Chapter 1

Tabbitha Langston came roaring into my life when I was six years old.

I was starting first grade at Glendale Elementary in Salmon Lake, Washington and I was scared. I had been raised by a rather cold and impersonal aunt and uncle since I was three, and I guess I really wasn't ready to begin socializing with those my own age. They weren't abusive, mean or harsh; it was more as though they were following some kind of manual. My parents had died, my mother in childbirth and my father shortly thereafter from too much alcohol. I think he blamed me, although I have no real clear memories of him; that was just a feeling I got looking back on it later.

I was taken in by my maternal grandparents, but they were too old to take care of me full time so I was shipped off to Salmon Lake to live at my Uncle Tom and Flo. Let the good times fucking roll.

Back then Salmon Lake was a pretty tiny place. It's still nothing to pay much attention to; most people have never even heard of it. In those days, that area was mostly farmland and hay fields and horse farms. Most of the kids going to school for that first time were tough farm hicks and I was pretty much a city slicker, even though I had lived around there all of my short life. It was like they could smell the city on me, or something. Plus I was small for my age and not at all impressive to look at, a situation which didn't change for at least another ten years...

So there I was going to school for the first time, feeling like I was heading toward the execution chamber. It was a bright sunny day, but I felt a cloud of doom hanging over me like a sword of Damocles. I just knew something was going to happen - somebody was going to steal my lunch, knock me in the dirt - something. I wasn't going to have any friends and I would end up sitting in a corner all by myself. I just knew it.

I was about to step up onto the sidewalk in front of the school when a bunch of tough looking third graders came up and surrounded me in a semicircle. I felt a lurch in my stomach and I thought here it goes, Bobby. The thread holding the sword had snapped and soon I was going to get knocked in the dirt.

"Well well, what we got here?" one of them sneered, poking me in the chest.

"It's a little pansy!" another one crowed in delight, pulling on the pocket of my new button-down shirt, tearing it a little.

"What do we do to pansies?" the first guy said, poking me again.

"We -"

"Leave him alone, Frank," said a girl's voice from over my shoulder.

I turned and saw a girl with short curly black hair and a gingham dress staring at the guy who had poked me, whose name, I guessed, was Frank.

"Aw, Tabby, we was just havin' some fun with the pansy," Frank whined, but I could tell he was almost done. He had backed off a little and looked as though he was trying to find a way to run away and still save his pride. "We didn't mean nothin' by it."

"Go pull your crap somewhere else, anyway," the unknown girl said, glaring at Frank and company.

"See, you really are a pansy. Have to have a girl do your fighting," Frank sneered at me one more time, and then he swaggered off, laughing at me with his buddies.

I was mortified, and without even saying thank you to the girl, I turned and beat feet into the school, ears and face red with shame. I hadn't been knocked in the dirt, but I had to be saved. What the hell kind of wimp was I?

Since there was only one first grade class, we were both in it. The teacher, Mrs. MacKenzy, made us all introduce ourselves to the class, which was when I learned her name. I still did my best to avoid her, though.

However, She didn't let it go. When we came out for lunch in the rare September sunshine, I found her sitting under a tree that I was heading for. I started to change direction, going red again, when her voice stopped me.

"Hey, you have to sit with me, Bobby," she said, looking up at me with big brown eyes.

I looked around for Frank and his pals, but didn't see them. She correctly read my mind though. "Forget about him and come over here."

Without any other choice, I settled gingerly as far away as I could and opened my lunch bag.

"Don't you say anything?" she questioned, exasperatedly. "Hi would be nice and I could use a ... introduction." She stumbled over the last word a little and I guess somehow that made me loosen up a bit. She was human, like me, or something. I don't really know how to explain it even all these years later. Hearing her stumble over the word introduction and using the wrong article somehow brought her back to earth with me. It was a weird way to think, but that was how it was.

"Hi, I'm Bobby Torrence," I said quietly, not really looking at her, but intensely interested in my lunch bag. Today for my first school lunch, it was a cold meat loaf sandwich and a boiled egg...

"Tabbitha Langston," she said, ignoring my efforts to keep a distance between us and scooting right over, sticking out her hand. I numbly took it and she gave me a brisk shake. "Where are you from, Bobby?"

"Right here," I said, still quietly, not sure what the hell was happening. "I live with my Uncle Tom and Flo Torrence."

