She pulled away suddenly, breathing hard, and I came awake. Her gray-green eyes were soft and heavy, but they started to clear until they had the depth and transparency of a cat’s eyes. I tried to smile, but she had looked away. One of the cows lowed, a long, deep chest sound. I heard birds that had been there all along. She took her hat and put it back on, pushed up this time.

“I’ma take you home. All right?”

I didn’t say anything. It was hot. My blouse was damp from sweat, and there was moisture on the back of my hands. If I tasted them, they would be salty. Rohn read my mind, the first of many times. “It’s all right,” she said, “you didn’t do anything wrong.” She kind of smiled as if there were something on her mind. I smiled back.

Southern nights are full of stars and crickets and mosquitos.

The stars hang down beside your head. The crickets are inside head. The mosquitos bite. They are there for the purpose of reality, I imagine. If they don’t often find their way into romantic stories, it is not their fault.

I used to sit out in the front in my rocking chair after watching Amos and Andy or Ozzie and Harriet, until it was well after dark. I used to look up at the stars and try to fathom how far away they were. It was hard to comprehend that the light I was seeing from a certain star had started from there eight years ago. I thought of furnaces bigger than the Earth. I thought of people who’d been alive eight years ago and weren’t anymore. I heard somebody quietly call my name, or thought I did.

I listened and I heard it again. “Pa-tri-ciaaa.” I walked around to the side of the house.

She was standing not more than six feet away, as quiet as a haunt. I grinned in the dark, and I think she smiled. She didn’t have her hat on, and her hair was all tousled. She had on jeans and a man’s big plaid shirt.

I stood close to her, and we whispered, because the house was right there.

“Can you go for a ride? In my car? It’s right down the road.”

“Naw, I don’t think so.”

“How about a walk?”

I shrugged. “It’s late. Grandma won’t let me.”

“Just inside the pasture. Over that fence. Just over there.”

I waited a minute. I wanted to so badly.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Then she was touching me, lightly, her arm around my shoulder. We were about the same height because I was tall for my age. She smelled of some odd perfume; I learned that it was her mother’s.