In the Tall Grass

STAND STILL! LET US COME TO YOU!”

He turned around, once more expecting to see Becky, but he only saw the grass. He flexed his knees and jumped. He could see the road (farther away than he expected; he must have run quite some way without realizing it). He could see the church-Holy Hank’s House of Hallelujah, or whatever it was called-and he could see the Bowl- a-Drome, but that was all. He didn’t really expect to see Becky’s head, she was only five-two, but he did expect to see her route of passage through the grass. Only the wind was combing through it harder than ever, and that made it seem like there were dozens of possible paths.

He jumped again. Soggy ground squashed each time he came down. Those little licking peeks back at Highway 400 were maddening.

“Becky? Where the hell are you?”

• • •

Becky heard Cal bellow for the kid to stand still no matter how scared he was, and let them come to him. Which sounded like a good plan, if only her idiot brother would let her catch up. She was winded, she was wet, and she was for the first time feeling truly pregnant. The good news was that Cal was close, on her right at one o’clock.

Fine, but my sneakers are going to be ruined. In fact, the Beckster believes they’re ruined already.

“Becky? Where the hell are you?”

Okay, this was strange. He was still on her right, but now he sounded closer to five o’clock. Like, almost behind her.

“Here,” she said. “And I’m going to stay here until you get to me.” She glanced down at her Android. “Cal, do you have any bars on your phone?”

“I don’t have any idea. It’s in the car. Just keep yakking until I get to you.”

“What about the kid? And the crazy mom? She’s gone totally dark.”

“Let’s get back together-then we’ll worry about them, okay?” he said. Becky knew her brother, and she didn’t like the way he sounded. This was Cal being worried and trying not to show it. “For now, just talk to me.”

Becky considered, then began to recite, stamping her muddy sneakers in time. “There once was a guy named McSweeney, who spilled some gin on his weenie. Just to be couth he added vermouth, then slipped his girl a martini.”

“Oh, that’s charming,” he said. Now directly behind her, almost close enough to reach out and touch, and why was that such a relief? It was only a field, for God’s sake.

“Hey, you guys!” The kid. Faint. Not laughing now, just sounding lost and terrified. “Are you looking for me? You there, Captain Cal? I’m scared!”

“YES! YES, OKAY! HANG ON,” her brother hollered. “Becky? Becky, keep talking.”

Becky’s hands went to her bulge-she refused to call it a baby-bump, that was so People magazine-and cradled it lightly. “Here’s another. There once was a woman named Jill, who swallowed an exploding pi-”

“Stop, stop. I overshot you somehow.”

Yup, his voice was now coming from ahead. She turned around again. “Quit goofing, Cal. This is not funny.” Her mouth was dry. She swallowed, and her throat was dry, too. When it made that click sound, you knew you were dry. There was a big bottle of Poland Spring water in the car. Also a couple of Cokes in the backseat. She could see them: red cans, white letters.

“Becky?”

“What?”

“There’s something wrong here.”

“What do you mean?” Thinking: As if I didn’t know.

“Listen to me. Can you jump?”

“Of course I can jump! What do you think?”

“I think you’re going to have a baby this summer, that’s what I think.”

“I can still. . Cal, stop walking away!”

“I didn’t move,” he said.

“You did, you must have! You still are!”

“Shut up and listen. I’m going to count to three. On three, you put your hands over your head like a ref signaling the field goal’s good and jump just as high as you can. I’ll do the same. You won’t need to get much air for me to see your hands, ’kay? And I’ll come to you.”

Oh whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad, she thought-no idea where it had come from, something else from Freshman Lit maybe, but one thing she did know was that he could say he wasn’t moving but he was, he was getting farther away all the time.

“Becky? Beck-”

“All right!” she screamed. “All right, let’s do it!”

“One! Two! — ” he cried. “THREE!”

At fifteen, Becky DeMuth had weighed eighty-two pounds-her father called her Stick-and ran hurdles with the varsity team. At fifteen, she could walk from one end of the school to the other on her hands. She wanted to believe she was still that person; some part of her had honestly expected to remain that person for her entire life. Her mind had still not caught up to being nineteen and pregnant. . not eighty-two pounds but one hundred thirty. She wanted to grab air-Houston, we have liftoff-but it was like trying to jump while giving a small child a piggyback. (When you thought about it, that was pretty much the case.)

Her eyeline only cleared the top of the grass for a moment, affording her the briefest glimpse back the way she had come. What she saw, though, was enough to make her almost breathless with alarm.

Cal and the road. Cal. . and the road.

She came back down, felt a shock of impact jolt up through her heels and into her knees. The squodgy ground under her left foot melted away. She dropped and sat down in the rich black muck with another jolt of impact, a literal whack in the ass.

Becky thought she had walked twenty steps into the grass. Maybe thirty at most. The road should’ve been close enough to hit with a Frisbee. It was, instead, as if she had walked the length of a football field and then some. A battered red Datsun, zipping along the highway, looked no bigger than a Matchbox car. A hundred and forty yards of grass-a softly flowing ocean of watered green silk-stood between her and that slender blacktop thread.

Her first thought, sitting in the mud, was: No. Impossible. You didn’t see what you think you saw.

Her second thought was of a weak swimmer, caught in a retreating tide, pulled farther and farther from shore, not understanding how much trouble she was in until she began to scream and discovered no one on the beach could hear her.

As shaken as she was by the sight of the improbably distant highway, her brief glimpse of Cal was just as disorienting. Not because he was far away, but because he was really close. She had seen him spring up above the grass less than ten feet away, but the two of them had been screaming for all they were worth just to make themselves heard.

The muck was warm, sticky, placental.

The grass hummed furiously with insects.

“Be careful!” the boy shouted. “Don’t you get lost too!”

This was followed by another brief burst of laughter-a giddy, nervous sob of hilarity. It wasn’t Cal, and it wasn’t the kid, not this time. It wasn’t the woman, either. This laughter came from somewhere to her left, then died out, swallowed by bug song. It was male and had a quality of drunkenness to it.

Becky suddenly remembered one of the things Weirdo Mom had shouted: Stop calling, honey! He’ll hear you!