Inside, Mama turned the kitchen faucet off and peered through the fogging glass window over the sink, framed by the broken wood and faded red paint. The hushed hum of the crickets came muffled through the humidity and the clashing of dinner plates being dried and set. And along with the cricket noises came into the house the hum of the sweet nothings from the couple on the swinging porch bench outside. Mama stopped moving the white plates and braced herself with her hands against the edge of the sink and kitchen counter. A few strands of curly hair—the same type of curly hair she’d given Mary—hung loosely over Mama’s forehead, leftover from the strands that were tangled in a sort of bun tied together with the end of a ripped skirt. Mama listened and watched the grappling drops of dishwater chase a jagged path from the edges of the sink until they reached the faucet and fell down, down, down.

“Hay, Joe,” Mary mused, fully collapsing herself into the young man next to her, bringing one of her knowing arms around the middle of his back, the other around his chest, and then wrapping one of her hands on top of the other, swaddling him like a warm faith, a gem. She snuck her check into the meeting place of Joe’s neck and the beginning of his shoulder. Her cheek rubbed against the beautiful must of his wrinkled, almost sheer white shirt with the rolled- up sleeves. The one with the brown and black and red stains on the back.

“You ever see Jaimie’s flowers? The new white ones she just planted on tha road, right there by her house?”

Joe thought about it for a second, with a knowledge Mary didn’t have yet.

“Yah, Mary, I seen em.”

“They sure are pretty,” Mary eased. “I’d wanna have white flowers like that.”

Joe watched a tiny, black silhouette of a cricket jump from one top of a bearded barley stem to another. The cricket would stay a while. Once the air got too thick on one spot, it’d jump to the next, making its sound as it leapt.

“Mary, you had those white flowers before.”

“Yeah, once,” she reflected. “Not anymore though.” She sighed an easy sigh and closed her eyes.

The crickets kept chirping their songs and the dust on the road on the side got heavier as it joined in dampening clumps. Joe stroked the side of Mary’s arm, eyes focused through the crickets and short field of barley to a tiny bright light shining from what he knew was a red lamppost. Then he raised his eyes to look at the sky. The open, blue-tinted darkness started cracking white streaks of lightning in a distance.

“Mary, I gotta leave,” Joe confessed slowly. “It’s ‘bout ta rain. Roads are gonna get all bad.”

Mary opened her eyes and unhooked her arms, supporting her slim figure as she leaned forward beside him, her face close to his, yellow dress with cut-off sleeves cinching at her waist. Her eyes were deep with feeling and the type of affection that comes before knowledge.

“Awl-right, Joe.”

They both got up as they always had, and then his hands were firmly on her hips, her arms floating around his broad and sloping shoulders, around his thick neck. The warmth poured out of her again, from spouts shaped like Joe. The kisses were warm and ignited by a flame that Mary grew accustomed to craving. And after the moment’s call to passion, Joe released his hands, and Mary her arms, and she smiled at him a big smile when he looked down from his height.

“Bye-bye, Mary Cole,” Joe said warmly, kissing Mary once more on the cheek, and then turning his shoulder to wander down the three steps of Mary’s porch and onto the dirt path that lead to his car, and then to the road.

“Bye-bye, Joe,” Mary mused, leaning her shoulder against the porch. She looked down at the ground that promised her things and waited to hear his labored truck’s engine sputter to starting. She waited to watch his car pull out and then start down the road.

Mama was in the plain darkness of the kitchen, sitting at the dinner table, wiping her hands on a dishrag, and watching the sky drop its first rains over the barley. She waited for Mary’s bare footsteps to pass by the kitchen's hallway entrance.

“Mary,” Mama called as Mary passed, bringing her daughter back to lean against the walls of the kitchen entrance.

“Hi, Mama,” Mary echoed in a voice that was from a mind and soul blissful and not present. Mama swallowed and looked kindly on her daughter who was glowing with hope.

“You go on up now,” she said and motioned with her hands, and Mary did.

Mama sat silent and put the dishrag down on the table. She looked at the yellow rag, tired and battered, and then brought her right arm to drag across her forehead. The beat brown wooden chair croaked when it skidded behind Mama’s knees as she stood up like a statue. She turned and went to the kitchen window and watched the rain come down. Mama looked out without blinking and without lengthy thought. Again she knew she would see two headlights of what she knew was a labored truck dimly glare next to what she knew was a red lamppost.