Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [108]
She mounted the hill slowly, amazed by the vision of lights opening out ahead of her. Hundreds of luminous fireflies were rising out of the grass while red and blue sparks rained down from the sky. All her sisters-in-law were busy feeding children or cleaning up, but the men were glued to their lawn chairs, hooting as the bombs went off. One after another the missiles rocketed crazily out over the pond or into the catalpa tree, setting dozens of small, hissing fires among the leaves.
“Aaaw,” the male voices cried in unison when one misfired sideways into the grass. Then came a solid, beery cheer when the next one shot straight up with a loud hiss, popping open above their heads, flinging its sparkling seeds to the wind.
Lusa bit her lip against the strange ache in her belly. This night was out of control completely, she thought, but what could you do? We’re only what we are: a woman cycling with the moon, and a tribe of men trying to have sex with the sky.
{16}
Predators
Hoof!” she cried aloud, jerking backward as if she’d touched electricity. That right there was a copperhead. Slowly she pulled her weed hook back from the briars she’d been clearing away from the edge of the trail. In one slow, steady motion she brought the tool’s handle up to rest on her shoulder while the rest of her body held perfectly still, catching up with its lost breath. Not all snakes did that to her anymore. She’d seen enough of them now to conquer the instinctive recoil; normally, when a slender-headed snake raced underfoot, a dark nose tapering to body in a streamlined profile, her mind instantly recognized a friend. But a triangular head made her go cold. Like a yield sign, she’d thought once before, only here in the woods it means stop. Here every bird and mammal knew that shape advertised a venomous status—the profile common to pit vipers in general and copperheads in particular. This one sunning itself at the trail’s edge was especially fat-bodied, marked in a diamond pattern like a long argyle sock in coppery hues of brownish pink and deep rose. They were beautiful colors, but they did not add up to an appealing creature.
Easy, stand your ground, her dad would sing in a low monotone. The first copperhead of her life they’d found in the barn, coiled under a hay bale they were fixing to carry outside for the cattle. She’d yelped and darted for the loft door that once, but never again. You can’t run away till you know where “away” is. You could be headed straight for his maw. Now she kept her boots planted as she watched this fellow coil lazily over himself, headed in several directions at once, in no hurry to choose a course. She breathed deeply and tried not to hate this snake. Doing his job, was all. Living out his life like the thousand other copperheads on this mountain that would never be seen by human eyes; they wanted only their one or two rodents a month, the living wage, a contribution to balance. Not one of them wanted to be stepped on or, heaven forbid, to have to sink its fangs into a monstrous, inedible mammal a hundred times its size—a waste of expensive toxin at best. She knew all this. You can stare at a thing and know that you personally have no place in its heart whatsoever, but keeping it out of yours is another matter.
Finally the wide-jawed head nudged out of the sunlight into the tall grass. The body elongated and followed in a sinuous line, flowing downhill. Shortly the head reappeared, tongue flickering, ten feet away, in another patch of sunlight. The fixed line of its mouth ran back from the blunt nose in a little upcurve, like an ironic smile. It was just an illusion created by the deep jowls with the fangs tucked inside, she knew, but it filled her with sudden emotion. The fear and anger and queasiness in her stomach made her feel weak, but there it was. She hated the thing for its smile.
“You stay there,” she said to its unblinking