Chapter 6: Peach Jamboree

The Peach JAMboree filled Stonewall's main road from the gas station to the church.

My father's stand sat under the same blue tarp it had sat under since I was nine.

Gus Wehmeyer looked up from a crate of Loring peaches and saw me step out of the truck.

He took off his seed cap and wiped his whole face with it.

"Greta Mae," he said.

"Hi, Daddy."

He hugged me hard, because he never knew what to say.

Over my shoulder he looked at the tall man in the gray suit.

Emilio had come around the front of my truck and stopped a good ten feet back, with his hands where anyone could see them.

"Who's this?" my father said.

"My boss," I said. "Mr. Cavazos. He's here to stand by the truck."

"Is that so."

"Yes, sir," Emilio said.

My father looked at him for a long time and then held out a peach.

"Eat it over the ground, son," he said. "It runs."

Emilio took it. He bit in, and juice went down his wrist, and he smiled for the first time all day.

I stood behind the tailgate where the crowd could not see and watched him lick his thumb.

Then I bit into my own.

Juice ran down my chin, and Emilio's hand came up before I could reach for a napkin.

His thumb crossed the corner of my mouth and wiped it clean.

He did not take his hand away.

His thumb rested on my lower lip, warm and sticky, and neither of us breathed.

"Greta!"

I knew the voice.

Conway was walking down the middle of the road with a bouquet of white roses in a cellophane cone.

Two hundred people parted for him.

He wore a navy blazer and loafers in the dust. His smile was one I knew from four years of dinners.

My father set down his crate.

"Honey," Conway said, stopping at the edge of the stand. "Thank God. I've been calling for three days."

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