by Brittany Micka-Foos
Jamestown, Virginia, 2002
I pluck a tobacco beetle from the sticky underside of a leaf, hold it between my thumb and forefinger, and watch it writhe. This is my summer job. I am sixteen years old, and I am testing my powers.
We stand in a small plot simulacrum of a tobacco field. A dad with a Midwestern accent sizes me up and asks, “Did they wear glasses like that in 1607? With plastic frames?” He smiles like he’s won a contest. I smile back and say no.
I give him the same old schtick I repeat countless times a day: “At Jamestown Settlement, we are not historical reenactors, but rather, costumed historical interpreters. If we were reenactors, I wouldn’t be here at all, because in 1607 there were no women settlers at Jamestown.”
I turn back to the plants and let my coworker, Derek, take over with the tourists. He guides them to a nearby shed and begins a painstaking explanation of the tobacco harvesting and drying process.
I started this job the same day as Derek. Though ten years older, he is unassuming with a baby face; short stature; and genteel, Southern-born manners.
It takes me less than a week to understand he’s into me. I don’t know what gives it away, exactly—the way he holds my gaze, a certain quality of his attention—but I’ve recently come to just know. I bask in the attention of this older guy, who has his own car and his own apartment. We eat lunch together in the large tourist-trap cafeteria, fighting for a seat amongst the school groups and families. He drives me home from work sometimes, and when he does, he makes me take off my shoes before I get in his Mustang GE. The meticulous way he takes care of his car is straight out of a Shania Twain song. I can’t decide if I should be impressed or not.
He’s nice and a little bit shy, and I like that about him. He never does anything that makes me feel uncomfortable—a change of pace from the guys at my high school. Derek is sweet in a way that is alien to me: how he blushes when he admits that he likes me, how earnestly he swears he’ll marry me someday. I don’t know what to make of it.
After a couple months of working together, he invites me over to his apartment. I drive down to Thomas Jefferson Estates, a sprawling apartment complex in Newport News about twenty-five minutes southeast of Williamsburg. Everything in the Tidewater region is named after colonial times and colonial men: the Founding Fathers, the Georges and Thomases and Johns (so many Johns).
I do not know exactly what I am doing here. I guess I’m curious to see the inside a grown man’s apartment (new territory for me). He opens the door and I step gamely across the threshold. It’s a modest apartment: worn carpets, beige walls, and a cookie-cutter layout. Its surfaces are clean and the shelves tidy. Everything is bland and bachelor pad-coded, except for the decor.
It’s all Bugs Bunny.
There’s a Bugs floor lamp as tall as me, a shade hanging in front of where his face should be, his ears peeking out of the top. A Bugs wall clock hangs on the wall, his tall eyes lolling wildly with each tick. There’s even a Bugs telephone, somehow. Through the open bedroom door, I see Loony Tunes pillowcases with a matching comforter.
We sit side by side on his couch. He offers me a glass of water. We do not touch.
I am suddenly aware of being profoundly out of place. I don’t know what’s expected of me and I don’t know what I was expecting. I am out of my depth.
I leave as quickly as I can, but not so quickly as to be impolite. I’m out the door before it gets dark.
Summer is still barely clinging on. Driving my parents’ minivan, I take the Colonial Parkway home, watching the sun move toward the horizon over the James River. Nearly four hundred years ago, some men landed their boats on this bank and named it after themselves. I wouldn’t be here at all sounds pretty good right about now.
Brittany Micka-Foos is the author of the short story collection It’s No Fun Anymore (Apprentice House Press 2025) and the chapbook a litany of words as fragile as window glass (Bottlecap Press 2024). Her work has been published in Ninth Letter, Witness, Epiphany Magazine, The Forge Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Read more at www.brittanymickafoos.com.