Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [190]
Deanna smiled. She really would. And Nannie would stand by her story.
He’d left with his mind unchanged. If anything hurt Deanna, it was that she’d made no dent, had never altered his heart to make room in it for a coyote.
She’d gone out this morning before dawn for one of her restless walks and had come home at last to the startling absence she’d been waiting for. His pack, his hat, his gun, everything gone this time, she knew in an instant. He’d touched nothing of hers, had left the cabin exactly as it had been three months ago—yet it seemed it must have enlarged, to hold such significant emptiness.
It was several hours later when she opened her field notebook and found his note inside, her only memento of Eddie Bondo—or so he would always believe. A farewell with just enough sting to let her know she needn’t wait for his return. On the empty page she’d marked with this date, he had recorded his own observation:
It’s hard for a man to admit he has met his match. E.B.
She’d wondered for most of the day whether he meant her, Deanna, or the untouchable coyotes. Which one of them had been too much for Eddie Bondo?
Finally she decided it didn’t matter. She tore the page out of her book so she wouldn’t have to see it again, then ripped it into tiny pieces that she piled in a corner of her sock drawer for the mice to use when they lined their winter nests. Only then, closing the drawer, did she understand. In his young man’s way, he was offering up his leaving as a gift. Meeting his match was a considerable concession. He was leaving them both alone, Deanna and the coyotes. No harm would come to anything on this mountain because of him.
A fierce crack of lightning shot her eyes through with a momentary electric blindness. “Oh God, oh God,” she sang, withdrawing further into her chair, blinking the rain-blurred landscape back into focus. That was close. That was fifty feet away, or less. She could smell its aftermath in the ionized air. Now it was time to pray that there would be something left of this mountain after the storm passed over. She turned the radio back on and listened. It wasn’t music now; it was the names of counties being repeated over and over. They’d gone to full-time emergency mode, listing counties, all of which she knew well. Franklin, Zebulon. The eye of the storm was here. She flipped the radio over and eviscerated it, slipping the batteries into her pocket. Better to save them for her flashlight. She would have laughed at herself if she could. If ever there was a piece of news she did not need a radio to receive, this was it. The eye of the storm was here.
She got up and tried to look through the sheet of water that flowed over the eave like a translucent shower curtain. She walked to the end of the porch and found she could see better out the gable end, where less water came off the roof. The rain seemed a little less dense now. An hour ago the air had been so solidly full of water it looked as if fish could jump the stream banks and swim into the treetops. She’d never seen rain like that. There was less of it now, but an ominous wind was rising. While she watched, in the space of just a few minutes, the rain died back drastically and the lightning seemed to have moved past the ridge top, but a wind came howling like the cold breath of some approaching beast. It blew the rain horizontal, straight into her face. Now frightened to her bones, she went inside and put on her boots and raincoat, and walked a few more circles around the room while she was at it. Every instinct told her to make a run for it, but there was nowhere to go. She felt vulnerable and trapped in the cabin. Standing on the porch seemed a little better, but once outside again, she was shocked by a wind that blew her backward against the cabin wall so hard she felt the humps of its logs against her back. The