Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

When they cot­ton dive, the boys become seri­ous. They coil into them­selves, squat­ting on the lip of the metal cot­ton bins, and they thrust their bod­ies into the air. The boys go for dis­tance, they go for height, but their main con­cern is arc. They’re try­ing to pierce the cot­ton deeply and com­pletely. So, against the sun­set, they curve together like dol­phins into the ocean, and the cot­ton catches and folds around them as they dis­ap­pear beneath, swim­ming into the soft waves, bits of husk float­ing by their bod­ies like shells. They do this over and over, pulling them­selves back up to the lip of the bins and then hurl­ing them­selves off again. The bins grunt under the pres­sure. The boys dive until their arms and legs ache. In midair, wisps of cot­ton flut­ter from their hair and fall behind them like bits of sea foam.

 

Though the boys were phys­i­cally distinguishable—Jeremy, tall and dusky; Peter, dirty-blond—together they acted like a mechan­i­cally sim­ple but effi­cient machine, first the tall body, then the short, mov­ing together through their high school lives, chew­ing through each new day, ben­e­fit­ing from the tech­no­log­i­cal advan­tage of two heads, four feet, four hands, four eyes. They had been friends since the fourth grade, though they never con­sid­ered how or when the friend­ship started. It sim­ply existed. They might have well have been fra­ter­nal twins for the way they fin­ished each other’s sen­tences, inhab­ited and dis­carded each other’s clothes, were fed and par­ented in each other’s houses.

###

The div­ing always made them late. For Peter, din­ner was at six, pre­cisely. His grand­fa­ther, bit­ter and enfee­bled, had always had his din­ner straight up at six, and he wasn’t going to change just because he was forced to live with his god­damned daugh­ter, Peter’s mother. As part of the fam­ily agree­ment, the old man had given up his car—a mid-80s Lin­coln Town Car, a mid­night blue mon­ster that Peter did his best to rag out. Jeremy, whose mother was still lit­i­gat­ing the proper amount of alimony out of his own father, was with­out a car and rode with Peter everywhere.

At school, cot­ton had become a code word. When­ever they saw girls walk­ing by, girls they knew or wanted to know, girls in boot cuts and belts, sweaters and pullovers, fleeces with and with­out hoods, the girls became “like cotton.”

“Just like cot­ton,” Jeremy would say with a con­tained smile.

“Fresh warm cot­ton at two o’clock,” Peter would say.

“Very uncot­ton,” Peter would some­times say.

###

If, look­ing back, Peter had had to trace the begin­ning of Jeremy and Lina’s rela­tion­ship, he would have said it began at a party at Robert Birch’s house in the win­ter of their sopho­more year, not too long after that first cotton-diving sea­son had ended. She was sit­ting on a couch in the liv­ing room, her legs folded under her Indian-style. A half-finished can of Beast rested between her legs. Peter noticed how the sweat of the can left damp marks on the inside thigh of her jeans. They had a but­ton fly, shiny like new nick­els. Lina was short with long black hair that mys­te­ri­ously con­tained sur­pris­ing strands of brown, and some­times red, depend­ing on the light. She was dark, even in the win­ter, and when the cou­ples walked among each other at bas­ket­ball games in Feb­ru­ary, it was obvi­ous she wasn’t from around there. All the Mis­sis­sippi girls had lost their brown, gone back to pearly white skin, tan lines gone for a few more months. Lina was from down fur­ther south, though the boys did not know where. She was telling some story, sur­rounded by other girls, ges­tur­ing with her one free hand, using the other to hold the beer steady between her legs.

“So like ro I am so not kid­ding that boy was fuck­ing wasted,” Lina said.

She was famous around the school, although no one dis­cussed why. All the boys who had been there at Niskayuna since sev­enth grade knew who she was, and remem­bered the day they first noticed her, the day she was pulled out of the junior high tableaux. Lina was the girl who had her first period pub­licly, dur­ing the morn­ing break, as she ate an apple on one of the pic­nic tables out in front of the quad. Nobody remem­bers the actual scene when it hap­pened. They only remem­ber the small spot of blood that stained the pic­nic table bench. Lina went home early. Nobody ever ques­tioned her about the inci­dent or gave her a hard time. Nobody said any­thing. Though the junior high boys would never con­fess to this, most of them stopped by the table at some point dur­ing the day. They approached slowly, with the rolling crunch of gravel under their feet, and they stretched their necks out and looked down at the spot of blood, mak­ing sure not to bend over, not to get too close. They stood there look­ing at it for a minute and let out a breath, rec­og­niz­ing that what they had heard was true. They then turned around and crunched back to their class, or their friends, or their moth­ers wait­ing for them in their cars.

