"You grow stuff?"

"Sometimes," he lied.

"Like what?" She wanted to stall him. She wanted him to talk to her.

"Grew some greens and squash."

"Can I come in there too?"

Wilson wasn't sure, so he just left the gate open slightly and walked to the back of the garden toward the shed. He felt hot, goosebumps prickled his thighs. A wanting began inside his heart and beneath his skin.

Pebbles stepped inside the gate. It was nice in the garden. She pulled the gate behind her, pretending she was a woman who lived on a farm in the country like her Aunt Bev. No chickens stumbled around her ankles in confusion the way they did in the real country. But there was a wheelbarrow and little rocky paths and poles stuck into the ground to hold up heavy plants. She pretended they were all hers. She saw Wilson go behind a small shed and heard the clattering of a lot of cans. He could be my handyman, she pretended.

Wilson surveyed the stock of returnable cans that he stored behind the shed. They amounted to a small mountain. He had more inside the shed. Tomorrow he would redeem them and he figured he'd get about $38. He peeked around the corner of the shed and saw the girl following all the paths and stepping over the hanging stalks of dead things. Her bleached hair hung down over her shoulders and over part of her face. She was young but acted even younger than she was. White girls did that sometimes. That way nothing was their fault when it happened. He wanted her sitting on top of him, astride him, her bleached hair hanging down over his face and his hands locked on the cheeks of her ass. He wanted to brush her hair and braid it and maybe tie it with a ribbon.

Pebbles pretended she was Eve in the Garden of Eden and soon a snake would cross her path. She wondered how it would feel to walk along the path in November with nothing on and a light snow falling. She imagined herself naked and people lining the fence. She thought it would be like an animal in a zoo must feel. Sometimes they play with themselves and people just keep watching. Pebbles thought she might do that. She would be naked in the garden and passersby would notice and a crowd would form. She might climb into the wheelbarrow and open her legs and touch her private self. They would have to watch until she came because no one would turn away, they would be too fascinated.

There were no flowers left in the garden except some faded pink zinnias that had been bent by the wind and in the back there were some sunflowers that the starlings were eating the seeds out of row by row. Wilson unlocked the shed and pulled open the metal door. Pebbles followed him inside and closed the door behind her.