Flight Behavior

“Oh, Cub. They’ll make it look like a war zone, like the Buchman place. Have you looked at that mountain since they finished logging it out? It’s a trash pile. Nothing but mud and splinters.”

Cub began pulling white threads of wool from the knees of his jeans, one at a time. The air was so dry they stuck to him, drawn by static electricity. How strange, the humidity dropping like that overnight. She cleared a spot on the floor and carefully ground out her cigarette with the toe of her work boot. “I drive past there every time I go to Food King,” she said. “It looks like they blew up bombs all over it. Then all these rains started and the whole mountain is sliding into the road. They have road crews out there blading the muck out of the way. I bet I’ve seen that six times since July.”

Cub’s voice flagged in ready defeat. “Well, you won’t have to drive past Dad’s upper hollow when you go get your groceries.” He was already losing interest, ready for a new topic, the same way he went glassy in front of the TV every night and channel-surfed without cease. Some flashy woman in a silk suit would be describing a faux-emerald necklace, and suddenly they’re landing the biggest fish in the Amazon. Or Fox News would morph into a late-night comedian making jokes about Christians and southerners. Cub claimed the surfing relaxed him. It made Dellarobia grind her teeth.

“I need to get back to the house,” she said. Hester was feeding Preston and Cordie their supper, probably an array of items from the choking-hazard checklist: grapes, peas, hot dogs cut crosswise. There was no point in arguing with Cub, when neither of them had a say in the family plan. She and her husband were like kids in the backseat of a car, bickering over the merits of some unknown destination.

She stood up, but instead of heading for the stairs, walked on impulse to the end of the loft, where the giant door was propped open to ventilate the hay. A person could just run the length of the haymow and take a flying jump. For the first time in her life she could see perfectly well how a person arrived on that flight path: needing an alternative to the present so badly, the only doorway was a high window. She’d practically done it herself. The next thing to it. The thought of that recklessness terrified her now, making her step back from the haymow door and close her eyes, trying to calm down.

When she opened them she looked down on the sheep milling around in the dusk, surprisingly slim and trim without their wool. Pastor Bobby at Hester’s church spoke of Jesus looking down on his flock from on high, and it seemed apt: an all-knowing creator probably would find humans to be exactly the same kind of ignorant little dumb-heads as these sheep. Right now they were butting each other like crazy. Hester said head-butting was a flock’s way of figuring out who was boss, so it was normal to some extent, but Dellarobia had noticed that shearing always left them wildly uncertain as to who was who. She had asked about it, but no one in the family could say why. She stood watching now, oddly fascinated. Grumpy ewes lowered their horns to toss off lambs that weren’t theirs, the poor little things bunting at the wrong udders, and one old girl in particular was running up against puny yearlings, revisiting arguments long ago settled. Suddenly they were strangers, though they’d been here together all along. In the still evening she heard the dull, repeated thud of heads making contact, horn and skull. They must have some good reason; animals behaved with purpose, it seemed. Unlike people.

And then it dawned on her: scent. They must recognize each other that way. And all their special odors had been removed with the wool. They’d be blind to one another’s identities until they worked up a good personal aroma again. Dellarobia felt a glimmer of pride for working out this mystery by herself. Maybe one day she’d inform Hester.

She walked back and sat down across from Cub. “When do you think your folks were planning to clue us in about the foreclosure?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just one day the phone would ring and they’d be like, ‘Hey, pack up the kids, get a new life, we just lost your half of the family deal.’ Or that they’re moving in with us, or us with them? Cub, I swear, your mother and me under one roof, never again. You’d just as well call nine-one-one right now and get it over with. Because homicide will ensue.”

“I know that, hon.”

“If he can’t make the payment, why wouldn’t they just repossess his equipment?”

“Depreciation, I guess. It’s not enough. They needed that lien on the farm.”

This shocked her. The equipment was so nearly new. She wondered if anyone totally understood how banks could make the ground shift underfoot and turn real things into empty air, just with a word. “So you think he’s really going to do that logging?”

“He said it was as good as done. He’s signing a contract.”

“Are they from here?” she asked.

“Is who?”

“The logging company. Whoever’s in charge.”

“Are you kidding me? What man in this county owns anything more than what he squats on to take a crap?”

“Thanks for the visual.” She thought of a magazine article that advised keeping your marriage sexy by closing the bathroom door. She couldn’t remember whether she’d actually read that article, or just wished someone would write it.

“Naw,” Cub said, “a guy came over from Knoxville. And that’s not even the main office, the outfit’s owned by Warehouser or something. Out west.”

“That figures. Come on down. Get the poor man’s goods and haul them out of here to make I don’t know what. Toilet paper for city people, I guess.”

“Well, hon, it’s money we need.”

“I know. Let’s all sing the redneck national anthem: Settle for what you can get.”

“I’m sorry you see it that way, but I don’t see where we have a lot of choice.”

He looked sorry all right. It made her want to punch something, all that sorry. She wished he would get mad. Instead he sat pulling threads of fleece from his jeans in a slow, passive way that made her blood boil. With occasional exceptions in the bedroom, Cub did every single thing in his life in first gear. It could take him forty minutes to empty his freaking pants pockets. In high school Dovey used to call him Flash. She was furious when Dellarobia first went out with him. They’d sworn onto a flight plan, older guys with vocabularies and bank accounts, men from anywhere but here.