🧺the yard

"Peeky. You and Lonny have got the orchard stretch. It's the long one. I gave it to you two because it needs somebody who'll actually count the hooks instead of guessing."

Which was true, as it happens. It was also not the reason.

"Oh — with me?" said Lonny, and Peeky said nothing at all but went noticeably less small.

They went up the lane and by the bend they were talking and by the orchard they were laughing at something, and neither of them ever knew they had been got out of the way of a thing.

Buddy had already put me and Peeky on the orchard stretch, before any of the counting got as far as who was left over. I did not know that at the time. I found out at the party, off an envelope, and had to go and stand in the kitchen for a minute.

The orchard is forty hooks long and nobody walks past it. Peeky did not say anything for the first ten minutes and neither did I, and then somewhere around hook four I said "want to be friends?" the way I always do, and Peeky said we already were.

We counted them. All forty, properly, instead of guessing — because guessing is what you do when you do not much mind how it turns out.

Buddy put me with Lonny on the orchard stretch. Forty hooks, the longest and dullest bit of the path, and nobody walks past it.

I found out much later — at the party, off Beamy's envelope — that Buddy did that on purpose and did it early, before the pairing got as far as the end of the line where the two of us were standing. Buddy never said. I do not think Buddy was ever going to say.

Lonny talked. I did not, for a while, and Lonny did not seem to mind, which is the only test that matters. Somewhere around hook four Lonny said "want to be friends?" and I said we already were, and I meant it, and it came out quite easily, which surprised both of us.