A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [68]
Bridget’s hand was at her throat, her eyes stricken. “The birds. What will happen to the birds?”
At the bottom of the steps was Deke’s cousin, proudly coming toward them with the bill.
That evening they wandered with peculiar reluctance out onto the porch for their ritual glass of wine, uneasy in a place that no longer felt familiar to them. Cici had spent a long time sweeping the leaves off the porch, but the smell of them still hung heavy in the air. And they all knew what lay beyond the railing. It was like a graveyard.
For a time even their conversation was stilted. Nothing felt the same. They sat in their chairs, but did not rock, and even the wine tasted too much of green and broken things.
And suddenly Lindsay summed it up for them. “I feel exposed,” she said. “The tree was like—a shelter. Now”—she gestured—“the whole world is out there.”
Unwillingly, they turned their eyes toward the place the tree once had been. In the distance was a magnificent vista of the mountains they had never noticed before. They could see the rise and fall of their own drive almost to the highway, and the whole of the pasture. Had the poplar tree not been there, they surely would have noticed sooner that the sheep they did not realize they owned were grazing in a pasture that they did. Yet Lindsay was right. The tree, with its towering limbs and green canopy, had been a kind of barrier between themselves and all that lay beyond. Without it they felt uncomfortable, defenseless.
“The guy said it would come back bigger than ever next spring,” Cici offered. “You’re supposed to trim back poplars. They’re lightning rods, and during an ice storm the branches can go right through the roof.”
“I wonder how old it was,” Lindsay mused.
“Not as old as the hickory tree,” Cici pointed out.
“I know, but . . . I hardly even noticed the hickory tree. The poplar was like a friend.”
“Well, you know the old saying.” Cici sipped her wine, but the cheerful note she was trying for fell flat. “God never closes a door but that he opens a window. We got someone to do our yard work only hours before we need more yard work done than we ever thought we would.”
“What if he quits?”
“Then we’re screwed.”
“He doesn’t seem all that reliable.”
“Maybe we should pay him more.”
Lindsay glared at her. “Don’t even think it.”
Bridget said, “All that stuff you were telling him about how much people made in this county—how did you know that?”
Lindsay shrugged. “I made it up.” And at Bridget’s reproving glance she insisted indignantly, “When I started teaching I made twenty-four thousand dollars a year. The education of an entire generation—the future of this country—was entrusted to me, and I earned less than a sanitation worker. Now I’ve got some punk high school kid on a lawn mower holding me up for the same kind of money it took me four years of college and a teaching certification to earn? I don’t think so.”
Cici lifted her glass to her. “You go, girl.”
“Well, I feel sorry for him,” Bridget said. “No mother, an alcoholic father, and he’s so skinny.”
“Bridget, you can’t be responsible for every stray in the country. First the sheep, then the dog . . .”
“Besides,” Cici added, “do you really feel sorry enough for him to pay him ten dollars an hour?”
Bridget thought about that for only a moment. “No.”
They were silent for a while, sipping their wine. Then Bridget smiled a little, reminiscently. “Remember the first meal we had on this porch?”
“The day we moved in.” She chuckled. “Cici opened a bottle of wine with a power drill. I’d never been so tired in my life. Gosh, I can’t believe it’s been six months.”
“A lot of things have changed.”
“A lot of things haven’t,” Cici pointed out. “I thought we would have gotten a lot more done on the place by now.”
“We keep getting distracted,” Lindsay said. “What we need is a better list.”
“Six months to paint the porch.” Cici said with a short, incredulous shake of her head.
“And one bedroom,” added Lindsay, “and the whole living room. That was huge.”
“And to start restoring the garden walkway