Read Online Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Barbara Kingsolver
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gate. Like a dog in a yard, pacing the edges of her confines to the tune of “Get me out of here.” Cub held the gate open for her, and she couldn’t meet his eyes.
Beefy, ruddy-faced Bear led the way, the platoon leader. He’d served in the military ages ago and carried certain vestiges: the haircut, the weight lifting, the blood pressure. He’d held on to a muscular build, despite his weight and age, and the natural supremacy that went with a frame of six feet, four inches. Hester bought his trousers from a place called Man of Measure, on rare shopping trips to Knoxville. Cub was nearly as tall but managed to fit into regular Wranglers, size 38–36, which to Dellarobia sounded more like the shape of a TV screen than a man. She assumed it was the tour in Vietnam that accounted for the difference in men like Burley Turnbow Sr. and Jr., so similar in their dimensions and opposite in bearing. Like those boxes that guaranteed they were equally filled, but contents may have settled. She could hear Cub huffing and puffing now as he brought up the rear, saying little. The two older men gave him no chance. Bear and Peanut Norwood were talking a lot but failing to explain anything, mostly contradicting one another’s accounts or declaring no explanation was possible. Cub was the first of them to say they thought it was insects.
Hester wheeled on him. “If you’re hauling me up this mountain to look at a bug, son, I will slap you nakeder than what you were born with.”
Cub pressed on, despite the threat. “It’s not regular bugs, Mother. It’s something pretty. Wouldn’t you say it was, Dad?”
Bear and Norwood, if they could agree on nothing else, both stated that was true, it was awful pretty. Or would be, if there weren’t so many they covered up the place.
“You won’t believe it,” Cub warned. “It’s like something taking over the world.”
They took the High Road in single file and the men settled down, directing their energy to the climb. A gobbler called from high on the ridge and a female answered, wild turkeys getting down to their family business. Normally one of the men would have wished aloud for his rifle, but today no one did. Dellarobia couldn’t remember a sadder-looking November. The trees had lost their leaves early in the unrelenting rain. After a brief fling with coloration they dropped their tresses in clumps like a chemo patient losing her hair. A few maroon bouquets of blackberry leaves still hung on, but the blue asters had gone to white fluff and the world seemed drained. The leafless pear trees in Hester’s yard had lately started trying to bloom again, bizarrely, little pimply outbursts of blossom breaking out on the faces of the trees. Summer’s heat had never really arrived, nor the cold in its turn, and everything living now seemed to yearn for sun with the anguish of the unloved. The world of sensible seasons had come undone.
At least there was no rain at the moment. Dellarobia was happy to feel warmth on her shoulders through her jacket, and a strength of daylight she’d all but forgotten, even now as they entered deeper woods. The sky was not blue but the cold white of high clouds in a thin reflective sheet. She could have used her prescription sunglasses, if she could remember what junk drawer they were in. But definitely, she was wearing her glasses today. Whatever was up here, she planned to see it clearly. She spied some ribbons of orange flagging tape dangling from the trees, but the men were paying no heed right now to boundaries. Bear kept them moving at a clip. Dellarobia was next to last in the line, behind her mother-in-law and ahead of Cub. She was dying for a rest or a smoke, ideally both, but would drop dead before she’d be the one to ask. She had barely been invited. Peanut Norwood gripped his chest in a promising way, so maybe he’d make them stop. Forget about wiry Hester in her yellow cowboy boots. Onward Christian soldiers. Dellarobia averted her
Beefy, ruddy-faced Bear led the way, the platoon leader. He’d served in the military ages ago and carried certain vestiges: the haircut, the weight lifting, the blood pressure. He’d held on to a muscular build, despite his weight and age, and the natural supremacy that went with a frame of six feet, four inches. Hester bought his trousers from a place called Man of Measure, on rare shopping trips to Knoxville. Cub was nearly as tall but managed to fit into regular Wranglers, size 38–36, which to Dellarobia sounded more like the shape of a TV screen than a man. She assumed it was the tour in Vietnam that accounted for the difference in men like Burley Turnbow Sr. and Jr., so similar in their dimensions and opposite in bearing. Like those boxes that guaranteed they were equally filled, but contents may have settled. She could hear Cub huffing and puffing now as he brought up the rear, saying little. The two older men gave him no chance. Bear and Peanut Norwood were talking a lot but failing to explain anything, mostly contradicting one another’s accounts or declaring no explanation was possible. Cub was the first of them to say they thought it was insects.
Hester wheeled on him. “If you’re hauling me up this mountain to look at a bug, son, I will slap you nakeder than what you were born with.”
Cub pressed on, despite the threat. “It’s not regular bugs, Mother. It’s something pretty. Wouldn’t you say it was, Dad?”
Bear and Norwood, if they could agree on nothing else, both stated that was true, it was awful pretty. Or would be, if there weren’t so many they covered up the place.
“You won’t believe it,” Cub warned. “It’s like something taking over the world.”
They took the High Road in single file and the men settled down, directing their energy to the climb. A gobbler called from high on the ridge and a female answered, wild turkeys getting down to their family business. Normally one of the men would have wished aloud for his rifle, but today no one did. Dellarobia couldn’t remember a sadder-looking November. The trees had lost their leaves early in the unrelenting rain. After a brief fling with coloration they dropped their tresses in clumps like a chemo patient losing her hair. A few maroon bouquets of blackberry leaves still hung on, but the blue asters had gone to white fluff and the world seemed drained. The leafless pear trees in Hester’s yard had lately started trying to bloom again, bizarrely, little pimply outbursts of blossom breaking out on the faces of the trees. Summer’s heat had never really arrived, nor the cold in its turn, and everything living now seemed to yearn for sun with the anguish of the unloved. The world of sensible seasons had come undone.
At least there was no rain at the moment. Dellarobia was happy to feel warmth on her shoulders through her jacket, and a strength of daylight she’d all but forgotten, even now as they entered deeper woods. The sky was not blue but the cold white of high clouds in a thin reflective sheet. She could have used her prescription sunglasses, if she could remember what junk drawer they were in. But definitely, she was wearing her glasses today. Whatever was up here, she planned to see it clearly. She spied some ribbons of orange flagging tape dangling from the trees, but the men were paying no heed right now to boundaries. Bear kept them moving at a clip. Dellarobia was next to last in the line, behind her mother-in-law and ahead of Cub. She was dying for a rest or a smoke, ideally both, but would drop dead before she’d be the one to ask. She had barely been invited. Peanut Norwood gripped his chest in a promising way, so maybe he’d make them stop. Forget about wiry Hester in her yellow cowboy boots. Onward Christian soldiers. Dellarobia averted her
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