Prodigal Summer: A Novel

  "Holy cow. Look at this, Crys."

  "What is it?"

  "A grain mill. An old-fashioned one--look, it has all these cloth belts and things." She studied the way it was put together. "I guess they hooked it up to some kind of a turning axle to power it. Maybe a mule in a yoke, walking in a circle."

  "What for?"

  "No electricity. This thing's a hundred years old. It was your great-great-grandfather's, probably."

  Crys sounded scornful, as if Lusa were very slow to keep up: "I mean, what'd they use it for?"

  "It's a mill. They used it to grind their flour."

  Crys squatted underneath the machine and looked up inside of it. "To grind up flowers?"

  She pronounced it "flars," puzzling Lusa for a second.

  "Oh, no, flour. You know. To make bread. Everybody around here used to grow their own wheat and corn for bread, plus what they needed for their animals. Now they buy feed at Southern States and go to Kroger's for a loaf of god-awful bread that was baked in another state."

  "Why?"

  "Because they can't afford to grow grain anymore. It's cheaper to buy bad stuff from a big farm than to grow good stuff on a little farm."

  "Why?"

  Lusa leaned against a fifty-five-gallon drum that had solidified creosote in the bottom. "Boy, that's hard to answer. Because people want too much stuff, I guess, and won't pay for quality. And also, farmers have to follow rules that automatically favor whoever already has the most. You know how when you play marbles, as soon as somebody starts getting most of the marbles then they're going to win everything?"

  "No."

  "No?"

  "I don't play with marbles."

  "What do you play with?"

  "Game Boy." Crys had drifted away and was putting her hands on things, drawing circles in the dust, looking under tables. "What's'is?"

  "A bee smoker."

  The child laughed. "For smoking bees? Do you get high off 'em?"

  Lusa wondered what this child knew about getting high but decided again not to react. "No. Smoke comes out of there, and it drugs the bees, as a matter of fact. It makes them dopey and lazy so they won't sting you when you take the top off their hive and steal their honey."

  "Oh." Crys leaned back and bounced herself against a bedspring that was standing on its end, propped against the wall. "That's where honey comes from? People steal it?"

  Lusa was surprised at the extent of the girl's ignorance--her generation's ignorance, probably. "People raise bees, for honey. Everybody around here used to, I'm sure. You see old broken-down bee boxes everywhere."

  "Now it just comes in a jar."

  "Yep," Lusa agreed. "From Argentina or someplace. That's what I mean about big farms far away taking the place of little farms right here. It's sad. It's not fair, and it stinks." She sat down on a side-arm of the ancient grain mill, which startled her by giving way an inch or two before it held. "Nobody cares, though. I used to live in a city, and I'll tell you, city people do not think this is their problem. They think food comes from the supermarket, period, and always will."

  Crys continued to bounce herself sideways against the bedspring. "My mama works at Kroger's. She hates it."

  "I know." Lusa looked around at the dim boneyard of obsolete equipment and felt despair, not only--or not specifically--for the loss of her husband, but for all the things people used to grow and make for themselves before they were widowed from their own food chain.

  "She hates it because it makes her tired. They won't give her no days off."

  "I know. Not enough, anyway."

  "Mama's sick."

  "I know."

  "I can't stay at Aunt Lois's no more. Lowell can, but I can't. You know why?"

  "Why?"

  Crys stopped throwing herself against the bedspring. She stepped carefully into a broken baling box and out the other side.

  "Why, Crys?" Lusa repeated.

  "She made me try on stupid dresses. Hand-me-downs from Jennifer and Louise."

  "Yeah? I never heard that part of the story."

  "She said I had to wear them. They's ugly."

  "Probably out of style, too. Jennifer and Louise are a lot older than you."

  Crys shrugged her shoulders, a quick, unhappy jerk. She sat down on a tractor tire and put her feet into the center of it, with her back to Lusa. "They were stupid."

  "Who was?"

  "The dresses."

  "Still. Breaking Aunt Lois's knickknacks on purpose, that might not have been the best way to handle it."

  "She made me go in the bathroom and give her out my clothes, while I was supposed to be trying the dresses on. And you know what she done? Cut up my corduroys and plaid shirt with scissors so I couldn't put 'em back on."

  Lusa was appalled. She stared at the back of the child's head, feeling her sore heart open up to this dejected little creature whose straw-colored hair stood up at the crown of her head like a porcupine's quills. "I think that's awful," Lusa said finally. "Nobody told me that part. Those were your favorite clothes, your old faithfuls, right? I don't think I ever saw you in anything but those corduroys and that shirt on the weekends."

