The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden

and rather than trying to quell the desire, he fed it by visiting the fence and running his hands over the slab of wood where the two of them had sat.

      He so desperately wanted to own something that had touched her, or that she had touched, that he spent an hour in the field hunting for the corncob. He didn’t find it, and when he went home his clothes were saturated with the scent of flowers. His father coughed his annoyance and asked Cole if he’d abandoned the baseball field for a funeral home.

      Once, when Cole thought he was alone in the house, he tried to reclaim the moment by imitating the laughter Sissy had expelled on that afternoon, and his mother walked in on him in the midst of a girlishly shrill giggle. She tapped him on the shoulder, and when the startled Cole swung around, he came face to face with his mother’s perplexed gaze.

      “Boy,” she calmly asked, “are you losin’ your mind?”

      Cole blinked wildly. Yes, he believed he was.

      Spring.

       Chapter Nine

      How they got away with it for as long as they did was a mystery to me. By the time they were found out, it was way past spring and weeks beyond their first awkward kiss. There had been hundreds of kisses by the time summer swaggered in, bringing with her days upon days of sweltering heat.

      It was summer’s heat that drove Sissy’s father, Edgar, off the road into the sparse shade of a pecan tree. If it hadn’t been so hot and Edgar had just kept walking up the road toward home, Sissy and Cole’s affair might have gone undetected for years.

      I’ll just sit here a minute and rest, Edgar told himself as he dragged the blue and white kerchief across his damp brow. Weariness crept over him and he braced his back against the bark of the tree, cocked the brim of his hat over his eyes, and soon fell fast asleep.

      Further up the road, Cole was sitting in the crook of a gnarly tree limb, working the tip of his mother’s kitchen knife into the bark.

      “What you doing up there?”

      He looked down to find Sissy squinting at him. Tiny balls of perspiration covered her face, and when she tilted her head, the sun ignited the orbs, gracing her with an undeniable shimmer.

      Cole grinned.

      With the handle of the knife clenched securely between his teeth, Cole began to make his descent with the assuredness and agility of a monkey. He hit the ground with a large thud.

      The lovers glanced warily around before leaning in and stealing a kiss. They crossed the road, climbed over the fence, and moved through the blanket of flowers to the bald spot of earth which had been scuffed talcumsoft by their lovemaking.

      She tasted like syrup.

      He tasted like his mama’s johnnycakes.

      She felt like butter.

      He felt like an iron poker warmed in kindling.

      An earshot away Edgar woke from his nap, stretched his arms over his head, and released a great yawn. His gaze swept over the field and stopped on a cluster of swaying flowers.

      That’s odd, he thought before licking his finger and testing the air to find that it was still as death. He rose to his feet and set off to investigate the phenomenon.

      As Edgar moved closer, he heard laughter. He knew that laughter, playful, teasing—lovers’ laughter. He stopped walking.

       Out here in the open?

      He couldn’t help but smile at the couple’s brazen outrageousness.

      “Well,” he muttered aloud as he turned around to leave, “I was young once too.”

      His intention was to head home, but his mind kept wandering back to the flowers and the laughter.

       Who are they?

      It was easy to imagine their heat, their complete surrender to one another—but try as he might, he could not imagine their faces. Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to hang around a little while longer, just to see what they looked like.

      He returned to the shade to wait. He couldn’t imagine that the couple would go on for much longer—not in that heat.

      Cole rolled off Sissy and onto his back. His penis slumped lazily across his thigh. Sissy reached for his hand, pulled it to her mouth, and slipped his fingers between her lips. Cole began to giggle.

      They lay there in that field as if it were their own home and the ground beneath them their bed.

      “I gotta go.”

      “I know.” He turned onto his side and gazed deep into her eyes. “I’m already missing you,” he breathed, and then leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips. “Let’s run away together and get married.”

      Sissy laughed. “Who would marry us? A white boy and his nigger mistress?” She laughed again, but this time the notes were flat.

      Cole’s eyes dimmed. “You ain’t no nigger. I hate that word.”

      “Come on,” she said brightly, “help me up.”

      From where Edgar sat, it seemed as if Cole had emerged from the soil and unfurled like some exotic flower. An exotic, naked flower.

      Edgar wasn’t yet over the first shock when he was rattled by the second. His heart dropped down into his gut when the brown-skinned girl appeared.

      Edgar stood up and took a few steps forward. “What colored girl … ?” he mumbled to himself, and then realized it was his own daughter.

      He didn’t even know he was running until the tunnel of wind he created tore his hat from his head.

      Sissy was still trying to get her arm into the sleeve of her dress when she looked up and saw her father charging toward them.

      “Sissy!”

      Cole spun around and jumped protectively in front of her. His green eyes flashed, and Edgar stalled.

      Edgar knew he could beat Cole with one hand, if he had to. He was a full foot taller and twenty pounds heavier, but there were shadows swimming in his blind anger, and the line that separated black from white coiled into noose; imagined or not, Edgar could feel the rough rope fibers brushing against his neck.

      Edgar took a very deep breath.

      “Sissy, come here.”

      “You don’t have to go with him, Sissy!” Cole barked.

      “She’s my child, Cole, you done enough. Lemme take her home.” Edgar’s tone was replete with disappointment and defeat.

      Sissy dropped her head. She wiggled the remaining length of arm through the sleeve and stepped shamefully away from Cole.

      “Daddy I—”

      Edgar shook his head. He didn’t want to hear any of it.

      What could she have said to him to make what she had done—had been doing—all right? That she was sorry? That she was—God forbid—in love with Cole Payne? No words she could speak would ever be powerful enough to change the fact that Cole was white and she was black and this was Mississippi, U.S. of A.

      Edgar’s long, brown face was etched with sadness and when Sissy finally looked at him, it broke her heart to see that she had broken his.

      She would have gladly taken a beating—a million beatings—if it would place the happy back onto her father’s face.

      “Let’s go home,” Edgar said before turning and walking away. Sissy followed, weeping into her hands.

      Edgar never uttered a word about the discovery to his wife or to God. He didn’t have to; Sissy never