“What the hell does ‘ro’ mean?” asked Peter, later that night back in the car.

“I think it might be short for ‘bro,’” said Jeremy.

“That’s stu­pid,” said Peter. “Is that some sort of Florida thing?”

“Lighten up, Pete.” Jeremy lit another cig­a­rette and spent the rest of the evening look­ing out the win­dow, finally ask­ing around mid­night to be taken home, even though his mom was out of town, and he could have done any­thing, and could have done it all night. 

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###

Peter’s full name was Peter Allen Traxler. He called the car the Traxler Town Tank—“a couch on wheels handed down through gen­er­a­tions.” When he drove peo­ple home from parties—he was always look­ing for an excuse to drive—he’d throw his arm up on the seat and crane his head back­ward and say, “Wel­come to the finest auto­mo­tive con­trap­tion in North­east Jack­son. Don’t worry about your safety”—and at this point he’d let go of the wheel and com­pletely turn to the back­seat pas­sen­gers, Jeremy man­ning the steering—“if we hit any­thing, we’ll prob­a­bly come out all right.”

###

On some week­end nights, months into their rela­tion­ship, depend­ing on the sched­ule of the evening, Jeremy and Lina would make-out in the Tank. If there was a party, Jeremy would snatch away Peter’s keys as he stood pump­ing up the keg, or if they went to a movie, Lina and Jeremy would take a long trip for snacks. Since both houses were on “per­ma­nent lock­down,” Jeremy claimed, they made time where they could. Once, when Lina’s father had to make an emer­gency busi­ness trip in the mid­dle of a week, Jeremy begged Peter into dri­ving him over to Lina’s house. Peter did his home­work out in the car, hun­kered beside the win­dow to get the good street­light, pre-calc notes spread across the dash.

###

In their sec­ond year of div­ing, junior year, their tech­nique became more intri­cate, involv­ing flips and twists and con­vo­luted and ulti­mately foiled land­ings. Day­light Sav­ings Time was about to end, and the specter of a 5:20 sun­set haunted Peter. He whined about it at school so much Jeremy had to tell him to shut up before some­one got curious.

The boys also became self-aware of their div­ing. They became finicky and pedan­tic about the details of the dive. They were harsh in their cri­tiques of each other’s per­for­mance. They devel­oped rules: you must always cot­ton dive shirt­less. You must wait at least 48 hours after a rain. Sun­set is the opti­mal time to dive, but full-on dark­ness is too dan­ger­ous. You should never cot­ton dive alone. Each per­son should act as the other’s life­guard. You must check in with your div­ing part­ner after every dive to ensure he has not smothered.

Then, one day, while stand­ing one the edge of a bin, psych­ing up for a back­flip, Peter took off his shorts.

After land­ing, he began vic­to­ri­ously swish­ing his arms and legs in that way peo­ple do when they’re mak­ing angels in the snow.

“What in the hell are you doing?” asked Jeremy, who had turned around to Peter’s bin.

“I don’t know,” said Peter.

“You don’t have any clothes on.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Put your fuck­ing shorts on.”

“Yeah, but Jeremy, it feels—”

“I don’t fuck­ing care. Put your shorts on.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s against the rules, that’s why.”

Peter glared at him for a moment. Then Peter leaned up and reached for his shorts and grunted out a Fine.

“Oh, shit—Goddamn it. Put your pants on.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Jesus,” said Peter. 

“No!” screamed Jeremy, his voice crack­ing. He was div­ing for his shirt and shoes.

