You won't find your salvation here
You think it’s almost dusk, but it’s so hard to tell. The clouds are always loitering around the sky, threatening rain that would be a blessing now, though you really shouldn’t think such things. It’s only five more miles to home, and it ain’t any of your business if the crops go thirsty for another day.
You swing the plastic bag carelessly, letting the cold milk chill your sunburnt legs. Really, you hate Tom right now. It wasn’t like Alisha wouldn’t be there tomorrow or the next day or the next. There’ll always be time to take her to the drive-ins, or maybe not the way Old Jim was lookin’. Depression’s hitting everyone hard, but Old Jim really got it bad. No one wanted to see anything, not when a good box of cereal took 10 cents out of savings, or a gallon of milk took 7 miles and a nice 45.
The first drop of rain plops down on your nose, and you curse a little, sounding out the syllables, before the voice in your head that sort of sounds like your ma tells you off for not being a proper lady. You brush it off. She ain’t fooling nobody, really. Proper ladies ain’t as skinny as a stick with muscles in all the places where flesh should be. They don’t walk 7 miles to the grocers and dressed in their brother’s cast offs. They’re like the girls in the pictures that Tom takes you to when he was feeling filial and all that, coming out of his self-absorbed shell to see well heck, there are other people in the house and they aren’t all worshipping his goddamn feet just cause he’s got a job.
You don’t stop walking, feeling the dust beneath your feet give, and you almost think for a second that the Earth is swallowing you up, taking you away from this place that God left to dust, but you snap out of it. It’s only five more miles to home, and your pa will give you hell if you come down with something.