Brad Watson - Miss Jane

She came out of the brush and stopped, out of breath. He was not in the field. She could not see the hoe where he must have laid it down. She felt tears coming up again, this time from anger, then heard his voice call out to her. She looked to her right and he was sitting beneath an oak tree not a stone’s throw away, his feet still bare, a jar of what looked like tea beside him, and eating a sandwich. Probably ham or bacon with fresh tomato slices or just the tomatoes. And then she was impressed that he was eating a light bread sandwich in the middle of the week. Her family ever only had light bread on the weekends, on Sundays, and would finish it easily by the evening meal. She called out to him, and waved, feeling awkward.

“Come on over,” he called back. “You hungry?”

She walked toward him, staying on her side of the fence. And, nearing him, was suddenly mortified realizing she hadn’t put on a fresh undergarment and was naked beneath her dress. She stopped still, feeling the blood rush to her face, but luckily it caused no accident, and when he looked at her curiously, grinning in a questioning way, she tried to put the thought of her near-nakedness out of her mind and went on toward him. She was just a girl, after all, with no big hips to poke a dress out, no big bush of hair down there to pooch obscenely against the dress like she’d seen it do on Grace when Grace sat on the porch after a bath wearing nothing but a summer skirt herself, to cool down, the wet spot on the front of her dress gradually drying in the heat. Until her mother came and saw that and sent her inside with harsh words about the nature of her character. Grace said, “Well, who in Hades is going to be watching me sitting on a porch here in the middle of nowhere, I might ask?”

“God sees you,” her mother had said once, in as cool a tone as Jane had ever heard her use with anyone. Like you couldn’t be sure if she really believed God cared about such a thing or not but it was something she could use on you if she wanted.

Grace had said back, just as cool, “Does he like what he sees?”

And her mother had slapped Grace, not hard, but in a way that ended their exchange. Grace went inside and put on some underpants and a bra and shoes and took herself out to the barn, her brooding place.

NOW JANE WAS STANDING just a few feet away from the Key boy, though still on her side of the barbed wire, and he stood up. Remembering Grace, she glanced down in fear of seeing her own dress wet from dipping herself in the creek but somehow it was not. She looked up again. Except for his hair being smashed down on his head from sweating in his hat, and the fading flush of his skin from the heat as he sat now in the shade of the oak tree, he was the same boy she saw in the store.

“You’re Jane Chisolm.”

“I don’t know your name, except your last name,” she said.

“Elijah Key.” He stepped over with his hand held out as if to shake, like with a man. She took it and returned his grip.

“Nice grip, for a girl. Most girls just kind of, you know,” and he made a pansy-like motion with his hand.

“I don’t really hang out with any girls,” she said.

“I know,” he said, letting the words out slowly like the release of a breath. Looking at her with his head cocked just a bit back on his neck. But not unsmiling.

“I guess people must talk about me.”

He shrugged, glanced at the corn he’d have to be hoeing again in a few minutes.

“I don’t listen to rumors.”

“What kind of rumors do you not listen to?”

He looked down, suppressed a grin, and shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing true, I imagine, you think about who all it comes from, that sort of thing. I don’t put any mind to it. It’s girls that talk the most, and I don’t have much to do with the girls at school.”

“You don’t seem to like girls too much.”

“No, it’s just some girls. Mostly the popular girls.”

“What’s the matter with them?”

“Nothing. They’re just. kind of mean-spirited sometimes,” and he waggled his head, shrugged. “I don’t know. Knuckleheads.”

“I thought only boys got called knuckleheads.”

“Huh,” he said. “Maybe so.”

Then he said, “So how come you decided not to go to the school?”

Now she wished she hadn’t approached him. She said, “I’d have figured those rumors would cover that.”

“It’s been a long time,” he said then. “I don’t even remember them, really. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

She didn’t say anything, wanting to walk away now but unable to make herself do it.

“I used to hate it — school, I mean,” he said. “That’s one thing I thought about you before. That you were lucky they let you quit. Whyever they did.”

“You like it better now?”

“It’s getting a little better,” he said. “So don’t you know how to read and write?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So you learned that without even a whole year of school. Yeah, I remember you coming just that one fall, but you were just first grade and I was already in fourth. I’ve seen you at church every now and then. You must not like it much, either, no more than you go.”

She shrugged. “It’s all right.”

“What about numbers?”

“What about them?”

He laughed. “How’d you learn numbers without school?”

“Tending my papa’s store.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He looked at her for a moment with that curious smile again.

“You’ve just about grown up. You don’t have a secret boyfriend, do you?”

“I don’t have any friends at all.”

He looked almost alarmed at that. Then as if he were thinking. Then as if he couldn’t decipher his own thoughts into a reply. Then, “I guess it’s hard to have any friends out in the country, if you don’t go to school. I guess it was that way for everybody, back when they didn’t even have schools up here, and folks had big families. They just got along knowing each other.”

“That’s the way it is with me, I guess.”

“I guess they’d know some people from going to church, though.”

“I guess so.”

“But you don’t have to do that very often, either. I’m feeling a little jealous of your freedom.”

“Huh,” she said, then shut her mouth.

“Are you an atheist?” he said then.

“What’s that?”

“I thought you were smart.”

“I just never heard of it.”

“It’s somebody doesn’t believe in God.”

“No, then. Though I really haven’t thought about it. I just thought everybody believed in God.”

“Well, everybody I know says they do.”

Then they were silent and awkward for a minute. She realized she was staring at him. He squinted at her.

“Don’t do that,” she said, teasing. “I can’t see your pretty blue eyes.” Then she couldn’t believe she’d said that.

He blushed and looked down, then reached into his bib pocket and pulled out a pair of thick-lensed wire-rimmed eyeglasses, hooked the earpieces over his ears.

“I hate wearing them,” he said, with a kind of gloomy grin. “I was hiding them, didn’t want you to see.”

“I saw you take them off one time before y’all came into the store.”

“Oh. Well.” He looked at her again. “My pretty blue eyes are blind as a bat.”

“They just got bigger and bluer,” she said, and they laughed.

“I’m glad I put them on, now, so I can see yours. They look like — I’ve never seen blue eyes like yours. They almost don’t seem real.”

“Well, they are. My papa and Dr. Thompson told me they haven’t changed a bit since I was born. I guess that’s a little unusual.” And thought, Like everything else about me .