On the hori­zon, a tor­nado of dust fun­neled behind a pick-up truck. It was speed­ing along the road next to the strip of thorny trees that led to the bins. “Maybe he isn’t com­ing—” began Peter. The furi­ous cloud of dust only grew. The truck was com­ing right for them. The boys busted it. Peter had never dressed so fast. The box­ers and shorts went on as one. Belts and but­tons and zip­pers were left undone. Feet were stuffed into untied shoes. Shirts were on inside-out. Socks were crammed into pock­ets. And every­thing was accom­pa­nied by Jeremy’s wail: “Get in the car hurry up I can’t believe we’re gonna get busted for this shit I hope he didn’t see your naked ass we are so dead oh my God would you just hurry the fuck up.” The Tank tore away. The pick-up was about fifty yards behind them. You could have seen the dust for miles. They drove so fast that the speedometer—a bright orange toothpick—peaked out at 80 and stuck there vibrat­ing. The car shook, and the wind gushed through the open win­dows and pum­meled them. Three min­utes later when they swerved through the gate at the school and parked behind the obser­va­tory, Jeremy pro­nounced the coast clear.

###

Peter heard his mother come into his bed­room early to put away clean clothes, the socks and boxer shorts and generic white under­shirts. She did not do this qui­etly, the warped dresser draw­ers need­ing two hands, their metal pulls clink­ing when slammed shut. Peter pre­tended to sleep. She let out a heavy sigh, a sigh that Peter rec­og­nized as his mother’s trade­mark, a the­atri­cal expres­sion of her mar­tyr­dom. He wasn’t sure—lying there encased in the down comforter—if she were sigh­ing because of him, or his father, or his Grandpa. Same dif­fer­ence, he thought.

“What’s this?” she said. “What’s this?”

Peter feigned sleep. She had picked up Peter’s dirty clothes that had been shed in a wad next to his bed, peel­ing under­shirts out of knit shirts, box­ers out of khaki pants. Peter men­tally inven­to­ried all the con­tra­band he could remem­ber. Cig­a­rettes and lighter? Wedged under­neath his car seat. Plas­tic traveler-sized bot­tle of South­ern Com­fort? Wrapped in a Pig­gly Wig­gly bag and bun­dled with the spare-tire gear in his trunk. The half-smoked dime­bag of pot bought from Binc Man­ches­ter? Was in car, now given to Jeremy to hide at his house once he heard rumor of drug dogs patrolling the Upper School lot. String of six con­doms acquired two years ago at camp? In the Lincoln’s glove com­part­ment, hid­den inside the owner’s man­ual. Three con­sec­u­tive issues of early ’93 Pent­house? Acci­den­tally thrown out the fall before, still sad about it. Peter could think of noth­ing else.

“Peter, what’s this?” his mother said, her sad pres­ence now sit­ting on his bed, impos­si­ble to ignore.

“Mom?” he said, emerg­ing, play­ing his best. “That you? What’s up?”

“Peter, what’s this? It fell out of your clo
thes.”

She held a tuft of raw cot­ton in her hand. Peter, dra­mat­i­cally groggy, worked at the wicks of his eyes with his fin­gers until they squeaked, and leaned over her hand, breath­ing hard. He tried some­how to reverse the blush­ing; he could feel the heat rush up his throat and over his cheeks. His lips felt chapped. He tasted the rusty morn­ing taste in his mouth. Fab­u­lous excuses began devel­op­ing in his mind, intri­cate plots involv­ing car wrecks and hos­pi­tals and emer­gen­cies and trauma.

“I dunno. Is it lint or some­thing?” he said.

“It’s not lint, honey. This is cot­ton. Like the kind you pick off a bush.”

Peter just kept star­ing at her hand, its fine wrin­kles like the depth­less cracks seen on old paintings.

“I dunno, Mom. Where did you get it?”

“It was in your clothes—where did you and Jeremy go last night?”

“Just the game. Like we always do.”

The hand retracted. The lint clutched tight, her face a blank hardness.

“Did we win?”

“No. Of course not,” Peter said, cough­ing up a laugh. “They beat us like a drum.”

“Won­der­ful,” his mother said. She got up, leav­ing the rest of the clean clothes stacked next to Peter in a neatly squared pile, the lock of cot­ton caught tight in her hand.

