Pale Harvest. Braden Hepner

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      —None of us know her history. She’s a slow river. Who knows what’s beneath the surface? But clever girls are perceived how they wish to be perceived. I know it ain’t what you want to hear, but if she’s that type—then my god man, you’ve got your hands full.

      —And that proves it, does it? said Jack.

      —You get a feeling from girls, whether they are or not. They behave in certain ways that betray the state of their virtue. This is a girl with some experience. I watched her grow up. She had a slow-burning beauty, a grace you can’t teach, even then, and I said watch out. Watch out for that one. Girls like her can’t stay pure.

      —Maybe you see what you want to see, said Jack.

      —Maybe you do too, said Heber.

      —I used to want a virgin, said Seth. Hell yes, I did.

      —This purity, it’s not the only road of value. There’s reason to value also a girl with experience. To two virgins it’s a mystery—the kind you don’t want—and without drawing on the accumulated knowledge of millennia of collective effort, it may forever remain so. They are children smashing a hotdog and bun together. Imagine spending those precious first months, years, not having figured it out, this thing that drives the very will of mankind, this reckless thing that God has inserted within each of us and told us to use with care, but which he uses just as recklessly to populate his worlds. It’s no detriment to find a girl who has screwed around a little. Give me a warm tart over a frigid virgin any day.

      —Is anyone even listening to this? said Seth. He raised his bottle to his face and examined its dregs.

      —Regardless of all your theory and speculation, that doesn’t mean she ain’t, said Jack.

      —Some part of us all wishes for that, said Heber. But have you ever considered that this virtue takes its very meaning from its loss?

      —That sounds ass-backwards, said Seth.

      —Some believe it can last in its rooted form indefinitely, but the greater tragedy than seeing it plucked is to see it wilt, to see its value fade until it is a nonfactor, nothing at all like it was and worst of all, forgotten. Tell me, Seth, do you feel the same for any girl’s virtue? Do you pine and mourn over every rushed undoing, or is it only for the beautiful ones? It seems that some girls are so desirable that there ought to be a national monument erected when they are deflowered, said Heber. And the fellow that did it properly ought to have a parade. And yet we’d gladly murder the fool who takes it from one of these selected before it is proper. But when it happens this latter way we are absolutely mystified. We brood about it, obsess over it. What is this element, this virtue, and can it replenish? Put it on the Periodic Table. What is this deep mystery that stirs both our loins and our spirits so profoundly? It is God at his most mysterious and abstruse. And when God is crucified afresh with each spoiled flower, we are deeply shaken. But we also lust with a regret deeper than our sorrow that we had been the spoiler.

      —Hey, you all know a girl by the name of Erica Birch? said Seth. From Hansel?

      —I knew her from school, said Jack.

      —Not that I ultimately give a damn, but what do you think?

      —Good looking, said Jack. Definitely no virgin.

      —That’s just it. Girls that smoke are easy. She works at the Horseman. I see her there when I go in.

      —Well, said Heber. That’s something else. It’s not every day. You wet your wick yet?

      —My wick? At least I ain’t hung like a grease zerk.

      —That’s me, is it? said Heber.

      —I need some advice, said Seth, and since I can’t get any around here but from a assclown like you, tell me what you know.

      —What do you want? said Heber.

      —Give it all to me.

      For a moment Jack felt the sadness Seth’s mother must have felt every time her son deliberately burned another moral bridge under her stern vigil. It was the glee with which he watched the flames, as if they alone were the pursuit. Heber was comfortable tonight playing the sage, if they cared to listen. Seth was drawn down to humility and innocence as he asked Heber questions about basic female anatomy. Heber began explaining, folding his legs beneath him and shaking two cigarettes out for them to smoke.

      Jack wanted to take her down to the river to watch it move its brown mirth past the banks. There was something raw about the river, something primal and ancient. There was a duckblind down there, a shack like a lone, derelict temple, sitting on what was almost an island for the river’s curve. When it came to getting a woman the farm was a fetter, though Elmer had done it. Blair once called that event an act of God. Divine intervention. Carrie worked hard at a man’s labor when they needed her, washing the barn, milking some mornings, driving tractor, feeding, moving pipe, and Jack felt pity for her, was softened toward her, even though he felt he hardly knew her and her demeanor toward him was civil at best. And their boy, there was their boy to consider.

      —What’s up, John? said Heber. You look like you got your peter knocked in the dirt. I tell you I saw her the other night, right before the funeral?

      —Where at?

      —I walked here to the park to sit under this tree, and directly I heard the chains of the swings going. So I got up and wandered over and there she was. She seemed distrustful of me at first.

      —You seen yourself lately?

      —I learned a little about her. She’s studying botany.

      —All right.

      —They left a bad husband and father. Abusive, probably, though she was reluctant to spell it out.

      —Yes.

      —She’s active in the church. She’s trying to live righteously.

      —Yes. I know all this.

      —She told you?

      —No.

      —Who told you?

      —Woolums.

      —Woolums told you? What does that asswipe know about anything?

      —All of what you just told me, and a lot sooner.

      —Did he tell you if she’s a virgin?

      —Dumbass, said Jack.

      —Who? Me or him?

      —I’d put you both on that train and wave goodbye.

      Heber said, Tell me with a straight face that you expect her to be a virgin and I’ll tell you you’re seeking something that no longer exists, and that you can’t demand it. Tell me you’re ready to throw that worn out scruple to the wind.

      —If there are no girls like that around anymore then God himself has also left us, said Jack.

      —He hasn’t left us. He’s as bent СКАЧАТЬ