the walker-hatfield girls at sixteen

Mar 08, 2008 - 09:55 AM PST

When the Walker-Hatfield girls were sixteen they stood side by side at the edge of the football field up at the high school, and they crossed their arms, looking across the field to the woods that lay behind it. They were one of two sets of twins who were born on the same day of the same year on opposite ends of Elk County. The other pair of twins were boys, and many people, most notably excepting their father, had made predictions. None of the predictions had so far come true.

The boys were unexceptional members of the football team, but this evening there was no practice and they were not there. The boys have nothing to do with this. I only mention them because no one can mention the Walker-Hatfield girls without mentioning their counterparts.

The field was empty. It was October and the trees were in the height of their color, but the sun had already gone behind the hills: bright in the sky, dark on the ground, and the colors dulled. There at the edge of the woods something moved. The girls sighed. The deer crept out and scattered randomly, their white tails flapping like papers scattered in the wind before alighting again.

The girls sighed. The girls sighed. The girls sighed. A hawk hovered at the edge of the trees.

Their father and mother, who had moved into the county to become farmers a year or two before the twins were born, were wealthy, progressive, idealistic, and had PhDs in their fields. There was no doubt the Walker-Hatfield girls would be going to a four-year college. This was not the case for most of their friends, acquaintances, and enemies at school.

Bernadine, the elder of the two by at least several minutes, had two cigarettes in her jacket pocket and a small paper book of matches. Now she took these out and gave one of the cigarettes to her sister, who coughed a few times before settling into it.

The person they were waiting for would at some point in the future be standing in the middle of the field, his hands in his pockets, his head held tilting slightly back, and they imagined he would be standing with his legs apart and his feel planted firm on the ground. That afternoon, Nevada, the second Walker-Hatfield twin, had found a note in her locker at school. It began, “Dear Bernadine…”

There was no doubt that the Walker-Hatfield girls would get married to men they met in college, and that they would eventually move back to Elk County and be on the school board or volunteer at the library or the radio station.

Bernadine was having trouble with the cigarette she had lit and held tentatively next to her mouth. It seemed like it should be a simple thing, but she couldn’t figure out how to use it. She held it between her lips and took it away again. She couldn’t figure out whether she was supposed to try to breathe while the cigarette was perched at the edge of her mouth, and if so, how. Nothing seemed to be happening. The boy they were waiting for was seventeen and had a red truck he shared with his older brother who used it to run over small trees, to do donuts on the church grass, or to drive around the back roads on Saturday nights shedding beer cans like scales from the windows.

The girls didn’t speak, but they were both prepared leave if the other suggested it. They shifted uncomfortably, and they hugged their jackets tighter with long arms.

The sky turned the brilliant deep blue that comes just before indigo and darkness, and the lights on their tall pillars above the football field came on with a suddenness that made the girls squint.