That next week, with­out expla­na­tion, Peter inher­ited his father’s cell phone. “Just in case some­thing comes up,” his mother said.

###

“I had a strange after­noon,” Jeremy said.

He looked off to the hori­zon, the way Peter had seen peo­ple in movies do when they are about to expel a great secret. They were on their way to a Hal­loween party.

“It was dif­fer­ent. Like noth­ing else. Ever.”

Jeremy was very solemn when he spoke. He was dressed as Ricky Mar­tin, with squeaky leather pants that Peter insisted were too shiny and radi­ant to be merely leather, that the pants were either pleather or vinyl. Vinyl, pleather, what­ever, Jeremy had said. It ain’t cot­ton. He wore a cream-colored, tight shirt. Nei­ther tried to iden­tify its mate­r­ial. It was col­lar­less but had a diag­o­nal slit at the throat-line that flapped open at will in a way that Peter said was either dis­tinctly Ricky Mar­tin or dis­tinctly Vul­can.

“What is so dif­fer­ent?” asked Peter.

“Can you keep a secret?” asked Jeremy. Peter nod­ded auto­mat­i­cally. “I was there when you came by this afternoon.”

“So why didn’t you come to the door?”

“Well, Lina was there, too. But no one else was around. So, you know, we started to make-out.”

“Yeah?”

“And well, we went … further.”

“You did it? Oh.” Peter was at a total loss. He was dressed in his nor­mal clothes. He didn’t have a cos­tume but an injury; a fake, rub­ber screw was glued onto his fore­head with trick­les of blood dried down his face and throat. His grand­fa­ther had said it was so life­like that he wanted to vomit. Peter was proud and asked for pictures.

“No no no. We didn’t do it. I told you that we are not going to do it for a while. Not until we’ve been going out for at least a year. We just said we loved each other like a month ago.”

“But—”

“We didn’t. We just. Well …”

“Well, what?”

“I don’t want to say it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it sounds so cheap when you just blurt it out.”

“Aw, J come on.” They were quiet. Peter checked his screw. It still looked perfect—blood spread­ing like branches across his face. It had tick­led hor­ri­bly when his mother squeezed the fake blood out of the drop­per. But it had tasted oddly sweet, as if sug­ared. He glanced over at Jeremy, whose hair was a caramel bouf­fant. Peter won­dered if he would try to carry the imper­son­ation com­pletely through the party that night. He had been practicing.

“What she going as?” Peter asked.

“Huh?” And then after a moment, he said, “Oh, yeah. She’s going to be a geisha girl.”

“A gee­sha girl? What’s that?” asked Peter.

“I don’t really know. Some ori­en­tal thing.”

“So are you going to tell me?” Peter asked, sound­ing more eager than he had intended. They were almost at the house. He could see the cars half-parked on the lawn.

“Lis­ten, just.” Jeremy crossed his arms. Peter pulled up and killed the engine. The house thumped with faint music.

Peter inhaled. Jeremy’s index and mid­dle fin­gers floated under his nose for a brief moment.

They were both quiet. And then Peter said: “That’s way bet­ter than cotton.”

         

The party was lame. The boys mulled around on the back porch. Their breath was the same white cloud as their cig­a­rette smoke. Lina and Mar­i­anne, Peter’s date, were some­where inside. Around eleven it started to sleet.

“Do you think she wants to?” Peter asked. They were stand­ing under the over­hang of the roof. Peter’s sneak­ers were slowly soak­ing. The bot­toms of their jeans were damp, as if they had been run­ning through tall, wet grass.

“I don’t know. Prob­a­bly. Maybe,” Jeremy said.

“How can you tell?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’ll say something.”

“You could say something.”

“Oh, yeah.” And when he noticed th
at Peter wasn’t kid­ding, he said: “But how?”

“What do you mean ‘how’? You must have talked about this some.”

“No, I mean where? As you well know, I have no car.”

“Your house?” Peter said.

“With my par­ents? Are you kid­ding? My mom hears it when the dog farts. She’s up check­ing to see if it’s a bur­glar. We can’t get halfway through a movie, for chrissakes.”

“Hers?”

“No. Her father dates.”

“I think I’ve seen him. Homecoming?”

