6:17 p.m.

Melanie’s chest ached. It hurt to breathe. And every labored breath tasted of gasoline.

She heard moaning then a rumble. Maybe it was only thunder. Everything else was quiet, even the car’s chassis had finally stopped creaking and the engine had stopped hissing. She reached to unbuckle her seat belt, and then realized she didn’t have it on. That was why her chest hurt. She vaguely remembered crashing into the steering wheel. The air bag hadn’t deployed. She was lucky she hadn’t gone through the windshield.

She heard another moan and looked beside her to find Jared gone, his car door wide open. Then suddenly the panic returned and she spun around, climbing over the seat.

“Charlie? Are you okay?”

He lay crouched on the floor, his legs twisted under him, his back facing her.

“Charlie, are you all right?” she asked again, hanging over the front seat and touching his shoulder. No reaction. She tapped, then shoved him before she got a response. Another groan, only this time he pulled himself up off the floor and rolled onto the back seat. That’s when Melanie saw the blood on his coveralls, dark splatters as if someone had shaken a Coke bottle before opening it and sprayed it all over. For a minute she worried the blood was his own. When she realized it wasn’t, there was little relief. The streaks of yellow vomit, however, were his.

“What happened, Charlie?” she asked, hanging across the front of the seat. “What the hell did you and Jared do?”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. Not a good sign.

“Charlie, I asked you a fucking question.”

“We gotta go.” Jared startled her, suddenly appearing in the open car doorway. He was out of his coveralls, the stocking cap and kerchief gone, too.

“I wanna know what the hell happened back there,” she demanded of the two of them even though it felt as if there were knives poking into her chest whenever she took a deep breath. Her cap was gone, her hair a tangled mess, and she batted it out of her eyes so that she could stare down Jared. Not that it ever worked. “Tell me what the fuck happened. I have a right to know.”

“We need to get the fuck out of here, now.”

He pulled open the back door and to Charlie said, “I’m sick of this crybaby act. Get the fuck up.”

But neither Melanie nor Charlie moved. She had never heard Jared talk that way to her son. Obviously Charlie had never heard it, either. He stared at Jared with glassy eyes, looking as if he had just been awakened from a deep sleep rather than been flung through the air and bounced around the crammed confines of the Saturn’s back seat.

“Get those coveralls off, too,” Jared told him.

“But you said—”

“Shut the fuck up and get moving.”

This time Charlie did as he was told. Melanie stayed still, watching her son wrestle out of the coveralls, ripping the kerchief off and flinging it out the car door. He scrubbed his face with his hands, digging his fingers into his eyes with such force that Melanie wondered if it was an attempt to erase what he had seen.

When he was finished, his face looked striped, the fake suntan rubbed off in streaks. She wanted to wipe his face, a mother’s instinct. She also wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him—another mother’s instinct.

“Hurry up,” Jared yelled again. He was on the other side of the car, crouched down, burying something in the dirt between the smashed cornstalks. It was only then that Melanie realized she could see nothing but cornstalks, the rows too tall to look over. Other than the path their car had sliced through the field, they were surrounded by nothing but yellow-green cornstalks and dark gray sky, the bottom ready to drop out at any moment. The rumble of thunder grew closer. The wind had picked up, whistling through the rows, setting the long leaves and tall stalks waving. They were almost ready to harvest, more yellow than green, dry enough that the wind caused them to rustle and crackle.

Beneath the darkening sky, that sound gave Melanie a chill. Maybe it was only the breeze against her damp body. Yet she couldn’t help remembering that their mother claimed there were certain sounds and sights that warned of bad luck. Birds were on the top of her list. Melanie listened to the crows, a black cloud of them flew overhead, their caws sounding like scoldings. But then they were gone, quickly replaced by the low growl of the approaching thunder and the increasing whirl of the wind. Except it wasn’t the wind Melanie was hearing now.

“Shit!” Jared yelled, making her jump even before she recognized the sound of the helicopter. “We need to get moving. Into the fucking field and stay low.”

When Melanie didn’t move, he shoved her from behind, almost knocking her to the ground. She saw Charlie disappear ahead, half crawling, half running in the ditch between the rows of stalks. She followed, trying to mimic his moves, Jared prodding her forward. The ache in her chest competed with the pounding in her head and the vibration beneath her feet. And somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered that crows were an omen of misfortune and death.