Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [111]
“Don’t ask me,” Jerry said cheerfully.
“I know. You’re from Roanoke, and you’re twelve.”
“Yes ma’am, that’s almost right. Twenty-four, actually. So,” he said, still rolling very slowly downhill. “A turnaround?”
“Oh, sorry. There’s really no place reasonable—your best bet here’s to just put it in reverse and back uphill real slow.”
Jerry followed her advice, though it was a tricky business to negotiate the road uphill and backward. “Dang,” he said repeatedly, driving with his body half turned around, frequently turning the wheels the wrong way. “This is like writing your name in a mirror.”
“You know what, Jerry? You could just park. I’ll walk up and get my list.”
“That’s OK, sit tight, I’ll drive you.”
Deanna felt uneasy approaching the cabin. He’d missed running into Eddie his first time up, apparently, but good luck didn’t strike twice. “No, really,” she said, “I don’t care to walk it. Stop here, it’ll just take me ten minutes.”
“You don’t care to? Or you wouldn’t mind?”
She looked at him, exasperated. “Would you please just let me out?”
He continued his slow backward progress, letting one tire run off the road for a second. “It’d take you an hour, and it’s raining cats and dogs. What’s wrong with you, you got the all-overs?”
“Whatch’ all doin’, Jurry, takin’ a college course somewheres in hillbilly English?”
“My mammaw says that, ‘You’ve got the all-overs.’ She’s from Grundy.”
“Fine. I’ve got the all-overs from sitting here waiting for you to rear-end a tree or plow over the cliff. Will you just let me walk?”
“No.”
She gave up. Fighting with Jerry to be allowed walk in the rain seemed ridiculous. She faced forward and watched the road wind out in front of them like a film running backward in slow motion. Could he really be that blind? Even if Eddie Bondo hadn’t been there, the cabin was full of him. His coffeepot on the stove, his pack under the bed. Come to think of it, there were very few signs. There was next to nothing. She relaxed.
“Hey, I met your boyfriend.”
“What!”
“He’s pretty cool. I never met anybody from Wyoming before.”
“What’d you do, interview him? He’s not my boyfriend, Jerry. He’s just a friend who hiked up to see me for a couple days. He’s packing out tomorrow.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. He’s packing out tomorrow.”
Well, Deanna thought, he might be, for all she knew. She shifted her legs; this jeep wasn’t built for tall people. Soldiers must have been short in World War II. “Why does everybody assume boyfriend when a girl and a guy are friends?”
Jerry touched his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “Maybe because of the twenty-five-pack of rubbers laying on the floor by the bed?”
She turned to face him, openmouthed. “Lying on the floor. Jesus, Jerry, that’s none of your business. He’s just a friend, OK? People see a single woman and think she’s got to have a man hidden somewhere.”
Damn him, she thought, why couldn’t he have been gone? Last month when Jerry brought the mail he was gone, usually he was gone, last week he’d stormed out and stayed away for four days, in the rain, just because she’d looked at him wrong. Of all the days for Eddie Disappearing Act Bondo to get domestic.
“OK,” Jerry said. “Whatever you say.”
Deanna stared ahead. “He probably thought you were my boyfriend.”
Jerry blushed.
“Scary thought, huh, Jur? Gives you the all-overs, don’t it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“OK, just pull in here by the cabin. I’ll run in and get my req list. And don’t you be telling the boss I’ve requisitioned extra food for a visitor, OK? Because I haven’t.”
“I’m not going to tell on you, Deanna. Government employees are allowed to have a life. At the office I think they’d all be glad if you were shacking up with some guy up here. They worry about you.”
“Oh, do they?”
“They think you should come down on furlough more often. You’ve got about a hundred vacation days saved up that you’ve never used.”
“How do you know I’ve never used them? Maybe