Flight Behavior

  "Can I have it, please?" Preston begged.

  "It's kind of old-timey," Dellarobia warned. She looked for a date: 1952.

  "But it's animals," Preston argued. "They stay the same!"

  "The price is right," Dovey advised.

  "Okay, it's yours." Dellarobia wished her son could aspire to more than a bargain-basement science book. Obviously, that's why most people didn't shop here. They didn't want to think of themselves as people who shopped here. But Preston looked thrilled as he ran off to rescue his sister. Down at the end of the books, the pear-shaped man was still reading, halfway through that big book with intent to finish. Maybe he came here daily.

  She and Dovey pushed down an aisle of pet items. Birdcages hunkered like skeletons alongside quiescent hamster wheels. Old, crusty aquariums lined a shelf, bricks of emptiness in a wall. The ghosts of all these dead creatures in their former homes made her think of the invisible baby that built her own house. The baby she and Cub had never discussed. That Preston and Cordie might never know about.

  "I hate this," she said to Dovey. "Pet cemetery."

  "Oh, no," Dovey said. "Those pets just grew up and went away to college."

  "So how come we didn't do that?"

  They came to a halt by a wig stand, wigless: a white Styrofoam bulb the size of a head, notable only for the face drawn on it with colored markers. The portrait was inexpert but extremely detailed, down to the eyelashes and lip liner and well-placed freckles, obviously the handiwork of a young girl. One who had needed a wig. Dellarobia said the word people never wanted to hear: "Cancer."

  She and Dovey stood in silent company with the young artist who no longer needed the wig. For better or for worse. Nothing stays the same, life is defined by a state of flux; that was basic biology. Or so Dellarobia had been told, perhaps too late for it really to sink in. She was an ordinary person. Loss was the enemy.

  A gentle tap on her forearm made her jump. "Jeez, Preston!" She put her hand on her chest. "You snuck up on me."

  He looked up at her through his smudged glasses, penitent, hopeful, sure of his next move. All things Preston. He held up the same book, this time open to a horrific close-up. "Magnified face of the common housefly," she read aloud.

  "Cool!" Preston paged ahead. "What are these?"

  "Ants," she read. "Flying."

  "Ants fly?" Dovey and Preston asked at the same time.

  "The Marriage Flight," she read aloud, and skimmed ahead to summarize. "At certain times of the year the nest has winged individuals, both males and perfect females." She glanced at Preston. "That's a quote," she told him, "perfect females. For some unknown reason, one day all the other ants will turn on the winged ones, attacking them mercilessly and driving them out of the colony. They test out their wings for the first time on the so-called marriage flight." She looked up at Preston again. "It's an old book. I think nowadays they'd say mating."

  He nodded gravely.

  "After mating, the female tears off her wings and crawls in a hole to start her own colony. After rearing a small nucleus of workers, she becomes an egg-laying machine."

  Dovey shuddered. "Sheesh. And they all live happily ever after."

  "How do they tear off their own wings?" Preston asked.

  "I don't know, sweetie. But we're taking the book home, so we'll find out."

  "We're getting this one too? It's not the same book I showed you before."

  "Let me see that." The spine was marked Volume 16. "Uh-oh," Dellarobia said. "There's a whole series of these, Preston. It's an encyclopedia."

  "I know, Mama, it has all the animals," he said. Considerately leaving off the duh.

  "I don't think we can buy all sixteen." She weighed the options, but sixteen dollars was a lot, for something this outdated. If they could hold out for a computer.

  Preston looked at the volume with a longing that made her miserable. How much would she deny him for the sake of something that might not materialize? But he came to grips, as always. "I'll get the ants, and the Goony Bird," he pronounced. "Cordie wants the baby elephant one, and lizards. Two each, okay?"

  Dellarobia took a deep breath. "Honey, I don't think they'll let us break up the set." This made no sense to Preston, so she tried again. "It's all sold as one thing. Like, they wouldn't let you buy the lid of the teapot, and not the teapot."

  "Well, if it's all one thing, then it costs one dollar," he reasoned.

  Dovey looked at Dellarobia, eyebrows raised.

