Jacob swallowed what felt like a sharp stone lodged in his throat. “Have you seen her naked?”

Joshua’s grin flashed in the dimness. “Better than that.”

“Bullshit.”

Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. “Ten bucks and your run of Hulk comics says so.”

“I don’t gamble.”

“Hang around here awhile and you’ll get over it.”

An unintelligible shout came from the trailer that hosted the card game, followed by laughter. “Sounds like somebody hit a full house,” Joshua said. “Some idiot probably just lost two weeks’ worth of trimming branches. Dumb fucks.”

Jacob scarcely heard, because his cheek was pressed against the wall again, his one-eyed gaze crawling between the curtain and up the curving insides of the girl’s thighs. He felt a small stir of air. Joshua had opened the shed door. The door closed with a rattle of metal, followed by the sound of a latch slamming home.

“Joshua,” Jacob said with a whispered hiss. “Let me out of here.”

“Keep watching, bro’, and I’ll show you what it means to be a Wells.”

Jacob scrambled over the scrap metal, bundled straw, and tree baling equipment until he reached the door. He tried his weight against it then nudged it with his shoulder. He was afraid to make too much noise and risk drawing the attention of the card players. Despite Joshua’s assessment, he could think of a number of ways the Mexicans could vent their anger at a gringo pervert.

He heard a tinny knock then Joshua called out, “Carlita, it’s me.”

Jacob listened for a moment and scrambled back to the knothole. He got there in time to see the trailer door close. Joshua was nowhere to be seen. Until he stepped into the girl’s bedroom, moved to the window, and opened the curtains. He winked, then the room went dark as Carlita leaned over, her robe parted and rumpled, and blew out the candle.

Jacob wasn’t sure how long he sat in the shed, huddled in a ball. The card game went on and on, the laughter sharpening while the Spanish banter grew more gruff and slurred. After perhaps an hour, Jacob looked through the knothole to find the girl’s window was still dark. He tried to picture Joshua, the girl lying beneath him with the robe parted, their limbs entwined.

Two men left the card game and stood outside the shed, passing a bottle, talking quietly in words that Jacob couldn’t understand. One of them went into the girl’s trailer, and Jacob expected shouts as the couple was caught in the act. Instead, a light came on in the room, an overhead bulb this time instead of the candle. Joshua lay on the bed, the blankets pulled up to his bare chest. The girl was nowhere in sight. Joshua lifted his head and flashed Jacob two fingers in a sign of peace or victory. Or maybe that he’d done it two times.

Someone fumbled with the latch to the shed door.

Jacob looked around. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and he could make out some agricultural equipment in the back of the room, fertilizer spreaders and watering tanks. He pushed away from the wall and clambered under the machines just as the door opened. Someone entered the room, clinking glass against the wooden door frame.

The man slumped into the loose stack of hay, hummed a drunken ballad that contained references to senoritas and corazon, then the toneless notes drifted into snores. When the snores became gravelly and steady, Jacob slipped from his hiding place and knelt by the door again. The half-light lay on the bottle by the man’s side, causing the liquid within to glow. Jacob took the bottle and returned to his vigil by the knothole.

He twisted off the lid and smelled the contents. He knew it was liquor, because his father had a cabinet of the stuff kept under lock and key that was occasionally broken out for dinner guests. Medicine to dull pain, Warren Wells had said.

Joshua was still on the bed, and the girl was with him now, her bare back to the window as she slid astride him. She threw her head back and Joshua’s fingers gripped her waist. She moved back and forth, her firm buttocks flexing with the gentle motion. Jacob sipped the liquor, barely aware of the burning on his tongue and in his throat. He took another swallow as the girl writhed faster, rocking as if on a hobby horse. The trot turned to a gallop and Jacob wasn’t sure how much of the liquor he’d drunk but his head swam and his hand ached to reach for the heat inside his pants. The girl began crying out, and Joshua was yelling and groaning, the girl’s skin red around the imprint of his fingers. Her flailing black hair fell across her shoulders as she ground her hips against Joshua, and with one great shudder and shriek, she went rigid.

Jacob drained the last of the bottle’s contents as the couple slowed their movements and the girl collapsed on top of his twin brother. Jacob’s head was thick; he was angry and aroused and nauseated. The card game must have ended, because silence filled the camp. He leaned his face against the wall and closed his eyes.

The next thing he knew, Joshua was shoving him awake. “Come on, goober, we better get home.”

Jacob felt as if a plow had speared his skull. He blinked, looked past the door at the graying of dawn, the Mexican asleep in the hay, the empty bottle at his feet.

Joshua picked up the bottle and laughed. “Jose Cuervo, huh? Cheap crap. I’ll bet you feel like Pancho Villa’s army camped out in your mouth.”

Thirst scorched Jacob’s throat. He tried to clear it but he couldn’t swallow. A knot of dry vomit worked its way up past his lungs. “That girl—”

“Carlita,” Joshua said. His hair was mussed, his eyes bright. “Mmm, mmm, moy bien chiquita.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jacob wasn’t sure if he was jealous or simply angry because Joshua had kept a secret. His thoughts were foggy and his eyes were dry as stones.

“Because you wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Then why did you bring me out here?”

“Because I hate you.” A rooster crowed, then another. Joshua nodded to the sleeping man. “They’ll be going to work soon. Dear old Daddy can’t make a profit off them if they sleep all day. Let’s get out of here.”

They headed back across the Christmas tree field, Jacob staggering and holding his stomach. The revelry that had colored the camp the night before had died with darkness, and now the trailers looked rumpled and sad. A Dodge van was parked out front, its side door gone, the rear window broken. Jacob knelt in the grass and tried to vomit, but all that came up was a caked, greenish-yellow substance. He crawled several yards with the stuff trailing from his lips until Joshua yanked him to his feet.

“Shape up, Jake. You don’t want nobody to suspect nothing back at the house.”

Jacob took one last look at the girl’s window, thought of that miraculous skin against the soft terry cloth of the robe, the black hair, the curves and muscles of her legs. He spat his mouth clear. “Did you...um...?”

Joshua patted him on the back. “A Wells never fails.”

They made it back to the house, and Jacob was able to shower and have breakfast before Old Man Wells made it to the table. Dad drank his coffee and checked the stocks in the newspaper. Joshua sat in silence, wearing a faint smile of amusement. The greasy bacon and eggs sat in Jacob’s stomach like steel shavings and rubber, but the nausea passed and his hands no longer trembled. It was Friday, so he and Joshua would have to walk the half mile to catch the school bus down by the bridge.

“What are you boys doing after school?” Dad asked.

“I thought we’d go down to the workers’ camp,” Joshua said, catching Jacob’s gaze and holding it. “I’m thinking of taking Spanish next semester and figured I could get a few free lessons.”

“You stay away from there. Those beaners are rough. They’re hard workers, but if they didn’t work so cheap, I wouldn’t bother with them. When they’re drunk, they get mean. They’d cut each other’s throat for a nickel.”