  Crys shrugged again, offering no reply.

  "So then what? I guess you had to put on one of the dresses."

  She shook her head. "I run out of the house neckid. Just underpants. I went and hid in the barn."

  "What about the praying-hands statue? How did that get broken?"

  "I don't know."

  "Just kind of happened, on your way out?"

  The porcupine head nodded.

  "I'd say that was a fair trade. Her treasure for yours."

  Lusa saw the hair on the back of the girl's head shift subtly, from a change in the musculature under her scalp. Smiling, was a good guess.

  "I'm not saying it was helpful," Lusa amended. "It's made things kind of tense between you and your aunt, which doesn't make life any easier on your mother. She's the one you probably need to be thinking about right now. I'm just saying I understand."

  "I told Jesus if I wore them clothes every day he'd make Mama get better. Now they're cut up in Aunt Lois's ragbag, and Mama's going to die."

  "Just thinking something like that doesn't make it happen."

  Crystal turned around and looked at Lusa through a diagonal shaft of light that fell from a hole in the roof to the floor between them. Dust motes danced up and down in the light, inhabiting their own carefree universe.

  "How are things with Lowell?" Lusa asked gently. "He must be pretty scared about your mom's being sick."

  Crys picked at a ribbon of loose rubber where the sole of her tennis shoe was coming apart. "He don't like it over there, either. He's asceared of Aunt Lois. She's mean."

  "How mean? Does she hit him or anything?"

  "Nuh-uh, they don't usually paddle us. She just won't be nice to him like Mama is. She won't put his clothes on the chair the right way and make him what food he likes and stuff. Her and Jennifer and them just all holler that he's a big old baby."

  Lusa's hand went to her mouth, but she kept her voice nonchalant. "Next time why don't you both come over here? Would that be OK, if I asked your mom to let you do that?"

  Crys shrugged, continuing to pick her shoe apart. "I guess."

  "OK. But today, since it's just the two of us, we can do whatever we want. I'd like to catch some bugs, if it's OK by you." Lusa pulled two short-handled collecting nets out of her box. "Here's yours. Let's go, the day's wasting out there."

  Crys took the net and followed Lusa out of the barn. They began by skirting the edge of the goat pasture. Lusa led, running as fast as she could uphill, sweeping her net through the tall grass along the fence. They were both breathing hard when they reached the hilltop. Lusa flung herself on the ground, panting, and Crys sat down cross-legged.

  "Careful," Lusa said, sitting up and reaching for the other net. "Here, fold the net over the frame like this so they won't get out. Now, let's see what you've got." She care
fully let a few bugs crawl out onto the outside of the mesh. "These are grasshoppers, and this is a buffalo leafhopper. Big difference, see?" She held out a bright-green grasshopper with its legs writhing in the air. To her surprise, Crys took it and held it up a few inches from her face.

  "Hey," she said. "It's got wings."

  "Yeah. Most insects have wings--even ants, in one stage of their life. Grasshoppers definitely. This guy can fly if he wants to. Look." She lifted the green wing case with her fingernail, extending the brilliant red cellophane fan of wing underneath.

  "Whoa," said Crys. "Are they always that color?"

  "Nope. There're twenty thousand kinds of grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids in the world, and no two kinds are alike."

  "Whoa!"

  "My sentiments exactly. Here, look at this one." She reached into the net and extracted a flat, cross-eyed creature that looked like a leaf with legs. "That's a katydid."

  Crys took it, looking it in the eye. She glanced up at Lusa. "They make all 'at racket at night? Keety-did! Keety-didn't!"

  Lusa was impressed with the imitation. "That's right. You never saw a katydid before?"

  She shook her head rapidly. "I thought katydids was some'n big. A big old whopper bird or some'n."

  "A bird?" Lusa was truly shocked. How could rural kids grow up so ignorant of their world? Their parents gave them Game Boys and TVs that spewed out cityscapes of cops and pretty lawyers, but they couldn't show them a katydid. It wasn't neglect, Lusa knew. It was some sad mix of shame and modern intentions, like her own father's ban on Yiddish. She watched Crys study this creature's every infinitesimal feature, handling it with utmost care, eating it with her eyes. Like a good taxonomist.

  "How's it holler so loud with that little mouth?" she asked finally.

