Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [110]
“What’d you do with my stuff, just plunk it down on the porch stoop?”
“Nah, I put it inside. With rain coming. Your mail’s on the table with the food boxes. I put your bottled gas for your stove on the porch.”
She studied him for some sign of what he’d discovered at the cabin. “You run into any trouble?” she asked cautiously.
“What, you mean that door? I’d say so—those hinges are ninety percent rust. You got any WD-40, or should I bring you up some next month?”
That was all he’d run into? Trouble getting the door open? She watched his face. “I got oil,” she said slowly. “I do have a list for you, though, for next month. I need some lumber to patch up a bridge, and I’ve got a list of books I need.”
Jerry shifted his hat and scratched his forehead. “Man alive, more books. Don’t you ever want, like, a TV?”
“A TV that runs on batteries? Don’t tell me they make such a thing. I don’t even turn on the radio I’ve got.”
“You don’t listen to the radio? Man. The President could get shot or something and you wouldn’t know it for a month.”
She dropped her left foot and hiked up her right to retie her other bootlace. “Tell me something, Jerry. If the President got shot this afternoon, what would you do tomorrow that’d be any different from what you’d do if he hadn’t?”
Jerry considered the question. “Nothing whatsoever, except probably watch a bunch of TV. On CNN, see, they’d tell you every fifteen minutes that he was still dead.”
“Why I like my life, Jerry. I watch birds. They do something different every fifteen minutes.”
“Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive up and get your req list. I promise I won’t tell you any news from the world.”
“All right.” She walked around behind the boxy metal truck to climb in on the passenger’s side, tossing her weed hook onto the floor behind the seats with a loud clang. “What were you going to do if you didn’t run into me, just repeat last month’s requisition?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” The jeep lurched forward in pulses as Jerry lifted his foot off the brake. The road was extremely steep.
“That’s true, it wouldn’t,” she agreed. “I’m still eating the rice you doubled up on me in November.” What had he seen in the cabin? She felt embarrassed and raw, as if Jerry had seen her naked. She studied him for signs of his thoughts while receiving whiplash in small doses as the jeep pitched downhill. Jerry seemed like his usual self—a kid, in other words. She resisted telling him to gear down and use the transmission instead of the brake. Who was she to backseat-drive? She hadn’t driven a car in two years.
He squinted at the single-lane track. The shoulder dropped off steeply to the left, while the mountain rose straight up to the right. “I never had to backtrack on this road before. Is there someplace wide enough to turn around?”
“Not for about a mile and a half. Down at that farm’s the first place it widens out.” She shifted in her seat. “Who owns that place at the bottom of the hollow? I guess you wouldn’t know.”
“I do, though; it’s the Widener place. Cole Widener. Forest Service had to get a right-of-way through him when we rehabbed this cabin. Before you came.”
She looked off to the side, thinking about it. “Wideners,” she said, nodding slowly. “They’ve got some kind of timber, let me tell you. There’s some virgin stuff in there, I swear, right back up against our border. Every year I’m scared to death they’ll discover what they’ve got and log it. It’d cut the heart out of some wonderful habitat, all the way up this side of the mountain.”
“Hey, he died, I heard. Truck blew two tires on the same side at once and he hit a bridge piling or something. On Seventy-seven, going over the mountain.”
“Jerry, no news. You promised.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“That’s sad, though. I wonder who that farm will go to now. They’ll log it, I bet anything.”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“Widener. What was his first name? You said it a minute ago.”
“Cole, like Old King Cole. Except I heard he was pretty young.”
“Cole. I’m trying to think if I knew him. I went to school with Wideners, but they were girls.” Not a very friendly