Prodigal Summer: A Novel

  2) Or are we to think of ourselves as keepers and guardians of the earth, as God instructed us to do in Genesis 1:27-30, "So God created man in his own image;...and God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it!...Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth'"--such as salamanders, Miss Rawley--"'wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat'; and it was so." If the Holy Bible is to be believed, we must view God's creatures as gifts to his favored children and use them for our own purposes, even if this occasionally causes this one or that one to go extinct after a while.

  3) If one species or another of those muddly little salamanders went extinct, who would care anyway?

  Just wondering,

  GW III

  That was it exactly, he thought. That was telling her. Garnett licked the envelope and pressed it shut, feeling more pleased with himself than he had in many years. As he walked out his front door and down the drive to his mailbox he whistled "Pretty Saro," casting it up to the mockingbird on the grain shed so he might catch up a few of Garnett's notes and weave them into his merry hymn to the day.

  {13}

  Predators

  Why would you use the word windfall to describe something lucky?" Eddie Bondo asked, revealing a peevish edge to his personality that she'd not yet seen.

  It was a fair question. She paused to scratch the back of her neck as they fought their way through the impossible maze of sideways trees: now the mosquitoes were finding them. Deanna had made an unlucky choice in an otherwise perfect morning, and they'd ended up here, climbing tediously through the horizontal labyrinth of an enormous windfall. As nearly as she could figure it out, one huge pine struck by lightning on the hilltop had taken down a whole hillside of its brethren by means of their intertwined limbs. Since she'd chosen the route, she was still trying to pretend this was fun.

  "A windfall would be lucky," she ventured, "if you'd been meaning to spend six weeks sawing down all these trees for lumber."

  "Well, I wasn't," he stated.

  They'd come out this morning in search of molly-moochers, as people here called them. He'd laughed at this funny pair of words (as he laughed at her "oncet" and "twiced" and "I might could") but got interested when she explained what they were. Morels were hardly more than a legend out on the arid pine slopes of the West, but here they were real, and he wanted to taste them. She was happy to take him looking. Officially she wasn't supposed to harvest anything out of these woods, but mushroom populations were in no danger in the National Forest, and now was the wrong time to find them anyhow. Her dad had taught her to hunt them in mid-May when oak leaves were the size of squirrels' ears. Even the ravenous will of Eddie Bondo couldn't make one appear in the third week of June. But they'd come looking because that was how it was with him. Some days he packed up and was gone, temporarily or for good she never quite knew, but when he was here he was here; if they began a day by waking up delighted together in her bed, it was going to be a new adventure, another reason to ignore her notebooks and the trails she was supposed to maintain. Most days they neglected the trails altogether to clamber into the mountain's wildest places, straight up or down slopes so steep they had to ascend on all fours and descend on the seats of their jeans, sliding like bobsledders on the slick leaves. They discovered groves and clearings even Deanna hadn't known before, where deer browsed quietly on moss and new leaves.

  They were reaching the edge of the tangle. Deanna peered through, swatting a mosquito and rubbing her scratched-up knee. The day was warm, but she regretted her shorts at the moment. She could see now where they were: not very far from the Egg Creek trail. She retied her braid into a double knot to keep it out of the branches and pushed on to the end of this tedious maze.

  As they emerged from the pine needles, they startled up a grouse, whose coppery tail flashed as its plump body soared horizontally with a noise like an outboard motor. Deanna stood still with her hand flat on her heart, which raised an equivalent ruckus. Grouse always made such an explosion. She wished she could have seen their chickenish cousins the heath hens, who used to strut around in clearings with their feathers standing straight up, inflating the yellow balloons on their necks to make booming sounds you could hear for miles. Not anymore, of course. In the same plaintive tone her single friends in grad school used to complain that all the best men were married, Deanna felt like whining, "All the best animals are extinct."

