Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [185]
He piled the folded shirts into a stack as neatly as he could, put the balled-together socks on top, and carried the whole thing upstairs. He paused by the window at the landing, balancing the folded clothes on one hand and drawing the sheer curtain aside with the other.
Almighty stars, there he still was, like a wolf waiting for the lamb. She was not even anywhere in sight. What kind of nerve would it take to just stand there waiting for her like that, with his elbows up on the fence? Garnett squinted hard, trying to bring the details of the man’s appearance into focus. By gosh, he wasn’t even that good-looking. On the portly side, if the truth be told. Portly, going to lumpy. Garnett felt so irritated he dropped a pair of socks. Never mind, he’d pick them up later. He peered as far as he could into the shadows of Nannie’s backyard, but she didn’t seem to be around there, either.
Well, then, he thought suddenly, wildly—this was his chance. He could go over there this minute and give that fellow his walking papers. That garden fence was not ten feet from Garnett’s line, and he had as much right as anybody to chase off no-goods and vagrants from the neighborhood.
Garnett went on up to the bedroom first, to put his shirts in the bureau drawer. Yes, by gosh, he thought, he was going to do it. He briefly considered fetching his shotgun but then decided against it. He hadn’t fired a gun in many a year, since the days when he could claim a better eye and a steadier hand, though he was sure he could still shoot in a pinch, if he had to. The thought gave him courage. Maybe just holding the shotgun would steady him. He wouldn’t load it; there wasn’t any need. He would just carry it out there with him, to give him the air of a man who meant business.
He walked around to the closet on Ellen’s side of the bed, where he tended to keep things he never planned on needing again. The door had gone off its frame a little and scraped the floor as he dragged it open. He batted at the darkness like a blind man, trying to find the pull string to switch the light on, and nearly jumped out of his shirt when something big plummeted down off the shelf, bouncing off his shoulder as it fell. Ellen’s old round hatbox. It landed on its side, and out rolled Ellen’s navy-blue church hat on its brim, describing a small half-circle on the floor before sitting down flat beside the bed.
“Ellen,” he said aloud, staring at the hat.
The hat, of course, made no reply. It merely sat there, flat on its proper little brim, adorned with its little bunch of artificial cherries. If it could have folded its hands in its lap, it would have.
“Well, don’t scare me like that, woman. I’m doing the best I can.”
He grabbed his shotgun with both hands and hurried out of the bedroom, reaching around behind him to pull the door shut. She didn’t need to see this.
“Man, state your business,” Garnett called out from the clump of wild cherries in the fencerow, a hundred feet from where the fellow still stood. He gave no sign of having seen or heard Garnett—ha!—who still had it in him to be stealthy as a good deer hunter. The thought gave him some satisfaction, and perhaps a little daring.
He cleared his throat, since his last words had come out sounding a little wobbly, and called out again. “Hello there!”
Nothing.
“I said, hello. I’m Garnett Walker, I own this land here, and I’d like to know your business, if you don’t mind.”
The man didn’t speak, did not so much as turn his head. Garnett had never seen such a display of rudeness. Even the boy who drove the UPS truck would nod a reluctant hello when pressed.
Garnett squinted. This man looked so slack he could be dead. He didn’t look young, though. Young people, Garnett had observed, often gave the impression of having too little gumption to hold up their heads. But this fellow didn