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  His mother had set out plates for the twins, though they were never up this early except during the school year. She gave him a reassuring smile as he passed through. “Morning, Harley Jay.”

  “Morning.” He glanced again at his daddy and went out the back door toward the barn.

  Wind sighed through the broom weeds. He thought of the toad somewhere there among the weeds, the thin hairline slit in its underbelly, wondering if it was deep enough to have killed it.

  He took a leak behind the barn where the two remaining cows stood flat and gray against the dawn, crunching on the bundled sorghum his daddy had thrown over earlier from the stack-lot. He thought how he might draw such flat shapes, showing what something was without detail. When he finished, he buttoned up and headed back to the house. Wind fluttered his shirt, hummed in the windmill.

  In the kitchen, he poured hot water from the kettle into the enameled pan, added a little cold from the bucket and washed up for breakfast. His plate was already made with scrambled eggs, hot biscuits, red-eye gravy and fried strips of tenderloin. His mother poured him half a cup of coffee, poured herself some and took her place.

  They ate in silence, the mood subservient to that of his daddy. Harley watched him without seeming to watch, apprehensive glances, little more than a blink of an eye from a lowered face.

  His daddy finished, dumped his knife and fork on his plate with a clatter, shoved his chair back and went out. The screen door slammed after him.

  Harley hurried.

  “Don’t swallow your food whole,” his mother said.

  By the time he got out to the tractors, his daddy was working the lever on one of the guns, pumping grease into the little metal nipples on the disk harrow behind the Farmall Regular.

  “I already gassed ’em,” his daddy said, not looking up from where he knelt under the Regular’s toolbar. “You get that old Twelve greased.”

  Harley grabbed the other grease gun from off the five-gallon can and slid down under the Twelve’s toolbar. He had made many drawings of the farm machinery, always impressed by their massive power—the big buzzard-wing sweeps, the steel disks, how they tore up the earth.

  His daddy finished, put his grease gun away and went up alongside the Regular, where he set the magneto, the spark and the gas. Then he went to the front, fit the crank in and gave it a sharp twist. The tractor coughed a puff of smoke out the stack. The second time it fired and died. His dad went around and set the spark back some and this time it fired right up, rattling rich and throaty, shattering the stillness of the soft tangerine light, the sun beginning to wobble up behind the long, dark horizon.

  Harley sneaked a look at his daddy, saw the little light there in his eyes, and figured it was about as near to joy as he could get. That was something he would never be able to paint. But he tried to imagine it, what the light would show behind his eyes.

  His daddy turned toward him. “You about through there?”

  “Yessir. Just finishing up.”

  “Okay now. You watch that old harrow. You cut them wheels too short, that toolbar’ll catch on them old knobby tires and it’ll pick that sucker up and land it right on your back. So you watch it, hear?”

  “Yessir.”

  Harley greased the last fitting on the harrow and turned to slide out from under the toolbar.

  He stopped.

  The horny toad dragged its great black-bloated belly through the dirt, its wide mouth gaping, watching him with its little slit eyes.

  Harley stared in turn, unable to swallow. It was fifty yards back to where the horny toad had disappeared yesterday into the broom weeds.

  Harley eased from under the toolbar on the opposite side, went to the fencerow and picked up a heavy rock in both hands. He brought it back, lifted it above his head with effort, and brought it down on the toad with all his strength. A muffled plop and yellow pus shot into the dirt from underneath.

  His daddy turned, frowning. “What’re you doing there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You stop that fooling around and get that tractor moving.”

  “Yessir.”

  Harley set the spark and the gas and then went around front. He stood humped over, holding to the crank. A moment passed; then he let go, went to the fencerow again and began to gag.

  His daddy looked up. “Hey…what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  His daddy studied him. “You sick?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then how come you throwing up like that?”

  “I ain’t. I’m fine.”

  Another moment. Then, softer: “No, you better get on back to the house. Lay down awhile. Hear?”

