Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [65]
If he took his time he would remember. Weed killer, of course! Roundup, one-gallon concentrate. He almost laughed aloud. It was coming back: Roundup, malathion, and paint markers for the trees, which he really shouldn’t buy; he had some in the barn.
“Now does it sound like more of a whine, or more of a buzz? Because when the gearing pops out of whack, hit’ll do that on you.” One of the brothers up at the register was chatting with a customer. That would be Big, or Marshall. Dink always stayed by the door.
“What I’m saying is I didn’t even hear it,” the customer argued. “I turned my back and it ran off down the hill.”
Weed killer and malathion. He spied a bottle of malathion on a shelf midway down the aisle past the galvanized buckets. Even though it was a spray bottle and not the size he needed, he walked over and seized it for courage. He was an old man lost in a hardware store, missing the fine print on all he surveyed; he needed to arm himself. What else had been on that list?
“They don’t make them any bigger than that, or any meaner. Just a monster, and you’ll have to take my word for it,” the customer said.
“Well, Big here’s the expert on big,” said Marshall.
“Now, you boys aren’t listening to me,” the voice said coyly.
The brothers were laughing to beat the band, but Garnett’s heart skipped a beat. He knew that voice. Good Lord in Heaven, was he meant to suffer like Job? It was Nannie Rawley.
Garnett stood next to the wheelbarrow at the end of the aisle, listening. How could she be here when she’d been down the street selling froufrou at the Amish market ten minutes ago? Was she one of those Unitarian witches, whizzing around Egg Fork on a broomstick? He leaned forward and peered around a stack of galvanized buckets, looking for an escape path. He could just leave, go home, get his list, and come back in half an hour. There would still be time for fish dinner afterward. Pinkie’s stayed open till four.
But there was no way out. The register was near the front door, and that was where she was, holding court, making her ridiculous small talk with Dink, Big, and Marshall. He nearly covered his ears, so unbearable was that voice to him. However entertaining it might be proving at the moment to the indolent Little brothers. They were laughing like a pack of hyenas.
“Not a snapper!” one of them cried.
“Yes, a snapper,” she replied, sounding both indignant and amused.
Garnett sat down in the wheelbarrow and held his head in his hands. This was too much to bear. This was beyond even what he expected of Nannie Rawley, whose sole claim on any kind of decency was that she was generally not a rumormonger.
“Law, I think I’da had to seen that to believe it,” said Marshall, practically doubled over with amusement.
How could she do this to Garnett, her own good neighbor? How dared she ridicule him in public over that business with the snapping turtle? When the whole thing had been her fault!
“It was her fault,” he said faintly, much too faintly to be heard, from his undignified post in the wheelbarrow. “Her weeds.”
They were still braying like donkeys as they rang up her purchases—did it take all three Littles to ring up a blessed purchase? They were acting like schoolboys, making over her as if she were some beauty queen instead of a backbiting hag in a calico skirt. She had this whole town under her spell. Now she was asking for their advice about roofing compounds! Was there to be no end to this torment? Apparently she meant to stand there flirting all day, until Pinkie’s Diner closed and the chickens went home to roost.
Garnett was going to have to march past them. This became clear. Suddenly all he could do was picture himself safely home at his kitchen table reading the farm news in the paper. That was where