The Making of Nebraska Brown

Scusi

Last thing I remember, Shane Kirkland had his left hand on my right boob, and I could feel the nub—the missing chunk of his pinky finger that got chewed off in the gristmill. So I ran, mostly because the idea of marrying him and his sad punk of a finger sent a shiver straight through to my bones.

Then I recall the wind under my feet as I left him in the raw evening mist that settled over the cornfields as soon as the sun was done burning a hole through the Nebraska day. And if memory served, I kept my mouth closed because my 12th grade track coach used to say that if you don’t, you could unknowingly swallow an entire bellyful of summer gnats in less than a mile.

I motored past the silo at McClusky’s farm and down the path that lays parallel to the stream. I don’t know why I was running so fast. He would never catch up, wouldn’t even attempt to. He couldn’t, what with his pancake-flat feet and bad ankles that dislocated at high speeds. Shane was as good as any maimed man, twenty-one years old, horny, in love and gloriously imperfect.

“Ann Leigh!”

His voice certainly could carry. Always said he could holler clear across town. There was some talent to that, I suppose.

“Ann Leigh, come back!”

I kept the pace for a while, only slowing when I neared the water tower. The vision in my mind turns grey and sketchy from there. Had I scaled all the way to the top? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time. Had I reached that skinny lip of a ledge and lost my footing, toppling over? Or had I slipped somewhere along the climb?

I recall the moonlight slicing through the trees, a sharp silver spear on my face while thoughts slashed my brain like a razor—thoughts of becoming Mrs. Shane Kirkland the Second, thoughts of working in his daddy’s restaurant alongside his mother, slinging hash—whatever that meant—and refilling the tampon holder in the ladies room known as the Hen House.

“Ann Leigh, where are you? Where are you?”

I pried my eyelids open.  A clean blue sky strung out above me. And then a face, a man’s face. His lips were moving slowly, his words like seasoned gibberish.

“Sta bene signorina? 

I squinted against the light, so bright, so un-like a Nebraska morning.

Morning?

“Pardon?”  My own voice was tiny and far off.

“Sta bene signorina?” he repeated.

I felt the ground beneath me, a cool damp mattress of low grass and smooth white pebbles. I sat up on my elbows to look around, over the man’s shoulder. My temples knocked from the inside out.

“Signorina?”

“I–I don’t understand.”

But somehow I did. I knew what he was saying. He was asking me if I was all right–young lady, are you all right. That’s what he’d said. How did I know that? There was no way. I’d transferred out of Spanish 1 in junior year to take Photography where we shot rolls and rolls of film—still life—apples and lampshades.

“Where…where am I?” I asked.

 “Campania,” he said.

“Campania?”

“Si. Campania.” He smiled. His teeth were Clorox white against his skin, which was the color of toasted almonds. “Ho pensato che fosse morto. Non ha bisogno di un medico?”

I propped myself up enough to notice where I was. Some strange garden. Someplace I’d never been or even seen. Not Nebraska. Not remotely close to Nebraska. Campania?