  Harley shook his head, spat out the taste of bile, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Wordless, he returned to the tractor. He took hold of the crank, gave it a sharp turn and it fired right up. He climbed up on the iron seat and knew without looking that his daddy was still watching as he shoved the clutch in, pulled the notched gas lever out two-thirds of its length, and nudged the shifter into gear between his knees.

  Chapter 2

  Fastball

  THE JULY SUN beat down, blinding off the windshields of cars and pickups parked behind the backstop at home plate. Dust kicked up from the ball field hung lazily on the heat before settling. Sweaty Separation fans meandered up and down the first-base line yelling encouragement and advice, while Blackwell fans claimed the territory behind third and home.

  Seventeen-year-old Harley stood at his position just off first, watching Billy Wayne Hinchley on the mound, winding up for a pitch. Billy Wayne Hinchley was the new boy in town. He was short, his head too big for his body and his nose too big for his head even. There were pockmarks on his face and his eyes were little. Little and beady bright. His mouth was little too, and he had a way of talking out of the corner, grinning up one side until the greasy hank of hair hanging across his forehead caught in the corner, like a hook. That was Billy Wayne Hinchley, and there was no reason in the world for the girls to be acting so crazy over him.

  Harley didn’t like the way Billy Wayne talked about the girls, the way he talked to them, bordering on the obscene. That in itself might whet their curiosity, regardless of their disapproval. Some of the boys thought it was funny, but in spite of his own raging hormones, he treated the girls with respect. His mother said you either looked up to people or down on them. It was all in respect. Too, he resented the way Billy Wayne had blown into town, acting right off like he was cock-of-the-walk. He supposed he was jealous, but he still didn’t see any reason the girls found Billy Wayne so interesting.

  One thing Harley had to say for Billy Wayne: He could pitch a baseball. Separation scraped together a team each summer and played similar teams all the way up into the Texas Panhandle. It wasn’t just kids; grown men came in from the farms and ranches and oilfields. They were well into the season when Billy Wayne Hinchley showed up, but he tried out and damned if he couldn’t throw that ball like a pro. He could hit, too, which pitchers weren’t usually known to do. So Separation was moving up fast, from seventh to third in what was unofficially known as the “Prickly Pear League.”

  And here they were, tied three and three with Blackwell in the bottom of the ninth, Blackwell’s Jimmy Phillips at bat, two outs and a man on second. Billy Wayne came out of his windup, the Separation crowd yelling and carrying on as Phillips took an embarrassing swing at Billy Wayne’s slider. Strike two.

  Harley’s gaze wandered past the backstop, beyond the cars and pickups to the café and Travis’s general store wrinkling in the heat among a half dozen little shoe-box houses down across the school grounds on the other side of the highway. It was high time he hit that road, got off to Dallas. But then there was Darlene Delaney.

  He looked aside to where she sat with three other girls in Billy Wayne’s ’55 Chevy. They drank Cokes they had brought up from the café, and fanned themselves with magazines, and now and then they’d get out and parade around in front of the cars,
laughing and giggling for the benefit of whoever cared to watch—and more than one were willing to watch these girls bursting out all over, jiggling up and down the sidelines in their light summer dresses, tanned arms and legs swinging.

  Things had gone well with him and Darlene for a while now. They had been to the musical at Travis’s general store two Saturday nights in a row, and Darlene had ridden to the Highland ball game with him the week before. That night he had given her a gold ankle chain with a little heart on it. That chain had cost him the last of his going-away money.

  He watched as Darlene got out of the car, her full twist of a mouth turning down at the corners in a haughty smile, big slanted eyes flashing over high cheekbones. One of the girls said something to her and they all giggled. Darlene flushed and laughed and threw a magazine back through the window at them. Showing off. She tossed a glance in Harley’s direction, then went parading along behind the backstop, hips and breasts doing the damnedest things under her sleeveless cornflower-blue dress. He was pleased to see she wore the ankle chain.

  He heard the crack of the bat but by the time it registered, the ball was a thin white blur whistling past his ear. His glove automatically snapped up in its wake, but that ball was long gone and Jimmy Phillips from Blackwell was pumping his knees ninety-to-nothing, coming down the first-base line with everybody yelling, and Anse, the man on second, was already rounding third, headed home. It was a fair ball just inside the base line. He could have stuck up his glove and had it without moving out of his tracks.

