"You're just the right person, Vangie."

I went, "Yeah, think of it. First waiting tables and now this. Who knows how far I could go?"

I thought Joe would lay into me for being a smarta.s.s, but he just looked at me for a moment.

"Is there something else you'd rather be doing?" he said.

From the way he said it, I knew the question was nothing more and nothing less than what it seemed.

"There isn't anything else I'd rather be doing," I said, and meant it.

I was to be at the stand from eight to six every day the market was open-Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sat.u.r.days-which meant leaving the orchard with my truck loaded no later than seven in the morning. Since I would be running the stand by myself, when I had to go to the toilet during the day, I'd put up a sign that said "Back in 5 minutes," take my money pouch, and leave the stand. Customers who wanted to buy fruit would either wait, circle back on their second pa.s.s through the market, or buy from some other stand.

"Don't you worry about someone taking something?" I asked Joe when he told me the setup.

"No one walks off with a bushel or a peck of fruit," he said. "Don't worry."

I remembered the farmers market from times my mom and dad dragged me along with them, and the first day I walked in, I saw the place had not changed at all. The whole of it was a series of old barns with concrete floors, with doors here and there opening to the outside. What a joint it was! The whole place had a funny, rank smell, which was in part from the fruits and vegetables, in part from the blood at the butcher counter, and in part from the hot people working the stands or shopping in the aisles.

Still, I liked the place. I liked to be in the bustle of things. I liked to watch the country people who came in for their weekly shopping trips, and I liked watching the people who ran the stands. There were produce stands, pie and baked goods stands, a funnel cake stand, a stand selling the homeliest kind of farm-wife blouses and dresses, and a jewelry stand selling bracelets, necklaces, and bolo ties made of a metal that lasted a wearing or two before turning sour and gray.

My favorite stands were the ones the Mennonites ran, but that was because I liked to watch the Mennonite boys work. Unlike the girls, who were mainly chunky and homely, the Mennonite boys were almost all good-lookers. I didn't like the young married men-I thought the fringe of beard they wore made them look silly-but the teenage boys and the unmarried ones my age caught my eye. They had slim hips and thick shoulders from the work they did, and their soft blue or green shirts looked pretty against their tanned skins. Something about seeing all those strong waists rising up out of pants that weren't cinched around by a belt-well, it did it for me.

So even though it had made me laugh to hear Joe Span-cake talk about how I was good with the public, or to have him say that I had the best attendance of any picker he ever knew, I was glad he got me the job. I liked talking with people who stopped by the stand, I liked making the bushel and peck baskets look nice, and I liked the change ap.r.o.n I wore. I knew I would not have been picked to run the stand if I was a f.u.c.k-up, so the whole experience was like getting an award at school, which I never got, or like pulling in some half-decent tips at Dreisbach's. Plus, the job was about a hundred times easier than picking pears, and I knew I was lucky to be out of the orchard rows.

Still, I missed seeing the trees of the orchard, and crazily, I even missed wearing the picking sack around my neck and waist. When I had the sack on, I felt strong, and when I took it off at the end of the day, I felt like I put my burden aside. It was a powerful combination of feelings, and I knew I couldn't explain to anyone what it meant to me. But those first steps without the sack after wearing it all day-well, I could have sworn I was airborne.

NOT LONG after I started running the stand at the farmers market, Del took to giving me a baby talk every night as I stood in front of the bathroom sink and punched a Lo/Ovral pill from its plastic cap into my hand.

"No one's ever ready for kids," he was saying this particular night. "And you know I love you. I want to knock you up."

"What you should do is knock it off. I do not want a baby."

"When are you going to believe I'm serious?"

"Oh, I know you're serious," I said. "But I'm serious, too. I'm not ready for a baby."

"When do you think you will be ready?"

"I don't know. But a long time from now."

I waited awhile there at the sink, putting cream on my face, and then I went, "Maybe some people shouldn't ever be ready. Take my old man. He probably never should have had kids. When my mom got pregnant with me, you know what he did? He didn't take a shower for three weeks. He was mad at her for getting pregnant. As if she did it herself."

"Well, your dad's crazy."

"What about your dad? You said yourself he never wanted any of you."

"You can't judge us by them," Del said. "Besides, I'll do a d.a.m.n sight better than my dad did. He never stopped drinking. I'm already a step ahead."

