“…they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under them but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and then thousand worlds for the taking.”
The soft whip of leather, the animal smell of wet hay, the wind whipping down a flat and open plain, picking up so much speed it threatened to knock down every house and person in its path. The summer they had stolen from the Golds’ orchard had been one of intense weather.
Tucker remembered it well, the whole summer, and not just because they’d been caught, but more because that was the last time he’d been caught for something and the consequences had been so very inconsequential. That, he could point to now that he was older, was the last time he’d been regarded as a kid.
He and his friends weren’t even that young then—seventeen, some already eighteen. They looked like men and could have done all the work that their fathers could do and probably even do a better job of it. They had yet to have had their bodies scarred by accidents or the simple back breaking repetition of oil well and farm work in middle Texas. But it was their last summer of high school and so most of their time was spent chewing tobacco and drinking in an empty and open field. There was no higher education or travel to look forward to after this and most already had positions waiting for them on their granddaddy’s farm or their uncle’s pit crew. That summer felt molten hot in Tucker’s hands. He’d pawned his old kid bike for twenty dollars and used it to fund his drinking for the month of June, the most forgiving of the Texas summer months. Most of the time they met up in fields of scrub, brought old blankets for the girls to sit on. The boys just stood around in their jeans, kicking dust up onto each other’s pant legs.
The days felt interminably long in the best ways, for their languid sameness. They all woke early to help their fathers with chores in the stables or to help their mothers get breakfast ready for the men who would have to go out into the oilfields, then they rubbed the sleep from their eyes and pulled on their jeans and met at the creek. Two years ago they’d found a part deep enough that they’d built a rope swing and so they would jump one after another, naked body swinging into the cold water. They had nothing to do. Tucker liked to read some afternoons or drink beer starting early. Sometimes it was so hot they just stood in one place and moved as little as possible, hardly even talked, trying to keep themselves cool. The girls must have done something else during the day but Tucker wasn’t sure what. Regardless, they all met up in the evening. Tucker was after a girl named Hart that summer. She was pretty in the way that girls who have been told their whole life they’re pretty are. Tucker liked that about her; she was a known entity. His best friend was always running after one of the girls who no one had ever looked twice at, who did strange things like cut their hair short or dressed like they were in a music video.
They were used to fields of scrub, so when someone suggested that Gold’s orchard was ripe and that no one was guarding it at night, they decided to go. Tucker could feel a small shiver of excitement run through the group. Something new. Gold’s was a newish farm, run by someone from out of town, and when they got there, he could tell the trees were young by the way they still bent. After Hart got out of the cab of her friend's truck he took her hand and walked her away from the group, a few rows of trees away. If there was something he liked about the orchard it was that there were more places to be alone. The dark silhouettes of the branches and the leaves could cover over his face when he talked to Hart. They wouldn’t be seen in the flicker of the fires they usually had out on the scrubland. He took his can of chew and his bottle everywhere with him. Chew, spit, chew, spit. It gave his mouth something to do. It was something easy to hide behind when he didn’t know what to say. Hart picked a peach off the tree they were standing under and ate it. From where they were they could still sort of hear the group. Someone made a joke and everyone laughed. The hiss of a beer can opening. The rumble of a car turning on and off, the key left in the ignition so the radio could just play. At one point, Tucker had one hand in Hart’s hair and the other resting just above her hips and he was talking close enough to her that he could smell the sweetness on her breath when he heard someone yelling, HEY! YOU! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! THIEVES!! Oh shit, Hart giggled and left her shoes behind and started running. Tucker tore after her. It was Gold, shirtless in the night, running after them, running fast, especially given his age. Between gasps of breath, he screamed after them, I CAN SEE YOU TUCKER GREER, I KNOW IT’S YOU! I’M GOING TO BE CALLING YOUR FATHER IN THE MORNING. I KNOW YOU BEEN STEALING FROM ME.
Tucker and Hart must have missed the humming of the engines and the yelling of the group in warning because as they ran past where the cars had been they were all gone. At that grove, he took her hand in his and the other delicately cradling the two soft peaches. They ran and ran, the hot air heavy enough that it slowed them down until finally they couldn’t hear Gold yelling anymore and they collapsed into each other on the ground. Tucker looked into his hands and realized one of the peaches was crushed and juicing. The other one he presented to her, m’lady, hoping to make her laugh. She did laugh and it twinkled across the night. The stars felt close enough that it seemed like her laugh might be able to make it all the way to them.
Gold never called Tucker’s old man and the whole thing passed without incident and the winds kept whipping and the stars stayed heavy in the sky and mornings kept smelling like hay and leather and oil, the afternoons of creek water and rope, the evenings like beer and tobacco and peach.
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