I had decided that I would write Ricky a letter and tell him about Libby Latcher. I was certain that none of the adults would do so; they were too busy burying the secret. But Ricky needed to know what Libby had accused him of. He needed to respond in some way. If he knew what was happening, then maybe he could get himself sent home to deal with the situation. And the sooner the better. The Latchers were staying to themselves, telling no one, as far as we knew, but secrets were hard to keep around Black Oak.

Before Ricky left for Korea, he’d told us the story of a friend of his, a guy from Texas he’d met in boot camp. This guy was only eighteen, but he was already married, and his wife was pregnant. The army sent him to California to shuffle papers for a few months so he wouldn’t get shot. It was a hardship case of some variety, and the guy would be back in Texas before his wife gave birth.

Ricky now had a hardship; he just didn’t know it. I would be the one to tell him. I excused myself from the porch under the pretense of fatigue and went to Ricky’s room, where I kept my Big Chief writing tablet. I took it to the kitchen table-the light was better thereand began writing slowly in large printed letters.

I dwelt briefly on baseball, the pennant race, then the carnival and Samson, and I wrote a couple of sentences about the twisters earlier in the week. I had neither the time nor the stomach to talk about Hank, so I got to the meat of the story. I told him that Libby Latcher had had a baby, though I did not confess that I had actually been nearby when the thing arrived.

My mother wandered in from the porch and asked what I was doing. “Writin’ Ricky,” I said.

“How nice,” she said. “You need to go to bed.”

“Yes ma’am.” I had written a full page and was quite proud of myself. Tomorrow I would write another page. Then maybe another. I was determined that it would be the longest letter Ricky had so far received.

I was nearing the end of a long row of cotton, close to the thicket that bordered Siler’s Creek, when I heard voices. The stalks were especially tall, and I was lost amid the dense foliage. My sack was half-full, and I was dreaming of the afternoon in town, of a movie at the Dixie with a Coca-Cola and popcorn. The sun was almost overhead; it had to be approaching noon. I planned to make the turn and then head back to the trailer, working hard and finishing the day with a flourish.

When I heard people talking, I dropped to one knee, and then I slowly sat on the ground without making another sound. For a long time I heard nothing at all, and I was beginning to think that maybe I had been wrong, when the voice of a girl barely made it through the stalks to where I was hiding. She was somewhere to my right; I couldn’t tell how far away.

I slowly stood and peeked through the cotton but saw nothing. Then I crouched again and began creeping down the row toward the end, my cotton sack abandoned for the moment. Silently, I crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped, until I heard her again. She was several rows over, hiding, I thought, in the cotton. I froze for a few minutes until I heard her laugh, a soft laugh that was muffled by the cotton, and I knew it was Tally.

For a long time I rocked gently on all fours and tried to imagine what she was doing hiding in the fields, as far away from the cotton trailer as possible. Then I heard another voice, that of a man. I decided to move in closer.

I found the widest gap between two stalks and cut through the first row without a sound. There was no wind to rustle the leaves and bolls, so I had to be perfectly still. And patient. Then I made it through the second row and waited for the voices.

They were quiet for a long time, and I began to worry that maybe they’d heard me. Then there was giggling, both voices working at once, and low, hushed conversation that I could barely hear. I stretched out flat on my stomach and surveyed the situation from the ground, down where the stalks were thickest and there were no bolls and leaves. I could almost see something several rows away, maybe the darkness of Tally’s hair, maybe not. I decided I was close enough.

There was no one nearby. The others-the Spruills and the Chandlers-were working their way back to the trailer. The Mexicans were far away, nothing visible but their straw hats.

Though shaded, I was sweating profusely. My heart was racing, my mouth dry. Tally was hiding deep in the cotton with a man, doing something bad, or if not, then why was she hiding? I wanted to do something to stop them, but I had no right. I was just a little kid, a spy who was trespassing on their business. I thought about retreating, but the voices held me.

The snake was a water moccasin, a cottonmouth, one of many in our part of Arkansas. They lived around the creeks and rivers and occasionally ventured inland to sun or to feed. Each spring when we planted, it was common to see them ground up behind our disks and plows. They were short, black, thick, aggressive, and filled with venom. Their bites were rarely fatal, but I’d heard many tall tales of horrible deaths.

If you saw one, you simply killed it with a stick or a hoe or anything you could grab. They weren’t as quick as rattlers, nor did they have the striking range, but they were mean and nasty.

This one was crawling down the row directly at me, less than five feet away. We were eyeball-to-eyeball. I’d been so occupied with Tally and whatever she was doing that I’d forgotten everything else. I uttered something in horror and bolted upright, then I ran through a row of cotton, then another.

A man said something in a louder voice, but for the moment I was more concerned with the snake. I hit the ground near my cotton sack, strapped it over my shoulder, and began crawling toward the trailer. When I was certain the cottonmouth was far away, I stopped and listened. Nothing. Complete silence. No one was chasing me.

Slowly, I stood and peeked through the cotton. To my right, several rows away and already with her back to me, was Tally, her cotton sack strapped over her shoulder and her straw hat cocked to one side, steadily making her way along as if nothing had happened.

And to my left, cutting low through the cotton and escaping like a thief, was Cowboy.

On most Saturday afternoons Pappy could find some reason to delay our trip to town. We’d finish lunch, and I’d suffer the indignity of the bath, then he’d find something to do because he was determined to make us wait. The tractor had some ailment that suddenly needed his attention. He’d crawl around with his old wrenches, making a fuss about how it had to be repaired right then so he could buy the necessary parts in town. Or the truck wasn’t running just right, and Saturday after lunch was the perfect time to poke around the engine. Or the water pump needed his attention. Sometimes he sat at the kitchen table and attended to the small amount of paperwork it took to run the farming operation.

Finally, when everyone was good and mad, he’d take a long bath, and then we’d head to town.

My mother was anxious to see the newest member of Craighead County, even though he was a Latcher, so while Pappy piddled in the tool shed, we loaded four boxes of vegetables and headed across the river. My father somehow avoided the trip. The baby’s alleged father was his brother, and that, of course, made my father the baby’s alleged uncle, and that was something my father simply wasn’t ready to accept. And I was sure he had no interest in another encounter with Mr. Latcher.

My mother drove, and I prayed, and we somehow made it safely over the bridge. We rolled to a stop on the other side of the river. The truck stalled, and the engine died. As she was taking a deep breath, I decided to say, “Mom, there’s somethin’ I need to tell you.”