  "Is there a season on those?" Eddie asked, marveling at the grouse, his earlier irritation now gone without a trace. She gave him a look, didn't answer. Grouse were fairly rare here. More often she discovered flocks of hen turkeys gabbling quietly in the woods, battering the undergrowth with their wings as they struggled into low branches. They'd seen some yesterday, in fact. And there was one big old tom they often saw in the early morning strutting alongside the Forest Service road, alone, steering clear of female companionship. She unknotted her braid and let it fall down her back while she considered the best route out of here. Eddie Bondo had begun to whistle.

  "Shhh!" she hissed suddenly. Someone or something was there in the pines above them. She waited a second to see if it moved like a deer or a man.

  Man.

  "Hey, buddy," she called. "How you doing today?"

  From the dark-green boughs he came forward: tall and a little potbellied, with gray hair down to his shoulders and a small-bore rifle, dressed out for jungle combat. It always killed her how these guys dressed. Like a deer would be impressed by the uniform.

  He was squinting at her. "Deanna Wolfe?"

  "Yeah?" She squinted back. She'd be darned if she could name him. She could memorize Latin names and birdcalls, but the guys she'd gone to high school with all kind of blended together.

  "Sammy Hill," he offered finally.

  "Sammy, sure," she said, as if that had been on the tip of her tongue. Sammy Hill, could she possibly forget a name like that? "Dee-anna Wolfe," he repeated, directing his pleasure mainly at her legs. "I heard you's up here. I heard you near 'bout got eat by a bear." He spoke too loudly, maybe nervous, or possibly a little deaf. A lot of guys lost their hearing on tractors and mowing machines.

  "Yeah? That story's still going around?"

  "That's how Miss Oda Black tells it. But hell, I didn't believe it. Gal like you getting cold all by herself up here on the mountain? Hell, you haven't changed a bit."

  All by herself. She glanced to the side, listened behind her. If Eddie Bondo could be relied on for one thing, it was to disappear. Well, fine, he didn't need to be part of this. "Not a bit, since high school?" she asked sweetly. "You're saying I still couldn't get a date unless everything else female in the county had rabies?"

  "No, now, you've got that wrong. We was all in love with you, Deanna."

  "Well, heck, Sammy. How come I didn't notice?"

  He laughed. "We's just asceared of you."

  "Now, is that why you brought your gun up here today?"

  He looked at his rifle, dismayed. "What, this?"

  "I hate to tell you, Sammy," she said, sounding convincingly sorrowful, "but deer season's in the fall. And now here it is June."

  He looked at her, blinking with the effort of his innocence.

  "You know what?" she said. "Down at George Tick's gas station? He's giving out free calendars. You could pick you up one on your way back to town."

  Sammy chuckled, shaking his head. "Deanna Wolfe. You." He chuckled some more. "You's just as funny as you ever was."

  "You, too, Sammy." She kept up the smile, waiting. She knew this routine. They were almost finished.

  He seemed to have a bright idea. "Hell, I wasn't aiming on shooting nothing today, I's just looking for sang," he said. "Got me a alimony payment due."

  "Oh, w
ell, then," she said, nodding seriously, "good thing you brought that rifle. Sang plants can get real mean in breeding season."

  He chuckled and chuckled, Sammy Hill. Tilted his head back and gave her a little wink, and then in a flash she saw him at age sixteen, in a different body altogether. Lean and confident, the cocked wrist tossing a wad of paper into the trash can--that Sammy Hill, the basketball player. He had a stuck-up sister, Regina, whom the boys called Queen of the Hill.

  Sammy scratched his cheek with a knuckle, betraying a missing molar in his embarrassed grin. "No, now, I needed this rifle for protection," he said, with make-believe conviction. "Bears and stuff. After I heard what happened to you."

  "Well, yeah, I can sure understand that. But now, Sammy, you could take a bear one-handed. Athlete like you. You still sink a jump shot like you used to?"

  His face brightened. "Naw," he said, blushing under his stubble.

  "Well, now, here's the bad news. There's no sang hunting up here, either, anymore--the governor's trying to let everything on this mountain grow back. I'm sorry, Sammy, but I've got to send you on out of here." She truly felt sorry for this heavyset version of Sammy, so early to ripen and now gone so badly to seed. "Maybe there's some sang up on the back of your dad's farm," she suggested, "up there by the fork."

