Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [105]
“No.”
“She says it fell on her side of the fence. That Green fellow figures she climbed over and got it, and he wants it back. He says he’ll take her to court over it. Cash saw her downtown yesterday, a-wearin’ it in her hat.”
Annawake is sorry to have missed that. “How’s Cash settling in, anyway?” she asks.
“Oh, I guess he’s all right. I think he broods. I got him fixing up my roof for me to improve his disposition.”
“That must be why I saw him yesterday talking to Abe Charley at the hardware store. You know, he’s got a secret admirer.”
Annawake can see Letty’s ears rise half an inch in her head. “Who are you thinking of?”
“There’s a woman staying over at Sugar and Roscoe’s place. She’s some kind of relative of Sugar’s.”
“Oh, honey, I know all about that. I was standing right over there in my own kitchen the day the woman called on my telephone and told Sugar she had to come here in a big old hurry. She’s got some secret business with the Nation. A big claim. I can’t tell you no more about it. I really oughtn’t to go into it even that much.”
Annawake smiles. “Well, she’s dying to meet Cash Stillwater, that’s what I heard.”
“We ought to tell him, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Annawake says. “He’d just be embarrassed, I imagine.”
“Probably. Far be it from me to go butt in. What’s she like, the cousin?”
“Alice Greer is her name. She’s nice-looking, divorced. She despises watching TV, that’s the main thing I know about her. She said she likes a man that will talk to her.”
“Well, goodness me, Cash will talk your ear plumb off. I ought to know that.”
“I gather she’s going to be in town for a while,” Annawake says. “They’ll run into each other one way or another, don’t you think?”
“Oh, sure,” Letty says. Her knife blade catches the sun and winks in Annawake’s eyes. “One way or another.”
Annawake decides not to ask again about the knife. She will drop off the plate and go, leaving Letty to her own devices.
24
Wildlife Management
THE MAN WHO COLLECTS TAYLOR’S rent has pulled up in front of their apartment, just as she was about to leave to walk Turtle to school. His truck is loaded with strange things: large, long-handled nets, for example, and shipping crates. He gets out of the truck and steps snappily up the walk before Taylor can pretend she didn’t see him.
“Hi,” she says. “I was going to put it in the mail tomorrow.”
“Well, they wanted me to get it from you today, if you don’t mind. Since it’s a week past due.”
“Okay. Let me go in and get my checkbook.”
The manager, a young man whose name she doesn’t know, wears broad, flat-paned glasses that reflect the light, giving him a glassy-fronted appearance, like a storefront. Taylor actually feels a little sorry for him: what a hateful job. He once told her, apologetically, that his real job is in City Park Maintenance; he had to take on managing the apartments for extra cash after his wife had a baby. He has pale, uncommanding fuzz on his cheeks and seems too young to have all these worries.
She has just paid to get the electricity back on, so she dates the check for the middle of next week, after payday, and tries to think of something to say to distract him from looking at it too closely. “What’s that on your truck?” she asks.
“Goose-catching stuff,” he replies.
She tucks her checkbook into the back pocket of her jeans and returns her hand to Turtle’s suspended grasp. “You catch geese?”
“We’re having the big goose roundup today.”
Taylor looks from his glassy face to the truck and back again, unsure of what one says in this exact situation.
“Canadian geese,” he adds, to shed more light.
“Is that, like, a sport?”
“No, it’s a citywide crisis,” he says, hitching his brown Parks and Recreation jacket on his shoulders with the air of a man who considers himself something of a goose expert. “We’ve got these Canadian geese that come down here to the lakeshore,” he explains knowledgeably, “while they’re supposed to be on their way to somewhere else. Stopping for a little break, supposed to be. But everybody goes down there