The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden
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next month, Melinda once again accompanied her father on his collection rounds. Same as always, she rode with her feet dangling out of the truck window. But now those pretty toes were adorned with pink nail polish.
Arthur parked the truck on the road, in the shade. He turned off the ignition and before he could reach for the door handle, Melinda was out of the truck.
A look of astonishment perched on his face. “What are you doing?”
“Coming along.”
Barbara Payne met them at the door.
“Afternoon,” she said, and then directly to Melinda: “Hello, so nice to finally see you … err … meet you. Please come in.”
They followed her into the house. Melinda looked around at the modest surroundings. The sitting room wasn’t much bigger than her own bedroom and everything— couch, chair, woven throw rug—seemed to be a variation of the color brown.
“Please, have a seat,” Mrs. Payne said as she hurried to the couch and fluffed the one limp pillow that graced it. “John is out back fiddling with something.” Her speech was hurried. “We weren’t expecting you this early. I’ll go out and get him.”
Father and daughter sat down. Melinda wondered if she was in the very spot where Cole sat. She closed her eyes and conjured up the vision.
“Melinda?” Arthur’s voice was cold. “What in the world are you doing?”
Her eyes snapped open. “Nothing.”
Barbara reappeared. “He’s coming now. Can I get you all something to drink?”
Arthur shook his head. “No thanks, I gotta get back home soon. Got family coming in from Miami.”
“Miami,” Barbara repeated in a dreamy voice, as if Arthur had said, I got family coming in from the moon.
Melinda said, “I’d like something to drink, Mrs. Payne.”
“You do?” Arthur uttered.
“Yeah.”
Barbara scurried off. When she returned with a tall glass of lemonade, her husband was handing over the rent money.
Arthur counted the money, swiped it across the leg of his trousers, folded it, and stuffed it into his pocket.
Melinda’s eyes darted from one corner to the next. Where was Cole? She attempted to stretch the time by taking small sips of lemonade. If she did it right, she could make that drink last for more than half an hour.
Barbara noticed how little Melinda was drinking. “Is it too tart, dear?”
“No, ma’am,” Melinda muttered without looking at her.
Arthur scratched his large belly. “Come on, Melinda, we gotta go.”
The daughter rolled her eyes and handed Barbara the glass. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. I do hope we’ll see you again.”
Melinda offered Barbara a small, disappointed smile. She’d painted her toes, dusted her body with an extra layer of the perfumed talc, and even washed her hair with her mother’s special—off-limits to her—shampoo. So much work and risk and not even a Cole sighting. Melinda was deflated.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to survive thirty more days without seeing Cole Payne. And besides, school was due to start in another two weeks, and she would no longer be able to make the collection rounds with her father. Which of course meant that she would probably never see Cole Payne again.
Melinda couldn’t ask either of her brothers to drive her out—there would be too many questions asked. She didn’t have any friends to speak of and the local buses didn’t go that far away.
Melinda looked down at her feet. She could walk, but in the heat she was sure she’d melt away in under an hour.
Her mind ticked.
There was her bicycle. A brand-new Schwinn she’d gotten as a birthday gift and had only ridden twice.
She smiled.
The following weekend, Melinda announced that she was going to the library. Her mother, Connie, was in the kitchen instructing their maid in the art of stringing a rump roast.
“Okay, see you later,” Connie sang without taking her eyes off the raw meat.
Melinda rolled the bicycle down the driveway and onto the street. She mounted it and began to peddle. The bicycle wobbled wildly through the first few rotations. Finding her balance, Melinda shot like a rocket through the center of town and past the Sidon library, out toward the rural area. The breeze raised her hair off her neck and forehead, and Melinda had the sense that she was flying.
Cole was outside and shirtless, tossing a ball back and forth with his younger brother, when Melinda rolled into the yard.
He blinked unbelievingly. “Melinda?”
She offered a breathless, “Yeah, hi.”
The sight of his bare sun-kissed torso set her skin on fire.
Cole strolled over to a nearby tree, snatched his shirt from a high limb, and shrugged it on. “What are you doing out here?”
Melinda hadn’t thought about the questions and so she had no prepared answers. “Just riding.” She laughed a little too loudly.
“All the way out here?”
She bounced her head up and down like a seal. She felt giddy, like her head was filled with soap bubbles.
Cole’s eyes moved to the road and then back to Melinda’s flushed face.
“Do your parents know you’re out here?”
“It’s okay,” she sputtered, “I told them I was going to the library.”
Melinda Thompson hadn’t crossed Cole’s mind since he last saw her. But he could see now, as she stood there quivering with excitement, that she had done little else but think about him.
“Oh, so you missed me, huh?” Cole teased smugly.
Melinda blushed.
“Come on,” he said as he wrapped his hands around the handlebars and guided the bike to the house.
“Whose that?” Cole’s little brother asked.
“This here is Melinda Thompson. Now go find something to do elsewhere.”
The brother threw his mitt angrily to the ground and stomped off.
Melinda and Cole sat down on the porch steps. Cole did most of the talking. He talked about baseball, comic books, and farming. Every so often he would lightly touch her arm when making a point, and it was all Melinda could do to keep herself from falling to pieces with pleasure.
Inside, Barbara eavesdropped and fretted from behind the curtained window. She couldn’t imagine that the girl’s parents knew she was out there keeping time with Cole Payne—the son of a sharecropper. And if they found out, what would the implications be? Would Arthur kick them off his land? Raise their rent? Ask for a larger portion of the crop? Barbara’s head began to hurt.
“That girl,” she muttered to the air, “is going to bring us a whole heap of problems.”
When Melinda finally left, Barbara breathed a sigh of relief. Cole sauntered into the house and tossed a “Hey, Ma” at her before throwing himself down into a kitchen chair.
“What that Thompson girl want?”
Cole grinned. “Me, I s’pose.”
Barbara bristled at his arrogance. “She outta your league, boy, and we don’t need no trouble from her daddy, ya hear?”
Cole heard her, but that didn’t matter. Melinda was prime for the slaughter; he just