“She has a penis. I seen her naked. Why do you think she always wears skirts?”

“That’s stupid. Ain’t nobody got a penis and boobs. That don’t make sense.”

“You don’t make sense.”

“Shut up, stupid.”

Farmhands Larry and Darryl ogled Meredith Winters from the barn’s hay loft. She walked past every day, twice, on her way to town and back to her little house in the dell. Always they stopped to stare as she passed. Usually they spouted nonsensical rumors to entertain themselves. Every day, she waved at them just before going round the bend past the copse of trees at the edge of their boss Traynor’s land. This unnerved them each time; once Larry jumped away from the window so abruptly, he shoved Darryl, who stumbled several feet before falling from the loft. He walked now with a limp, and his left hand fell asleep randomly. Larry covered for his cousin when the hand affected his work. Family was family.

Miss Meredith giggled as she waved. Not only was her hearing superior to humans, they would never guess her secret in a gazillion years, when she would still be there, and all these silly, rumor-mongering humans gone.