The Thunder That Follows

Mama caught me crying in the barn. This time of morning, she’s usually baking. She come over to me, wiping her floured hands on her stained apron. I kept on milking our Holstein cow, Sugar.

“Not like you to cry over milk,” she said, smiling. What she really meant was that I’m not the crying type. Not even the time Pa took a willow switch to me one afternoon for kissing Preston Taylor in this very barn.

When I didn’t laugh, but only hung my head lower, she squatted down at my level, absently stroking Sugar’s soft flank. “What is it, honey? Tell your mama.”

"Can’t,” I said, taking in a ragged breath. I swiped at my nose with the sleeve of my dress. She gently pulled back my plaited hair and rubbed my shoulder. She handed me the handkerchief she kept in her apron pocket for when she peeled onions. She waited, sighing. Then stood.

“Well, whatever’s made you cry, I expect you’ll tell me later or keep it to yerself. Just stop dripping tears into the bucket.” She sighed again. “Makes for salty milk. Finish your chores in the barn, then come help me take down the clothes on the line.” She squinted at the washed-out light outside. “Weathervane spinning like a top. Storm’s comin’.”

The wind flipped locks of my hair across my face as me and mama pulled clothespins off sheets, and quickly balled up dresses and petticoats into two wicker baskets. The distant rumble of thunder made us work faster. Mama has always been scared of lightning, and she scanned the charcoal clouds for the first electric flashes, her eyes as big as the buttons on Papa’s overalls.

“Storm’s far off, still, Mama,” forgetting for a moment the reason for my tears.

“A storm is never far off,” and I had to agree with her there. We carried the last of the washing on our hips into the house. She sighed deeply as the screen banged shut– and I couldn’t figure if it was that we’d saved the laundry, or that she was safe in the house. She looked at me. “About those tears earlier …” she asked.

I didn’t know the right words. I wasn’t ready.

“Shouldn’t we start supper?” I evaded. What I really wanted was to go upstairs and be alone. To think. To cry some more.

Mama knew the ups and downs of a teenage girl. She’d been one herself, growing up on a farm much like this one. She smiled and shook her head.

“I’ve got a stew planned. Most of it’s ready for the pot. Why don’t you go upstairs and read your new book for a while? I’ll call you down to set the table in a bit.”

I sat crossed-legged on my Mamaw’s quilt, a copy of Little Women beside me, and watched the gathering wind billow my curtains. Sometimes you just know something to be true. You can feel it in your bones. At least that’s how the saying goes. I felt it in the inevitable storm headed our way. I shook my head. It was going to be an inevitable storm, alright.

I thought back to that day in the barn. The day Preston had appeared while I was brushing down Bay our plow horse. He’d made me jump, I remember, and my heart had beat faster. Thinking back, I don’t know if it had been beating so fast because he had scared me, or because I had a crush on him. A bad crush.

“You’re one of them Taylor boys up on Jackson Hill,” I said, trying to make the whole situation of him just showing up unexpected and all, seem like the most normal thing to have done. He had just grinned and leaned up against the ladder to the loft. He brushed dark brown, shaggy locks from his forehead. I rambled on.

“Seen you at the General Store the other day. I was trading eggs for molasses. And anyway, I seen you there, and Mrs. Bailey, well, she says to me, ‘there’s one of them Taylor boys from up on Jackson Hill,’ and that’s when we met. Well, not really met, but we looked at each other.”

Preston continued to smile, adding a slight nod, as if all I’d just said were true.

“You don’t go to school, I reckon.”

I was beginning to think Preston Taylor couldn’t talk, when he stuck his hands in his pockets and strode over to me.

“That’s right. I don’t go to school. My mama taught us boys to read and write, though,” he finally said. He reached up and took the horse brush from my hand, which I realized I’d been holding, frozen in mid-stroke. Preston began to brush Bay. “I seen you, too. After you left, they told me who you were and where you lived.”

“Why would they tell you that?”

“Cuz, well, cuz I asked.”

A silent, sweet moment passed between us.

“Why would you ask?” I said, quieter. Preston didn’t answer right away, but I could see a different kind of smile on his face.

“Do you believe in ‘love at first sight?’” He turned, then, and looked at me straight on, like he wasn’t ever going to stop looking at me right there in that barn, one hand on Bay, until I gave him an answer.

I thought back to the moment Preston and I had met. I remembered the shock of Preston’s presence. The shock to my nervous system. I thought of Mama’s words about boys. How they will say things that can fluster you. How they’ll look at you a certain way that will make you all mushy inside. How the things they say and do are more often than not, a means to an end. A means to what end, Mama, I remember asking. She had reddened, then, standing in the kitchen, her hands deep in lemon dish soap. We’ll talk more tonight, Mama had said, the blush still high on her cheeks.

I remembered we never did finish that talk.

And he stood there, all boyish, waiting. He had fading freckles on his nose. And green eyes like the damselfly pond in summer. And there was a smudge of dirt on his forehead, just under that unruly lock of dark hair.

“Yes,” I had finally said, although in a whisper barely audible. Then, “Yes,” I said with more conviction. “I believe in love at first sight.” What else could I say? In that moment, I believed I was in love. And that this feeling, which must be love, had happened the moment I had seen Preston at the General Store.

He had dropped the brush somewhere in the hay. Then grabbing me by my waist, pulled me into him and held me there. I looked up at him, our breath coming in quick, heated gasps. He took my hand and sat down a few feet away from Bay.

“Come here,” he said, giving my hand a tug.

I laid down beside him, vaguely thinking the hay had been mucked out no more than an hour ago. That we both lay in clean hay. Then all other thought left my head when Preston kissed me. He kissed me hard, my first kiss. And I kissed him back. After all, I was in love with him. I opened my eyes, and yes, I told myself, I was so deeply in love with Preston Taylor. This country boy who smelled of horses and alfalfa. Even as he ran his hand up under my dress, and I quivered at his touch and tears of wonder were in my eyes, I was in love.

Not much later, we stood near the barn doors, watching a sudden, warm rain. The sweet scents of the farm were released. And Preston turned to go. But turning back he kissed me, lightly, grinning. And that’s when Pa had come in from the side door.

The first spatters of rain could be heard, and I got up from Mamaw’s quilt, Little Women falling to the floor, and shut the windowpane. It had been three months since I’d seen Preston Taylor. I supposed he had a lot of work to do on his parents’ farm.

I supposed a girl could easily fall for a handsome boy and think she was in love.

Some things you just know, though. I touched my growing belly.

Lightning flashed across the yard, and I waited for the inevitable thunder.