The Hayloft. A 1950s Mystery

was a lot better looking than Ed. “All right,” I said. “But dress warm. It’s getting cold up there.”
    ***
    We played two on one, with me being the one. I got a good workout trying to dribble the ball against two defenders. On defense, I was lax. I wasn’t going to guard Kate closely, and Ed couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn, so she scored most of their points.
    After I won a couple of games, Ed said, “I want to slide down the hay.”
    A child’s game, but what the heck. I led them up to the top of the haystack on one side of the hayloft and down we slid with appropriate squeals of joy. We repeated this several times until Kate suggested that she and I slide down in tandem.
    I wasn’t too sure about this. I said, “You can slide down with Ed.”
    “He’s my brother.” She made it sound as if he had a disease. “I want to slide down with you.”
    I guessed it wouldn’t hurt anything. I sat down at the top of the slide, and she sat between my legs. I gingerly put my arms around her. Otherwise, we wouldn’t stay together. Even though we both were wearing several layers of clothes, I was conscious of the fact that I had my arms around a pretty girl. And she wrapped her arms around my legs.
    We pushed off and went sailing down the hay chute. We landed at the bottom with a bump and a tangle of bodies. It occurred to me that this wasn’t child’s play anymore. We slid down several more times together. I began to have lustful thoughts and, with them, a twinge of guilt. What was Ed doing to protect his little sister? Nothing. He seemed to be having too much fun sliding on his own. He was ignoring us.
    Then I thought about my brother, Tom, who wasn’t here to defend his relationship with Kate. What relationship? They had only seen each other once. But she was just a kid. Too young for me. I finally said to her, “Ed said you wanted to build a fort in the hay bales.”
    “That sounds neato,” she said, brushing stalks of hay out of her hair.
    I asked Ed if he wanted to build a hay fort, but he shook his head. So I took Kate up to the top of the stacked bales at the other end of the barn. She was quite strong, and together we wrestled the heavy bales into position, creating a room with a roof over it.
    I kept an eye on Ed. I was trying to be the good host. He had stopped sliding and was wandering around the floor of the hayloft near the walls, as if he were looking for something. I called to him a couple of times, but he said he was happy.
    We finished our room, leaving a narrow opening for a door. Kate crawled inside and said, “This is keen. Come on in.”
    She seemed to be enjoying herself. As a jaded senior, I didn’t feel quite so enthusiastic about playing in the hay, but I crawled in after her. It was dark inside. We sat with our backs against the wall of bales, squeezed together. I was aware of her closeness and felt uneasy. It was one thing to be touching a girl when you were dancing or sliding down the hay together. The activity gave you an excuse for putting your hands on her.
    But this was different. I tried to think of something to say. How did you talk to a sophomore? “So, what classes are you taking?”
    “Oh, the usual. English, history, algebra, biology, gym…”
    “Did you have Mr. Plover for science last year?”
    “Yes. It was so booorrring. I sat in the back of the room and talked to my friend, Nancy.”
    I quizzed her a little about his teaching methods and received confirmation of what I had heard before. I wondered if Sylvia planned to go in front of the school board with this information. Maybe before her father’s firing—she had the guts to do it—but would she have any credibility with the members now? I also wondered what she had been doing since I took her home this afternoon.
    “We’d have more room if you’d move your arm.”
    Kate’s statement brought me back to the present. The only thing I could do with my arm was to put it around her shoulders. Is that what she wanted me to do? Apparently so, because when I lifted it, she snuggled up against me. I was conscious of the fact that her hair was touching my cheek.
    Then she turned her head, and her face was touching my cheek. I turned my head slightly to find out what was going on, and our lips came together. She made no effort to remove hers. We kissed for a few seconds. I felt more and more panicky.
    I pulled my face away from hers and said, “We can’t do this.”
    “Why not? You can teach