WAYLON DROVE UP just after Father Travis left, and Maggie turned off her radar, right there in the driveway, where he met her. She had asked him over to help her work in the cornfield. Peter had plowed last year’s stubble into the field, but there were already weeds up in the rows. She went inside, and changed into work clothes, put on SP 30 and came out. Together, they walked to the field. It was warm. They each had a hoe they’d keep sharp using the files stuck in the back pockets of their jeans. Maggie’s were short cutoffs. She was a faster or more indifferent weed killer, so she got ahead of Waylon right away. He left a few pickers in the black dirt and stumbled after her. Maggie’s white shirt was tied off at her belly. Her foal’s legs shot down into thick socks, heavy tie boots. A battered straw cowboy hat shaded her face. Her lips were moving to some song in her head. Both of them had heavy brown cotton gloves in their back pockets but they swung their hoes bare-handed. The scent of dry crushed plants, torn dirt, piercing and pure, followed them over the earth. Waylon was proud of his shoes—Jordans—which he shouldn’t have been wearing in the field. His dad had bought them and didn’t have the money. He’d had to sign something to get them—but he wanted people to know that Waylon’s family could afford them. Fine dirt was sifting into the shoes and his sweating feet turned the dust to paste. He kept on swinging the hoe, slicing off pickers, shuffling along behind Maggie in his pasty shoes. One moment he was thinking about washing the shoes out later with a hose, or maybe a wet cloth, and if he would ruin them. The next moment everything changed.
Maggie’s white shirt is slung off. She is chopping weeds in just her bra—sky-colored cups holding two small creamy scoops. She is pale all over because of the sunblock slathering that went on before an incident of possible sun exposure. Her skin is marless. Not a freckle, a fleck of mole, or even a blemish. Only the blue dot on her shoulder. Which Waylon sees when she turns away. That dot. He knows what it is. She told him. And his heart is pierced as with the needle-sharp pencil. He puts his hand to his chest, takes his hand off, even looks at his fingers, but there’s no blood. Just her, obliviously swaying with her hoe, occasionally leaning forward to viciously whack a deep-rooted thistle.
The sunblock hasn’t kept her back from glowing a supple golden. Her spine sweatily glistens down into the tiny cutoffs. Her legs are milky white and deerlike. There is dirt up the insides of her calves, thighs, adhering to her sweat like shadow.
Waylon sits down between the rows, on sunny dirt. A small black jumping spider lands on his knee. Stares at him with fierce, pent sorrow. Then pops away. Waylon doesn’t move. He rubs his head as if to rearrange his thoughts.
Maggie moves down the row.
Get up, lazy-ass, she says. Don’t make me do this whole field by myself.
Waylon leaves the hoe on the ground, gets up, and stands before her. She squints up at him, smiling her bad-luck good-luck smile. Right then they are the only people in the universe, yet Waylon is too shy to say out loud what he leans over to whisper against her neck.
Maggie could wind herself through the bush, no matter how snakey and dense, but Waylon was like a big calf and stumbled after her, hair flopping, eyes wide, lips pink and lustrous, skin darkly glowing with sweat until at last she pushed her hand on his chest to make him stop.
Okay, this is the place, she said. My place.
It was an old oak so huge that it had choked out all other brush but the long pale grass they lay on underneath.
Do you love me? asked Waylon.
No, said Maggie.
You’re lying, huh. You love me.
I said no. Maggie laughed.
He put his hand around her face and adored her chin. She was thinking about her volleyball kill score—she had got up to 200 last season. It would take at least another couple years to hit 1,000.
Okay then?
All right then, said Maggie. Let’s try it. I mean, if it hurts too much you have to quit.
She leaned toward him and he tried not to grapple with her, not treat her like he couldn’t wait, not lunge or buck, tried to be all manly and collected, but it was all too unbelievable. She was just so small but just so quick. She got on top of him and moved aside her panties, unzipped him and got him out and started to try.
Put it in, she said.
They couldn’t get it in. She got off, lay down, opened her legs. He got on top and tried that way. It worked better, but she screamed.
Get it out!
He moved backward.
Okay, she panted. Try again.
Waylon sweat and worried, trying to slow down but stay hard all at once. Then it was suddenly better and she relaxed under him and said it was okay and she could handle it.