"Oh, out on Highway 99, I know where that is. That used to be a big horse farm, my daddy says."

"They sold the last one before I got there. Hard times or something."

"Yeah, I heard about that. We run a dairy so we don't have much of a problem, least not yet. Daddy says some big company might try and buy us out though..."

"Oh, you're that Langston? We have your milk in our fridge."

She giggled. "Come over sometime and I'll show you all the cows and stuff. You'll love it."

"Okay, I can do that," I said, surprised to hear myself agreeing. I didn't know how she did that.

She beamed at me, showing me white teeth. "Great. I'll meet you after school today."

So began my friendship with Tabbitha Langston, the first black girl I ever met.

When I came out that afternoon she was standing out on the front steps. She was right in the middle of a crowd of girls giggling like mad with them. I was about to turn away thinking she had changed her mind when suddenly I found a hand slipping into my elbow.

"Hey, where you going?"

I nodded uncomfortably toward the giggling gaggle. "I thought you were with them."

She giggled herself. "I was waiting for you, silly. Let's go."

For some reason my face got warm at that, but I let it go.

"Are you planning on walking to school every day?" I asked, looking at the long road ahead of us.

"Nah, I walked here today because it's the first day and I was excited. I'll probably get Mama or Daddy to drive me here, 'specially if it rains."

"I will probably walk because I don't live too far from here. My uncle leaves early for work and probably wouldn't drive me, and my aunt doesn't care."

"That's terrible," Tabby said, squeezing my arm.

We chatted about our first day of school for a while, our way taking us out of town onto a gravel road. "What time you have to be home, or do they not care about that either?"

We had come to a long driveway that could almost be its own access road by this time. Big evergreens lined the side of the road and I could already smell cows.

"Six-thirty," I replied.

"I'll get Daddy to drive you home," she chirped, leading me down the long driveway toward the big farm house.

The spread was a typical farm. There was a big white farm house with a wrap-around porch. A dirt path sloped down behind the house to a row of six barns, from which the sound and smell of large numbers of cattle emanated. There was a bottling plant and a fleet of trucks off to the other side, and a low slung bunkhouse for the farmhands squatted on top of a low hill to the east of the main house.

Tabby dragged me up to the house and pulled me inside. Somehow along the way there she ended up holding my hand. "Look who I found, mama!" she called out, dragging me into the big country kitchen, still holding my hand.

A woman in jeans and a sweat shirt turned from where she was chopping potatoes and smiled at us. "Why, you done dragged home another stray, girl. What on earth am I gonna do with you?"

"Oh, Mama," Tabby said, letting go of me and going up to hug the woman. "This is Bobby Torrence, he lives over at the old Suttner place."

The woman dried her hands on an apron and stuck one out. "Hi there, Bobby. I'm Barbara Langston, this here rascal's mother."

I shook her hand, a little bemused. I was totally out of my depth in this situation. The love emanating from this kitchen was something that I had never experienced.

"Pleased to meet you," I mumbled, but before I could scuttle into a corner and hide, a big bear of a man came stomping in, wearing a checkered lumberjack shirt and green rubber boots.

"Well hello, my family!" he boomed. He went over and scooped up Tabby and swung her around, making her giggle and shriek. "How's my kitten this afternoon? Did you have a good day at school?"

"Put me down, Daddy!" she squealed, laughing. "We have company."

Mr. Langston set his daughter gently back down and turned to me. "And who might you be?" he asked, still wearing a smile.

I introduced myself and somehow before I knew it I was invited to supper.

Mr. Langston showed me around the farm and I got to meet all the cows. He even let me help out with the evening milking. They called my Aunt Flo and she said she didn't care if I stayed over or not. Mrs. Langston told me, when I was older, that she got the distinct impression they didn't care if I ever came home at all.

Tabby trailed along, smiling like a fool the whole time. I thought she was a little bit crazy, smiling like that. I mean, I was a boy, she was a girl and we were only six years old, and I'd barely said two dozen words to her. So why was she adopting me or whatever the hell she was doing? It took me a couple more years to get it.

Well, more like four or five years. From that first day onward, Tabby and I stuck together. It was us against the world. I spent more time at her house than I did my uncle's, a situation I think he was grateful for. Eventually I just never went back and more and more of my stuff found its way into the Langstons' spare room. And before I was eight, they had requested guardianship of me.