Peaches

brute force—but she wasn’t sure she wanted Enrico pointing this out.
    But Enrico looked at her very seriously. “Birdie, they do it because of you. I do it because of you. Maybe you don’t see this.” Birdie was speechless, so he continued. “My mom say things like this. She say I am a thoughtful guy, smart, good guy. I don’t see it. I just think, I am…” He searched for the English words he needed. “Normal. But maybe it’s better to believe good things when you hear them.”
    Birdie smiled. “Take a compliment.”
    “Yeah.” Enrico nodded solemnly.
    “Maybe.” Birdie swiped the sweat off her face and then stopped.
    Enrico looked concerned. “What?”
    “Um.” Birdie stared at him. “Um. Do I have a dirt mustache?” Enrico looked at her for a second and then started laughing. Like the time in the cider house, she felt like he wasn’t laughing at her, just with her. So she started laughing too.
    “See. What girl would ask this? Crazy.”
    Birdie had always thought of herself as the opposite of crazy. She thought she liked being crazy, the way Enrico said it.
    When he stopped laughing, Enrico looked at her for another moment and then stood up.
    “Temperatures go up today, no?”
    Birdie nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”
    “When do we find if peaches are okay?” Enrico asked, dusting the grass off his butt. The way his body twisted while he did this, making the muscles of his shoulders stand out, made Birdie achy. But then his question settled in, and she was filled with fear.
    “Not till they ripen,” she said. “And we start to pick. In June.”
    Enrico nodded. “I leave for Texas tomorrow.”
    “Are you coming back?” Birdie asked, trying not to sound too agonized.
    “Yes. I will see you then.” He reached out his hand and Birdie took it, letting him pull her up. Then he shook it. It was a quick, hard shake, and Birdie suddenly felt he was distant again, even though he hadn’t gone anywhere yet. “Bye, Birdie.”
    She squeezed his hand back. “Bye.”
    As she watched him walk away, Birdie considered going after him, in a way that they did in the movies. She pictured calling him and running up to him and just planting a kiss on him. She envisioned him turning and walking back and planting one on her. She imagined sneaking into his room in a few minutes and kissing him then.
    But the farther away he got across the grass, the more glaring it was to Birdie that a lot could change between April and June. He could come back with a girlfriend. Or not come back at all.
    She trailed far behind him and paced outside the dorms forseveral minutes, meditating on the third movie option. She even walked up the stairs of the men’s dorm. But really, she was kidding herself. She didn’t even come close to going inside.
    She decided to take a walk through the orchard to clear her mind. She ended up at the pecan grove and then beyond it, at the edge of the country club.
    The sun had just laid the first orange slices on the horizon. It lit up the manicured grounds of the clubhouse on the rise, the rooftops of the condos in the distance, making the country club look a bit like Disney World. Birdie had been to Disney World, but she’d never liked it. It didn’t feel like real life.
    The view was enough to make a person think that God was smiling on Horatio Balmeade. He would never have to worry about frost, unless it might kill his imported pine trees, which had no business being in Georgia in the first place. A person could assume that his club would never have any problems, that it would always be perfect, and that at some point it was inevitable it would swallow up the mess of the orchard.
    But Birdie saw it differently.
    She took it as a good omen that the sun, though it was shining on Horatio Balmeade and all of his glittering property, was the exact same color every morning. That is, it was the exact same color as peaches.
    In 1976, two teenagers were making out to the sounds of Sonny and Cher in an unplanted orchard field when they were struck by lightning. Both survived, but from that time on, the boy, Richard, who went on to work at Pep Boys, claimed to have a mental connection to the airwaves that enabled him to predict whenever “I’ve Got You Babe” was being played on the radio.

Chapter Eleven
    T hough April wandered on into May with heavy showers and scattered thunder and the rain in Bridgewater continued relentlessly for almost fifteen days straight, it was bright and perfect