Flight Behavior

The vision of Ovid’s body, forgotten for a few blessed seconds, returned to agitate her. Men she had seen, in life and in the movies of course, nakedness was everywhere anymore. But not this one. Her boss, the one man whose good opinion she worked hardest to earn. Who scrutinized her routinely from behind the safety of rubber goggles. She envied forgetfulness, and simpler minds than the one she inhabited. She was desperate for Cub to say anything at all, but he was too busy breathing.

“How come Hester finally decided to move the ewes over here?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.” He added after a beat, “Too wet over there.” It would be a conversation of short sentences, then.

“That bottomland is too wet for them now? As in what, hoof rot?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He puffed. “And she thinks they’ll get wormy.”

She was careful of her footing on the slope. The white frost accentuated details of the ground, its ridges and stippled dead grass, the lay of the land. This didn’t look good for the butterflies. It felt strange not to know the damage. Someone should go up there.

“You know what?” she said to Cub. “I talked with Hester about that, the day she came over to our house. Before Christmas, that would have been.”

“About the ewes? What’d she say?”

“She didn’t trust us to keep an eye on them. When the lambs started coming.”

“She said that?”

“As good as.” Dellarobia panted a little herself with the climb, watching each white breath materialize in the cold air. Her glasses fogged, so she took them off and slipped them in her pocket. Along the top of the pasture bare trees stood upright like bars of a prison, throwing vertical shadows down the length of the hill. All the world enclosed her in black and white. “I told her we could help out when the lambs were born. Preston and I would like it. Hester just kind of pulled up her nose at that.”

“But we could,” Cub said. “She’s got books. You could read up on the lambing.”

He’d been reaching up with one arm, maybe to get a book from the shelf. His camper’s tiny kitchen cupboards were all crammed full of his books, he’d taken the doors off them. He might have turned toward the window in time to see her scuttling away. Dellarobia struggled for an even conversational keel. “Okay. Borrow me one of those books from Hester,” she said. “So I’d know what to do if a lamb came early.”

“Boil water,” Cub said, and she laughed. Coming from Cub, that was funny. It softened her present distress.

“How were your folks this morning?”

“Mother was fit to be tied. Bobby Ogle’s coming over later.”

“Really. While she’s got the kids?”

“Probably not till after we pick up the kids. But the conniption has begun.”

Dellarobia wasn’t surprised. It was maybe the minister’s third or fourth visit since all this began, and each had launched Hester into a new orbit of anxiety. If spiritual comfort was the goal, things were not going that way. “Why do you think your mother’s so nervous around Bobby?”

“Well, you know. He’s the pastor.”

“Well, yeah. She loves to admire him across a crowded room. But why get so bent out of shape with the one-on-one?”

“I don’t know. Dad said she’s been vacuuming since the crack of dawn. He was going out to his shop so she wouldn’t vacuum him. She had her stuff thrown all over the furniture.”

“What do you mean?” Dellarobia envisioned a food fight, but that was her life, not Hester’s.

“You know, those lacy things. Covers, I guess.”

“Those crochet things she puts on the arms of the sofa, to cover the worn spots?”

“Yeah, all that. She was baking something. It smelled good.” He chuckled. “Cordie pooped on the way over. I walked in there with a loaded baby, and Mother about lost it. She said to get upstairs and change that child before she stank up the place. She made me bring the diaper home with me.”

“Nice,” Dellarobia said. But despite herself, she was moved by the breach in Hester’s armor. Someone still had the power to make Hester feel house-poor and embarrassed. Vacuuming up dog hair, throwing slipcovers over a threadbare household, Dellarobia certainly knew the drill.

At the top of the field they found the gate to the High Road standing open. No real surprise there, strangers came through constantly. Hester’s tour service was no longer needed, since people just walked or drove themselves to the butterfly site. People with binoculars, butterfly nets, telescopes, expensive-looking cameras, all or none of the above; they were not scientists or news teams now, but mostly tourists. One morning while she and Preston waited for the bus, a young couple wearing bright, matching Spandex pants had walked right past them through the yard, speaking a foreign language. When Dellarobia spoke up, they’d stared at her in stunned surprise, as if they’d been hailed by a groundhog. People even carried tents up there and camped out, including some polite kids from the Cleary environment club and a trio of young men from California who’d knocked and explained to Dellarobia they were from some international group with a number for a name. Something-dot-org. Dr. Byron was keeping these kids busy with simple tasks, counting and measuring, probably not the nature show they’d come looking for, but they submitted happily to being useful. The three California boys, especially. She’d asked how in the world they found this place, and they showed her a computer program that drew a map directly to her house. All they had to do was type in her address on their little flat screen, and open sesame, there it was. Her address was public knowledge, they said, and so was the photograph taken from the sky, apparently, showing the gray rectangle of their roof and Cub’s truck and her Taurus sitting slightly askew in the drive. Not Ovid’s trailer. She’d asked about that, and the young men said the satellite photo would have been taken some time back. Before anyone cared, in other words. The Internet had information in storage, waiting at anyone’s beck and call. It made her feel helpless to defend herself. That little gray rectangle was all the shelter she had.

These Californians at least had introduced themselves, and she appreciated that, since most did not. All the work Cub and Bear had done to make the High Road passable was probably a mistake. It was being taken as an invitation. And fairly enough, she thought, for that was the way of the world. A road was to be driven upon. The candy in the dish was there to be eaten, money in the bank got spent, people claimed whatever they could get their hands on. Wasn’t that more or less automatic? For a human being to do any less seemed impossible. She waited while Cub dragged the fence closed.