Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [78]
“Who built this cabin?” he asked her.
“Guy named Walker, Garnett something Walker. There was this whole line of them, all with the same name. Kind of like land barons in this area, a hundred years ago.”
“And this was the baron’s luxurious abode?”
“Oh, not hardly. This was just the headquarters for one of his hundred logging camps. He and his sons logged out all these mountains. This was probably one of his last stands; the cabin is nineteen-thirties or so, I’d guess. Looking at the logs.”
“What are they, oak?”
“Chestnut, every one. When people realized the chestnuts were dying out, they had this huge rush to cut down all that were left, even the standing deadwood.”
He studied the construction more closely. “That’s why the logs are kind of small and twisted?”
“Yeah. Deadwood, or maybe some of the bigger limbs off huge trunks they took for lumber. But Eddie, listen.” She turned to look at him. “What I’m saying is, they realized the chestnuts were going extinct. So what did they do? They ran up here and cut down every last one that was left alive.”
He thought about it. “They were dying anyway, I guess that’s what they figured.”
“But not all of them would have died. Some of those last chestnuts were standing because they weren’t sick. They might have stood straight on through the blight.”
“You think?”
“I’m sure. People study this stuff. Every species has its extremes, little pockets of genetic resistance that give it an edge on survival. Some would have made it.”
She watched his eyes track the twisted logs as he pondered what she’d just said. This was the thing that surprised her again and again: Eddie Bondo paid attention. Most men of her acquaintance acted like they already knew everything she did—and they didn’t.
“If some of the chestnuts had lived,” he asked, “how long would they have stood?”
“A hundred years, maybe? Long enough to spread their seeds. Some of them did live; there’s maybe five or six per county hidden back in the hollows, but there aren’t enough to pollinate one another. If more of them had been spared they could have repopulated these mountains over time, but nobody thought about that. Not one person. They just sawed the last ones down, hell for leather.”
He turned his acute gaze on Deanna. “That’s why you live up here by yourself, isn’t it? You can’t stand how people are.”
She weighed this, feeling its truth inside herself like damp sand. “I don’t want to feel that way,” she said finally. “There’s people I love. But there’s so many other kinds of life I love, too. And people act so hateful to every kind but their own.”
He didn’t reply. Was he taking her judgment personally? She’d been thinking of people who refused to be inconvenienced for the sake of an endangered fish or plant or owl, not of coyote killers per se. She forced her next words, knowing that each one had its own cost. “You said I could ask you a question, and now I’m asking it.”
“What?”
“You know.”
He blinked but didn’t speak. Something in his eyes receded from her.
“What brought you down here to the mountains?”
He looked away. “A Greyhound bus.”
“I have to know this. Was it the bounty hunt?”
He didn’t answer.
“Just say no if the answer is no. That’s all I want.”
He still said nothing.
“God.” She let out a slow breath. “I’m not surprised. I knew. But I will never, ever understand who you are.”
“I never asked you to.”
No, he hadn’t, and she would refrain from trying if she was capable of it. But here he was, naked beside her with his left hand lying above her heart. How could she not need to know who he was? Were male and female from different worlds, like the indigo bunting and his wife? Was she nothing but mud-colored female on the inside? She who’d always been sure she was living her life bright blue?
“Where does it come from?” she asked. “I can’t understand that kind of passion to kill a living thing.”
“Not just a living thing.