Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver [9]
“That’s the way, Curty,” Emelina directed. “Don’t get blood on your brother. Dip him all the way in. Now pluck him quick or he’ll go stiff on you. Start with the wings, see how Glen’s doing?” She wiped perspiration out of her eyes.
I was amazed by the muscle definition in her upper arms and her easy command of the axe. Her hands stayed surprisingly clean through the whole operation. She reminded me of Hallie, the way she could do things. Though of course Hallie would never decapitate anything.
“I can’t believe you’re watching this,” she said when both boys were settled down to plucking feathers. She went inside and came out with a beer. She sat down next to me on the wide wooden rail, knocking the heels of her sneakers against the crossbar like a child. I was very conscious of my height. Sometimes I had an acute feeling that small women were better put together somehow, more in control of their bodies.
“You used to have a hissy fit when we’d go over to Abuelita’s and she’d be killing chickens,” Emelina said. “Remember? Even when we were big, twelve or thirteen.”
“No, that was Hallie. She’s the one that had such a soft heart. We’ve always been real different that way. She’d cry if she stepped on a bug.” I drained my beer. “She’s still like that, except now she cries about bag ladies. I swear. She gives them quarters and then she wishes she’d given them a dollar.”
I stared out at the treetops and the leaf-green gables of the roof on a house below us. The shingles were an odd, elaborate shape like the spade in a deck of cards. I wondered in what decade they’d stopped making shingles like that, and how this neighbor might repair the roof after a bad storm.
“You really do look great,” Emelina said. “That’s a terrific haircut, I mean it. You’ll stand out in a crowd here till you get your first cut down at Beth’s Butcher Shop.”
I ran my fingers over my weedy scalp, feeling despair. I’d spent my whole childhood as an outsider to Grace. I was willing to march downtown and submit myself to butchery this minute if that would admit me to the club. I’d led such an adventurous life, geographically speaking, that people mistook me for an adventurer. They had no idea. I’d sell my soul and all my traveling shoes to belong some place.
“I always forget you have so much auburn. Doc Homer had the same coloring, didn’t he? Sort of reddish before he went gray?” She fingered her own shoulder-length hair. “Speaking of him…”
“Speaking of him,” I said.
“Have you talked to him?” She looked apprehensive. Emelina was my informant. When he started getting lost on his way home from the drugstore, she was the one person in Grace who thought to call me, rather than just draw him a map.
“I’ll go up and see him tomorrow.”
“And where’s Hallie gone? You told me, but I forgot.”
“Nicaragua,” I said. “To save the crops. Cross between Johnny Appleseed and a freedom fighter.”
Emelina laughed and I felt disloyal. I hadn’t meant to sound glib. It was just hard to put Hallie into the context of regular life. “I guess it’s really dangerous,” I said. “But she’s excited about it. She’ll be happy.” I was sure of this. Hallie didn’t have my problem. She belonged wherever she was.
Emelina nodded. She watched the boys, who sat cross-legged on the driveway, transfixed by the importance of their task. They were dappled with blood and looked like they’d been through a strange war themselves—a children’s war.
A scarlet bougainvillaea covered the front porch. In fact, it was so overgrown that the wood of the vine seemed to be supporting the structure over our heads. The breeze coming up the valley felt like a warm liquid against my arms and face. I held the sweaty beer can against my temple and watched