Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [14]
Cole was nearly a quarter of a mile away across the bottom field, tilling the ground where they’d soon set tobacco. It seemed unbelievable that his disturbance of the branch could release a burst of scent that would reach her here at the house, but the breeze was gentle and coming from exactly the right direction. People in Appalachia insisted that the mountains breathed, and it was true: the steep hollow behind the farmhouse took up one long, slow inhalation every morning and let it back down through their open windows and across the fields throughout evening—just one full, deep breath each day. When Lusa first visited Cole here she’d listened to talk of mountains breathing with a tolerant smile. She had some respect for the poetry of country people’s language, if not for the veracity of their perceptions: mountains breathe, and a snake won’t die till the sun goes down, even if you chop off its head. If a snapping turtle gets hold of you, he won’t let go till it thunders. But when she married Cole and moved her life into this house, the inhalations of Zebulon Mountain touched her face all morning, and finally she understood. She learned to tell time with her skin, as morning turned to afternoon and the mountain’s breath began to bear gently on the back of her neck. By early evening it was insistent as a lover’s sigh, sweetened by the damp woods, cooling her nape and shoulders whenever she paused her work in the kitchen to lift her sweat-damp curls off her neck. She had come to think of Zebulon as another man in her life, larger and steadier than any other companion she had known.
But now there was her husband across the field, breaking off the honeysuckle branch to bring back to her. She was sure of it, for he’d tucked it between his thigh and the padded seat of the Kubota. Its cloud of white flowers trembled as he bounced across the plowed field, steering the tractor with both hands. His work on the lower side was nearly done. When he returned to the house for his late-morning coffee and “dinner,” as she was learning to call the midday meal, she would put the honeysuckle branch in water. Maybe they could talk then; maybe she would put soup and bread on the table and eat her bitter words from earlier this morning. They argued nearly every day, but today had already been one of their worst. This morning at breakfast she’d nearly made up her mind to leave. This morning, he had wanted her to. They had used all the worst words they knew. She closed her eyes now and inhaled. She could have just let him laugh, instead, at her fondness for this weedy vine that farmers hated to see in their fencerows.
This week’s gardening column in the paper was devoted to the elimination of honeysuckle. That had been the jumping-off point for their argument:
“‘Be vigilant! The project will require repeated applications of a stout chemical defoliant,’” she’d read aloud in her version of a stupid, exaggerated mountain burr that she knew would annoy Cole. But how could she help herself? It was the county Extension agent who wrote this awful column called “Gardening in Eden,” whose main concern, week after week, was with murdering things. It stirred up her impatience with these people who seemed determined to exterminate every living thing in sight. Grubbing out wild roses, shooting blue jays out of cherry trees, knocking phoebe nests out of the porch eaves to keep the fledglings from messing on the stairs: these were the pastimes of Zebulon County, reliable as the rituals of spring cleaning.
And he had said, “If you’re making fun of Zebulon County, you’re making fun of me, Lusa.”
“This I need to be told?” she’d snapped. As if, sitting in this kitchen where she felt