Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [5]
He took off his hat, daunted by her sudden willingness to speak up. “I worship worms and termites.”
She stared at him. “Are you trying to make me mad? Because I don’t talk to people all that often. I’ve kind of forgotten how to read the signs.”
“Right there I was being what you call a pain in the ass.” He folded his cloth hunter’s hat in half and stuck it through a loop in his pack. “And before that I was being nosy. I apologize.”
She shrugged. “It’s no big secret, you can ask. It’s my job; the government pays me to do this, if you can believe it. It doesn’t pay much, but I’m not complaining.”
“To do what, run off troublemakers like me?”
She smiled. “Yeah, a fair share of that. And trail maintenance, and in August if it gets bad dry they make me sit in a fire tower, but mostly I’m here watching the woods. That’s the main thing I do.”
He glanced up into the hemlock. “Keeping an eye on paradise. Tough life.”
“Yep. Somebody’s got to do it.”
He nailed her then, aimed his smile straight into her. All his previous grins had just been warming up for this one. “You must have some kind of a brain, lady. To get yourself hired in this place of business.”
“Well. Brain, I don’t know. It takes a certain kind of person. You’ve got to appreciate the company.”
“You don’t get a lot a visitors?”
“Not human ones. I did have a bear in my cabin back in February.”
“He stay with you the whole month?”
She laughed, and the sound of it surprised her. How long since she’d laughed aloud? “No. Long enough to raid my kitchen, though. We had an early false thaw and I think he woke up real hungry. Fortunately I was out at the time.”
“So that’s it, just you and the bears? What do you live on, nuts and berries?”
“The Forest Service sends up a guy with a jeepload of canned food and kerosene once a month. Mainly to see if I’m still alive and on the job, I think. If I was dead, see, they could stop putting my checks in the bank.”
“I get it. One of those once-a-month-boyfriend deals.”
She grimaced. “Lord, no. They send up some kid. Half the time when he comes I’m not at the cabin, I’ll be out someplace. I lose track and forget when to expect him, so he just leaves the stuff in the cabin. I think he’s a little scared of me, truth to tell.”
“I don’t think you’re a bit scary,” said Eddie Bondo. “Truth to tell.”
She held his eye for as long as she could stand it. Under the sandpaper grain of a two-day beard he had a jaw she knew the feel of against her skin, just from looking at it. Thinking about that gave her an unexpected ache. When they resumed walking the trail, she kept him five or six steps ahead of her. He was quiet, not somebody who had to fill up a space between two people with talk, which was good. She could hear the birds. After a while she stopped to listen and was surprised when he did, too, instantly, that well attuned to her step behind his. He turned toward her with his head down and stood still, listening as she was.
“What?” he asked after a bit.
“Nothing. Just a bird.”
“Which one?”
She waited, then nodded at the sound of a high, buzzing trill. “That one there. Magnolia warbler. That’s really something.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, see, because they’ve not been nesting up on this ridge since the thirties, when these mountains got all logged out. Now the big woods are growing back and they’re starting to breed up here again.”
“How do you know it’s breeding?”
“Well, I couldn’t prove it. They put their nests way up where you’d have to be God to find them. But it’s just the male that sings, and he does it to drum up business, so he’s probably got some.”
“Amazi Eddie Bondo.
“Oh, it’s not. Every single thing you hear in the woods right now is just nothing but that. Males drumming up business.”
“I mean that you could tell all that from a little buzz I could just barely hear.”
“It’s turned and was walking ahead