“Yeah. He was her escort.”

“How did some­one so tall have some­one that short?”

“Lay off.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just say­ing that if you ever had kids, they might be tiny.”

“Pete.”

“Okay, sorry.”

“Let’s not even go there.”

“Well, have you thought about that?”

“Yes. Duh.”

“So?”

“So … I got some condoms.”

“Good. What kind?”

“I can’t remember.”

“What do you mean you can’t remem­ber? It’s not that hard. They’re either—”

“I haven’t actu­ally got­ten them yet.”

“Well, you need to.”

“I know,” said Jeremy. “I am. I will.”

Peter caught him­self glar­ing at Jeremy, as if he was squeez­ing the agree­ment out of him. His bouf­fant had lost its shape and it was just reg­u­lar Jeremy hair now, except lit with the glit­tery hair-paint Lina had bought him. The sleet was com­ing down heav­ier. It sounded like bits of plas­tic falling. The blood on his face had begun to itch.

“Is she on the pill?” asked Peter.

“Has been since she was fourteen.”

“Four­teen? What for?”

“I don’t know. It like helps them with their thing. You know.”

“It does? How?”

“I don’t know—I heard it somewhere.”

Peter, after smirk­ing dis­be­lief for a moment, said, “Has she been screw­ing around since she was fourteen?”

“Peter. God­damn it. Why do you say shit like that?”

There was a knock on the slid­ing glass door behind them. It was Lina—her face ghostly white in the makeup. Her hair had come down too. It had been up, intri­cately braided and folded, and Peter had told her she looked like origami. Her small smudge of lip­stick and the white paint around her mouth had faded from the drink­ing, so she looked like she was in reverse black face. Let’s go, she mouthed to Jeremy.

“Now?” he asked. She nod­ded and mouthed, please? He said okay and held up his cig­a­rette, only burned a fourth of the way down. She mouthed okay and her float­ing ghost-face dis­ap­peared back into the house.

“She’s been on the pill since—” said Peter.

“Shut up,” Jeremy whis­pered. “It’s a fuck­ing mir­a­cle I don’t kick your ass.” Peter started stamp­ing his feet. His legs felt numb from the calves down.

“You couldn’t even try, Ricky,” he said back.

“How would you like it if I said some­thing like that?”

“All I’m say­ing,” Peter said, still stomp­ing, “is that you should ask how many part­ners she’s had.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s important.”

Peter was now bent over rub­bing his shins. The rhyth­mic sound of his hands on his jeans. He couldn’t help but think of what this weather was doing to the cot­ton. It was prob­a­bly turn­ing into oat­meal and would take days to dry enough for another jump. And before they knew it, it would be Thanksgiving.

“What in the hell are you doing, Peter?”

“My feet are prac­ti­cally frozen solid,” he said.

“Well why didn’t you say some­thing?” said Jeremy.

“Because you said you wanted to stay out here.”

“But not if you are freez­ing to death,” said Jeremy.

“Are you pissed at me?” asked Peter.

“No,” said Jeremy. “It’s just this night has so com­pletely sucked.”

“Well, maybe we could—”

There was another knock on glass, much harder. They both turned around. Now, she mouthed.

“Okay,” Jeremy said back. Peter heard him curse under his breath and saw him drop his cig­a­rette into his beer can and swish it around, like Peter’d seen cousins do. It was nearly fin­ished any­way. But Jeremy didn’t move, only stood there look­ing at the glass door. He was prob­a­bly watch­ing Lina walk, Peter thought. She had been wear­ing a kimono but ended up bor­row­ing someone’s sweat pants after about 20 min­utes. At school, she had a way of posi­tion­ing her­self at the front of what­ever group of girls she was walk­ing with so that you could always see her, despite her shortness.

