Delta Girls Read Online Free Page A

brushed our teeth and changed into shorts and T-shirts for the night; when we got to our cot, I noticed something on Quinn’s back. A round green sticker that said “Ripe and Ready.” I ripped it off her shirt, my whole body furious.
    “Who the hell put this here?” I marched into the aisle between the stalls and held it up high. A man with a deeply creased face smiled and nodded from behind his half-door. “You put this on my daughter?”
    He smiled and nodded again.
    “You sick fuck!” I threw the sticker at his face, but it fluttered to the ground before it could reach him. “What kind of pervert puts a sticker like that on a nine-year-old girl?”
    His smile dropped. Even if he couldn’t understand English, I knew he could understand me.
    “Don’t you dare—don’t any of you dare—lay a finger on her again. No finger, no sticker, no nothing!”
    “Shit, lady,” I heard someone say under his breath.
    “Quinn, pack your bags,” I yelled. I picked the sticker up off the floor, the back of it encrusted with dirt and dust. Evidence.
    WE PILED EVERYTHING into the car and were bumping along the dirt road when Mr. Vieira appeared in the headlights in his striped pajamas, dragging a hose.
    “Where are you two headed?” he asked.
    “We’re leaving.” I showed him the crumpled-up sticker. “I found this on my daughter’s shirt.”
    He took the sticker and smoothed it in his palm. “That’s for the ripe pears we bring to market,” he said.
    “My daughter is not a ripe pear.”
    Quinn laughed out loud but stopped when I threw her a look.
    “Let me go talk to the men,” he said.
    I SAT IN the dark car with Quinn, engine turned off to save gas. The moon was full—it hugged the trees, outlined them like a highlighter pen. Bats darted in and out between the rows, wings snapping like flags in the wind. A white owl swooped andgleamed like some sort of angel. Quinn fell asleep, her dark hair splayed against the window, her legs spread open on the seat. I was glad no pervert was there to see her shorts riding up, a sliver of panties peeking out one leg.
    Mr. Vieira appeared, making me jump.
    “Jorge didn’t know what it said.” He leaned into my window. “Forget English—he can’t even read Spanish. Just thought she’d like a sticker. Kids like stickers.”
    “He can’t go around sticking things on a little girl’s body.”
    Mr. Vieira shrugged. “Where you gonna go?”
    “There’s a berry farm up in Washington.” The thought of so much road suddenly exhausted me.
    “All them berries will be picked by the time you get up there,” he said.
    “We can’t stay here,” I told him.
    “I need all the pickers I can get,” he said.
    “I can’t take her back to a barn full of men.”
    He looked off into the distance. “I have an option,” he said, rubbing his bristly chin. “If you want some privacy.”
    “How much privacy?” I looked at Quinn again.
    “You have to drive there,” he said. “It’s on the water.”
    I forced myself to stay skeptical.
    “Let me get my truck,” he said. “You can follow me.”
    We drove through the dark orchard out into untamed fields, up a curved dirt hill. When Mr. Vieira said the place was on the water, he meant it. He pointed to a houseboat down on the other side of the levee, circa 1975, anchored at a small pier. I could hear rustling in the tule grass, sudden flapping of wings as we walked to the edge of the hill, Quinn still asleep in the car. The pear orchard lay in the field behind us, thirty feet beneath us; the trees hulked in formation like kneeling monks. A swath of river lay before us, twenty feet down, shimmering with moon.
    “If this levee ever breaks,” said Mr. Vieira, “the water would drown every last tree. But if you’re in the boat, you’ll go sailing right over us. Your own Noah’s ark.”
    A couple of short, puffy sheep trotted over, as if they wanted to get on board. “What are you doing all the way over here,