At a Fence

By Rob Kirkner
Collegian Reporter
September 27, 2006

It was the kind of summer wind you find annoying wind chimes until they spill their shimmering secrets. Out there in the open farmland, it felt enormous, heavy with lightness. Her lips smacked at its sweet smell of earth, and her ears found, tumbling atop its gusts, a confident clump of farmboy words, whispered from across the alfalfa field: “May I have a minute?”

She instantly excused her tennis shoes from the dirt road, and introduced the seat of her shorts to the fence’s top board, granting his request.

He achieved the fence. “Thank you.”

“I’ve to be at my grandmother’s soon.”

“I just wanted to say hello.”

“Hello.” She swiped a delinquent strand of hair behind her ear, and smiled at her dangling feet.

He smiled.

“Is this farm yours?”

“Yes—my father’s.”

“I think I’ve seen him out here before.”

The boy, noticing his dirty palms, made two fists. “Probably; you walk by enou—”

“You watch me?” she asked, quickly.

He laughed. “I might’ve noticed you once or twice.”

Her eyes strolled down the road, and gripped the horizon. “You could walk me to my grandmother’s, if you wanted.”

“I couldn’t.”

“No?”

“I’ve to work until my brothers get back from school.”

“Hm,” she muttered, as her body slithered off the fence, and her tennis shoes were reunited with the road. “I’ll be going, then.”

“They’re back around three.”

“Until tomorrow.” She began to walk, and soon the wind had taken her out of his eyes’ reach.

kirknerr1@lasalle.edu