Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [72]
She sobered some, though, to think of Jewel. Not about Shel’s running off; about Jewel’s being thirty and looking fifty. “I thought that was right, that she was younger. But lately I was wondering. She looks older.”
“She’s the littlest sister, though. My mom and them were always jealous of her growing up, because of Cole. He was everybody’s favorite, right? And him and Jewel were, like, unseparatable best friends.”
“Oh,” Lusa said, taking this in. “And then I came along. So they could all resent me instead.”
“They don’t, Aunt Lusa.”
“But they do. You don’t have to pretend.”
He looked at her, seeming just in that moment more man than boy, as if he understood pain. She felt her heart stir again, but it wasn’t desire, she realized, just a kind of love for who he might someday become. She could see how he would be with a girlfriend: sweet and in charge. Exactly like Cole at seventeen, probably. She leaned against the barn wall beside him, tilting her head back against the planks, both of them facing out the doorway into the evening. Content for a minute to be just where they were. The surface of the pond was the color of blood oranges.
“So,” he said.
“So?”
“So, you run your ad. People start showing up to dump off their goats, starting with me. You can have my two.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“And then what? What are you going to do with your five hundred goats?”
Lusa closed her eyes, tasting and smelling roast goat. Last time she’d celebrated an Id-al-Fitr was years ago, when her mother was still lively and well, someone Lusa could talk to. Someone to cook with. A late-winter celebration, it had been then. The Muslim calendar crept up eleven days on the Christians every year. By now, Id-al-Fitr would be close to Christmas.
She opened her eyes. “Rickie. Can you get a bunch of goats pregnant all at once?”
He blushed, and she burst out laughing.
“Not you,” she said, when she could speak again. “I mean if you had a bunch of female goats and a—what do you call him? A billy goat?”
“You call them does and bucks. If they’re meat goats.”
“Does and bucks, right. So, what happens? Don’t blush! Rickie!” She swatted his arm. He was giggling like a child. “I’m being practical. I just had an idea. Two huge goat-feast holidays are coming up, together, at the very end of the year. And that means Id-al-Adha will be—February, March—early April! The same time as Orthodox Easter and Passover. I can’t believe this!” She was talking fast, counting on her fingers and getting herself excited. “I need to look at a calendar to make sure. How long does it take to make a kid?”
“How long are they pregnant, you mean? Five months, a little bit less.”
She counted on her fingers. “That’s November, that’s perfect! A month to fatten them up. Can you get them all to, you know—don’t blush!” She smoothed her shirttails, made a sober face, and deepened her voice. “We’re farmers, Rickie. Farmer to farmer, I’m asking your advice. Could I get one stud billy to knock up a whole field of babes at the same time?”
“Ppphhhhh!” Rickie exploded, folding up on himself.
“I’m serious!”
He wiped his eyes. “I think so, yeah. You can give them hormones and stuff.”
“No, no, no. These are religious-holiday goats. No hormones. Can we do it another way?”
“It’s been a long time since I was in Four-H, Aunt Lusa.”
“But you know about livestock. How does it work?”
“I think how it works is, if you’ve got does that haven’t been around a buck at all, and then you put them all in the field with him, they all come into season together. I’m not positive, but I think that’s right. You could call up Mr. Walker and find out.”
“Oh, right. I’m going to call up some old dude out of the blue and ask him about goat sex!” She and Rickie collapsed again, starting the cow lowing in the stall behind them. Lusa tried to shush herself and Rickie, but she had to hold on to a post just to keep