Then, because I could not stand the thought of getting preached at some more, and because I didn't even know how to talk to Del these days, I said, "I had a funny dream last night."

I told Del my dream of the owl, the dream I had after I f.u.c.ked Kevin Keel, which I hadn't told anyone, but which I still hadn't forgotten. I was lying by saying I had the dream the night before, but everything else I said about the dream was true: how I'd heard the beating of wings and saw the striped markings, how the bird flew close to me and brushed my hair back with one wing.

At the end I said, "When the owl brushed its wing over my face, the whole thing felt real. I mean, I could really feel feathers against my face. It made me happy. Comforted, you know? And that was the dream. It was something."

Del looked at me a long time after I finished, and I couldn't read his face. He looked half surprised and half mad, but when he started to talk, I realized it wasn't anger at all that I was seeing.

"The Holy Spirit comes in different forms, Vangie. It's the sign you've been waiting for."

He said it in that calm Christ-voice that made me crazy.

"How do you know it's the Holy Spirit?" I said.

"It had wings, it came down upon your head. What else could it be?"

"A bird. Maybe the dream was just about a bird," I said. I wanted to go on and tell him the truth about when I had the dream and how it had nothing at all to do with church or being born again, but if I confessed to one lie, it might make my other lies harder to uphold. So I said nothing, not about when I really had my dream, not about my scar, and not about Kevin Keel.

"Why are you rejecting Him, Vangie? Isn't this the sign you've been waiting for?"

"The only sign I'm waiting for is when you're going to get tired of the whole thing."

"What whole thing?"

"This whole G.o.d thing. The going to church, the testifying, all that Bible study stuff."

"I can't believe you," Del said, shaking his head.

"Well believe me. My dream was about a bird."

"Anyone else would be happy to get a sign from the Holy Spirit."

"I'm happy I dreamed about a bird. How's that?"

"f.u.c.king-A, Vangie. Why can't you just accept it?"

He hadn't gotten mad about all the Sundays I b.i.t.c.hed about having to get up early, and he hadn't gotten mad about me refusing to testify, but me dreaming about an owl and calling it a bird instead of the Holy Spirit made him angry.

"You accept it for me," I said. "You're the religious expert around here."

"You don't understand what I went through."

I said, "You never told me what you went through. All I know is what I went through."

And that comment was enough to end the fight, because in treatment they'd worked Del over good about how he had to make amends to those he'd harmed. But the only thing I needed anyone to make any amends for was something I did. I was the one who f.u.c.ked Kevin Keel. Me. I might have gone to Kevin Keel because I was hurt and angry about Del, but it was still my choosing and my action. I had to make amends to myself for that.

"I go to church because I love you," 1 said. "Isn't that enough?"

Del shook his head some more at me, but he was calmed down and talked again in his Christ-voice.

"Vangie, all I remember from that day they found me was the rain pouring down in my face," he said. "I was lost."

"And now you're found?"

"I'm trying. I know you don't understand yet, but one day you will."

"Maybe," I told him, but in my heart I doubted it. The main mystery I was trying to understand was the mystery of me, Vangie, and I knew I could never learn what I needed to know in a church.

That night when we went to bed, I slept backed up against Del the way I always did, but neither of us reached for the other. All the G.o.d talk killed the desire to screw, which was a first. That more than anything convinced me of the power of religion.

I wanted nothing to do with it.

25.

THE next morning I was glad to leave the house and go to the orchard to load up. Glad to leave Del. I didn't know what to do about the baby thing or the religion thing anymore, and it all made me wonder where Del and I were headed. If Del couldn't be with me when he was drinking and I couldn't be with him when he was praising G.o.d, where did that leave us?

The whole fight was still on my mind at the farmers market, and I felt unsettled and grumpy. On my way back to my stand after going to the toilet, I did something that made the day even blacker, and I did it just by stopping by the jewelry stand to look at the bits of feldspar and rose. It was my luck that a little girl was getting her ears pierced then, and even though I knew I should not stay to watch, once I saw what was happening, I couldn't leave.

