Flight Behavior

It flew, and she stood up, meeting the unguarded eyes of both Hester and Bear. They seemed expectant, or even accusing, as if it might be up to Dellarobia to arrange this nonsensical sight into something ordinary and real. She couldn’t imagine it. Cub stared at her too, through the moving light, and then startled her by pulling her to him, his arm around her shoulders.

“Mother, Dad, listen here. This is a miracle. She had a vision of this.”

Bear scowled. “The hell.”

“No, Dad, she did. She foretold of it. After the shearing we were up talking in the barn, and she vowed and declared we had to come up here. That’s why I kept on telling you we should. She said there was something big up here in our own backyard.”

Dellarobia felt a dread of her secrets. She recalled only her impatience, speaking to Cub in anger that night, telling him anything could be up here. Terrorists or blue trees.

Hester peered into her face as if trying to read in bad light. “Why would he say that? That you foretold of it.”

A movement of clouds altered the light, and all across the valley, the butterfly skin of the world transfigured in response, opening all the wings at once to the sun. A lifting brightness swept the landscape, flowing up the mountainside in a wave. Dellarobia opened her mouth and released a soft pant, anticipatory gusts of breath that could have become speech or laughter, or wailing. She couldn’t give it shape.

“Here’s your vision. I see a meddling wife.” Bear shook his head in weary disgust, a gesture that defined him, like the dogtags he still wore after everyone else had given up on his war. A large and mighty man among the trifling, that was Bear’s drill. “You all need to get down off your high horses,” he said. “We’re going to spray these things and go ahead. I’ve got some DDD saved back in the basement.”

“You’ve got 3-D in your basement?” asked Norwood.

“DDT,” Cub told him. “Dad, that stuff has been against the law for more than my whole life. No offense, but it must be something else you’ve got stored.”

“Why do you think I saved it up? I knew it would be hard to get.”

“That stuff’s bound to go bad on you,” Hester argued. “After this many years.”

“Woman, how is poison going to go bad? You reckon it’ll get toxic?” Bear laughed at his own joke. No one else did. Cub normally cowered like a cur under this tone from his father, but was strangely unyielding now.

“There’s not enough spray in the world to kill that many bugs, Dad. That might not be the thing to do.”

“I guess you’ve got money to make the equipment loan, then.” Bear’s eyes were the color of unpainted tin, and exactly that cold. Dellarobia kept her mouth shut. She knew they had received a down payment on the logging, already forwarded in part to the bank and the taxes. Two places, along with the grave, that didn’t give back if you changed your mind.

“Listen, Dad. There’s a reason for everything.”

“That’s true, Bear,” Hester said. “This could be the Lord’s business.”

Cub seemed to flinch, turning to Dellarobia. “That’s what she said. We should come up here and have a look, because it was the Lord’s business.”

Dellarobia plumbed her brain for what he might have heard her say, but came up empty. Once, in bed, he’d asked what she was smiling at with her eyes closed, and she’d mentioned colors moving around like fire. Only that. Cub now gazed at the sky.

“It’s like the tenth wonder of the world,” he said. “People would probably pay to see these things.”

“That they might,” Norwood agreed.

“We should wait till they fly off,” Cub declared, as if he’d made such decisions before. “I bet we can get that much grace out of the company, Dad.”

Bear exhaled a hiss of doubt. “What if they won’t fly off?”

“I don’t know.” Cub still held onto Dellarobia by the shoulders. “Y’all just need to see the Lord’s hand in this and trust in His bidding. Like she said.”

This boldness was so unlike him, she wondered if Cub was play-acting, tormenting her as a reprisal. But deceits were beyond her husband’s range. He just held her there like a shield in front of his chest. Hester and Bear were scarcely more than an arm’s length away, and even that small distance between them filled now with butterflies, like water through a crevice. In every inch of the air they were moving down-mountain along this path, tumbling, a rush of air, a river in flood. She observed something like a diagram of wind resistance around her father-in-law’s great bulk, made visible by the butterflies that followed smooth, linear paths over and around him. The people, she and the others here, were human boulders in the butterfly-filled current. They had waded into a river of butterflies and the flood gave no heed, the flood rushed on to the valley, answerable to naught but its own pull. Butterflies crossed her field of vision continuously at close range, black-orange flakes that made her blink, and they merged in a chaotic blur in the distance, and she found it frankly impossible to believe what her eyes revealed to her. Or her ears: the unending rustle, like a taffeta dress.

Hester’s eyes dropped from her son’s face to Dellarobia’s, and what could possibly happen next, she had no idea. For years she’d crouched on a corner of this farm without really treading into Turnbow family territory, and now here she stood, dead on its center. She felt vaguely like a hostage in her husband’s grip, as if police megaphones might come out and the bullets would fly. Looking down at her feet made her dizzy, because of butterfly shadows rolling like pebbles along the floor of a fast stream. The illusion of current knocked her off balance. She raised her eyes to the sky instead, and that made the others look up too, irresistibly led, even Bear. Together they saw light streaming through glowing wings. Like embers, she thought, a flood of fire, the warmth they had craved so long. She felt her breathing rupture again into laughter or sobbing in her chest, sharp, vocal exhalations she couldn’t contain. The sounds coming out of her veered toward craziness.

The two older men stepped back as if she’d slapped them.

“Lord Almighty, the girl is receiving grace,” said Hester, and Dellarobia could not contradict her.

3

Congregational Space

Dellarobia sensed troubled waters at the Café in Christ. Crystal Estep had parked herself at a table front and center, all done up for church, the waterfall of gel-stiffened curls cascading over her shoulders. A regular Niagara of blond highlights was Crystal, sitting alone with her breakfast, gazing at it with such earnest focus, you’d think she was on a first date with that Pepsi and glazed doughnut. People rarely worked up so much innocence without cause, it seemed to Dellarobia. She looked around for the rest of the story and located it near the juice machine, where two tables were occupied by the ex-friend Brenda, of hand-slammed-in-the-car-door fame, and a posse of her mad-looking friends. Dellarobia remembered the injured party was this particular Brenda, one of three sisters who ran the church nursery with their mother. Brenda appeared to be out on disability today, flashing the metal splint on her two middle fingers, basically flipping Crystal the bird in church.