  "Technically you're right," Dellarobia said. "It has to be one or the other. I could ask. But I don't think the store people will see it our way." Her mood sank at the thought of haggling and pleading. For someone's thrown-out books.

  "He's the master persuader," Dovey said. "Let him go ask."

  Dellarobia watched fear overtake her son as he understood this proposition. His razor-straight eyebrows lifted as his eyes met hers, hoping for a bailout.

  "Here's the thing, Preston. If I ask, they'll say no. I'm nobody here, they won't do me any favors. But you're this awesome kid that wants his own encyclopedia, right? You totally have a shot." She backed up her cart to look down the length of an aisle to the checkout registers. There were two cashiers, a heavyset kid with tattoos covering his arms, and an older lady with a ponytail. "Come here," she said. She stood behind him with her wrists crossed over his chest. "Which one, you think?"

  He picked the tattoo kid, no surprise there. In Preston's world, grandma types were not automatically on your side. Dellarobia told him to gather up as much of the set as he could carry, and go make his argument. She and Dovey watched him make the long walk down the towering book aisle, like a prison inmate going to meet his justice.

  "Quiet on the ward," she said to Dovey.

  "Gulp," Dovey replied.

  She had noticed her son's wrists sprouting like wheat stems out of his sleeves, and now also noted the visible expanse of sock above his shoes. A growth spurt, finally. Perfect timing, she could upsize his wardrobe on the cheap here if she could drag him out of his books. Somberly he gathered an armload of the yellow volumes, ignoring his sister, who was stuffing books in the alligator purse and dumping them out. Preston waited an eternity at the second register behind a woman buying a floor lamp, who seemed to have an issue with it. The tattoo kid at the register seemed attentive to her monologue. A good sign, it went to character. Dovey and Dellarobia stood mute with apprehension. From the distance, they couldn't hear, but watched as Preston articulated his claim. The kid took one of the books from Preston, looking it over carefully.

  "At the college where Pete and Dr. Byron teach," Dellarobia said quietly, "the students send them e-mails to demand what grades they want. Can you imagine?"

  When the cashier gave his verdict, they saw Preston's whole body react, the pump of his fist, the faintly audible hiss of joy, yesss! He turned and looked back across the long jumble of castoffs toward his mother, meeting her eyes with a cocksure expression wholly unlike anything she knew of her son. She felt pierced by loss. He would go so far. Maybe she had the same stuff inside, the same map of the big picture, but the goods had passed through her to lodge in her son and awaken him. Already he had the means and the will for the journey.

  A strange fog rolled over February. Hester called it an omen, but in a winter so persistently deviant as this one, most people were sick of weather talk and greeted the latest act without a salute. For Dellarobia its downside just now was that it reduced morning visibility nearly to zero. Clouds lay low on the mountain, erasing its peaks, making the rugged landscape look like flatland. With binoculars she scanned the yellowish roost trees in the valley where the fog's veil dimmed all the forest colors to a uniform dun like an old photograph. She sat in a lawn chair, not ten feet from the spot where she'd first laid eyes on the monarchs. The place was unrecognizable now, thanks to the graveled turnaround Bear put here and the traffic flow his engineering had helped facilitate. She wasn't here to count sightseers, but this morning had seen six. This was t
he end of the road, as far as vehicles were concerned. Some tourists parked and hoofed it down the path toward the study site for a better view. Others stayed in their cars, taking their gander from here and then heading back home.

  Dr. Byron had told her the fog was no mystery, but a predictable part of a warm front. He could even make physics safe for consumption, in small, digestible bites. Warm air held more water; that made sense to her. The sudden crispness of autumn days, the static sparkling in her rayon pajamas on frigid nights, this was air with the water squeezed out. A glass of iced tea dripping in summertime was hot air, wet as a sponge, meeting its match. These things she could see.