  "Not with its mouth. Look, see this? Wings again." She extended them carefully. "There's a scraper on one and a little ridged thing like a file on the underside of the other. He rubs them together. That's how he sings."

  Crys practically put her nose against the thing. "Where at?"

  "Those parts are hard to see. Really teeny."

  Crys looked skeptical. "Then how's it so loud?"

  "Did you ever hear a little teeny piece of chalk screech on a blackboard?"

  She raised her eyebrows and nodded.

  "That's how. A rough thing pushed against a hard thing. Big isn't everything. I should know: I'm only five foot one."

  "Is that little?"

  "Yeah. For grown-ups, that's little."

  "How big's Aunt Lois?" Ain't Lois, she always said, as if to negate the woman. Lusa could appreciate the sentiment.

  "I don't know; big. For a woman. Five foot ten, maybe. Why?"

  Crys looked warily down the hill. "She said you was pushing everybody too far."

  Lusa lay back on the grass, crossed her arms behind her head, and watched a cloud loll in the sky. She wondered whom Crys wished to hurt with this betrayal. "Some of your aunts think I shouldn't have this farm. That's what that's all about."

  Crys lay down, too, with the top of her head a few inches from Lusa's. "How come?"

  "Because I'm different from them. Because I wasn't born here. Because I like bugs. You name it. Because your uncle Cole died and I'm still here, and they're mad because life's not fair. I don't know exactly why; I'm just guessing. People don't always have good reasons for feeling how they do."

  "Is my mama going to die?"

  "Wow. Where did that come from?"

  "Is she?"

  "I don't know the answer to that. That's the truth, I swear. Nobody knows. I do know she's doing everything she can to get better, for you and Lowell. Even going up to Roanoke and taking poison once a week. So she must love you pretty much, huh?"

  No answer came.

  "Another thing," Lusa said. "I know for a fact that Jesus will not hurt your mother just because Aunt Lois chopped up your clothes. If he was in a position to punish somebody, which is debatable, I think it'd be Aunt Lois, don't you?"

  "So will he kill Aunt Lois instead of Mama?"

  "No, he won't, that one I can answer. Life is definitely not like that. God doesn't go around calling fouls like a referee, or else we'd have a different world by now. Ice cream three times a day and no spankings and no stinky dresses if you didn't want them."

  Crys chuckled. For the first time since she'd planted herself fiercely on Lusa's driveway that morning, she sounded clear and transparent, like a child. Like the crystal she was. Lusa couldn't see her face, but she could feel her body next to hers in the grass and hear her relaxed breathing.

  "Hey. Did anybody ever tell you what a crystal is?"

  "A stupid thing. Jewry."

  Lusa was startled for an instant. Jewelry, she must mean. "Nope. It's a kind of rock. Hard, sharp, and shiny. There are a lot of different kinds, actually. Salt is a crystal, even." She sat up. "Hey! Our bugs got away."

  Crystal sat up, too, looking desperately disappointed.

  "It's OK," Lusa said, laughing. "We were going to let 'em go anyway. We can catch more." She waved at the pasture. "All the bugs you'll ever need, right there. Can you believe people spray insecticide all over their fields?" She shook the last stragglers out of the two nets. "Look at all the beautiful creatures that die. It's like dropping a bomb on a city just to get rid of a couple of bad guys. See, that's what's so great about my goats--I don't have to use any chemicals to grow them. I only have to kill fifty animals, not fifty thousand."

  Crys frowned through the fence at Lusa's goats. That field was shaping up, Lusa noticed. All the gangly thistles left standing by the cows were getting mowed down evenly, pretty as a Lexington lawn.

  "For real, how come you got all them goats?"

  "Well, it's true what I said, I hate pesticides, and I have to raise something here to make some money. Plus, I said some bad words about tobacco, so that's out. And I don't like sticking my hand up a cow's butt."

  The child's mouth flew open and she laughed a beautiful laugh.

  "Well, you asked. That's one thing you have to do if you want to raise cows."

  "Yuck!"

  "I'm not kidding. You have to make a fist and stick it way up in there and feel if they're pregnant. And that's not even the worst of it. Cows are big and stupid and dangerous and nothing but trouble, in my opinion." She laughed at the face Crys was making. "Why? You been hearing your uncles talk about me and my goats?"

  The child nodded, looking slightly guilty. "They said you was a dope."

  Lusa leaned over toward Crys, grinning. "Your uncles took over my cows. So who's the dope?"

