Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [125]
“I understand,” she said, crossing her arms and looking down at all the bruised apples strewn through the grass. She kicked at one with the rubber toe of her small white canvas shoe. “I just hate to see you forget about him.”
Forget? Garnett felt a sting of salt in his eye and turned his head away, looking for something to look at. What a useless, pathetic business, the human tear duct! His cloudy vision settled on a square white wooden box at the edge of her garden. He puzzled over it for a minute and then remembered that Nannie kept beehives. She was in thrall of bees, as of so many other things. It was true what she’d said: she was a surprisingly happy woman most of the time. And he was often quite glum.
“We had that boy too late in life,” he confessed, keeping his back to her. “We were like Abraham and Sarah. At first we couldn’t believe our luck, but a baby worried us to death, and a teenager plain bewildered us. Sometimes I wonder what Abraham and Sarah would have done if they’d had their son in the day of hot rods and beer.”
He was startled by her hand, laid gently on his upper arm for just a few seconds. She had surprised him by coming up on him that way, from behind. After she took her hand away he could still feel its pressure there, as if his skin were somehow changed underneath the cloth of his shirt.
“There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fence line,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
They stood side by side with their arms crossed, looking over toward her blossoming garden and his field of young chestnuts behind it. At such close range, standing quiet this way, Nannie lacked her usual force. She just seemed small—the crown of her head barely came up to his shoulder. Goodness, we are just a pair of old folks, he thought. Two old folks with our arms folded over our shirtfronts and our sorry eyes looking for heaven.
“We’ve both had our griefs to bear, Miss Rawley. You and I.”
“We have. What worse grief can there be than to be old without young ones to treasure, coming up after you?”
He cast an eye out over his field of robust young chestnuts yearning for their future. But the pain was so great, he could not look that way for long.
An indigo bunting let out a loud, cheerful song from the fencepost, and the strange buzzing sound also rose in the clear air. Why, that was her bees, Garnett realized. A world of busy bees doing their work in field and orchard. Not his hearing aid.
When he felt sure most of the emotions had safely passed over, Garnett cleared his throat. “The reason I came down here, like I said, is because one of your trees has come down on my property. Up in the back.” He nodded toward the rise of the mountain.
“Oh, up there across the creek?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not surprised. There’s trees galore up there threatening to come down. I won’t miss it much. What kind was it?”
“An oak.”
“Well, that’s sad. One less oak in the world.”
“It’s still in the world,” he pointed out. “On my property.”
“Give it a year,” she said. “The carpenter ants and bark beetles will take it on back to good dirt.”
“I was thinking of something more expeditious,” he said. “Such as Oda Black’s boy and a chain saw.”
She looked at him. “Why on earth? What harm is that tree doing you up there in the woods? For heaven’s sakes. The raccoons can use it for a bridge. The salamanders will adore living under it while it rots. The woodpeckers will have a heyday.”
“It looks unsightly.”
She sighed, overdramatically in Garnett’s opinion. “All right,” she said, “call Oda’s boy if you want. I expect you’ll want me to pay half.”
“Half would be fair.”
“The firewood’s mine, though,” she said. “All.”
“It’s on my land. It’s my firewood.”
“My oak!”
“Well, now. A minute ago you wanted it to rot into topsoil. Now you want the firewood. You don’t seem to know what you want.”
She let out a little explosion of air through her nose. “You are a sanctimonious old fart,” she announced, before stooping to pick up her basket of June Transparents and tromping off toward her barn. Garnett watched