Flight Behavior

The man she’d impulsively invited to supper two weeks ago was now living next to the barn. The arrangement seemed unreal to Dellarobia, like so much else that had arrived out of her initial recklessness. It had been Cub’s idea to let him park his RV behind their house, near the old sheep shed, and Cub who had rounded up the all-weather extension cord to hook him up to the electricity in the outbuilding. Dellarobia wouldn’t have thought to suggest it. It wasn’t her place. Even after all this time on her in-laws’ land, she felt connected to security by something far more tenuous than an orange extension cord. All she’d offered at supper that first night with Ovid Byron, besides the casserole, was a warning about the motel. “They call it the Wayside,” she joked, “as in, ‘fallen by the . . .’ ” He really shouldn’t stay there, when he came back.

Because he was coming back, he’d told them that very evening. His semester at the college was winding up, and with their permission he would like to bring back a small research team to investigate the question of what the butterflies were doing on their mountain. The “alarming question,” as he’d called it. He normally lived in an RV while doing his fieldwork in remote and scattered places, he’d explained, and Cub pointed right out the window. That was where he should park his camper, handy to the scene. That old barn had electricity, and was unused in winter because Hester liked to oversee the siring and lambing from the barn near her house. Dellarobia was amazed; she’d hardly known her husband to take a whiz without first checking in with Bear and Hester, yet he’d thrown out the welcome mat for Ovid Byron, just as she had, within minutes of meeting him. Of course, Cub was inclined to flatten himself before anything or anyone famous. She’d seen him go speechless one time while trying to order fast food when they recognized a NASCAR driver on the premises. So he was helpless to resist Ovid Byron, a very nice man who could probably charm a snake. Educated people had powers.

And the nice man now resided in a white, humpbacked camper attached to the body of a Ford truck, a road-worn affair that looked to have hosted more than a few of his life’s events. He had his own little home sweet home in there: stove, refrigerator, the works. He’d driven it from New Mexico with his young helpers, Pete, Mako, and Bonnie by name. They were post graduates or doc-graduates, something, it was too late to ask now because she’d pretended to know what it all meant when they were first introduced. Unfortunately she’d been distracted by the muscle definition in Pete’s upper arms, and the fact that dark-eyed, long-waisted Bonnie was much cuter than she had any right to look in cargo pants and a fleece vest. The students were lodging at the Wayside. Dellarobia wondered about the specifics of that arrangement—two guys and a girl—and truly, she regretted the accommodations. But the kids were only staying another week. They were young urban people with advanced degrees. They could fend for themselves.

They spent every daylight hour up the mountain, anyway, except during the most unutterable downpours. In the evenings they gathered around a sort of dinette table inside the RV, doing what, exactly, she didn’t know. She’d seen charts of numbers in stacks, and knew they played penny poker because they’d invited her to join them. Once she did, after Cordie and Preston were in bed. Was a hostess gift necessary, she’d wondered, when invited to a camper home? She brought a jar of dilly beans. They got a little bit rowdy playing cards, while Ovid sat off to the side tapping industriously at his slim computer that opened like a sideways book, tilting its blue glow into his face. Its light made his skin a strange color in the dim camper, and his reading glasses two inscrutable rectangles of light.

She felt guilty about not inviting these people into her house for their after-hours activities, but Ovid wouldn’t hear of disrupting her family’s life. The deal hinged on it, he said. This was normal life for field scientists, they all had assured her. Ovid seemed proud of his traveling abode. The toilet was in a tiny closet that also became, with the door tightly closed, a shower. The dinette table folded away and the seats pulled together to make a full-size bed. He would need a good-size bed, with that much height, Dellarobia thought. Did he have a wife or family? She was hesitant to ask. If he meant to remain here through the holidays, that didn’t bode for much in his family department. But yesterday he’d mentioned he would be going away between Christmas and New Year’s, leaving the camper here, and would return in January to stay a good while. She had no idea whether he had people who wanted him home for the holidays, or simply desired to get out of the Turnbow hair at a family-oriented season.

A banging sound, she realized with a start, was coming from inside her own house. Quickly she stubbed out her cigarette in the butt-filled flowerpot and dashed in to find Cordie standing up, gripping her toy telephone’s yellow earpiece so the rest of the phone dangled by its cord.

“Was that you banging?” Dellarobia asked.

“Mawmawmaw,” Cordie replied.

Dellarobia was stunned to look up and see Hester in her hallway.

“I knocked,” Hester declared. “Where were you?”

“Just cleaning, moving some stuff around on the back porch,” Dellarobia lied. She took a quick inventory of the things Hester would hold against her this morning: breakfast dishes in the sink, Cordie in just a diaper and shirt. She’d tried to get her dressed, but the child had pelted her all morning with a hail of no; she felt like a woman stoned for the sin of motherhood. “All this water is making me stir-crazy,” she said. “Come on and sit down, I’ll make us some coffee.”

“Well, I had some. But all right, I’d have a cup, if you don’t care.” Hester looked around for a place to hang her dripping raincoat.

“It’s not much of a fit day out, is it?” Dellarobia took Hester’s coat from her, as if she were a guest.

“Reach down your hand from on high, and deliver me from the mighty waters.”

“I was just thinking the same,” Dellarobia said, surprised. “Those psalms about the wreck of the world. People think the Psalms are only about nice stuff.”

Hester appeared unimpressed with Dellarobia’s thoughts on the Psalms. She tried to focus on one thing at a time, hanging up the coat, tidying up the table. Hester was practically a stranger to this house. Everything always happened over at Bear and Hester’s: sheep shearing, tomato canning, family discussions, wakes. This two-bedroom ranch house was flimsy and small compared with the rambling farmhouse Cub and his father both grew up in, but dimensions and seating weren’t the issue. Bear might condescend to helping his son dismantle and rebuild an engine here, and now Hester of course led her tour groups up the nearby hill. But for practical purposes, the corner of their property occupied by their son’s home was a dead zone for Bear and Hester. Eleven years ago they’d built the house with a bank loan, choosing the floor plan and paint colors themselves and making the down payment as a wedding present, when Cub got Dellarobia in trouble, as they put it. Plainly, they’d begrudged the bride price ever since.