Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [63]
Garnett would like to tell her a thing or two about God’s plan. That the creatures of this earth came to pass and sometimes passed on. That these matters were not ours to control if we were, as she claimed, merely one more species among our brethren, the animals. And if we were not the equal of animals, if we were meant instead to be masters and keepers of Eden, as the Bible said, then “lizards” were put here for a man to go bass fishing with, and that was that. She couldn’t have it both ways. It was all quite clear to Garnett. Yet his logic always cowered before her curt and snappy replies. He had actually thought, once or twice, of writing her a letter.
He drove past the Pentecostal church, which had a spindly clump of joe-pye weed sprouting up in its parking lot. Oho! Too busy speaking in tongues and throwing babies to get out and weed their parking lot. Garnett smiled, feeling secure in his understanding of what God’s word did and did not mean to suggest. He felt a slight press of guilt, then, as he steered his truck onto Maple. He ought to tell Miss Rawley about those shingles in his garage. If only she were the least bit reasonable.
There was the bank, there was the Esso. He was in town now. There was Les Pratt, who’d taught math at the high school when Garnett taught vocational agriculture. He waved, but Les was on the wrong side of the street. There was Dennis Grandy’s wife with all those children, who weren’t exactly dirty but never seemed quite clean.
And there was Nannie Rawley! Her truck, anyway. Dear merciful heavens, could he not get away from her for at least one pleasant trip into town? That woman was stubborn as cockleburs and a rash of poison ivy.
He slowed down to get a better look. It was her truck, parked in the Baptist church lot, where they let the Amish set up their farmers’ market on Saturdays. This was Friday, though. Yet it was them, all right, the Amish children in their sober black dresses and trousers, politely selling their produce. He didn’t see Nannie. He would maneuver his truck around the block and come back for a second look.
Were there so many Amish now that they had to have markets on Saturdays and Fridays? They were a burgeoning people, that much he knew. They’d taken over a long row of farms on the other side of the river, he’d noticed last year. How were they managing so nicely, when every other farmer in the county was selling off his hayfields for house lots and looking for factory work? Well, the Amish weren’t in debt up to their ears on chemicals and equipment—which gave them an unfair advantage, Garnett supposed. Oh! He missed a stop sign, then slammed on the brakes a hair too late, but it was all right: the car got around him. For quite a while he’d wondered about those farms along the river, which were unreachable by car and accessible only by swinging bridges—long, narrow ones made of planks with just cables for handrails. It would take some courage to cross that gorge every day. He’d wondered how on earth a man would get his television or his wife’s refrigerator over there, or even a tractor, to a farm like that. Then Les Pratt had told him the answer in a single word: Amish.
He rounded the corner and took another look at the Amish market. It was tempting to stop. He used to go nearly every Saturday before Nannie started showing up there with her apples or, in the early season, like now, her apple-blossom honey and basil-dasil and whatnot for sale. Evidently you didn’t have to be Amish; they shared the