  Frog Anderson tried to stop it in right field but it took a bad hop, jumped his glove, sank up in his jelly belly, and came spitting back out, Frog swatting at it, sucking air. It didn’t matter anyway; Anse was crossing home plate, and everybody was hooting and hollering, and that Blackwell bunch were blowing their car horns and going crazy, and by now Phillips was rounding third, headed home. Phillips had a home run on what would have been a line drive to first if Harley had been on his toes instead of daydreaming over Darlene Delaney. That was it. He had lost the game: Blackwell five, Separation three.

  Billy Wayne Hinchley glared at him with his big head cocked to one side, hands on his hips as though he might like to do something about it. Willie McDonald on second slammed his glove on the ground and kicked up a cloud of dust. There was a lot of noise: “You wanna sleep out there, we’ll get you a cot.” “Get that boy some caffeine.” “Gonna get killed standing around on the ball field, your face hanging out like that.”

  He felt himself flushing—looking like a damn fool right in front of Darlene. Pretty soon everybody quieted down, and some of the boys even thought it was funny. The Blackwell team hung around for a while, rehashing the game with the Separation boys. Most of the older men went on back to work or down to the café.

  “Goddamn, you can flat throw that ball,” Jimmy Phillips said to Billy Wayne.

  “And you can flat hit the hell out of it, too,” Billy Wayne replied, a sideways glance at Harley. “You just about knocked that cover plumb off.”

  “Shit, let’s all go swimming,” Frog said, rubbing the red spot on the fat under his T-shirt where the ball had popped him.

  “Yeah, let’s all go swimming.” They began gathering up balls, gloves and bats, stuffing them in the tow sacks they hauled them around in.

  Harley picked up a practice ball, slapped it in his glove and shuffled over to where Darlene stood with her three girlfriends near the bleachers. The girls were laughing, talking loud, trying to get attention without being obvious. Darlene looked at Harley and rolled her eyes. “Where was your mind at, anyway, Harley Jay!”

  He forced a grin. “Take a guess.”

  Billy Wayne Hinchley stepped between them, his back to Harley. “Hey, y’all girls wanna go swimming with us?”

  They giggled and turned red, all but Darlene, and some of the boys laughed out loud because everybody knew the boys skinny-dipped. A few Blackwell boys paused nearby, looking on with slit-eyed grins.

  Clara Ann, a small blond with freckles and a turned-up nose, said, “What makes you think we’d go swimming with you, anyhow?”

  “It might be real educational,” Billy Wayne said, that grin hooked up one side of his face.

  “Sheew. You can’t teach me nothing,” Clara Ann said. “You don’t know nothing I don’t know.”

  “Okay, then, you be the teacher. Maybe you can show me a thing or two.”

  “Just what do you mean by that, Billy Wayne Hinchley?”

  The girls were red and sweaty and embarrassed, but Harley could see they were tickled to death over it. All but Darlene.

  “C’mon and find out,” Billy Wayne said.

  “Shoot, I wouldn’t go nowhere with you, not even to a dogfight.”

  “Aw, Clara Ann, they don’t come any nicer’n me,” Billy Wayne said.

  “Or bigger either,” Jimmy Phillips said, and all the boys whooped and whistled.

  “Just what do you mean by that crack?” Clara Ann said, but she was flushed, and she and everybody else knew what he meant. Word had gotten around from the gym showers about Billy Wayne’s big pecker. It was big even in relation to his head and nose. Harley had to admit he hadn’t seen a dong like that on anything short of old Lucifer, Uncle Jay’s stud horse.

  “You wanna find that out, you gotta go swimming with us,” Billy Wayne said.

  Darlene swelled up and stepped out in front of the other girls. “You really think you’re hot stuff, don’t you.”

  Billy Wayne looked her over with his seedy little eyes. “Try me.”

