Scusi

Last thing I remember, Shane Kirkland had his left hand on my right boob, and I could feel the nub—the missing chunk of his pinky finger that got chewed off in the grist mill. So I ran, mostly because the idea of marrying him, with that sad punk of a finger, sent a shiver straight through to my bones.

Then I recall the wind under my feet as I left him in the raw evening mist that settled over the corn fields as soon as the sun was done burning a hole through the Nebraska day. And if memory served, I kept my mouth closed, because my 12^th grade track coach used to say that if you don’t, you could unknowingly swallow an entire belly-full of summer gnats in under a mile.

I motored past the silo at McClusky’s farm and down the path that lays parallel to the stream. I don’t know why I was running so fast. He would never catch up, wouldn’t even attempt to. He couldn’t, what with his pancake-flat feet and bad ankles that dislocated at high speeds. Shane was as good as any maimed man, twenty-one-years-old, horny, in love and gloriously imperfect.

“Ann Leigh!”

His voice certainly could carry. Always said he could holler clear across town. There was some talent to that, I suppose.

“Ann Leigh, come back!”

I kept the pace for a while, only slowing when I neared the water tower. The vision in my mind turns grey and sketchy from there. Had I scaled all the way to the top? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time. Had I reached that skinny lip of a ledge and lost my footing, toppling over? Or had I slipped somewhere along the climb?

I recall the moonlight slicing through the trees, a sharp silver spear on my face while thoughts slashed my brain like a razor—thoughts of becoming Mrs. Shane Kirkland the Second, thoughts of working in his daddy’s restaurant alongside his mother, slinging hash—whatever that meant—and refilling the tampon holder in the ladies room known as the Hen House.

“Ann Leigh, where are you? Where are you?”

I pried my eyelids open.  A clean blue sky strung out above me. And then a face, a man’s face. His lips were moving slowly, his words like seasoned gibberish.

“Stai bene giovane signora?”

I squinted against the light, so bright, so un-like a Nebraska morning.

Morning?

“Pardon?”  My own voice was tiny and far off.

“Stai bene giovane signora?” he repeated

I felt the ground beneath me, a cool damp mattress of low grass and smooth white pebbles. I sat up on my elbows to look around, over the man’s shoulder. My temples knocked from the inside out.

The Making of Nebraska Brown on Amazon US or The Making of Nebraska Brown on Amazon UK

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