Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [156]
“Nineteen thousand birds that eat them.”
“So? Who needs birds?”
“I do. You do.” She so often wondered whether Crys was really heartless or only trying to be. “Not to mention, the rain would run straight down the mountain and take all the topsoil off my fields. The creek would be pure mud. This place would be a dead place.”
Crys shrugged. “Trees grow back.”
“That’s what you think. This forest took hundreds of years to get like this.”
“Like what?”
“Just how it is, a whole complicated thing with parts that all need each other, like a living body. It’s not just trees; it’s different kinds of trees, all different sizes, in the right proportions. Every animal needs its own special plant to live on. And certain plants will only grow next to certain other kinds, did you know that?”
“Sang only grows under a sugar maple tree.”
“What does? Ginseng? Where’d you learn that?”
She shrugged again. “Uncle Joel.”
“So he’s a sang digger, is he?”
She nodded. “Him and his friends like to go up ’air on the mountain and dig it up. There’s a lady up ’air hollers at ’em for it, too. You’re not supposed to dig it up. He says she’s prolly fixing to shoot his hide if she catches him one more time.”
Lusa looked up the mountain. “Some lady lives up there? Are you sure? That’s just supposed to be Forest Service land, above this farm.”
“Ask Uncle Joel. He’ll tell you. He says she’s a gol-dang wild woman.”
“I’ll bet. I think I’d like to meet her.” Lusa poked an inchworm out of the grass and let it make its way up her finger. “What does Uncle Joel say about me? Is he the one who thinks I should cut down my trees?” She felt only slightly guilty about exploiting this new source of inside information.
“No. He’s the one says you’ve gone plumb goat-crazy.”
“Him and everybody else. They’re all just dying to know why, aren’t they?”
Crys shrugged and looked over at Lusa, a little guarded. But she nodded. “I guess you wouldn’t tell, though.”
“I’d tell you,” Lusa said quietly. She would love to give this child a gift that mattered. Her confidence, that would be something.
Her face lit up. “You would?”
“Only if it was just you, not Uncle Joel or anybody else. You couldn’t tell them no matter what. Can you keep a secret, cross your heart?”
With earnest solemnity, Crys drew a cross on her chest.
“OK, here it is. I’ve got this cousin in New York City, he’s a butcher, and we’ve made a deal. If I can get all those goats up there on the hill to have babies a month before New Year’s, he’ll pay me so much money for them your uncle Joel will keel over.”
The child’s eyes grew wide. “You’ll be rich?”
Lusa grinned and hung her head. “No, not really. But I’ll be able to pay the guy who’s redoing all the plumbing in the house, and that friend of your uncle Rickie’s who’s fixing the barn right now.”
“Clivus Morton?” Crys made an awful face. “He’s got B.O.”
Lusa tried not to laugh. “Well, that’s no reason not to pay him, is it? If so, I just wasted nine hundred dollars, because I wrote him a check this morning.”
Crys seemed astonished by this figure. “Shit fire. I guess now he’s rich.”
“It takes a bunch of money to keep a farm in one piece. Sometimes you don’t make as much in a year as you have to pay out. That’s why people moan and groan about farming. Just in case you were wondering.”
“What if your goats don’t do that—have their babies?”
“I’ll still have to pay Clivus Morton a whole bunch more money when he’s finished. Whether or not he takes a bath.” Lusa lay down on her back in the damp grass, crossed her arms behind her head, and sighed. “It’s risky. But the goats are the only way I could think of this year to make some money off a little patch of briar scrub and keep the farm in one piece.” She glanced at Crys, who didn’t seem to be listening, though it was hard to tell. “So that’s what I’m doing with the goats. Just trying to keep my little piece of heaven from going to hail.”
“Uncle Joel said you was throwing the place away.”
“He’s welcome to make a suggestion if he has a better idea—he and my vegetarian friends Hal and Arlie in Lexington,