I was scared but determined not to show it. She seemed to have no fear-no fear of getting caught, no fear of the darkness, no fear of sneaking up on a house where a baby was being born. At times Tally was aloof, almost moody and dark, and seemed as old as my mother. Then she could be a kid who laughed when she played baseball, liked being looked at when she bathed, took long walks in the dark, and most important, enjoyed the company of a seven-year-old.

We stopped in the center of the bridge and carefully looked over its side at the water below. I told her about the channel catfish down there, about how big they were and the trash they fed on, and about the forty-four-pound one that Ricky had caught. She held my hand as we crossed to the other side, a gentle squeeze, one of affection and not safeguarding.

The trail to the Latchers’ was much darker. We slowed considerably because we were trying to see the house while staying on the trail. Since they had no electricity, there were no lights, nothing but blackness in their bend of the river.

She heard something and stopped cold. Voices, off in the distance. We stepped to the edge of their cotton and waited patiently for the moon. I pointed here and there and gave her my best guess as to the location of their house. The voices were of children, no doubt the Latcher brood.

The moon finally cooperated, and we got a look at the landscape. The dark shadow of the house was the same distance as our barn was to our back porch, about 350 feet, same as home plate is from the outfield wall in Sportsman’s Park. Most great distances in my life were measured by that wall. Pappy’s truck was parked in the front.

“We’d better go around this way,” she said calmly, as if she’d led many such raids. We sank into the cotton and followed one row and then another as we silently moved in a great semicircle through their crops. In most places, their cotton was almost as tall as I was. When we came to a gap where the stalks were thin, we stopped and studied the terrain. There was a faint light in the back room of the house, the room where they kept Libby. When we were directly east of it, we began cutting across rows of cotton, very quietly moving toward the house.

The chances of someone seeing us were slim. We weren’t expected, of course, and they were thinking of other matters. And the crops were thick and dark at night; a kid could crawl on hands and knees through the stalks without ever being seen.

My partner in crime moved deftly, as ably as any soldier I’d seen in the movies. She kept her eyes on the house and carefully brushed the stalks aside, always clearing a path for me. Not a word was spoken. We took our time, slowly advancing on the side of the house. The cotton grew close to the narrow dirt yard, and when we were ten rows away, we settled in a spot and surveyed the situation.

We could hear the Latcher kids gathered near our pickup, which was parked as far away from the front porch as possible. My father and Mr. Latcher sat on the tailgate, talking softly. The children were quiet, and then they all talked at once. Everyone seemed to be waiting, and after a few minutes I got the impression they’d been waiting for a long time.

Before us was the window, and from our hiding place we were closer to the action than the rest of the Latchers and my father. And we were wonderfully hidden from everything; a searchlight from the roof of the house could not have spotted us.

There was a candle on a table of some sort just inside the window. The women moved around, and judging from the shadows that rose and fell, I figured there were several candles in the room. The light was dim, the shadows heavy.

“Let’s move forward,” Tally whispered. By then we’d been there for five minutes, and though I was frightened, I didn’t think we would ever get caught.

We advanced ten feet, and then nestled down in another safe place.

“This is close enough,” I said.

“Maybe.”

The light from the room fell to the ground outside. The window had no screen, no curtains. As we waited, my heart slowed, and my breathing returned to normal. My eyes focused on the surroundings, and I began to hear the sounds of the night-the crickets’ chorus, the bullfrogs croaking down by the river, the murmuring of the deep voices of the men in the distance.

My mother and Gran and Mrs. Latcher also talked in very low voices. We could hear, but we couldn’t understand.

When all was quiet and still, Libby screamed in agony, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Her pained voice echoed through the fields, and I was sure she had died. Silence engulfed the pickup. Even the crickets seemed to stop for a second.

“What happened?” I asked.

“A labor contraction,” Tally said, without taking her eyes off the window.

“What’s that?”

She shrugged. “Just part of it. It’ll get worse.”

“That poor girl.”

“She asked for it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Never mind,” she said.

Things were quiet for a few minutes, then we heard Libby crying. Her mother and Gran tried to console her. “I’m so sorry,” Libby said over and over.

“It’s gonna be all right,” her mother said.

“Nobody’ll know about it,” Gran said. It was obviously a lie, but maybe it provided a little relief for Libby.

“You’re gonna have a beautiful baby,” my mother said.

A stray Latcher wandered over, one of the mid-sized ones, and sneaked its way close to the window, the same way I’d crept upon it just a few hours earlier, just moments before Percy nearly maimed me with the dirt clod. He or she-I couldn’t tell the difference-began snooping and was getting an eyeful when an older sibling barked at the end of the house, “Lloyd, get away from that window.”

Lloyd immediately withdrew and scurried away in the darkness. His trespass was promptly reported to Mr. Latcher, and a vicious tail-whipping ensued somewhere nearby. Mr. Latcher used a stick of some variety. He kept saying, “Next time I’ll get me a bigger stick!” Lloyd thought the current one was more than enough. His screams probably could be heard at the bridge.

When the mauling was over, Mr. Latcher boomed, “I told you kids to stay close, and to stay away from the house!”

We could not see this episode, nor did we have to, to get the full effect.

But I was more horrified thinking about the severity and duration of the beating I’d get if my father knew where I was at that moment. I suddenly wanted to leave.

“How long does it take to have a baby?” I whispered to Tally. If she was weary, she didn’t show it. She rested on her knees, frozen, her eyes never leaving the window.

“Depends. First one always takes longer.”

“How long does the seventh one take?”

“I don’t know. By then they just drop out, I guess. Who’s had seven?”

“Libby’s mom. Seven or eight. I think she drops one a year.”

I was about to doze off when the next contraction hit. Again it rattled the house and led first to weeping and then to soothing words inside the room. Then things leveled off once more, and I realized this might go on for a long time.

When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I curled up on the warm soil between the two rows of cotton. “Don’t you think we oughta leave?” I whispered.

“No,” she said firmly, without moving.

“Wake me up if anything happens,” I said.

Tally readjusted herself. She sat on her rear and crossed her legs, and gently placed my head in her lap. She rubbed my shoulder and my head. I didn’t want to go to sleep, but I just couldn’t help it.

When I awoke, I was at first lost in a strange world, lying in a field, in total blackness. I didn’t move. The ground around me wasn’t warm anymore, and my feet were cold. I opened my eyes and stared above, terrified until I realized there was cotton standing over me. I heard urgent voices nearby. Someone said, “Libby,” and I was jolted back to reality. I reached for Tally, but she was gone.