The little girl hollered when her mom put her on the high stool, and she hollered as the woman who ran the booth swabbed her ears with alcohol, and she continued to holler as the woman got out her piercing gun. When the needle went into the first ear, quick like a bite, the girl squealed higher and harder, and she kept up that high, keen sound as the woman did the second ear. At the end, the little girl's eyes looked gla.s.sy because she was crying so much, and her ears were bright red from the tops down to the buds where the earrings were. That's all those lobes were, buds, because the girl was only two or so. When the lady held a mirror up so the little girl could see, the kid didn't even look. She just hid in her mother's neck.

The whole thing made me sick, because I thought the stand was probably dirty, and I didn't like the fat woman doing the piercing, with her fat arms and the rolls of her belly straining at the front of her dress. I hated the mother because I thought if you had a kid, you should wait until she asked to have her ears pierced, because then she'd know the pain was for something. At two or three, this kid couldn't know. She had to get those bits of metal in her ears because her mom wanted them.

But I was never going to have a kid, so the whole thing was beside the point. Even thinking it was beside the point. Yet there I was, thinking it, and that made me feel even blacker. I did not ever want to grow up if it meant taking the side of people like that fat woman or the little girl's mom. I had a job, I paid rent, I wanted no one to tell me what to do ?- but that was all I wanted of adulthood. I did not want it to be up to me to change diapers or cook meals from the four food groups or get someone's ears pierced. I did not want to take care of anyone but me.

Maybe it was the black mood I was in, and maybe it was because I didn't want to go home and get preached at, but all I could think was how much I wanted to go get stoned with June. I missed her, and I was beginning to see that even if I still felt embarra.s.sed about telling her I wanted to be her boyfriend, feeling stupid or uncomfortable was still better than the blankness of not talking to her. That feeling just grew during the day, so after work I called her. It was the first time I'd dialed her number since the day she told me about the picture of Ray and Luke.

"Long time no see," she said when she heard me. "No hear, either. How's it hanging?"

"It's about hung," I said, and she laughed. I could hear in her voice that she was hurt because we hadn't been speaking, but she was not so hurt that she would not talk to me.

"Things are that good, huh?"

"Things are that good," I said.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing. Everything. It's a long story."

"I'll listen."

"Can I come out?" I said. "Are you busy?"

"Everyone's gone. Come on."

"Do you have any weed?"

She laughed then and said, "I always have weed."

Just hearing her say that and hearing her voice-a little husky, a little loose-sounding-made me feel better. Whatever else was going on, whatever had happened between the two of us, I knew we would be able to sit at the kitchen table, get high, and laugh. There was something easygoing in June, and that fast I knew how much and how bad I missed her.

Out at the house, it was the same scene with the dogs as the other time, with them almost knocking me down, so Lucky and Pearl got locked up again. When June and I went into the kitchen, I saw that she'd been rolling joints.

"This is for us to smoke now," she said, pointing to the water bong with her chin. "And these are for you to take with." She pushed three joints toward me then, over the tabletop.

"How much do I owe you?"

"A dollar."

"For three joints? You're crazy."

"It's for you," June said. That's when I knew it was a gift and not a transaction, and that we had forgiven each other for whatever happened.

"I see you're wearing that," I said then, because when June pushed the joints toward me, I saw she had on the ring Ray gave her.

"I wear it most of the time now."

"What's it mean?"

"It means it's easier for everyone if I wear it."

"That's all?"

"That's all," she said, holding the smoke in. "What about you? Does Del ever talk about putting a ring on your finger?"

The question seemed strange to me. Even if I had a ring from Del, it would be nothing like her taking a ring from Ray at the same time she was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Luke. We couldn't just be two girls sitting around talking about when we might get married.

"Mostly Del talks about knocking me up."

"Are you going to do it?"

"Get pregnant? Jesus Christ, no." And that seemed strange to me, too, that I'd even have to say that to June. I said, "A baby doesn't interest me at all."

"It might interest me if I was with the right person. I might want a baby then."

That surprised me. It didn't seem at all like her. But I didn't say, Well, who's the right person, or How are you going to be able to tell whose baby it is? I wasn't there to fight or preach. So instead I went, "Well, I wish you luck with all of that. With choosing, I mean."

"The choice is made," she said. "You know that, don't you, Vangie?"

I didn't know how the choice could be made when she was still in the house with the two of them, but I nodded. I knew she wanted me to. She waited a few seconds before she said the next thing.

"It felt good when it started. Now it just seems complicated. The lies are getting more complicated. But I don't lie to you, Vangie, and I never did. At least not for long."