Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [142]
“It’s not about fear,” he said.
“Can you feature the damage those men will do to the state of Arizona in just one weekend, the plague of mice and grasshoppers they’ll cause? If you can’t feel bad for a hundred mother-years left to rot in a pile, think of the damn rats.”
He didn’t respond. She lifted the bird with care, cradled it against her forearms, and carried it over to the empty canister, which seemed large enough but not quite the right shape. She stood looking down into it for a minute and decided to stand the bird more or less on its head—or rather, the region of its former head. She shifted the carcass around until its drumsticks stuck up satisfactorily, but the joy of this celebration had ebbed. “Here,” she said, “help me get this on the fire.”
Between them they lifted the heavy pot and lowered it down into the center of the fire. She poured in a little water from the kettle and settled the lid onto the pot, then washed her hands with the rest of the water. There was a faint chill in the evening air, enough that the cold water stung her hands. But then her hands and feet were always cold, lately. She held her palms up to the fire’s warmth. Almost immediately the pot began to hiss with satisfactory little crackles, the age-old conversation of steam and fat. Deanna sat down on the ground on the opposite side of the fire pit from Eddie, facing him through the flames. He poked at the fire a little more, seeming restless. He was squatting on his heels, not sitting.
“It’s not,” he finally said.
“What’s not what?”
“Hunting predators. It’s not about fear.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her arms around them, holding her elbows in her palms. “Then what’s it about? Do tell. I’m ready to be enlightened.”
He shook his head, got up to collect two more logs from the woodpile, then shook his head again. “You can’t be crying over every single brown-eyed life in the world.”
“I already told you, that’s not my religion. I grew up on a farm. I’ve helped gut about any animal you can name, and I’ve watched enough harvests to know that cutting a wheat field amounts to more decapitated bunnies under the combine than you’d believe.”
She stopped speaking when her memory lodged on an old vision from childhood: a raccoon she found just after the hay mower ran it over. She could still see the matted gray fur, the gleaming jawbone and shock of scattered teeth so much like her own, the dark blood soaking into the ground all on one side, like a shadow of this creature’s final, frightened posture. She could never explain to Eddie how it was, the undercurrent of tragedy that went with farming. And the hallelujahs of it, too: the straight, abundant rows, the corn tassels raised up like children who all knew the answer. The calves born slick and clean into their leggy black-and-white perfection. Life and death always right there in your line of sight. Most people lived so far from it, they thought you could just choose, carnivore or vegetarian, without knowing that the chemicals on grain and cotton killed far more butterflies and bees and bluebirds and whippoorwills than the mortal cost of a steak or a leather jacket. Just clearing the land to grow soybeans and corn had killed about everything on half the world. Every cup of coffee equaled one dead songbird in the jungle somewhere, she’d read.
He was watching her, waiting for whatever was inside to come out, and she did the best she could. “Even if you never touch meat, you’re costing something its blood,” she said. “Don’t patronize me. I know that. Living takes life.”
A fierce hiss came from inside the pot, inspiring her to listen for a minute to this turkey’s last lament.
“Good, we agree on that,” he said. “Living takes life.”
“But it can be thoughtful. A little bit humble about the necessity, maybe. You can consider the costs of your various choices. Or you can blow big holes in the world for no better reason than simple fear.”
He held her eye. “I’m not afraid of a coyote.”
“Then leave it…the hell…alone.”
They glared at each