Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [53]
“I’ll tell you something. Mary Edna and Herb could help with the burial. I would if I could, but they can. Herb and his brother are doing good with their dairy over on Six. That’s Herb’s family’s land, paid off. So they’re set up pretty good right now.”
“I can cover the burial, it’s done. That was our savings. Mary Edna didn’t offer, and I sure wasn’t going to ask.”
“Mary Edna’s bark’s a whole lot worse than her bite.”
“It’s not that. You know why. I’m not stupid, Jewel, I know what everybody’s saying: here I am living in this house you all grew up in, on your family’s land. The so-called Widener place, and there’s no longer any Widener on the premises. Do you think I’d feel comfortable asking your family for anything?”
Jewel gave her an odd look. “Is that true? Lois told me that—that you were going to take your maiden name back now.”
“What? No, I never did…” Lusa wondered how far the misunderstandings went, and whether any of it would be possible to untangle, after a point.
“Well, anyway,” Jewel said, “having a house and a farm’s not the same as having money.”
“Tell me. When I hear people hinting I’m a gold digger, I feel like publishing my damn debts in the newspaper. I’ve got a barn to reroof before winter, and this house, too, probably in the next year or two. And something’s wrong with the spring box; I’m just waiting for the day I wake up and have no water. What else? Oh yes, Cole’s brand-new Kubota, twenty-two thousand dollars, which won’t be paid off for another four years.”
“I didn’t know he’d financed the tractor.”
Was Jewel spying? What difference would it make if they knew she was destitute? None, Lusa decided. “He didn’t want to. But we had to have a tractor, and he deserved new. That John Deere of your daddy’s was older than Cole, I think. He’d been fighting with it his whole life, holding it together with baling twine and fence wire.”
“That tractor was older than Cole. Come to think of it.”
“And now I’ll have to pay somebody to mow hay and put it in the barn, and fix the fences and round up the cows when they get over on the neighbors’, and mess with the baler, which breaks down every single time you use it. And run and repair the bush hog and the side-arm mower—or am I supposed to learn to do all that myself? I’m sure there are other costs, too; I just don’t know enough to see them coming.”
“Lord, Lord,” Jewel said softly. Her face was the saddest thing Lusa had seen in a stretch of many sad days. Her forehead was deeply creased, and her eyes looked like an old woman’s. At close range she looked much older than Lusa had thought she was.
“No man to farm it,” Lusa summarized. “As you put it.”
“Herb and Big Rickie will help you out.”
“Oh, they’ve been up here. I guess they’re in charge now. Cole’s grave isn’t yet healed over, and already I’m nobody.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I need help, sure. But help. It would be nice to be asked, instead of bossed around like a child. Do they do that to you?”
“They don’t have any business with me. I don’t even plant a garden anymore. I praise the Lord for my job at Kroger’s and beg Him to strike Shel dead if that check should fail to keep coming for the kids.”
“What about Emaline and Frank?”
“Emaline and Frank are officially out of farming for good, they say, and I think they’re just as happy about it, to both have factory jobs instead of farming.”
“But I heard Frank complaining at the funeral about losing his tobacco lease. And he complains about commuting to Leesport.”
“Frank would complain about the moon if it looked at him wrong. He makes good money at Toyota, and he likes everybody to know it.”
“So who’s still farming, just Lois and Big Rickie? And Herb? How can I live smack in the middle of you all and not know what’s what?”
“Well, because it’s not really settled, that’s why. About half the time Hannie-Mavis and Joel lease out their allotment to a big grower over to Roanoke, like Herb does. Then the next year, they won’t. But Lois and Big Rickie