Peter remem­bered how she squat­ted down, like a catcher, to get her books for each class. She didn’t carry her back­pack com­pul­sively like the other stu­dents. She car­ried only the books she needed for the next class, prop­ping them on her hip. (Because of some unspo­ken tra­di­tion, the lock­ers at Niskayuna High were mostly dec­o­ra­tive.) When she squat­ted down, her shirt would some­times sep­a­rate from the waist­line of her pants, so that there was a band of flesh uncov­ered, the amount depend­ing on the type of shirt and pants. Peter had seen her shrink down to replace a binder, a high­lighter, a copy of Oth­ello, and when the por­tion of her lower back had appeared, he had once seen, just above the waist­line, a glit­ter of metal. At first he didn’t know what it was and he tried to stare incon­spic­u­ously, while fid­dling with his locker. But as she moved, the belly-chain moved, and the light reflected off it again, as if the metal were jew­eled. Peter stepped closer, to peer down at what he thought looked like a neck­lace. He was almost over her, try­ing to dec
ipher exactly what was tied around her waist, exactly what it was com­posed of. Then she stood up. Peter straight­ened and stepped back, sud­denly self-aware. Lina walked off to her class with­out turn­ing around. All Peter could now see were jeans and a sweater.

“Jeremy,” Peter said. “Come on. Let’s go.” He stood behind Jeremy, wait­ing for him to slide open the door. Jeremy was still look­ing into the glass, into his reflec­tion. Peter gave him a lit­tle push, very soft, just under his right shoul­der blade. After a sec­ond push, Peter felt him un-tense, and he finally slid the door open and the boys walked into the warm, dry party together.

###

After day­light sav­ings passed, their trips to the cot­ton bins became short and intense. They had seen the pickup once more, pulling up a dust storm on the hori­zon as they’d pulled off the road, and it had turned toward them, so Peter gunned it back onto the road. But they still returned, only once or twice a week, one of them stand­ing on the edge of a bin, fully clothed, the car keys held tight, keep­ing watch, while the other jumped and whooped and flipped and cursed the farmer, wher­ever he was. Peter typ­i­cally took the first lookout. 

###

Now that it was get­ting dark early, Peter’s mom wanted him home first thing after school. He needed to bring his grades up, she’d said. He had come home the week before with a scratch on his nose he couldn’t explain. He had scratched him­self on a cot­ton bulb husk, but he was sure she thought it was drugs.

Jeremy was out sick, and Peter had been dri­ving around Niskayuna after school, think­ing about going div­ing solo but always decid­ing it was too risky. He would get home by four and his mother would ask where he’d been, and he couldn’t even come up with a good lie. She knew Jeremy was sick and trusted him even less alone.

After three days of his mum­bled eva­sions, she said, “What part of come home right after school don’t you under­stand? Either get home or give me the keys.”

The next day after school, walk­ing out to his car, Peter saw Lina wait­ing at the curb, amidst the back­packs and the base­ball hats.

“Need a ride?” asked Peter. She shook her head. She was in a black skirt that touched the tops of her knees. A black sweater but­toned twice over a sky blue stretchy shirt. Her hair blew in the wind and a strand stuck to her lip.

“My dad’s com­ing. He’s bring­ing me my car.” And then as an expla­na­tion: “It’s my birth­day tomorrow.”

“Oh. Happy birth­day. Jeremy hadn’t told me. You’re get­ting a car?”

“Mhmm. A Forerunner.”

“Sweet,” said Peter. “You talk to Jeremy?”

“Still sick.”

“Bum­mer. I haven’t seen him in like a week.”

“How do you go on?”

“What?”

“Noth­ing.”

“Why do you hate me so much?” he asked.

“I don’t hate you at all.”

“Right.”

The flow of cars kept run­ning through the car­pool line with a stut­tery con­sis­tency, like the time-lapsed pho­tog­ra­phy of blood cir­cu­la­tion he’d seen in biol­ogy ear­lier that day.

“What’s he get­ting you?” Peter said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope he just gets well enough to go out. His mom keeps say­ing he’s got mono.”

“Really?”

“Ro, I totally did not give him mono. Don’t even joke.”

“I didn’t say that. I wasn’t even gonna.”

A hunter green Fore­run­ner was mak­ing its way around the curve of the entrance road. Lina’s hair swirled around her face in the wind. It looked almond-colored in the bright Novem­ber sun, Peter thought.

“So that it?” Peter asked.

She nod­ded, her excite­ment undis­guised. “That’s really nice,” Peter said.

“Thanks. Maybe when J gets bet­ter, we can all go out. I’ll drive.”

