Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [55]
“You were? But you’re so pretty. And you cook!”
Lusa felt awkwardly flattered, though she was also aware that this wasn’t the point. “You should have seen me. I skinned my knees and caught bugs and wanted to be a farmer when I grew up.”
“Careful what you wish for.”
“The syrup’s boiling.”
“Do you put a dash of vinegar in it, or not? Oh good, you did, I can smell it. Here, you hold the funnel over the jars and I’ll pour—where’s your ladle?”
Jewel knew exactly where the ladle was, and everything else in this kitchen. The question was a gift of respect. Lusa retrieved the ladle from its drawer and closed it with her hip, feeling acutely grateful.
“Crystal’s pretty. The name, I mean.”
Jewel shook her head. “It doesn’t look like her. She looks like Beaver Cleaver.”
Lusa smiled. “Meeseh maydel, shayneh dame,” she said, her grandfather’s promise—which had finally come true, for what it was worth.
“What?”
“‘Ugly ducklings grow up to be swans.’” Lusa felt frustrated again—this wasn’t really her wish, to promise that Crys would grow up straight and feminine, because maybe she wouldn’t. Her wish was to tell Jewel that the alternative would be fine, too. But Lusa couldn’t imagine having that conversation with Jewel. “Maybe it’s not really about trying to act like a boy,” she hazarded cautiously, “but just her way of trying to be herself.”
“Let’s don’t talk about it. Crys is just Crys. Tell me some gossip. Tell me why you’re mad at Big Rickie and Herb.”
Lusa poured four cups of cherries into each jar, then held the funnel steady over the mouth as Jewel covered them with boiling syrup. “I’m not mad, I don’t guess. I mean I am, but I shouldn’t be. I know they meant well.”
“Well, but what did they do?”
“They came up this morning to inform me that they’re going to set my tobacco on Saturday.”
“And?”
“And, I don’t want to grow tobacco.”
“You don’t? Why not?”
“Oh, I’m being stupid, I guess. Farm economics, what do I know? But half the world’s starving, Jewel, we’re sitting on some of the richest dirt on this planet, and I’m going to grow drugs instead of food? I feel like a hypocrite. I nagged Cole to quit smoking every day of our marriage.”
“Well, honey, you didn’t ask the whole world to quit smoking. And by the way, they didn’t.”
“I know. It’s the only reliable crop around here you can earn enough from to live off a five-acre bottom, in a county that’s ninety-five percent too steep to plow. I know why every soul in this end of three states grows tobacco. Knowing full well the bottom’s going to drop out any day now.”
“They’re trapped.”
“They’re trapped.”
Jewel paused between jars and pointed the ladle toward the back window, the one that faced up Bitter Hollow toward the mountain. “You’ve got timber.”
Lusa shook her head. “I couldn’t log this hollow.”
“Well, but you could. That hollow goes up half a mile or more before you get to National Forest land. We used to think those woods went on forever.”
“I will not cut down those trees. I don’t care if there’s a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of lumber on the back of this farm, I’m not selling it. It’s what I love best about this place.”
“What, the trees?”
“The trees, the moths. The foxes, all the wild things that live up there. It’s Cole’s childhood up there, too. Along with yours and your sisters’.”
“That’s so. Cole loved it best of any of us.”
“Cole did? He always acts like—acted like—the woods and the briar patches of this world were enemy number one.”
“Well, farming. You know. You’ve got to do what it takes.”
“Yep. And around here that’s tobacco, I guess, if I want to keep this farm. I just wish I could be the one person to think of a door out of that trap.”
Jewel smiled. “You and Cole. He used to say that.”
“What?”
“That he’d be the first one in this county to make a killing off something besides tobacco.”
“When did he say that?”
“Oh, he was sixteen, maybe. Future Farmers of America and high school running-back star, what a combination. Much too interested in his good looks to smoke a cigarette, mind you, or grow plain old ordinary