Read Online All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Wallace Stegner
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minutes, so close I could have leaned over and patted them. I could see every whisker on their chins. Now wasn’t that a lovely thing to happen on our first night out here?”
We agree that it was. In fact, the Catlins themselves seem a nice thing to have happened, a big improvement over Thomas. In a sneaky bid for favor, trying to solidify a friendship by tying a former neighbor to the whipping post, I tell them how old Thomas used to sit in his back patio on Sunday mornings, dressed in pink pajamas, and hold target practice on the towhees and quail with a .38 revolver.
Marian Catlin is suitably horrified. But then she slants her wide, strangely shaped eyes at me, and completely undiverted from her original disapproval, says, “But you shoot gophers.”
“You bet,” I have to say. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Who are you to say they haven’t got as much right to live as quail? They can’t help it if they’re not pretty, and can’t sing. All they’re doing is just innocently digging away and eating the roots they run into.”
“Did you ever look into a gopher’s beady eye?” I ask. “He knows he’s evil. He’s got guilt written all over him. Wait till one innocently eats up your begonias.”
“I haven’t got any begonias.”
“You will have.”
“Nope.”
“Carrots, then. Loganberries. Pole beans. Whatever you grow.”
“We’re not going to grow a thing,” she says happily. “We’re just going to let grow. While the house was vacant nearly everything dried up and died, and we’re going to leave it that way—let it go back to the things that grow here naturally. We aren’t going to tinker with nature one bit, we like it exactly as it is.”
“Poison oak and all?”
“It doesn’t poison me,” she says, as if she has pull with the management.
“The immune are bad witnesses,” I tell her. “I hope you’re immune to beggar’s-lice and cockleburs and needle grass and foxtails, too. I hope your nylons are immune to screw grass.”
“If I’m foolish enough to wear nylons in the country, I deserve to ruin them.”
“Barefoot, then. Have you got a dog?”
“We might get a pup for Debby—that’s our daughter.”
“Is she immune?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“So. Well anyway, if you get a pup, get one without ears or eyes or feet. Otherwise you’ll be taking him to the vet once a week, the way Fran LoPresti does her cocker, with foxtails in his tear ducts or his eardrums or the webs of his toes.”
Her eyes, I have finally determined, are shaped like some exotic sunglasses, turned upward at the outer corners, but they are wide, not narrow and heavy-lidded the way Oriental eyes are. And they are as blue as my mother’s were. She is watching me; the easy blush floods into her face. “Yes, but ...”
“Not even barefoot nature lovers can find anything nice to say of the foxtail,” I say.
“It’s only following its natural way to reproduce. If it sticks in your stocking or in a dog’s ear, it’s only distributing its seeds.”
John Catlin, who has been following the argument with a suspended half-smile, says to me, but with his eyes on her, “And if it’s distributing its seeds, don’t try to tell Marian it isn’t O.K.”
But by now I am beginning to rev up, because so far as I can see this girl seriously means the ridiculous things she is saying. I ignore the storm warnings that my good wife is beginning to fly, and I refill Catlin’s glass and my own, and I bring up my strategic bombing command and prepare to plaster her off the map.
“You like nature as she is,” I say. “Let me ask you. A gopher is nature, right?”
“Right. Just as much as any...”
“So it’s O.K. if he eats my tomatoes. He’s following his natural instincts. Is the tick on a gopher nature?”
“Sure.” She is smiling, blushing, amusedly at bay, prepared to fight to the last man.
“So it’s all right if the tick eats the gopher’s blood. Is the germ on a tick
We agree that it was. In fact, the Catlins themselves seem a nice thing to have happened, a big improvement over Thomas. In a sneaky bid for favor, trying to solidify a friendship by tying a former neighbor to the whipping post, I tell them how old Thomas used to sit in his back patio on Sunday mornings, dressed in pink pajamas, and hold target practice on the towhees and quail with a .38 revolver.
Marian Catlin is suitably horrified. But then she slants her wide, strangely shaped eyes at me, and completely undiverted from her original disapproval, says, “But you shoot gophers.”
“You bet,” I have to say. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Who are you to say they haven’t got as much right to live as quail? They can’t help it if they’re not pretty, and can’t sing. All they’re doing is just innocently digging away and eating the roots they run into.”
“Did you ever look into a gopher’s beady eye?” I ask. “He knows he’s evil. He’s got guilt written all over him. Wait till one innocently eats up your begonias.”
“I haven’t got any begonias.”
“You will have.”
“Nope.”
“Carrots, then. Loganberries. Pole beans. Whatever you grow.”
“We’re not going to grow a thing,” she says happily. “We’re just going to let grow. While the house was vacant nearly everything dried up and died, and we’re going to leave it that way—let it go back to the things that grow here naturally. We aren’t going to tinker with nature one bit, we like it exactly as it is.”
“Poison oak and all?”
“It doesn’t poison me,” she says, as if she has pull with the management.
“The immune are bad witnesses,” I tell her. “I hope you’re immune to beggar’s-lice and cockleburs and needle grass and foxtails, too. I hope your nylons are immune to screw grass.”
“If I’m foolish enough to wear nylons in the country, I deserve to ruin them.”
“Barefoot, then. Have you got a dog?”
“We might get a pup for Debby—that’s our daughter.”
“Is she immune?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“So. Well anyway, if you get a pup, get one without ears or eyes or feet. Otherwise you’ll be taking him to the vet once a week, the way Fran LoPresti does her cocker, with foxtails in his tear ducts or his eardrums or the webs of his toes.”
Her eyes, I have finally determined, are shaped like some exotic sunglasses, turned upward at the outer corners, but they are wide, not narrow and heavy-lidded the way Oriental eyes are. And they are as blue as my mother’s were. She is watching me; the easy blush floods into her face. “Yes, but ...”
“Not even barefoot nature lovers can find anything nice to say of the foxtail,” I say.
“It’s only following its natural way to reproduce. If it sticks in your stocking or in a dog’s ear, it’s only distributing its seeds.”
John Catlin, who has been following the argument with a suspended half-smile, says to me, but with his eyes on her, “And if it’s distributing its seeds, don’t try to tell Marian it isn’t O.K.”
But by now I am beginning to rev up, because so far as I can see this girl seriously means the ridiculous things she is saying. I ignore the storm warnings that my good wife is beginning to fly, and I refill Catlin’s glass and my own, and I bring up my strategic bombing command and prepare to plaster her off the map.
“You like nature as she is,” I say. “Let me ask you. A gopher is nature, right?”
“Right. Just as much as any...”
“So it’s O.K. if he eats my tomatoes. He’s following his natural instincts. Is the tick on a gopher nature?”
“Sure.” She is smiling, blushing, amusedly at bay, prepared to fight to the last man.
“So it’s all right if the tick eats the gopher’s blood. Is the germ on a tick
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