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Authors: Barbara Kingsolver
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say.”
“Why are you nagging me about this all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know. There’s just reasons. There could be more treasure than you think in your own backyard.”
He shook his head. “What you’re saying is what you always say. Work harder, Cub, go faster, Cub.”
“Is not.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? The ATV busted an axle last month.”
“Busted an axle all by itself, as I understand it. With no help from your drunk friends.”
“Nobody was entirely drunk.”
Here we go, she thought, into the quicksands of stupid. She stood up. “I’m going in the house. I just thought I’d mention that God gave you feet, to set one down in front of the other, if memory serves me. Seems like you’d go up there and look at what you’re selling off before it’s gone. It’s just good business.”
“Good business. Since when did you get your business-lady degree?”
The contempt startled her. That wasn’t even Cub, he was just parroting his father in some last-ditch attempt at manhood. She made for the stairs without looking back. “I hear you. Good business, and it’s none of mine.”
A thicket of reasons led them up the mountain, and Dellarobia’s insistence was one strand of it. Bear and Peanut Norwood’s mistrust of the logging company, and possibly of each other, comprised the rest. Four men in hard hats had flagged the boundaries of the section proposed for logging and declared that it was up to the Turnbows and Norwoods to see that property lines were respected. The hard-hat men, who were subcontractors for the real decision-makers in California, came from Knoxville in a panel truck that said Money Tree Industries. Suspicion was only natural.
Cub rallied to repair the all-terrain vehicle so they wouldn’t have to make the hike on foot. It took four of his buddies and nearly a week of evenings to replace the broken axle. Dovey observed to Dellarobia that there was no end to the amount of effort a man would put into saving himself some work. On a Friday morning the expedition piled onto the ATV with Cub at the wheel, Bear riding shotgun, and Peanut Norwood in the cargo bucket hugging his knees, insufficiently shaped like a bale of hay to fit in there very well. Dellarobia stood at her kitchen window watching the squat vehicle crawl up the steep pasture slope like a broad, flat toad with three men clinging to its back. Her life had become some kind of fairy tale, in which her family members set off one by one to meet their destiny on the High Road. She couldn’t have said what she hoped the men would discover up there, but her distraction was acute. Ten minutes after they left, she found herself folding clothes from the dirty-laundry basket while the clean ones sat in the dryer.
Less than an hour passed before the men came back, astounded, to collect their wives as witnesses.
There was no question of everyone riding in the vehicle. They would have to walk. Dellarobia surprised herself by asking to go along, despite the sticky fact of Cordelia eating cereal in her high chair, and Preston needing to be picked up from kindergarten at noon. She asked anyway. Dovey was off work that morning and could come over to mind the kids. Cub made his parents hold their horses while they waited the ten minutes it took for Dovey to get there. Cub was surprisingly resolute on Dellarobia’s behalf.
Her heart raced as they mounted the hill, on various accounts. Mostly for the strangeness of reenacting this walk she’d so recently taken with outrageous intent, this time with husband and family in tow. It felt like a reality show, poised to expose and explode her serial failures. The wife who keeps having inappropriate crushes, falling off the marriage wagon, if only in her mind. They navigated the mud at the top of the pasture where the sheep had beaten down the perimeter, cursed with their certainty of greener grass on the other side. Like herself, she thought, when she’d last slipped through this
“Why are you nagging me about this all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know. There’s just reasons. There could be more treasure than you think in your own backyard.”
He shook his head. “What you’re saying is what you always say. Work harder, Cub, go faster, Cub.”
“Is not.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? The ATV busted an axle last month.”
“Busted an axle all by itself, as I understand it. With no help from your drunk friends.”
“Nobody was entirely drunk.”
Here we go, she thought, into the quicksands of stupid. She stood up. “I’m going in the house. I just thought I’d mention that God gave you feet, to set one down in front of the other, if memory serves me. Seems like you’d go up there and look at what you’re selling off before it’s gone. It’s just good business.”
“Good business. Since when did you get your business-lady degree?”
The contempt startled her. That wasn’t even Cub, he was just parroting his father in some last-ditch attempt at manhood. She made for the stairs without looking back. “I hear you. Good business, and it’s none of mine.”
A thicket of reasons led them up the mountain, and Dellarobia’s insistence was one strand of it. Bear and Peanut Norwood’s mistrust of the logging company, and possibly of each other, comprised the rest. Four men in hard hats had flagged the boundaries of the section proposed for logging and declared that it was up to the Turnbows and Norwoods to see that property lines were respected. The hard-hat men, who were subcontractors for the real decision-makers in California, came from Knoxville in a panel truck that said Money Tree Industries. Suspicion was only natural.
Cub rallied to repair the all-terrain vehicle so they wouldn’t have to make the hike on foot. It took four of his buddies and nearly a week of evenings to replace the broken axle. Dovey observed to Dellarobia that there was no end to the amount of effort a man would put into saving himself some work. On a Friday morning the expedition piled onto the ATV with Cub at the wheel, Bear riding shotgun, and Peanut Norwood in the cargo bucket hugging his knees, insufficiently shaped like a bale of hay to fit in there very well. Dellarobia stood at her kitchen window watching the squat vehicle crawl up the steep pasture slope like a broad, flat toad with three men clinging to its back. Her life had become some kind of fairy tale, in which her family members set off one by one to meet their destiny on the High Road. She couldn’t have said what she hoped the men would discover up there, but her distraction was acute. Ten minutes after they left, she found herself folding clothes from the dirty-laundry basket while the clean ones sat in the dryer.
Less than an hour passed before the men came back, astounded, to collect their wives as witnesses.
There was no question of everyone riding in the vehicle. They would have to walk. Dellarobia surprised herself by asking to go along, despite the sticky fact of Cordelia eating cereal in her high chair, and Preston needing to be picked up from kindergarten at noon. She asked anyway. Dovey was off work that morning and could come over to mind the kids. Cub made his parents hold their horses while they waited the ten minutes it took for Dovey to get there. Cub was surprisingly resolute on Dellarobia’s behalf.
Her heart raced as they mounted the hill, on various accounts. Mostly for the strangeness of reenacting this walk she’d so recently taken with outrageous intent, this time with husband and family in tow. It felt like a reality show, poised to expose and explode her serial failures. The wife who keeps having inappropriate crushes, falling off the marriage wagon, if only in her mind. They navigated the mud at the top of the pasture where the sheep had beaten down the perimeter, cursed with their certainty of greener grass on the other side. Like herself, she thought, when she’d last slipped through this
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