Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [39]
It had started back in April when he left this steep weed patch to the county’s boys for spraying, since it was a county right-of-way. The first of May he’d done the same again. Both times she’d snuck out here in the middle of the night before road-spraying day, working in darkness like the witch she was, to move her sign over onto Garnett. Now it was the second of June, and the spray truck must be due again soon. How could she always know when it was coming? Was that witchcraft, too? Most people around here couldn’t even predict when their own cows were going to calve, let alone prophesy the work habits of a bunch of county-employed teenage hoodlums wearing earplugs, jewelry, and oversized trousers.
In previous years, he had talked to her. He’d had the patience of Job, informing her it was her duty to keep her NO SPRAY ZONE, if she insisted on having such a thing, inside of her own legal property boundaries. He had pointed dramatically at their line fence and stated (for Garnett was a reader), “Miss Rawley, as the poet said, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”
She would reply, “Oh, people just adore fences, but Nature doesn’t give a hoot.” She claimed the wind caused the weed killer on his side to drift over into her orchards.
He’d explained it to her scientifically. “One application of herbicide on my bank will not cause your apple trees or anybody else’s to drop off all their leaves.”
“Not to drop their leaves, no,” she’d admitted. “But what if some inspector came tomorrow to spot-check for chemicals on my apples? I’d lose my certification.”
(Garnett paused, again, to untangle the sleeve of his work shirt from a briar. His heart was pounding from the effort of bushwhacking through this godforsaken mess.)
Her certification! Nannie Rawley was proud to tell the world she’d been the first organic grower to be certified in Zebulon County, and she was still the loudest one. Fifteen years ago he’d assumed it was a nonsense that would pass, along with rock music and hydroponic tobacco. But that was not to be. Nannie Rawley had declared war not only on the county’s Two-Four-D but also on the Sevin dust and other insecticides Garnett was bound and obligated to put on his own seedling trees to keep them from being swallowed whole by the army of Japanese beetles camped out on Nannie Rawley’s unsprayed pastures. There was no end to her ignorance or her zeal. She was the sworn friend and protector of all creatures great and small, right down to the ticks, fleas, and corn maggots, evidently. (All but goats, which she hated and feared due to a childhood “incident.”) But could she really be such a fool as to fear the certification men, coming around to spot-check her apples? That would be along the lines of the Catholics coming to check up on the morals of their pope. The organic-certification men probably called up Nannie Rawley for advice.
He paused again to catch his breath. In spite of the cool day he felt dark sweat spreading down his shirt from the armpits like a pair of a fish’s gills. His arms ached from thrashing the sign, and he felt a queer heaviness in his left leg. He couldn’t see his feet but could feel that his trousers were soaked up to the knees from all the dampness down in the weeds. It was practically a swamp. The briars had