Charles Rafferty

The summer we lost a dozen chickens to a fox, Momma made Daddy build her a brand-new henhouse. It was the same summer Amanda learned she was to leave for Ohio. She had never been out of South Jersey, but Amanda had cousins she'd be living with. She said Ohio was full of factories. Amanda was a year older than me, and smart. She knew all about my teachers before I had them, and she could make the change in her head at McCallister's corner store even faster than the register. But Ohio made Amanda quiet.

Once, Amanda and me were in the tractor barn in early spring, patching up holes in some irrigation pipe. There were birds building nests all over the rafters—quick scissory birds that never let you see their eyes. I touched my hand on the back of Amanda's neck and she flinched, like my fingers were hot. Momma told me I'd scare girls if I touched them with my burn hand. A long time ago, I took hold of the red coil of the kitchen stove. I don't remember this myself, but the coil is still in my palm. Momma says they had to pry my hand from it, and the doctor told her later some pains are so big they can't be felt, that this was a mercy of God. Daddy says I'd seen something pretty and wouldn't let go. He says when I get big the girls had better watch out.

If I needed to fuss with something on the other end of the farm. Amanda would get me in the pickup and drive us out. I'd sit in the bed and watch the rows of blueberries make a pattern. The opening of the row would hit me, and suddenly I could see clear across the field. And just as quick it was gone, replaced by another—and another and another. Amanda said that's perspective—that things look different depending on where you are. When she caught me staring at her hair gathering the wind inside the pickup cab, I'd turn back to the berries, and feel the bumpiness of the flat place we drove across.

Another time we were unloading the bee boxes. Daddy rented them for the flower time. Amanda and me put one at the edge of every field. We did it at night so we didn't get stung. The bees were inside sleeping. We could have set them on fire and they still wouldn't come out. Amanda said that's why we didn't need nets or funny hats. We put them where we wanted, and when the sun heated up, the bees came out and said thank you to the fields. Blueberry flowers can tell the future. You can see the shape of the berry in the way their petals shut. In a little while, everything on Daddy's farm would be closing and tightening, getting sweet. When Daddy's berries are ready, they go all over the world—even Ohio. On the carton, it says "From Hammonton, New Jersey. The Land of Berries."

When the first full week of picking was done, Amanda took some whiskey to the bonfire. The fire was built from Momma's old henhouse. The new one stood like a palace outside my bedroom window. Fox-proof, she called it. I don't know why. It had a door. If I were a fox, I'd walk right in and slip a hen between my jaws, and then I'd slide like a knife into the berry rows in case Daddy came looking with his floodlight and his gun. Every now and then a feather dislodged from one of the boards and shot up into the night. Sometimes on fire, sometimes not. Amanda handed me the bottle. Amanda had a glassy smile. She took my good hand and led me into the rows of tomorrow's field. The berries brushed against us as we went. I grabbed a handful and got rid of the whiskey taste. Amanda called that a satisfaction. From the middle of the field, we could hear the crackle of the fire, and the people around the fire, talking and joking in Spanish. When somebody threw on a board, a fountain of sparks leapt up.

Amanda told me she was leaving for Ohio in the morning, that she'd never see me again. Then she told me her Momma had cancer somewhere in her belly, and that was the reason for Ohio. I wanted to cry at this, but Daddy says boys that cry are pussies. So I stood there listening to Amanda talk about the factories of Ohio, how they're so loud you can't hear the songs inside your own head, how sometimes men fall into the machines and get pressed into car parts or sausages, how it's too much trouble to fish them out. She said her cousins all worked in the factories. She said she'd be doing that too.

I reached out and touched Amanda's neck. The whiskey had made me forget, and I used my burn hand. She didn't flinch. And it was like the way I imagined that stove coil must have been all those years ago.

Somebody yelled in Spanish—angry or joking, I couldn't tell—and threw another chunk of henhouse onto the fire. I was so close to Amanda, I could see the sparks flying up in her eyes. The land of berries stretched into the night, and Momma's henhouse was almost gone. Somebody, I knew, would have to pry me from this girl.