American Honey

Farmer’s Daughter

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Out.” I know this dance, his game, it’s meant to make me think I can’t get away from this place.

“And that is?” his eyes penetrate, he’s searching for my lie knowing damn well he can’t trust me. In some ways, here’s a man in complete denial that his only daughter graduated last week and she’s turning eighteen on Tuesday. Deep down, he’s scared I’m leaving and never coming back. He should be scared

“Dad…” My eyes are on my phone, certainly not on my dad. If he sees my eyes, he knows I’m lying. I sigh and grab my bag by the door letting the screen door slam behind me.

“Be back by midnight.” He orders from the porch, then without another glance, turns and walks inside the house. I don’t know why he cares but he acts like he does. I know he means well, he’s just overbearing and completely unreasonable.

Midnight? He’s lucky if I make it home before the sun rises tonight. I graduated last week. You’d think there’d be some leeway there but not with Adam Rodger.

My summer starts the moment Jessie picks me up. She’s dressed in her blue jeans and cowboy boots. She doesn’t bother with a shirt, never usually does once she leaves her house and settles on her bikini top. Other than in school, Jessie Gayle is the girl most girls stay away from in fear she’ll kick your ass. She’s tiny but tough. Sweet but sassy and cold but caring. She’s never anything anyone expects her to be.

She tips her red trucker hat at me when the door closes, dirt kicking up as she speeds down the driveway. It’s a familiar sight down this long gravel driveway. I know every pothole just like I know every scar on my body. Behind me sits the house that I was born in. It’s seen better days, cracked paint and a barn that’s barely standing. The barn was hit hard by numerous storms this past year and never recovered. Kind of like me.

I’m trapped in Amarillo in more ways than I can say. It’s a dusty farm that’s been my home since I was born and I want away from it, as far away as any four wheels can take me. I want freedom and a chance to be anything but a farmer’s daughter. I want out of this culturally poor town with its extreme weather. The summers are unbearable and the winters just the same.

“Just a few more days.” I tell myself that every day.

It’s my age holding me here and I believe that to be true. It’s this farm and these life sucking cowboys that seem to find me and make their way between my legs.

“Think he’ll bring it up?” Jessie asks me lighting her cigarette she’s holding between two fingers.

I’m taking my pants off and changing into my jean shorts and old flannel my dad won’t let me wear because it’s too low, too much, too anything but the modest clothing he only wishes I wear. I take the ends of my flannel and twist them up revealing the tanned skin of my stomach.

Jessie takes a few drags from her cigarette and hands it to me.

“I’ll kick his ass if he does.” I take a drag as well, and then again knowing this is my only time to smoke, or do anything other than be a homemaker they expect me to be.

“Alanna,” Brown eyes so dark they appear black find mine, “you know Harrison isn’t keeping any secrets for you. If he thinks it’ll get him in good with your dad, he’d tell

him.”

Harrison means well, he just can’t keep his mouth shut. I know this but I still hope that maybe he will for me. Just this once. He’s hung up on me and thinking we would someday be what he’s hoping for. Together. It’ll never happen. Harrison’s good hearted and nice. I’m not.

Jessie leans forward and turns down the Pistol Annies blaring through the cab. “Have you heard from Kasey since then?”

“Nope.” I gesture to the bruise on my inner thigh. “Haven’t seen him since Sunday but I have this reminder.”

Jessie rolls her eyes as we pull into the driveway at Harrison’s house. “Figures. He’s an ass.”

We pass by a section of road that turns my stomach and brings my heart a pain that’s so intense my breath is stolen from me. It’s instant and as we pass the white cross still lined with flowers his mama plants each year, the memory, much like the flowers, is fading with the light of the day and the wilted blooms that have fallen like the tears that have long since been shed.

My hands shake when I reach for the door handle, my worn cowboy boots sliding over the caked on country dirt spread over Jessie’s floor mats. When I close my door, the sound carries through the field, rust shaking loose on the bed of her Chevy that’s as old as she is. Wind whips at my face and it smells like dirt and cow shit.

Jessie rolls her eyes at the smell flicking her cigarette in a nearby mud puddle.

I’ve known Jessie about two years. She moved here with her mom when her dad left to “head into town for some things” and never came home. She’s the only person who knows every secret I have and I have more than my share of a few. Probably more than most seventeen-year-olds. Jessie doesn’t judge me. She never will. She and I are kindred spirits in more ways than one and my closest confidante in this hell hole called bum fuck Egypt. I honestly don’t think I can live without Jessie. Her sharp tongue and determination, we’re inseparable in our ways.

We make our way through the overgrown wheat fields out behind Harrison’s parent’s barn. There’s a light haze in the air but there usually is here. As I look around, everything about this place is just another indicator that this town is, in more ways than one, the town that time forgot. The ground is dry and dusty, cracked from the blazing heat of the day.

Once near the barn, there are about ten people already standing around drinking and smoking. It’s what we do here. Sugarland is blaring through two large black speakers against the wall, shaking the wood floor of the barn and rattling the broken windows loose. The barn’s seen better days but it’s a refuge for us, a way to forget that the majority of us will still be in this town twenty, thirty, even fifty years from now probably doing the same thing then as we are doing today, drinking and smoking not accomplishing much more than what we are doing in this moment and time. But this barn allows us a sanctuary where we can just be kids. It’s a small way for us to be away from the judgmental eyes and voices that always accompany being around our parents and other adults. Just a way out…even if it’s just tonight.

Harrison finds me, he’s drunk and wraps his arms around mine. “I’m not going to tell anyone. Just stay away from him.”

“Don’t worry.” I roll my eyes taking the beer he hands me. “It was nothing.”