  "You know, I bet there is."

  "How is your dad?"

  "Dead."

  "Oh. Not so good, then."

  "Not so ornery, neither."

  "Well, OK," Deanna said. "Nice to see you, Sammy. Say hey to Regina for me."

  "Well, hell, Regina don't speak to me no more but to nag. Since I busted up her Camaro. I reckon you'll have to tell her hello yourself."

  "I'll do that," Deanna said, raising one hand in a coy little wave. Sammy touched the brim of his camouflage cap and headed downhill, slow and awkward with his head craned far forward in the way of tall men with potbellies and bad backs. He had to watch his footing carefully on the steep slope.

  She stood waiting a long time for the molecules of Eddie Bondo to reassemble out of pine boughs and humid air. He wasn't behind her now, it turned out, but above her, standing a little to the rear of where Sammy had been. She spotted his grin first, like the Cheshire cat's.

  "Well hell, Deanna," he mocked, and spat.

  "Watch it. That's my mother tongue."

  "I bet those boys were all in love with you."

  "Uh-huh. Not so much that it interfered with their general disdain."

  He moved down the slope toward her as if he'd been born to slopes. Short men really had the advantage in the long run, she decided, admiring his grace. Their backs held better. And then there was the matter of shoulders and narrow hips and that grin--the matter of Eddie Bondo. She felt a strange little interior pride, that this beautiful male was her mate, at least for a season.

  "What the heck is sang?"

  "Ginseng." She began picking her way toward the Egg Creek trail, and he followed.

  "That's what I thought," he said.

  "You ever seen any?"

  "I don't know. What's it look like?"

  She thought about it. "A five-fingered leaf, littlish plant, dies back to the ground in winter. It's particular about where it grows. Only under sugar maples, on a north slope."

  "And it's good for ex-wives?"

  She was puzzled. "Oh, right, alimony payments. Good for payments of all kinds. It's hard to find, though. It's been overharvested for about five generations, I guess."

  "Daniel Boone had an ex-wife?"

  "No doubt. They could always sell it for good money even back then, get it packed off to China some way."

  They walked quietly for a while. "Sammy Hill wasn't looking for sang," she confided.

  "No?"

  "Nope. He'd have had a spade and a burlap bag, and he'd be a little higher up than this, and he'd be looking in the fall. Not now."

  "You can't find it now?"

  "I could. Sammy couldn't."

  Eddie clucked his tongue at her. "Bragging."

  "Well, it's just...you know. It's easy to find in the fall, and people do what's easy. Spring and summer, ginseng's a real shy plant, and then in October it goes careless and gets bright-red berries and these yellow leaves like highway construction flags."

  She didn't mention that whenever she found it in that condition she plucked off the gaudy leaves and tucked them in her pockets to save it from being discovered by hunters. She scattered the ripe berries under new groves, helping the ginseng roots to keep their secrets. Later on, when she did her weekly washing in a tub of scalding water, she'd roll ginseng leaves out of all her pockets like wads of tissue. Eddie would think she was nuts if she told him that. Hoarding this mountain all to herself, was his general accusation, but that wasn't it. If no person ever saw it again, herself included, that would be fine; she just loved the idea of those little man-shaped roots dancing in their world beneath the soil. She wanted them to persist forever, not for the sake of impotent men in China or anywhere else, just for the sake of ginseng.

  Eddie Bondo was curious about the roots. When they sat down in the moss on the bank of Egg Creek to eat their lunch of sardines and crackers, she took a stick to the soft black dirt and tried to draw pictures of the different forms she'd seen: one-legged man, one-armed man; they weren't always perfect. Rarely, in fact.

  He wasn't looking at her pictures. He was looking at her. "Those guys don't scare you, do they? You chew them up and spit them out between your teeth, smiling the whole time."

  She looked down at her ginseng man. "What, you mean Sammy Hill?"

  "And the best part was, he loved it. He'll go down and tell everybody he ran into this long-haired she-wolf with legs like a pinup girl."