  Harley was about to step in when Darlene’s face screwed itself out of shape and she gave Billy Wayne a look that would wither a stove bolt. “Not if you were the last ugly little dwarf on God’s green earth.”

  Everybody laughed. Billy Wayne laughed too, though his color was up.

  “Hoo-wee!” somebody shouted.

  “Aw, c’mon, y’all, let’s go swimming.”

  A few boys broke away. Others hovered nearby, leering.

  Billy Wayne stood in place, looking Darlene over. “You hurting bad, ain’t you.”

  “That’s enough,” Harley said sharply.

  “You’re a nasty little boy,” Darlene said to Billy Wayne. She turned and stomped off toward her daddy’s pickup, nose in the air.

  Billy Wayne slouched against his Chevy, watching Darlene walk away. He laughed a short bark of a laugh. Darlene stopped. She looked flustered for a second, then turned and came directly to Harley, her eyes flashing over his shoulder at Billy Wayne.

  “We still going to the musical tonight?” she demanded loudly.

  Harley swallowed. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Well, who knows, you go off with that…that Prince Charming there, and who knows where y’all are gonna end up.”

  “Not me. I’m going swimming for about ten minutes. I gotta do the milking and feeding tonight, so I’d better meet you there.”

  Darlene shrugged. Her gaze flicked past Harley again; then she looked back at him, quick, and all at once her mad look dissolved and she smiled as sweet a smile as he had ever seen. He thought for a second she was actually going to kiss him right there in front of everybody. Instead, she put one hand on his shoulder, cupped her other hand to his ear and whispered, “Okay. I’ll meet you there. Say around seven.” Then she drew back and blushed that same sweet smile on him again—as though she had just confided the grandest secret in the whole world. She turned then, chin up, and marched with a jaunty, hip-swinging show toward the other girls, who were looking on with gleeful anticipation.

  “Let’s go down to the café and get something cold to drink,” Darlene said airily, and the girls piled into the cab of her daddy’s pickup, giggling among themselves. Darlene waved at Harley with a big showy smile and then drove down across the school grounds to the café.

  Billy Wayne had climbed into his car with three other boys. He sat with his arms draped over the steering wheel, grinning his crooked grin, just as if Darlene had whispe
red in his ear and not Harley’s at all.

  Willie McDonald got in the cab of Harley’s old 1935 Ford pickup. Frog and Bender climbed up in the bed behind.

  “I’m only going for a quick dip,” Harley said. “Y’all want to stay, you’re gonna have to ride back with somebody else.” He slid in behind the wheel and backed around at the same time Billy Wayne did so that both vehicles were facing each other. Engines revved, clutches slapped and dirt drummed under the fenders. Harley heard Frog cursing from where he and Bender slammed back into the tailgate. They missed a head-on collision only because Billy Wayne slacked off and cut his wheel at the last moment, Harley gambling correctly that Billy Wayne wouldn’t bash up that shiny ’55 red Chevy with its customized vinyl interior and its horn that played “Dixie,” just to smash Harley’s old pickup.

  Harley downshifted coming off the school grounds and hit the highway across from Enoch Engleson’s mechanic shop, tires squalling over the pavement. Frog and Bender hunkered down behind the cab. In the rearview mirror Harley saw Frog throw his head back and let go a rebel yell that could be heard for five miles over the whine of the engine: “Yeeeeee-haaaaaaaa!”

  Harley angled off onto the lake road just before the Separation Baptist Church, upshifting into third gear. The Chevy was right on his tail, but let off in the big cloud of dust that whoomed up when the pickup went off onto the caliche. They blew by the galvanized sprawl of the cotton gin, and then old Sanchez’s trailer house blurred past in its camouflage of weeds and junked cars. Harley saw in the rearview mirror, over the .22 in the gun rack, that Frog and Bender were huddled in close to the cab again, dust boiling up behind.

  After another half mile the caliche played out to hard-packed red clay and the Chevy crawled up behind them again. Harley glanced at the speedometer. It wobbled on sixty-five. Frog yelled and pumped his middle finger over the tailgate at the red Chevy closing on their bumper now.