  A maroon SUV bumped up the rise into the turnaround and parked at an angle. She watched a couple get out, a trim middle-aged woman and super-skinny husband in cross-trainers. "Look, they're here today," he said in a loud whisper, and they stood at the edge of the precipice holding hands, thrilled with their luck. As if the butterflies might have been elsewhere. None of the visitors had spoken to her today, addressing their questions, if any, to a man in khaki who was passing out leaflets to the intermittent visitors, asking them to take some kind of pledge. He wasn't one of the Californians like Carlos and Roger. Those boys had gone home, taking their wrecked clothes and good cheer. This man was from another organization in a city she didn't recognize, and he was no kid, either. He had white hair and a snap-brimmed hat and slightly crossed eyes behind thick glasses. He was here in no official capacity, despite all the khaki. It was his retirement project to travel from place to place distributing the pledge, which Dellarobia had yet to read. He'd actually talked her ear off this morning with rambling tales of people he'd met and unfriendly encounters with officers of the law and with wildlife, always winding up with the baffling declaration, "And that's all she wrote!" Who was she? This man, Leighton Akins by name, somehow came out ahead as the hero of all his own stories, Dellarobia noticed. A sure sign he was not from the South. Hereabouts, if a man told a story in which he was not the butt of the joke, or worse yet, that contained no jokes at all, his audience would shuffle off at the first appreciable pause. Without that choice, Dellarobia listened awhile, then tuned him out, and finally told Mr. Akins in the politest way possible that she was working as a biologist here and had to concentrate.

  She was supposed to watch the roosting colonies and track their flight behavior. The butterflies were showing some signs of restless movement, actually leaving the roost trees in significant numbers. It did take concentration to watch for the small explosions of flyers, then locate individuals with the binoculars and follow the wobbling specks that vanished through gray air. The weighty binoculars made her anxious, probably three or four months' utility bills right there, highly breakable. But Ovid had hung them around her neck as if it were no high occasion. Costume jewelry, not diamonds.

  He wanted to know which direction the flyers were headed, in what numbers, and whether they returned in the afternoon. They might be seeking water or nectar sources. After surviving all other onslaughts in this alien place, it could be the warmth rather than the cold that killed them. The sunny, warmer days that brought them out of dormancy to fly around, as they'd seen, would tax the butterflies in a way that the cool, steady clime of the Mexican mountains did not. They might burn through their fat reserves and starve. Ovid had asked if anything could possibly be flowering here in late February, a question she'd passed on to Hester. Hepatica and skunk cabbage and harbinger of spring and maybe cutleaf toothwort, was her astonishing answer. Could any of these be nectar sources for an insect? Hester didn't know, but surprised Dellarobia by offering to help her find some flowers. The hypothesis could be tested with live monarchs in the lab.

  The sightseeing couple took a barrage of photos with a camera whose very shutter clicks sounded expensive. After chatting cordially with Leighton about his pledge, they set off down the steep trail for a close-up view of the butterflies, as she'd known they would. For her own entertainment she was predicting hikers vs. turnarounds on the basis of body mass and shoe type. She was batting a thousand except for two teenage girls who defied all expectations, charging down the mountain in stiletto boots.

  The SUV couple didn't stay very long. They returned and drove off in short order, possibly daunted by the fog. Almost immediately Dellarobia heard the approach of another vehicle that didn't sound like a car. A motorcycle, maybe, though what kind of crazy person would try this steep, gravelly track on a motorcycle? She heard it slipping and keeling, its engine revving. And then by way of answer she saw Dimmit Slaughter. She'd gone to high school with Dimmit. He kicked the stand and dismounted his machine, helmetless, his T-shirt stretched to within an inch of its life across his broad belly, where the letters distorted outward like horror movie credits. He hitched his jeans and whistled at the view. Or at something. She tried not to stare at his midsection, but it did draw the eye, ballooning under the yellow shirt he'd tucked into his belt, sub-belly, in the most unflattering way imaginable. As men so often did. How they toted such physiques around so proudly was a mystery to Dellarobia. Women spent whole lifetimes trying to camouflage figure flaws that were basically undetectable to the human eye.

  "Well, well, Miss Dell," he said. "I heard you were hanging around up here. Where's the Farmer?"

  "Not hanging around up here," she replied. Leighton Akins started to approach with his pledge pamphlet, but reconsidered.

  "And are we having fun yet?" Dimmit asked.

  "I'm working."

