He arrives at the farm at nearly three in the morning. Lizzy hears tires on gravel as the Plymouth slowly creeps up the driveway. The headlights momentarily blaze through her window, making patterns on the faded flowered wallpaper. She holds her breath until she hears the car come to a stop in front of the old garage. It's a hot summer night and earlier the June bugs slapped up against the screens while Mama sat on Lizzy's narrow bed and read to her from The Wizard of Oz, about Dorothy-brave Dorothy, and her loyal friends. Lizzy wishes she was as brave. Lizzy is shy and the world frightens her. At least the world that goes beyond the borders of the farm.
   
On the farm she isn't shy. She bellows from branches in the large oak tree she climbs in the corner of the yard next to the orchard-a yell she learned from the Tarzan movies she and Ester go to see on Saturday afternoons. Lizzy rolls down grassy slopes in the pasture, whooping, bumping over small rocks, hardened cow pies, and prickly thistles. She shrieks as she wades barefoot on mossy stones in the cool bubbling creek.
   
Lizzy slips from the light weight covers now, just wearing white cotton underpants and a white cotton sleeveless undershirt, too hot for pajamas. The moon is almost full, brilliant, lighting the dewy yard below. Only hours earlier she and Ester ran with empty mayonnaise jars collecting fireflies, putting the hole-punched lids on. They played with their magic jars, watching them glow-off and on like a light switch on a timer. Before bed they let the fireflies go, back to their freedom. Lizzy and Ester back to their dreams.   
   
Now she watches, her father still behind the wheel of the car.
Daddy was drunk again. Lizzy didn't like it. He wasn't a bad drunk. He never got mad at her and Ester. He never fought with Mama. But he was noisy on those nights. And he did crazy things. Like now, ramming the garage door with the blue Plymouth when he thought the door was open, but wasn't. Downstairs, Mama watches him from the kitchen screen door, as he backs up in the driveway and rams it a second time. Finally, stumbling out of the car he shouts, "Didn't even see the goddam thing!" He weaves across the damp grass, bumping into a white Adirondak chair and his curse rises to her window, "Shhhhhhhit!" Then he falls down in the grass in a fit of giggles while Mama goes out to him in her satin pajamas.
   
She tries to pick him up off the wet grass but he just lays there rolling and laughing and grabbing on to her. Then she's there rolling with him, and laughing, getting her pale blue satin pajamas all wet.
   
Then he kisses her.