Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [164]
Garnett was so hot under the collar he could scarcely breathe. He had never sworn in front of a woman in his life, not since grammar school, anyway, but this was a near occasion. She was asking for it. Nannie Rawley needed a willow switch, was what she needed. If they’d both been sixty-five years younger, he’d have turned her over his knee. Garnett swore a silent oath, turned on his heel, and walked away without so much as a word. For an occasion like this, there just weren’t any words that would do.
An hour and ten minutes later, Garnett returned to Nannie’s backyard with one asphalt shingle in his hand. She was carrying a bushel of Gravensteins to her pickup truck, starting to load up for the Amish market tomorrow, and was so startled to see Garnett Walker that she stumbled and almost dropped her basket.
He held up the shingle, showing her the peculiar heart-shaped profile that matched the ones on her roof, and then he threw it at her feet. It lay there in the grass next to a puddle, this thing she needed, like a valentine. A bright crowd of butterflies rose from the puddle in trembling applause.
“There are two hundred of those in my garage. You can have them all.”
She looked from the shingle to Garnett Walker and back to the shingle. “Lord have mercy,” she said quietly. “A miracle.”
{24}
Moth Love
It was nearly noon on a Sunday when Jewel came up to collect the children. Lusa was in the garden picking green beans when she saw her coming up across the yard, moving slowly. “Honey, it’s the Lord’s day of rest,” Jewel called out when she reached the gate. “You shouldn’t be working this hard.”
“What was God thinking, then, when he made green beans and August?” Lusa replied, trusting that her sister-in-law wasn’t really scolding her for sacrilege. Jewel looked pale but jaunty in a little blue cloche someone had crocheted for her. She hadn’t ever bothered with a wig but just wore scarves and hats. “Come on through the rabbit fence,” Lusa called to her. “The gate just has a wire around the top.”
Jewel fiddled with the chicken wire and found her way in. “Lord, this is pretty,” she remarked. Lusa sat back on her heels, feeling proud. Red and yellow peppers glowed like ornaments on their dark bushes, and the glossy purple eggplants had the stately look of expensive gifts. Even the onions were putting up pink globes of flower. During all the years of childhood she’d spent sprouting seeds in pots on a patio, she’d been dreaming of this.
“You must be a slave to this garden,” Jewel said.
“Just about. Look at this.” She gestured at the long row of un-picked beans. “I’ve done forty quarts of beans already, and I’ve still got two more rows to go.”
“You’ll be glad, though. Come next February.”
“That’s the truth. Between this and my chickens, I may not have to go to Kroger’s again till next summer. I’ve got tomatoes put up, spaghetti sauce—maybe twenty quarts—and I’m freezing broccoli, cauliflower, you name it. Tons of corn. Your kids ate their own weight each in corn last night, by the way.”
Jewel smiled. “They would. Lowell will even eat roasting ears, and he is Mister Picky. They didn’t put much dent in your broccoli, though, did they?”
“No.”
“You could quit on the green beans right now,” Jewel said. “If you’ve got forty quarts, you could just stop picking and say, ‘Well, sir, I’m done.’ It’s not against the law.”
“I could,” Lusa said. “But Cole planted these beans. He put in most of this. Remember how it got warm early, in May? I feel like as long as I’m up here picking stuff, he’s still giving me presents. I hate to think of the fall, when I’ll