  He looked her up and down in her chair. Probably he'd looked at her the same way on some nasty little screen, that Internet portrait of her as the almost-nude on the half shell. "Nice," Dimmit said. "If you can get it."

  "What is, work? You ought to try it out some time. For a change of pace."

  "Who pays you for that, the government?"

  "Who pays your disability, Dimmit? Santa Claus?" She'd heard about a back injury, a fall out a window. But not while working. "I get paid out of a grant," she told him. "From the National Science Foundation."

  He picked up a brittle monarch from the muddy ditch at the edge of the gravel and brought it over, flipping it with his thumb onto her notebook. "Here you go, science foundation. Why don't you perform a dialysis on that to see what it died of?"

  Mr. Akins seemed alarmed, but Dellarobia had no fear of Dimmit. He and Cub moved in some of the same circles. She might not be much liked in town these days, but if Dimmit misbehaved, he could find himself disliked a good deal more. "I see you've gained some substance in the world," she observed. "Since I saw you last."

  He cupped the sphere of his belly in both hands, and winked. "Baby, that's the fuel tank for my love machine."

  She rolled her eyes sideways. She wouldn't mind having Dimmit's self-confidence, but would not take that body as part of the deal. Like waking up pregnant every morning till death do you part.

  The fog had congealed into a low, thick cloud cover, and she'd seen no butterfly action for an hour. A thermos of coffee she'd left at the study site was calling her name. But Dimmit had now approached Mr. Akins, they were blocking the path, so she waited until their encounter was complete. It didn't take long. Mr. Akins explained he was asking people to sign on to a lifestyle pledge to reduce their impact on the planet. Dimmit nodded serenely, took the flyer, folded it into a paper airplane, and sailed it high across the foggy valley. Then he kicked his Harley into gear and tore off, throwing gravel.

  "That's just Dimmit," she apologized to Mr. Akins, leaning her folding chair against a tree. "I've known him my whole life. Sometimes you shouldn't even try."

  "I always try," Mr. Akins said brightly. His snow-white bangs were cut straight across and he had a gap between his front teeth. "That's why I come to places like this, instead of Portland or San Francisco. You people here need to get on board, the same as everyone else. If not more so."

  She didn't know what to say about that, so she headed down the path in her leather-soled farm boots. You people here. If not mo
re so. She felt heat rise from the collar of her shirt. She remembered Dovey's declaration that she hated everyone, which was not true, but beginning to seem that way. Leighton Akins and his snappy L.L. Beans. Apparently all those tourists ignored her because she and the Dimmits of this world were you people. She descended into the fog-shrouded forest, a little disoriented by the whiteness that lay on the air. In the mixed, barren forest surrounding the fir grove, craggy old pines stood out in relief. A solitary woodpecker laughed. The path crossed a streambed whose banks were deeply encrusted with monarch bodies washed down from the center of the roosting site, dumped here like litter.

  At a distance she saw the lanky frame of Ovid Byron walking downhill, charting his own course between the butterfly-clad trunks. She picked up her pace to catch up to where he would meet the trail, stumbling a little over a tree root. She wondered if he would mind that she'd left her post. "Hey," she called, getting his attention. "I got to thinking about hot coffee, when that sun went in."

  He waited for her with his arms crossed, standing behind all the gleaming teeth in his smile. "Great minds have similar thoughts."

  "I have something amazing to tell you," she said when she caught up. "Oh, is it okay if Preston comes up after school tomorrow? That's not the amazing thing."

  His smile notched up, like flipping the headlights to brights. "Preston is, actually. I have to admit, Dellarobia, I envy you. A child like that."

  "Thank you."

  "Yes, it is fine. I have a little project for him I have been thinking about."

  Her heart tumbled, and she held her tongue, lacking faith in it. Why did he not have his own children? What argument, what divide, what kind of wife. She fell into step behind him on the trail, watching her footing, thinking the words head over heels.

  "The amazing thing," she said, "is this man has volunteered his truck to transport the butterflies to Florida. Some nature park, I guess, where he's got family ties." She hesitated, recognizing a level of absurdity. "I just thought I'd mention it. I called and talked to the guy last night. He really cares, you know? About the monarchs surviving."