“That would be nice,” Peter said. “Is it four-wheel drive?”

“I have no idea. You could ask my dad.”

“Nah. Just curi­ous. If it was we could take it mudding.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

The truck pulled up in front of them and Lina put her stuff in the back­seat, and then did a sort of hop to get into the front passenger’s seat. She made some inde­ci­pher­able, excited noise to her father. She gave a quick wave before clos­ing the door, and Peter waved back, but by then the door was closed, the glass tinted, the truck pulling away, and Peter was left alone in the car­pool line, another car pulling up and jolt­ing to a stop and another per­son jump­ing in and leaving.  

The next day, a Fri­day after­noon, was per­fect for cot­ton div­ing. The air was crisp; the sky was cloud­less, a deep, blind­ing blue. Peter sat out on his back porch, smok­ing a cig­a­rette. His mother was happy. He’d finally come home straight from school. She gave him an exag­ger­ated thank you before leav­ing for the store. Said she’d make him one of his favorites—chicken and dumplings—for finally listening.

Jeremy was still out of school. Peter had tried to find Lina, to see what the game­plan was for the week­end, but no luck. It was get­ting close to five, and he was grow­ing des­per­ate from the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the vision of Fri­day night at home with the fam­ily, watch­ing Grandpa’s mouth work on the dumplings at din­ner, Dad turn­ing up Nash Bridges too loud. He started another cig­a­rette and called Jeremy.

Jeremy’s mother was star­tled to hear from him. “Yes, Peter. He’s doing much bet­ter. Doc­tor gave him a shot yes­ter­day. Turned out not to be mono—just a bad cold, I guess. Any­way, he told me he was with you,” she said.

Peter tried to cover, but his voice went shaky, and he could tell from the way hers b
ecame thin and angu­lar that she did not believe any­thing he said.

He called Lina’s house. He felt odd doing this. He had seen Jeremy do it so many times. The number-pattern was not famil­iar but the sound of their touch-tone keys was com­fort­ing. The voice of a very large man answered. She was out, for her birth­day. She would not be in until late. Peter beeped off the portable phone and began to pace. It was almost five. Three cig­a­rette butts lay crushed in black, ashy smudges at his feet on the back porch. His mother would be home soon with with the dumpling mix. Birds chirped. Every­thing out­side turned a shade darker, as if the world had just slightly con­densed. The old man was out with her, rid­ing shot­gun, guard­ing all the coupons, read­ing the obit­u­ar­ies, telling her to slow down. Leaves were turn­ing orange, a purplish-brown. It was four forty-five. Thanks­giv­ing was two weeks away. He dialed Jeremy’s cell phone. It rang and rang, went to voice­mail. He imag­ined it bleat­ing next to him, sit­ting on the seat against his thigh, wher­ever he was. He re-dialed.

They mea­sured the cir­cum­fer­ence of the four bins with their feet, one placed care­fully in front of the other. Jeremy took off his shirt, his watch, his shoes, his socks, his belt, his jeans, his box­ers, one leg at a time so as not to fall. Lina began undress­ing as well, san­dals flipped over the side, T-shirt on the edge of the bin, bra thrown back toward the truck, jeans unbut­toned one at the time—the del­i­cate tam­bourine jin­gle of the but­ton fly—sliding off the left leg, then the right, hold­ing her hand out to Jeremy for bal­ance. She tossed the jeans over the edge. She wore no under­wear. A thin wire sparkled around her waist. She pranced away from Jeremy on the balls of her feet. The bin whined under­neath, and Jeremy fol­lowed her out to the cen­ter, to the cross cre­ated by the con­joined bins. They embraced, their two vague shad­ows momen­tar­ily con­geal­ing. Hold­ing hands, stand­ing side-by-side, they turned to face one of the bins. After glanc­ing at each other, they leaned back, together, falling back­wards into the cot­ton, swim­ming in back strokes. Again, over and over, together or on their own, they dove with a deep arc into the cot­ton and pulled them­selves towards the bot­tom and found the metal mesh that now cov­ered urine-colored dead grass, and then they turned around, push­ing upwards, towards the orange light, towards the air.

