“Fine, you go first.” Tom stuck one hand on his hip in a defiant gesture.
“Why? Need me to show you the way? You a sissy?”
Tom’s face, already pink from perpetual sunburn, flushed a darker shade of crimson. Even his scalp flushed through the thin layer of the almost-white blond hair of his buzz cut. Everyone could see it. “Nah, I ain’t a sissy. Take that back.”
At this rate, their parlaying would take all day. Helen snorted in disgust, turned, and took off in a sprint toward the split-rail fence. She balled her hands and punched up at the sky with each stride. Faster and faster. She neared the fence. It was higher than she’d expected, but there was no turning back. She sucked in a breath and held it, launching herself into the air. Up, up, and over. Her heel caught the top plank of the fence and she wobbled, straining to keep her feet underneath her, to keep her balance. She landed with a thump, stumbling slightly on her landing, but kept upright and exhaled before gulping down some desperate breaths, glad to be facing away from the boys so they couldn’t see the relief she knew to be stamped all over her face. She slowed to a stop, turned, and raised her arms over her head. “Ha! See if you can do that!”
At that moment, Miss Thurston emerged from the schoolhouse. From where Helen stood, she couldn’t hear exactly what her teacher said to the boys, but from the way their chins dropped to their chests, there was little doubt it was a good tongue-lashing.
Miss Thurston turned to scan the schoolyard, but stopped when she caught sight of Helen. “Miss Stephens, you come here right now.”
With heavy legs, Helen headed back toward the school, slipping between the middle portion of the split-rail fence. By the time she sidled in front of her teacher, Tom and the other boys had edged away, eyes averted and sniggering, but they dawdled, anticipating the scolding everyone knew was coming.
“You’re far too old for these shenanigans, Miss Stephens. Start acting like a lady. Tomorrow I expect to see you walk home with the girls.”
The girls? Helen almost choked. The girls wanted nothing to do with her. The boys didn’t care much for her company either, but at least they valued her abilities. Racing, ditch jumping, and games of ball had won her a good dose of respect from them, respect that she sorely missed from the girls. Helen looked up to Miss Thurston’s face in time to see a flash of pity in the woman’s dark eyes.
“I mean it, Helen,” Miss Thurston murmured. “If you keep up with the boys, you’re going to find yourself in trouble. Nothing good will come from this. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Helen angled her head down, but annoyance surged through her ten-year-old brain. What did Miss Thurston know anyway? She had straight teeth, wore pretty dresses, knew how to wear her hair in a fashionable style. How was it that someone purported to be smart about books could be so ignorant about people? Did adults forget the battlefield that was childhood when they left it behind?
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, while everyone else dawdled, gathering their things and gossiping, Helen took off out the front door at a sprint and cleared out of the schoolyard, eager to avoid Miss Thurston’s wrath. It wasn’t until she passed the school’s outbuilding by the front gate that she slowed, her lunch pail banging into her thigh with the change of pace.
“Hey, Hellie!” a voice called.
She turned to search the shadows of the outbuilding, her vision spotty with the sudden shift toward the afternoon’s brightness. There, standing in the doorway, her sixteen-year-old cousin Jimmy shifted his weight from one foot to the other. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone had come out of the schoolhouse but no one appeared to have left. Silently, she congratulated herself on getting out of school without any trouble.
“C’mere,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
Helen had seen him doing odd jobs around the school, but they never spoke. Like many of the kids from the surrounding farms, his attendance at the local high school had become more and more infrequent with every passing year. Curious, she picked her way through the scrubby grass toward him. He waved his hand at her to follow him and disappeared into the building.
Helen entered the outbuilding and blinked a few times for her eyes to readjust in the low light. Streaks of sunshine edged through the cracks of the building walls, creating veils of dust motes in the air. Jimmy stood at the far wall and pointed at a pile of hay bales next to him. She neared him, wondering what he had found. Perhaps a dead snake? One neighboring farmer had even found an unbroken bottle of moonshine in one of his hay bales. When she reached Jimmy’s side, she examined the bales but saw nothing out of place. She glanced at him. His narrow, tanned face studied her. Grubby hands held on to the snaps of his overalls, revealing bare arms, ropy with lean muscle. He wore no shirt under his overalls.
“Wanna see my pecker?”
Helen considered this. Farm life necessitated a certain familiarity with all things pertaining to reproduction. The animals on their farm revealed their various anatomical features without shame and even engaged in the business, often violent, of procreation in public spaces, but aside from the little worm on her younger brother, visible when he bathed and dressed, she hadn’t seen anyone else’s. A small pulse of warning began at the base of her neck, but before she could say a word, he had unfastened his dungarees and the dirty clothes fell to the floor with a sigh. She took a long look, unimpressed.
That was it?
She had seen the thing on her neighbor’s stallion Nero. Now that gave her pause. But Jimmy’s pecker
