Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [187]
“I thought she’d gone to live up in the mountains here somewhere, working for the government.”
“She did. She’s been up there in a cabin living all by herself for two years. But now she’s taking a leave from her job and coming back down. And here’s the part you have to sit down for: she’s going to have a baby.”
“Well, that is a shock.” He squinted up toward the mountains. “How did that happen, do you think?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I don’t care if the daddy’s a mountain lion, I’m going to have a grandbaby!”
Garnett shook his head, clucking his tongue. Nannie looked like the cat that’d swallowed the canary. Women and grandbabies, there was nothing on this earth to beat it. Like Ellen fretting on her deathbed over that child of Shel’s. And now there were two of them, a boy and the girl. That Lexington gal with her goats had called him up on the telephone, plumb out of the blue, and announced that she wanted to bring those kids over to see his farm. They wanted to see the chestnut trees. His trees.
“I’ve got grandchildren, too,” he told Nannie.
“You always did,” she said. “You’re just too high-handed to bother learning their names.”
“The girl’s name is Crystal, and the boy’s Lowell. They’re coming over here on Saturday.” How Garnett had plucked those names from the mossy crevices of his memory, even he would never know. “I was thinking I might be able to teach them how to bag flowers and make crosses,” he added. “On my chestnut trees. To help me keep it all going.”
To his great satisfaction, Nannie looked stunned. “How did that happen?” she asked finally.
“Well, I don’t think a mountain lion had much to do with it.”
She stood looking at Garnett with her mouth open. If she wasn’t careful, he thought, she’d get a bee in there. Then her eye caught on something behind him, and she frowned. “What’s that over yonder leaning on the tree in the fencerow?”
He turned and looked. “Oh. That’s my shotgun.”
“I see. And might I ask what it’s doing over there?”
Garnett studied it. “Not very much. Just leaning up against the tree, it looks to me like.”
“All right, how did it get there, then?”
“It came out to have words with this fellow who’s been leaning up against your fence for the last couple of days.”
She laughed. “Oh, this is Buddy. I don’t believe you’ve met.”
“Well, Buddy gave us a little bit of a worry.”
She narrowed her eyes at Garnett. “Is that right?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And you came over to make sure I was all right, is that what you’re telling me? You came over here with your shotgun to protect me from my scarecrow?”
“I had to,” Garnett said, spreading his hands, throwing himself on her mercy. “I didn’t care for the way Buddy was looking at you in your short pants.”
Now Nannie looked more than stunned; she looked lightning-struck. She stared at him until a smile broke out and spread over her face like the sun coming out after a storm. She walked to him with her arms out like a sleepwalker’s, put those arms around his waist, and hugged him tightly with her head resting against his chest. It took him a minute and a half before he thought to put his arms around her shoulders and keep them there. He felt as stiff as old Buddy—as if he, too, had nothing inside his shirt and pants but newspaper and straw. But then, by and by, his limbs relaxed. And she just stayed there like a calm little bird inside the circle of his arms. It was astonishing. Holding her this way felt like a hard day’s rest. It felt like the main thing he’d been needing to do.
“Mr. Walker. Garnett. Will wonders never cease,” she said once again, and to be certain they did not, Garnett held her there. She turned her face up and looked at him. “And here I’m finally going to have a grandbaby in my house, and you’re going to have two. You’ve always got to have the last word, don’t you?”
“Now, Nannie. You’re a difficult woman.”
She laid the side of her face against his frail old heart, where the pink shell of her ear could capture whatever song it had left.
“Garnett. You’re a sanctimonious old fart.”
{29}
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