The Legend of the Albino Farm by Steve Yates

Author:Steve Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2016-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

- 17 -

At Mack’s Creek, they stopped for sodas and to switch drivers. From a picnic table by a cedar in the sun, Wes and Hettienne watched cars blaze by loaded high with hooting alums dressed in black and gold, black-and-gold banners snapping from antennae—it was a game weekend in Columbia.

“So . . . what did Baby Elvis mean, ‘Albino Farm girl’? He said it was a spook tale?”

Hettienne rolled her eyes. “Do you really think he’s okay?”

“Smooching Scotland the Brave in the back of some old Chevy as we speak. Sure, he’s fine. Hillbilly brains are made of flint.” He watched her, her shoulders slumping, posture bowing, as if someone were crumpling her like aluminum. He had never been around a woman so lovely who could in an instant bow up, hunch, and make herself appear so awkward and disagreeable. So pale of skin but not afraid to wear ivory and cream and white, and with her blonde hair and acetylene-blue eyes, the whole effect could be unforgettable, like white heat off metal in a forge. “We don’t have to talk about what he said if you don’t want.” He cupped her cheek and could see that their rather wild first night had cost her a lot of sleep. Her eyes were ringed by pink, wounded skin, and blue bruises of exhaustion showed beneath them. “But I do want you always to sit up very straight, and never hunch. You are an exquisite, magisterial presence. There’s no need to hunker down to my height. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Hettienne Sheehy, no more hunching.”

She let out a deep breath. As she leveled her shoulders, raised and squared her neck and head, he felt he was witnessing an egret, one of those huge white birds in the marshes along the Illinois River near duck camp. The birds leapt into the air, wings spread wide, impossible to conceive of them flying, but in just a few whoops of those elegant, monstrous wings, the miracle was airborne, and he felt his heart just then shoot up into flight.

“I was always the tallest in class. And the palest. I was always trying to be normal. Always hunching.” She was smiling at him. “Well. Never again, then.”

He was enraptured, goggle-eyed like she had seen him a few times last night. It was a nice change to have him speechless, and to know she was the reason made her heart sprint. “The Albino Farm is a story that Springfield tells about the Sheehys and the Old Sheehy Place. I don’t know why. It makes no sense. Uncle James thought he and I had started it with the Roy Boy, both of us white as albinos down in the Sac.”

“You mean with the soldiers and hussies? That story?” he asked. He squinted at her. “It’s a small town, but that one incident making a legend happen? That’s a lot of fame for one little girl and her poor old uncle.”

“Well, I hope you’re right.

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