Peter saw it all. He was squat­ting behind a row of trees, del­i­cately hold­ing back a ring of thorns. It was almost dark, and the world had blurred. He couldn’t con­trol his breath­ing; his under­shirt was stuck to his chest; the thorns were prick­ing into his palms, into his fin­gers; one scratched his neck like a bro­ken fingernail.

He saw the pick-up truck, almost gray and invis­i­ble in the dusk, slowly creep­ing down the dirty road towards the bins. It was already almost a hun­dred yards away.

Peter had sum­moned it. He had seen the Fore­run­ner on his ini­tial drive by the field, and in silence, with no think­ing, no pause to con­sider what he was doing, he drove around the cir­cum­fer­ence of the field, look­ing for the near­est one-story farmer’s house, try­ing to find the one with that truck. It didn’t take long. The truck was inno­cently parked in a car­port, and Peter idled in front of the house, lean­ing on the horn, until a cur­tain twitched in one of the win­dows, and he was sure he had been seen. He then stomped on the accel­er­a­tor and sped back to the cot­ton bins.

Lina’s dark green SUV floated next to the bins like a fat shadow. They con­tin­ued to dive—an awk­ward and sin­cere motion. Peter heard Lina gig­gle. A cell phone chirped from inside the Fore­run­ner, but it was ignored. Their cloth­ing lay strewn on the lip of the bin. A cou­ple of arti­cles rested on the top of the Fore­run­ner. Jeremy was a pale shadow, with dirty shad­ings where his hair was sup­posed to be. Lina was com­pact and dark. The belly-necklace sparkled.

The sky behind the bins had turned a navy blue.

Peter heard a twig snap under the tire of the approach­ing truck.

He thrashed, twist­ing his body. A thorn traced across his fore­arm, and he felt a siz­zling sting. It left a thin, red scratch—the kind that never bleeds but always appears to be on the cusp of bleed­ing. Lina and Jeremy con­tin­ued to dive. He saw them per­form a flip into a bin together, hol­ler­ing as they dove. Peter could almost see the fluff and recoil of the cot­ton as it caught them.

The truck was fifty feet away. Peter saw the vague out­line of a dri­ver bent over the wheel.

Peter sucked his scratch, hop­ing to make the sting go away. Lina and Jeremy did not come up from the cot­ton. He knew they were under its cov­ers. He fought the urge to run for the bins and fling him­self into the cot­ton. Instead, he turned around and walked back to his car, slop­pily parked in the soy­bean field behind the trees. He left the cou­ple naked in the cot­ton, float­ing together in the twi­light with the pick-up truck approaching—he left them to go home, back to his mother who would be wait­ing at the din­ner table with her old man.

###

Peter did not hear from Jeremy for another week. Both he and Lina were at school but nei­ther approached him. He didn’t even see them together. All he got as he walked down the hall was a fake, par­tial smile, or a slight head nod. After a week, Jeremy finally approached Peter after school. “Hey, man.” Peter was lean­ing over his back­pack, try­ing to force the zip­per to close. “Ya think we could start car­pool­ing again?” With­out look­ing up Peter said sure.

They walked out to the park­ing lot. The dark blue Lin­coln sat alone. Frost had hit and they moved slowly in their thick jack­ets and under their bulging back­packs. When they had almost reached the car, Jeremy said, “Hey, Peter. I’m sorry about the last week. About not talking.”

Peter nod­ded. “I’ve been in some seri­ous shit.” Peter said, yeah, he’d heard things.

They crawled into the car. The doors whined. Peter put the heater on high but the air was cold at first. The seats and steer­ing wheel felt stale.

Once they were situated—the back­packs put away, the wipers mas­sag­ing the blurry wind­shield, the boys buck­led in and rub­bing their hands together—Jeremy looked over at Peter and with a fright­ened but elated smile said: “Pete. Man, I have had the weird­est fuck­ing week. You wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t beleeeve what hap­pened to Lina and me. We—”

“Get out,” Peter said, his hands now stuffed into his coat pock­ets. The smile on Jeremy’s face made Peter want to pum­mel him.

“What—”

“Get the fuck out.”

“Pete—I”

“I said: get the fuck out of my car.”

“Man, I’m sor—” >