From my kitchen window I saw them. It was a late afternoon in early summer,
and they were walking along the boundaries of the cemetery wall. I thought
they must be out of tune. I thought they must be hillbillies. I wasn’t
sure that they weren’t ghosts; but when I saw the girl and was for
a moment caught in her unaccountable gaze, I prayed god that they weren’t.
The fat kid, though, I’d seen before. I think he’d been living
with his grandmother, in an unaspiring shack out by the tracks. I think
he delivered pizza for awhile. I think the shack had burned down. It hadn’t
affected the strut in his stride, though. And the way he talked, maybe
he
knew things. But, like I said, it was the girl who sealed it. She was
slender and lovely, or maybe a little homely--a diamond in the rough,
I flattered myself--both stupid and smart, blossoming yet unripe, and
even from a distance I could tell that she was burning.
