Dropping her bike at the field’s edge and not bothering to lean it against a tree, Annie walks toward the group of men gathered under the oaks. It’s lunchtime, and so they’re pulling sandwiches from their lunch buckets, sipping coffee from the lids of their silver thermoses. The younger ones who have come with their daddies to help in the digging, setting, patting, and watering are jackassing around. That’s what Grandma would call it. Jackassing around. And jackassing around on a Sunday doesn’t much happen.
Annie knows enough to be careful where she walks in a newly plowed field, and had she not found herself getting more and more angry as she pedaled over here—angry about the way Sheriff Fulkerson kept raising his brows as he asked Annie all those questions, angry at Daddy for thinking she lied about the cigarettes, angry at Mama for loving Ellis Baine—she might have taken care not to step in the soft overturned dirt. A few of the older men holler at her for doing just that, which causes all the rest to turn her way. Ryce, who sits off to the side with a few of the other younger fellows, turns too.
At first, Ryce gives her a wave, not bothering to stand from his seat on the ground. He leans against the trunk of one of the elms shielding all the men, his knees bent up, both boots planted flat. He looks at the two fellows sitting next to him and gives a shrug big enough for everyone to see. He’ll be thinking about Lizzy Morris and not wanting any of these fellows to tell her Annie Holleran was visiting him at work.
Ryce has been to Lizzy’s house twice for Sunday supper. Both times he said he went because his folks were invited and so he had to go along. Said it wasn’t so bad because Mrs. Morris glazes a real fine ham but that must be all she can cook because they’ve eaten the same both Sundays. Annie said he’d better brace himself for a lifetime of glazed ham because like mother, like daughter.
Or maybe, as Annie marches in his direction, ignoring the older men who continue to holler at her, Ryce will be thinking she’s come to see Miss Watson, who stands nearby, a basket covered over with a blue-and-yellow kerchief slung from her arm. Ryce glances at Annie again and yet again as she gets closer. When she’s close enough to call his name without shouting, he jumps up like something bit him in the hind end, grabs her by the arms, and pushes her away from the other men.
“What the hell are you doing, Annie?”
Annie jerks away and shoves him in the chest. “What are you doing?”
“Good Lord, Annie.” He slides a step to his left as if trying to hide her. “Look at yourself.”
“Don’t want those fellows telling Lizzy Morris I come to see you, do you?”
“Don’t care about Lizzy, but I do care what these fellows are seeing.”
“My Aunt Juna is back, and I want you to make your daddy do something about it,” Annie says. “He’s the sheriff and he should see to it.”
“I can’t tell my daddy nothing like that,” Ryce says, still shifting about.
Over at the truck where the older men sit, legs stretched out, feet crossed, some with hats yanked down over their eyes, Miss Watson has pulled back the kerchief on her basket and is handing out that cornbread Abraham is all the time complaining about. In between pulling out slices and handing them off to the fellows, she gives Annie a wave.
“You doing all right there, darling?” Miss Watson shouts.
Miss Watson came back to town a few years ago after she finished her schooling and has been the fifth grade teacher ever since. Two months ago, a few weeks after her grandmother died, she got engaged to Abraham Pace. Soon she’ll be Mrs. Pace. She wears a belted, blue cotton dress, the same one she wears most days when she’s teaching arithmetic, and slip-on heels that make her waddle as she walks among the men.
Miss Watson was raised by her grandparents, and her granddaddy died a good many years ago. Folks figured when Miss Watson’s grandmother finally passed, Abraham Pace would have no choice but to propose. Grandma said, upon hearing news of the engagement, that she wasn’t altogether surprised but that didn’t make the news any more agreeable.
Miss Watson is young, too young for Abraham Pace. Grandma says youth generally has a way of making even the most ordinary woman striking, if only for a few years. Youth has not been so kind to Miss Watson. Even at her age—almost twenty years younger than the man she’ll marry in a few weeks—she is ordinary. She doesn’t have the shine, that’s what Grandma says. A person couldn’t say Miss Watson has beautiful hair because it’s thin and wispy and dried out on the ends, and a person couldn’t say she has pretty eyes because they’re small and her lids never quite open all the way, and she’s a worrier, always fussing that the gutters might plug, that the milk might spoil, or that Abraham’s heart might suffer lasting damage from too much salt. That kind of worrying will wear a person down.
“Doing fine, ma’am,” Annie calls back and gives Miss Watson a wave.
Ryce waves too and says no thank you to a piece of cornbread. Then he steps close to Annie, too close. Somewhere along the way, Ryce has done his share of sprouting, and he’s as tall as Annie now, maybe taller. Him standing so close makes her want to close her eyes, though she isn’t sure why. Instead, she gives him another shove, but he’s set on his spot and doesn’t back away.