  She didn't like to think about what he'd tell. "I try not to step too hard on their manhood. You do that, next thing you know they're back up here with three or four of their buddies, which can get ugly. But no, they don't scare me." She shrugged. "They're just people I grew up with."

  "I can't picture that," he said. "You with those guys. You driving a car, going shopping. I don't really see you anywhere but in the woods."

  "Well. I guess it's been a while."

  "Don't you miss it, any of it?"

  "If you're speaking of high school and the Sammy Hills of this world, no, I don't."

  "I'm not. You know what I mean."

  She tried to decide if she knew. "There's some people I'd love to spend the day with, sure. And certain things."

  "Like what?"

  "I couldn't even say." She thought about it. "Not cars or electric lights, not movies. Books I can get if I ask. But walking around in a library, putting my hands on books I never knew about, that I miss. Anything else, I don't know." She pondered some more. "I like the beach. My husband's family had a beach house in North Carolina."

  "The beach doesn't count. I mean stuff invented by people."

  "Books, then. Poems, scary stories, population genetics. All those pictures Mr. Audubon painted."

  "What else?"

  "Chocolate? And Nannie's apple cider. And my border collie, if he weren't dead. But he counts, domestic pets are inventions of man." She closed her eyes, fishing for the taste of something lost. "And music, maybe? That's something I used to love."

  "Yeah? Did you play any instrument?"

  She opened her eyes wide. "No, but I listened a bunch. My dad played in a bluegrass band, Out of the Blue. And when I lived in Knoxville there was this little bar where we'd go, bluegrass and country music. People you've never heard of. These sisters used to play there sometimes--man, they were great. They came up from Texas, I think. The Dixie Chicks."

  Eddie Bondo laughed out loud.

  "Yeah, funny name."

  "Funny you. You've been out of circulation awhile. They don't play little joints anymore."

  "You've heard of them?"

  "Me and everybody with ears."

  She shook her head. "Amazing. Nothing stays the same down there."

&n
bsp; "Nothing stays the same anywhere."

  She looked at him earnestly. "Well, but see, up here it does. I guess there's big successes and failures going on, but they're too slow to notice in a lifetime." She crossed her arms, hugging herself. "I guess that's why I like it. Nature's just safer."

  He leaned forward and kissed her. "Tell me some more about ginseng."

  She concentrated on her drawing of a perfect two-armed, two-legged cocky little man who had no need to dig up ginseng for virility. He laid her down on the ground on top of her artwork and they stayed there awhile in the shifting leafy sunlight, leaving their own impression of human desire. Soon they were headed back toward the cabin with nothing on their minds but their bodies.

  That was when they came upon the coyotes, two females hunting in the open. They were a mile or so from the hollow that fed Bitter Creek, not a place where Deanna would have gone looking for them. It was in a clearing where fallen trees had opened the canopy, letting the sun onto a patch of forest floor that now grew thick with a red carpet of new blackberry leaves. At first she thought they were dogs, they were so big: thick-furred behind the ears like huskies, and much stockier than the scrawny specimen she'd seen in the zoo or any western coyotes she'd seen in photographs. These two appeared golden in the sunlight, arching their backs and hopping through the foot-deep foliage, one and then the other, like a pair of dolphins alternately rolling above the waves. They were on the trail of something small and quick beneath the leaves and grass. Probably a vole or a mouse. They paid no attention to the pair of humans who stood with their boots frozen in the shadows. Focused entirely on their pursuit, their ears twitched forward like mechanical things, tracking imperceptible sounds. Like two parts of a single animal they moved to surround and corner their prey against a limestone bank, tunneling after it with their long noses. Deanna watched, spellbound. She could see how efficiently this pair might work a field edge, pursuing the mice and voles they seemed to prefer. No wonder farmers saw them often and feared for their livestock; if only they knew that they had nothing to lose but their mice. It occurred to her as she watched them that this manner of hunting might actually be helpful to ground-nesting birds like the bobwhite, because of the many passages it would open through the tight clumps of fescue.