A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [57]
“I do remember that. It had a blue stripe along the side that angled upward at the fin.”
“That’s it.”
“Well, he only stopped driving it last year.”
Jess, who was squatting and poking with a stick under the bedstead, looked up at me.
I laughed. “Gotcha. Really it’s been ten years, anyway. I was just teasing you.” He smiled.
I looked around. The rosebushes were nearly as high as my head and hid the dump from the view of my house, though you could see Harold’s house and barn through the trees. On the lower branches of the rosebushes, simple white flowers spread their five petals like the open palm of a tiny hand. I knelt and sniffed. The fragrance was perfumy and strong. Jess said, “Do you ever come out here and gather the hips in the fall? They’re probably as big as cherries.”
“I heard you could do that.”
“Good natural source of vitamin C. Or you could make rose petal jam. I love the fragrance of that.”
“What are you poking at?”
“Snake.”
“What?”
“Snake. Not a rattlesnake or anything. I think it’s an eastern hog-nose, even though this area is sort of out of their range. I saw one last time I was here. They’re funny snakes.” He stood up. “No luck.”
“How are they funny?”
“Well, they have hoods, like cobras, and if they can’t chase you off any other way, they roll over and play dead, right down to the lolling tongue.”
I laughed.
“They’re one of my favorites.”
“I never thought of having favorite snakes.”
“Oh, there’re lots of nice snakes around here. Milk snakes are beautiful, and racers. Rat snakes will climb up into corncribs and trees.”
“Daddy’s killed those.”
“I’m sure.”
“Daddy’s not much for untamed nature. You know, he’s deathly afraid of wasps and hornets. It’s a real phobia with him. He goes all white and his face starts twitching.”
“Huh.”
Through the metal grid of the bedstead, some thin stalks of grass were growing. I broke one off and put it between my teeth. Jess did likewise, and said, “Big bluestem. When the pioneers got here, that was seven feet high.”
“When the pioneers got here, this was all under water.”
“Well, I know that. I was speaking generally.” He grinned at me. “Trying to evoke the romance of it all. Anyway, there’s a bit of prairie here, now that it’s dried out. Here’s some switchgrass, too, and there’s timothy all along the edge of the gully. Know what these are?”
I bent down and fingered the white petals. “The flowers look like pea flowers, but they’re on stalks.”
“Prairie indigo. Poisonous, too.”
“What are those?”
Now it was Jess’s turn to look closely at some short, purple-pink flowers. He said, “I know these.”
“Well?”
“Locoweed?”
“Yup.”
“And you were making out like you didn’t know nothin’.”
“I know shooting stars and wild carrots, and of course, bindweed and Johnsongrass and shatter cane and all that other noxious vegetation that farmers have to kill kill kill. Haven’t you seen Ty’s trophies? Giant cockleburs and world-class velvetleaf?” Now I was grinning, too, though the brightness of our grinning didn’t seem exactly appropriate to the conversation. I had the strong sense that we had stumbled into a kind of daring privacy, and that the secluded nature of the spot where we were standing allowed it but did not create it. It was as venturesome to be out here, poking around in this dump, as it would be to head off to Minneapolis together, knowing you couldn’t return until the next morning. It was also, oddly enough, terrifying. But our gazes were fixed on each other’s faces, and we were unable to keep ourselves from testing the fix by moving, turning, bending down. The fix held, until I climbed into the truck bed, sat down in the filthy car seat, and looked over the roses to the green roof peak of my house. I was breathing hard and trembling. I felt very afraid, but the fear also seemed unusually distant. I inhaled deeply. Jess went back to poking with his stick. I could hear a rhythmic tchocking punctuate the soughing of the breeze. The breeze in Zebulon County is eternal, and life there is marked by those times when you notice it. I