lawn-maintenance guys this way, do you?”
Lucy wasn’t listening to him. She was looking up into the infinite sky. Edward cast his own gaze over his shoulder, and saw the moon watching them.
“Now it will blossom,” Lucy said.
That same evening, Lucy announced she was going out.
“There’s a Grange meeting tonight.”
“So soon?”
“It’s an emergency. We have to deal with the gypsy moths.”
“You mean those stupid caterpillars that are chewing up all the trees? I thought there was nothing that stopped them short of spraying. And the town council’s voted against that.”
“Sally has a plan.”
Lucy was gone till after midnight. When she crawled into their bed, beneath the down comforter the country nights still made a necessity, Edward came half-awake.
“How’d it go?” he murmured sleepily.
“Shhh, go back to sleep. I’ll tell you in the morning.”
But in the morning there was no need to ask, for the gypsy moths lay dead in heaps everywhere.
* * *
All work on his book had gone by the board. Edward found he couldn’t concentrate on what had once seemed so important to him. It wasn’t the environment that was distracting him anymore, though. At least not firsthand. He had realized with a start, soon after the wild coupling with Lucy on the garden bed, that his senses had become harmonized to the natural world somehow, had achieved a rapprochement with the forces of sunlight and soil, leaf and limb. These forces did not make the same demands on his attention as they had when they were new to him. He found he could go about his daily life without paying much attention to the bewitching, continually varying play of light and odors around him.
Not that nature had vanished or retreated from the back of his mind or the depths of his gut. No, that had not happened, no more than one’s heart or lungs had ceased to function, simply because they went hourly unheard.
No, what preoccupied Edward now was trying to find out what Lucy had gotten herself involved in.
What exactly was this organization known as the Grange?
Here and now, in mid-June, this question—along with its corollary, Was the Grange good or bad for his wife?—filled all of Edward’s mind. He attacked it the only way he knew how, short of confronting the Grange members themselves (something he was surprisingly reluctant to do), and that was through research.
Every morning, Edward set out for the city, leaving Lucy behind to tend to her garden. He worried about what she might be getting up to, picturing her reenacting their fructifying ritual, only with other partners. Then he would admonish himself for a fool. Lucy, despite her newfound interest in matters horticultural, was still the same woman he had always known, and she wouldn’t do that to him. Besides, any such activity would surely crush the tiny seedlings that now sprouted where Edward and Lucy had tumbled, and even the sturdier shoots of the transplanted tomatoes, and Lucy wouldn’t stand for that. The garden seemed to be her whole life lately. In the end, there was nothing Edward could or would do if she wanted to rut all day, so he dismissed it from his mind as best he could.
On the campus, moving from stack to dusty stack in the various familiar libraries where he had spent so much time—and which now seemed so alien —Edward sought answers to the meaning of the Grange and what it stood for.
He confirmed in detail the brief encyclopedia entry he had read on that day, seemingly ages gone by. The Grange, if this was indeed the same one, had been the brainchild of Oliver Hudson Kelley in 1867. (The word “grange” came from the same Latin root as “grain,” granum, and meant merely a storehouse for grain.) He dug into Kelley’s past. The man had been an immigrant, his father Irish, his mother French. There the personal trail petered out. Edward switched to the public practices of the Grange.
On the surface, the Grange’s history was one of promoting
Lucy wasn’t listening to him. She was looking up into the infinite sky. