"Oh, goodness," Garnett said nervously. The sight of a woman's tears in broad daylight should be against the law.
She fished in her pocket for a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly. "I'm all right," she said after a minute. "I didn't say what I meant to, there." She blew her nose again, like nobody's business. It was a little shocking. She rubbed her eyes and stuffed the red bandanna back in her pocket. "I'm not a godless woman," she said. "I see things my own way, and most of it makes me want to get up in the morning and praise glory. I don't see you doing that, Mr. Walker. So I don't appreciate your getting all high and mighty about the darkness in my soul."
He turned his back on her and looked out over his own land. The narrow, bronze-tipped leaves of the young chestnuts waved like so many flags, each tree its own small nation of genetic promise. He said, "You called me a bitter old man. That wasn't nice."
"Any man who'd cut off his own son like a limb off a tree is bitter. That's the word for it."
"That's none of your business."
"He needs help."
"That's not your business, either."
"Maybe not. But put yourself in my shoes. I'd give up the rest of my life in one second if it could help Rachel, and I've lost that chance. If I could have gotten the doctors to cut out my heart and put it into her, I would have. So how do you think it feels to watch other people throw away their living children?"
"I have no children."
"You did have one for twenty years. And he's still alive, last I heard."
Garnett could feel her eyes on the back of his shirt like the noonday sun, but he couldn't turn around. He just let her go on hitting him with her words, blunt as rocks. "He's walking around somewhere carrying your genes and Ellen's." She paused, but he still didn't turn around. "Even your same name, for heaven's sakes. And you won't help him, or claim him? Looks to me like you've given up on the world and everything in it, including yourself."
Garnett wanted nothing but to walk away from there. But he couldn't let her be right about this, too. He turned to face his neighbor. "I can't help that boy. He has to help himself. There comes a time."
"You think he's still a boy? He must be in his thirties by now."
"And still a boy. He'll be a man when he decides to act like one. It's not just me that thinks that. Ellen went to those meetings for years, and that's what they told her. With the drinking and all that, they have to decide for themselves to get better. They have to want to."
"I understand," she said, crossing her arms and looking down at all the bruised apples strewn through the grass. She kicked at one with the rubber toe of her small white canvas shoe. "I just hate to see you forget about him."
Forget? Garnett felt a sting of salt in his eye and turned his head away, looking for something to look at. What a useless, pathetic business, the human tear duct! His cloudy vision settled on a square white wooden box at the edge of her garden. He puzzled over it for a minute and then remembered that Nannie kept beehives. She was in thrall of bees, as of so many other things. It was true what she'd said: she was a surprisingly happy woman most of the time. And he was often quite glum.
"We had that boy too late in life," he confessed, keeping his back to her. "We were like Abraham and Sarah. At first we couldn't believe our luck, but a baby worried us to death, and a teenager plain bewildered us. Sometimes I wonder what Abraham and Sarah would have done if they'd had their son in the day of hot rods and beer."
He was startled by her hand, laid gently on his upper arm for just a few seconds. She had surprised him by coming up on him that way, from behind. After she took her hand away he could still feel its pressure there, as if his skin were somehow changed underneath the cloth of his shirt.
"There's always more to a story than a body can see from the fence line," she said. "I'm sorry."
They stood side by side with their arms crossed, looking over toward her blossoming garden and his field of young chestnuts behind it. At such close range, standing quiet this way, Nannie lacked her usual force. She just seemed small--the crown of her head barely came up to his shoulder. Goodness, we are just a pair of old folks, he thought. Two old folks with our arms folded over our shirtfronts and our sorry eyes looking for heaven.
"We've both had our griefs to bear, Miss Rawley. You and I."
"We have. What worse grief can there be than to be old without young ones to treasure, coming up after you?"
He cast an eye out over his field of robust young chestnuts yearning for their future. But the pain was so great, he could not look that way for long.
An indigo bunting let out a loud, cheerful song from the fencepost, and the strange buzzing sound also rose in the clear air. Why, that was her bees, Garnett realized. A world of busy bees doing their work in field and orchard. Not his hearing aid.
When he felt sure most of the emotions had safely passed over, Garnett cleared his throat. "The reason I came down here, like I said, is because one of your trees has come down on my property. Up in the back." He nodded toward the rise of the mountain.
"Oh, up there across the creek?"
"Yes."
"I'm not surprised. There's trees galore up there threatening to come down. I won't miss it much. What kind was it?"
"An oak."
"Well, that's sad. One less oak in the world."
"It's still in the world," he pointed out. "On my property."
"Give it a year," she said. "The carpenter ants and bark beetles will take it on back to good dirt."
"I was thinking of something more expeditious," he said. "Such as Oda Black's boy and a chain saw."
She looked at him. "Why on earth? What harm is that tree doing you up there in the woods? For heaven's sakes. The raccoons can use it for a bridge. The salamanders will adore living under it while it rots. The woodpeckers will have a heyday."
"It looks unsightly."
She sighed, overdramatically in Garnett's opinion. "All right," she said, "call Oda's boy if you want. I expect you'll want me to pay half."
"Half would be fair."
"The firewood's mine, though," she said. "All."
"It's on my land. It's my firewood."
"My oak!"
"Well, now. A minute ago you wanted it to rot into topsoil. Now you want the firewood. You don't seem to know what you want."
She let out a little explosion of air through her nose. "You are a sanctimonious old fart," she announced, before stooping to pick up her basket of June Transparents and tromping off toward her barn. Garnett watched her go. He stood there for quite a while, in fact, letting his shoes inhabit Nannie's green, manure-drunk orchard grass while he pondered the risky terrain of a woman's mind.
He really had intended to thank her for the pie.
{18}
Moth Love
In the summer after her husband's death Lusa discovered lawn-mower therapy. The engine's vibrations roaring through her body and its thunderous noise in her ears seemed to bully all human language from her head, chasing away the complexities of regret and recrimination. It was a blessing to ride over the grass for an hour or two as a speechless thing, floating through a universe of vibratory sensation. By accident, she had found her way to the mind-set of an insect.
Like so many tasks that had always been Cole's, the mowing was something she'd initially dreaded taking on. For the first weeks postfuneral, Little and Big Rickie did it alternately without a word. But then the day came when she noticed that the yard was calf-deep in grass and dandelions. The world grows quickly impatient with grief, she observed, and that world seemed to think her chores were her own now. Lusa would have to put on her sunglasses and boots and go see if she could get the mower started.
At first she'd been dismayed by the steepness of the slopes and by how perilously the riding mower tilted toward creeks and ditches, but she'd concentrated on finding the Zen of a straight, even roadside or a spiral of tightening concentric circles in a yard. After her first few hours she realized she had stopped thinking a
ltogether. She was just a body vibrating like one of Heaven's harp strings in the sharp, green-scented air. The farmhouse was surrounded by acres of yard, side yard, and barnyard, not to mention a mile of shoulder on both sides of her road that she had to keep clear. In a summer as rainy as this one she could hardly afford to pass a dry day without spending some part of it on the mower.
So that was where she was on the morning Hannie-Mavis and Jewel drove up to drop off Crys before heading to Roanoke for another chemo. Not both Jewel's kids, only Crystal. The plan was for Lois to pick up Lowell from T-ball and keep him overnight while his sister stayed here. Evidently Crys had used up all her other aunts: her last time at Lois and Rickie's she'd had a fit, broken a porcelain praying-hands statue on purpose, and hidden out overnight in the barn. This was reported to Lusa along with the claim that Emaline's new work schedule made her too tired to take the kids, and Mary Edna wouldn't have the child in her house, period, until she quote-unquote straightened up and flew right. Lusa understood that they must be desperate to ask for her help; she didn't know the first thing about taking care of a child like Crys. But at least she didn't enforce a dress code.
She killed the mower engine as they pulled up, but the two women waved frantically and called out that they were running late for Jewel's appointment. Crys got out of the back of the sedan, Hannie-Mavis reminded her to get her overnight bag, and Jewel yelled at her to be good, all in the same instant, and then they were off, sending gravel flying. Crys stared at Lusa with her eyes narrowed and her chin tucked down, like a guard dog on the brink of its decision. Lusa could only stare back at this sullen, long-legged urchin in her Oliver Twist haircut and high-water jeans. In her hand she clutched a small, white, squarish overnight case from another era--probably something her mother or aunts had used in their teens for happier sleepovers than this one. Here we are, Lusa thought, widow and orphan, at the mercy of a family that takes no prisoners.
"Hi," Lusa said, trying not to sound too much like she was from Lexington. She would never get the long, flat i, though, not the way they said it around here.
"Hi-y," the child mimicked, sure enough, eyeing Lusa with disdain.
Lusa licked her lips and thumped the steering wheel a couple of times with her thumbs. "You want me to show you your room? So you can unpack your bag?"
"'S got nothing in it. I just brung it so Aunt Hannie-Mavis would think I had clean underpants and stuff."
"Oh," Lusa said. "Then I guess you don't need to unpack. Just pitch it up there on the porch, then, and come help me finish the mowing."
Crys tossed the hard little cube toward the porch, underhand, like a softball pitch. It hit the step and flew open, letting fly a square of mirror that broke to pieces on the stone steps. A banty hen scratching in the flower bed next to the porch let out a squawk and scrambled for safety. Lusa felt shaken by this child's untempered hostility, but she knew enough not to show it. "Oh, well," she said carelessly. "There's seven years of bad luck."
"I already done had ten years of it," said Crys.
"No way. How old are you?"
"Ten."
Lord help me get through the next thirty hours, Lusa pleaded to any God who would listen.
"You know what, Crys? I've just got a few minutes left to go on this yard. You want to sit here on the seat with me and help me mow? Then we'll be done with this chore and we can find something more fun to do."
"Like what?"
She racked her brain wildly; suggest the wrong thing here and she might lose an eye. "Hunt bugs, maybe? I love bugs, they're my favorite thing--did you know I'm actually a bugologist?"
The child crossed her arms and looked elsewhere, waiting for Lusa to say something interesting for a change.
"Oh," Lusa said, "but I guess you hate bugs. All the other women in this family fear and despise bugs. I'm sorry, I forgot."
Crys shrugged. "I ain't asceared of bugs."
"No? Good, that makes two of us, then. Thank God I've finally got somebody to go bug hunting with." She pressed the clutch, turned the key, and started the engine roaring again, then sat and waited. After a second of hesitation Crys crossed the yard and climbed onto the seat of the mower in front of Lusa.
"Uncle Rickie says you can't do this 'cause hit's dangerous," she declared loudly as they backed up a little and headed into a circular path around the lower yard.
"Yeah, it's probably dangerous for little kids," Lusa yelled over the engine noise. "But holy smokes, you're ten, you're not going to fall off and get run over or anything. Here, put your hands on the steering wheel, like this." They bounced down a small embankment. "OK, you're driving now. Don't run over the chickens, or we'll have chicken salad. And watch out for the rocks. Go around, OK?"
She helped Crystal steer around a limestone outcrop on the bank between the barn and the henhouse. Lusa had learned to give it a wide margin, to spare the mower blade and also because she loved the flowering weeds that had sprung up in this little island.
"What's them orange flowers?" Crystal asked loudly. She seemed unperturbed to be having a conversation at this decibel level.
"Butterfly weed." Lusa tried not to be shocked by her grammar, which was noticeably worse even than that of the other kids in the family. She wondered if everyone had given up on Crystal, and if so, how long ago.
"What's butterflies do, smoke it?"
Lusa ignored this. "They drink nectar out of the flowers. And there's one kind, the monarch, that lays its eggs on the leaves so the caterpillars can eat butterfly weed when they hatch out. And you know what? The leaves make them poisonous! The whole plant's full of poison."
"Like 'at stuff the doctor's putting in Mama," Crystal said.
It was unnerving to have this sad, bony little body so close to her on the seat; it was all Lusa could do to keep from wrapping her arms around it. "Yeah," she said. "Kind of like that."
"It makes Mama poison. Whenever she comes home from Roanoke we can't go in her room or touch nothing in the bathroom after she goes pee. Or we'd die."
"I don't think you'd die. You'd get sick and throw up, maybe." Lusa allowed her chin to brush against the crown of the blond, cropped head that bobbed just in front of her chin. It was brief, a gesture that could pass for an accident. They stopped talking for a minute while Lusa helped steer the mower around the shrinking swath of remaining grass. "You know what?" Lusa said, "That's exactly what happens to the monarch butterflies."
"What does?"
"The caterpillars eat the poisonous leaves, and their bodies turn toxic. So if a bird eats them, it vomits! It's kind of a trick the butterfly plays on the birds to keep her caterpillars from getting eaten."
Crystal seemed unimpressed. "But if a bird eats it and vomits, the caterpillar's already done keelt."
It took a second for Lusa to interpret this. "It's already been killed? Well, yeah, that one has. But the birds learn their lesson, so most of them don't get eaten. It's a scientific fact. Birds avoid eating the caterpillars of monarch butterflies."
"So what," Crystal said after a minute.
"So that's one weird way that mothers can take care of their children," Lusa said. "Making them eat poison."
"Yeah, but so what for the one that's dead."
"Good point," Lusa said. "So what for him." She would not go into the current theories on kin selection. She reached under the seat and pulled the lever that lifted the blade. "Let's head into the barn. We've done enough mowing for today; let's go hunt bugs." She helped guide the mower in through the door of the barn cellar and parked it inside.
When she cut the engine, her ears were left singing the high, ringing complaint of assaulted eardrums. She and Crys climbed off the machine and stood dazed for a minute while their eyes and ears adjusted to the dim, dusty silence. Crys was peering up at the steps that rose to a trapdoor in the floor of the barn above them. It was more of a permanent stepladder than a staircase, and so twisted by a hundred years of this structure's settling that none of its angles squared w
ith gravity anymore. It always made Lusa think of an Escher drawing of a spiral staircase whose every flight seemed to define "up" in a different direction. This thing looked so crazily hazardous that she had never used it, even though it was a long walk around to the ground-level entrance on the hillside.
"Can we go up there?"
"Sure." Lusa swallowed a taste of panic. "Good idea. We need to go up to the storage room anyway, to get nets and collecting jars."
The girl grasped the rickety, splintered wood and started to climb in the many different directions this staircase called "up." On a wing and a prayer, Lusa followed. The trapdoor gave easily when they shoved it. They stuck out their elbows like chickens spreading their wings in the dust, pulled their bodies up through the hole, and emerged into the main room of the barn. Lusa inhaled its perfume, a faint petroleum pungency but mostly the mellow sweetness of old tobacco. A fine brown dust of crumbled leaves inhabited every crevice of this place where Wideners had stripped, hung, and baled tobacco for over a hundred years.
The storeroom was a former corncrib, framed out in a corner of the barn and carefully rodent-proofed by means of wire mesh nailed over every square inch of its floor, walls, and ceiling. Lusa unlatched the door and felt depressed by the sight of this dusty, quiet room full of equipment. Everything here had been touched by Cole's hands at one time or another. He'd moved it, stored it, kept it in repair. A lot of it she didn't even know how to use: sprayer arms and tractor attachments, a long row of chemicals stored on the shelf. Vehicle parts. Stranger things, too: an antediluvian oil furnace and an assortment of horse and mule tack left from the days before tractors. An empty piano, just the wooden case, with nothing inside. Lusa stored her own things in this room but had never really looked around at everything else. Before this moment, it had never all belonged to her. She pinched her nose against a sneeze that was bringing tears to her eyes and tried to stave off whatever sadness was coming on; this child would brook no self-pity. And given the set of woes she'd been handed at ten years of age, why should she? Lusa wedged herself through an aisle between the piano case and some large bundles of baling twine and stooped to blow some dust off the huge iron hulk of an ancient machine.