Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [31]
She waited a little longer, heard nothing. Clicked on her light: only darkness at first. Then suddenly two small lights appeared, bright retinal glints—not the fierce red of a human eye, but greenish gold. Not human, not raccoon. Coyote.
{5}
Moth Love
The spiraling flights of moths appear haphazard only because the mechanisms of olfactory tracking are so different from our own. Using binocular vision, we judge the location of an object by comparing the images from two eyes and tracking directly toward the stimulus. But for species relying on the sense of smell, the organism compares points in space, moves in the direction of the greater concentration, then compares two more points successively, moving in zigzags toward the source. Using olfactory navigation the moth detects currents of scent in the air and, by small increments, discovers how to move upstream.
It was Lusa’s nephews running a zigzag course through the metal folding chairs that had set her to ruminating on that passage she’d read on moth navigation, and then roused her suddenly to wonder: When was that, a hundred years ago? Day before yesterday? Reading in bed secretly, hurrying to finish a page or a chapter before Cole got back: there would be no more of that. Now she could read wherever she pleased, read until she finished the book if that was what she felt like. Lusa tried to make this strange dream feel true but couldn’t quite connect herself with the person she found herself sitting inside of here, a woman in a borrowed black dress that hung loose in the bosom. This funeral parlor was a place she’d never seen on the inside or even imagined, especially not for the occasion of her husband’s wake. The rooms were painted a stale toothpaste green, and the fancy, dark-painted molding around the doors was actually molded plastic, textured with artificial grain to look like wood. What an odd thing, Lusa thought, to buy and install plastic woodwork in this town surrounded on every side by forests.
Beyond the doorway she could hear the people who waited in line, filling the long, narrow hallway like a glass pipette or medicine dropper that kept dispensing solemn visitors into the room, one stricken face at a time. Visitors just now arriving for the viewing would have to wait in line for an hour or more, Mary Edna had just announced (seeming pleased) after going out for reconnaissance. The line was out the door now that it was evening and people were getting off work. Most came in their work clothes, the clean jeans they’d worn underneath their milking overalls if need be; suits and ties would be saved for the funeral tomorrow. Tonight was a friendlier business, their chance to look at Cole and say their private good-byes. There was hardly a soul in the valley who had not turned out, it seemed. Cole was very well loved—Lusa had known this, of course. And also there was the handiwork of the undertaker to be admired, given the accident.
Lusa hadn’t had to wait in the line. She was the end of the line, sitting near the head of the casket where people could come over and pay their respects if they wanted to, though most of them knew her only by name and hearsay and couldn’t manage much more than a stiff little nod. She knew they were sorry, though. To the rest of Cole’s family they were pouring out such a stream of condolences that Lusa feared she might drown in the backwash. She sat on a metal chair flanked by sisters-in-law—Hannie-Mavis and Mary Edna at the moment. When Mary Edna went out front to hold court she was replaced by Jewel or Lois or Emaline, interchangeable blocks in a solid, black-clad wall. Maybe not precisely interchangeable.