Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [112]
“You live here,” he said firmly. “You work here. You take a vacation in civilization. TV, electricity, city streets, cars, honk honk. Remember?”
“Not my idea of civilized, pal.” She slammed the jeep door and headed her long-legged stride toward the cabin. She flung open the door with no heed for its rusty hinges and stood for a second inside the doorway, glowering at Eddie Bondo in his blue corduroy shirt, unbuttoned. He was reading, leaning so far back in the chair that it was balanced on its two hind legs like a dancing dog. She pointed a finger at him.
“As soon as he’s out of here, I’ve got a crow to pick with you.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows.
She snatched the requisition list off the desk and was out the door again. Through the kitchen window he could see her out there standing in the rain, talking a mile a minute to the kid in the hat. She could picture how she looked to him; her hood had slid off the back of her head, her hands flew as she spoke, and her braid hung out the bottom of her jacket, lashing at the backs of her knees like the tail of an animal setting off at a gallop. When she bent over to pull her long-handled scythe from behind the seat, the kid cowered as if he thought she might take his head off. Eddie Bondo would be smiling.
She hung up her tools on the outside of the cabin with a hard thump while the jeep turned out and puttered down the hill.
“What are you grinning at?” she demanded when she came back in. “I saw a copperhead a while ago, making a face just like that.”
“I’m grinning at you, girl. Just like that snake was.”
“Should I chop you into pieces like I did him?”
“Don’t lie, tough girl. You didn’t hurt a hair on his little copper head.”
She looked at him. “What, then?”
“Nothing. You’re just beautiful, that’s all. You look like some kind of a goddess when you’re mad.”
What did he think she was, some high school girl he could sweet-talk? Tight-lipped, she began to shove pots and pans around, putting away cans from the wooden crates Jerry had left on the table. She lugged the huge, mouseproof canisters out from under the pantry shelves and heaved in the sacks of beans and corn flour. Eddie Bondo couldn’t stop grinning.
“I’m not kidding,” she warned him. “I’m just about mad enough to throw you out, rain or no rain.”
He looked amused by this toothless threat. “What did I do now?”
She turned around to face him. “You couldn’t have gone out? You couldn’t just step into the outhouse or something for ten minutes when you heard the jeep?” She stood with her hands on her hips, amazed, as if confronted with a fabulously unruly child. “For once it didn’t occur to you to disappear?”
“No, it didn’t. May I ask why I’m supposed to hide?”
She went back to slamming cupboards. “Because you don’t exist, that’s why.”
“Interesting,” he said, looking at the backs of his hands.
“I mean here you don’t. You’re not a part of my life.” She unzipped her parka and came out of it like a snake shedding its skin, shaking out the full length of her miraculous hair. She hung the windbreaker on a peg, wrung out the end of her braid, sat down on the bed with a put-out sigh, and began unlacing her soaked boots. With one damp, wool-stockinged foot she kicked the long string of condoms back into the darkness under the bed. “Jerry was impressed with your supply of prophylactics,” she said.
“Oh, I see. I blew your cover. Deanna the Virgin She-wolf has her reputation to think about.”
She glared at him. “Would you put all four legs of that chair on the floor, please? I’ve only just got the one. I’d thank you for not breaking it.”
He obliged, with a thump. Closed his book, looked at her, waited.
“Rainy day got you down?” he asked finally. “PMS? What?”
The PMS joke made her wrathful. She had a mind to tell him the truth, that she was apparently menopausal. July’s early full moon had snuck past her with no ovulation, and she couldn’t even recall when she’d menstruated last. Her body was going cold on her. She tossed her boots at the door and stood up to pull off her soaked jeans. She didn