Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [87]
Sugar slows her pace even more as they head uphill, and sighs a little. “I loved that State Fair. Seems like ever time we went and sat in them bleachers, there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky.”
“They had two fairs. First the State Fair, and after that the Black State Fair.”
“Really? I never knew it was divided up.”
Alice recalls that she used to find her beloved cousin sometimes naïve and in need of protection. “We only went to the second one. We liked it best, there was more music to it.”
“There was. And the church floats.”
“People dressed to beat the band, with hats and all. I liked all the hats.”
“Remember those children that dressed like angels?”
Alice thinks. “No. I remember women dressed like bluebirds, in blue high-heeled oxfords. And I remember when they’d turn on those streetlights that were like light bulbs under fluted pie plates, and we’d dance in the street.”
“Don’t you remember those children? They’d sing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ I just loved that.”
Sugar and Alice pass by a dwelling that looks slightly more prosperous than most, though less interesting: a yellow brick rectangle set in a huge, flat lawn with nothing planted in it. A riding mower preens in the carport. “That’s Les and June Courcy’s, they’re white,” Sugar says, with neither favor nor disapproval, as if she’d simply said, “There goes a white rooster across the road.” The two women walk on.
The land is steep. Everywhere Alice looks she sees long, dark loaves of hill cut with forested hollows. Around the houses, almost everyone has a goat to keep down the underbrush, although once in a while a front yard will sport an old orange mower alongside the satellite dish.
As they crest the hill, they’re faced suddenly with a long mowed field surrounded by white fences, exactly like the horse farms Alice has seen in Kentucky. A brass sign on the white gate says HIDEAWAY FARMS. The shining asphalt drive trails proudly up the knoll to a stone house trimmed in white. The brass knocker on the front door is huge, as if to suggest you ought to be a fairly good-sized person to bother those within. Alice asks, “What’s that place, racehorses?”
“Ostriches,” Sugar replies.
Alice laughs at her cousin’s sense of humor. “They get a good price for the meat?” she asks.
“No, the feathers. For ladies hats and things.”
Alice stares, but Sugar is not smiling. In fact, she looks irritated. “Ostriches?” Alice asks. “An ostrich farm?”
“That’s what I’m a-telling you.”
“Who ever heard of the like?”
“I never did,” Sugar admits, “before this fellow name of Green come in from New Mexico or New Hampshire, one of the newer states, and says you can get rich on raising ostriches. He’s been trying to get the state government in on it. The thing is, though, you have to be rich to start with, to raise ostriches. They cost you around twenty thousand dollar for a pair, just to set up housekeeping.”
“Lord,” Alice states. “Every feather on their hide must be worth a thousand.”
“That’s about it. The fellow was trying to sell the eggs for a hundred dollar, telling people around here they could hatch them out and get into the business that way.” Sugar starts to giggle. She holds her fist in front of her mouth. “Roscoe’s friend Cash, that just moved back here from Wyoming, told the man he’d buy one if Mr. Green would promise to set on it himself.”
Alice feels intensely curious. She has never seen an ostrich, and combs the ridge for the sight of sassy tail feathers and a long pink neck, but she sees only velvet grass. “I don’t reckon they’re out today,” she says at last, disappointed.
“Oh, you see them, some days,” Sugar insists. “The kids like to pester them to pieces, to try and get them to run. Or spit, I heard they’ll spit if they’re mad. I don’t know that a bird could spit, but they’re an odd bird. They don’t bury their heads, that’s just