Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [100]
“You must have fell hard for Roscoe,” Alice says. “You wrote me you’d met him at the railroad yard, and then the next thing I know you’d run off and married him.”
“Well, I was mad because you run off and got married first. And anyway I was sick of factory work.”
“I’ll tell you, Foster Greer wasn’t anything to be jealous of. You’ve been a whole lot luckier in love than I ever was.”
The two women sit still, watching slim brown bodies slip through air into water as if they were made for nothing more than this single amphibious act. Sugar sighs.
“He had shoulders just like that. Roscoe did. From carrying the ties.”
“Railroad ties? That’s a job.”
“Mm-hmm. He used to cut ties and posts. Later on when we got married and come on back up here he cut cookstove wood. Just cut it right out of these woods around here. He’d sell it for fifty cents a rick. Now you get twenty-five dollars a rick.”
“Isn’t that something, what we used to pay for things?”
“Oh, Lordy! Remember when we worked in that mattress factory for fifteen cents a day?”
Alice laughs. “That was fun, though. More fun than you’d guess.”
“No, what was fun was when we’d go to beer joints, or sneak in to watch them wrestling matches they organized in the barns.”
“Oh, I liked those!” Alice says. “Those matches they have now on TV are just plain stupid. Like a costume party of grown-up men. I liked those tough-looking boys in the baggy shorts.”
“You had a crush on that one, what was his name?”
“Rough and Tumble Ludwig. I did not.” Both women cover their mouths and laugh.
“You know what I really loved?” Alice asks suddenly. “When we’d go out to the colored church with that girl Arnetta from the mattress factory.”
“Your mama tanned our hides on that one,” Sugar says.
“I didn’t even care. I kept on going, even after you all left the farm. They sang gospel on Wednesday nights, and there was one woman in particular that always spoke in tongues.”
“I’ve seen that, the speaking in tongues and the carrying on,” Sugar says. “I wasn’t much impressed.”
“This one was different,” Alice says, though she knows she can’t explain it to Sugar. She leans back, closing her eyes and remembering, feeling the light from the creek playing on her face. That woman could be counted on. Her eyes would go soft and faraway, not agitated, and she would lay her hand on the head of a child, whoever happened to be near, because nobody was afraid, and she would speak out in a slow, meaty voice: “Belbagged oh Lessemenee! Yemett algeddy boolando!” And you would understand what she meant. Yes, sister, they would all cry. No one doubted she was receiving the spirit. In the years since, Alice, too, has seen the ones who shake and scream and roll their eyes back as if snakebit, but she has always doubted the sincerity of this. Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It’s peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.
Annawake stirs her coffee. Through the café window she can see Boma Mellowbug’s bottle tree, with hundreds of glass bottles stuck onto the ends of its limbs. It’s a little thin at the top where no one can reach, but once in a while someone from the volunteer fire department will bring a ladder and move some bottles to the upper branches to even things out.
She reaches for the cream pitcher and knocks over the sugar bowl at the same instant she sees the woman who must be the grandmother. She’s wearing running shoes and polyester pants and a bright, African sort of shirt, and she is trying not to look lost. Annawake taps on the window and waves. The woman raises her head like a startled animal and changes her course, heading across the street toward the café. Annawake tries to spoon the sugar she has spilled back into the bowl. By the time Alice gets there, Annawake has created a crater in the small white mountain in the center of the table.
“I spilled the sugar,” she says.
“Sugar’s cheap,” Alice says. “You could do worse things.”
Annawake is caught off guard, forgiven before they even start.