Peaches

noticing the time. What she did notice was the way the air cooled and heated up depending on where she was standing. The trees didn’t offer much shade, but the tiny dips in the land did. Murphy had the kind of hungry brain that noticed these things, and surprisingly, it didn’t find itself bored all morning, until she remembered why she was here and that she didn’t want to be. She swatted at another branch, and it bounced back and stuck a twig into her thick hair, clinging to it.
    When Murphy had extracted herself, her mood was worse than when the day had started, and she suddenly felt tired. The expanse of trees felt endless. All she really owed Walter was a quarter bottle of crème de menthe.
    She looked around to make sure nobody was watching, then she walked the two hundred yards to Camp A, climbed the two sets of stairs, and crawled into her bed.
    When Emma knocked on her door to invite her to eat lunch, the smells of Mexican cooking wafting in through the cracks in the door, she pretended she was sleeping and held the pillow tighter over her head.

    The Darlingtons had always invited the workers to dinner on the first night of thinning to celebrate the start of the season. This year, though, Walter had opted for a quiet family dinner instead, and now he, Poopie, Birdie, and Leeda sat around the kitchen table alone.
    On the chalkboard beside the refrigerator Poopie had written down the phone messages for Walter. It used to be that Walter or Cynthia would see them, take care of them, and erase them. In the weeks since Cynthia had been gone, they had collected and stayed there, glaring at everyone all day long. Now the neglected board listed calls from Horatio Balmeade, Bridgewater Savings and Loan, and Wachovia.
    Next to Birdie, Honey Babe had his short little legs on her cousin Leeda’s calf and was trying to jump up to sniff her crotch. Birdie tugged him gently by the tail.
    “Get in your place, Honey. Go on, get in your place.” Honey stared up at her mournfully for a second, then pranced over to the corner by the olive green stove and lay down, tapping his paws in a gesture of contained restlessness that Murphy would have been able to empathize with had she been invited to dinner.
    Leeda, though, wore a wrinkled nose and a frown and held her hands tight over her skirt. Why she’d brought skirts to wear to the farm was anyone’s guess. Birdie shot glances at her over Poopie’s signature rib eye steak, feeling resentful. She hadn’t asked Leeda to come in the first place. But here Leeda was, wrinkling her nose and obviously judging. Judging Birdie’s room, her dogs, her house’s out-of-date kitchen. Birdie tucked a forkful of sweet corn in her mouth, wondering why she still cared so badly what Leeda thought. It had been this way sincethey’d hit puberty and drifted apart. Birdie had always wanted Leeda to be her friend, and she still had no idea why.
    “Birdie, why don’t you keep your elbows off the table? Look at Leeda.” Walter nodded in Leeda’s direction.
    Birdie looked at her dad, who hadn’t said so much as a word through dinner so far. Then at Leeda, who sat with her legs crossed and her wrists resting at the edge of the table like a china doll, occupying Cynthia’s old chair and yawning occasionally. Birdie pulled her elbows to her side. From the corner, Honey Babe let out a tiny squeaky sympathetic howl. Everyone chewed loudly.
    Exhausted from the day, which was always one of the most challenging of the year, Birdie snaked a hand shyly across the table and patted her dad’s fingers. Since her mom had gone, Birdie had noticed the ways it mattered that her mom wasn’t around, and today—with all that Cynthia would have been doing to help get the season moving—had been a major day for that. The big ways Birdie missed her mother were expected. The little ways were hard for their own reasons, because they took her by surprise. Birdie knew her dad felt it too.
    “That software I got is great, Dad,” she said, referring to the program she’d bought a couple of weeks ago at Wal-Mart to help organize payroll.
    Walter merely sawed on his steak, so halfheartedly that he barely made a slash through it. “Did you bring the old bottles down to the cider house?”
    Birdie shook her head. “Not yet.” Actually, she’d done extra chores in other areas to avoid the cider house. So far, she’d managed to avoid Enrico completely. Which, on a small farm, was actually quite a