  Sometime near midnight, Lusa was surprised to hear a car in the drive. She'd fallen asleep on the parlor couch reading a W. D. Hamilton article on monarch mimicry and kin selection. The knack for sleep must be returning to her--she hadn't conked out on the couch since before Cole died. She had to sit up and think for a minute to get her bearings. It was Tuesday night. Crys was settled on the daybed upstairs. Jewel was supposed to call tomorrow, as soon as she felt up to having the kids back. Lusa smoothed her shirttail and went to the window. It was Hannie-Mavis's car. She hurried to the front door and flipped on the porch light. "Hannie-Mavis? Is it you?"

  It was. The engine stopped and her small figure got out. "I just come up to see if y'all was all right. I figured if all the lights was out, fine, then, I'd go on home."

  "You haven't been home yet? Goodness." Lusa looked at her wrist, but she wasn't wearing her watch. "What time is it?"

  "I don't even know, honey. Late. I've been down there with Jewel, she's bad this time. I couldn't leave her till she was good and settled. But she's asleep now. If you're all right with the young'un, I'll go on home. I just thought I better check."

  "Oh, we're fine. She's asleep. I was just reading on the couch." Lusa hesitated, worried by the strain in her sister-in-law's voice. "What is it? What are you saying, then--that Jewel's been sick all afternoon and evening? Ever since you got back from Roanoke?"

 
Lusa heard a long, strange exhalation in the darkness. "We couldn't even get in the car to come back for three and a half hours. Even then we had to make a stop ever ten miles for her to up-chuck."

  Lusa shivered in the chill air. Tiny moths whirled around her head. "My God, you've been to hell and back. Come in for a minute. Let me make you a cup of tea."

  Hannie-Mavis hesitated on the walkway. "Oh, it's late. I hate to pester you."

  "It's no trouble." Lusa came down the steps to meet her sister-in-law and was surprised when the small woman nearly tumbled into her arms. Lusa held her for a minute, there on the steps under the porch light. "She's really bad, isn't she?"

  She was shocked to see, at closer range, that Hannie-Mavis was weeping. "They said it's no good, the chemo's not helping her. Everything she's went through, vomiting and losing her hair, for nothing. She's worse."

  "How can that be?" Lusa asked numbly.

  "It's all over her, honey. Her lungs and her spine. The doctor told me today."

  "God," Lusa whispered. "Does she know yet?"

  Hannie-Mavis shook her head. "I didn't tell her. How could I? I started telling her the doc said no more chemo, and she thought that was good news. 'Oh, Han,' she says, 'wait'll I tell the kids. Let's go get us a ice cream to celebrate!' Mind you, this was between throwing up and throwing up, when she said that." Hannie-Mavis took a deep, racked breath, then let out a long wail. Lusa just held on, feeling awkward, not yet sensing in her body the full weight of this new grief.

  "How will she leave her babies!" Hannie-Mavis cried.

  "Shhh, one of them's asleep upstairs." Lusa took her by the shoulders and steered her up the last step, across the porch, and in through the front door. In the bright hallway Hannie-Mavis seemed to pull into herself, appearing suddenly more contained and absurdly cheerful in her red-and-white-striped dress made of some silky material. She even had on snappy red high heels, Lusa noticed. The image of her two sisters-in-law dressing up this morning to go to the city, for this awful trip, was devastating. She watched Hannie-Mavis dab at her ruined eye makeup with a ball of tissue that appeared to have been in her hand for much too long.

  "Come on. Come in the kitchen and sit down."

  Hannie-Mavis hesitated again but then moved slowly toward the kitchen door under her own power while Lusa ran upstairs for a box of tissues. When she came back down to the kitchen and put on the kettle, her sister-in-law had vanished. Lusa heard intermittent nose-blowing from the bathroom. By the time Hannie-Mavis emerged, hairdo and makeup fully repaired, the kettle had already boiled and Lusa was steeping the tea. Seeing her standing in the doorway brought Lusa a sudden, harsh memory of the funeral, of looking at all that blue mascara and saying something cold. She wished she could take it back, whatever it had been. She felt penitent for all the times she'd nearly called her Handy Makeup out loud. You had to be so careful with large families. Who knew how things would turn around, whom you'd need in the end, and what could cause you to see even eye shadow in a different light? At this moment Lusa had to admire the woman's art and energy in the face of heartache. After Cole died, it'd probably been three weeks before she herself had even managed to put a comb to her hair.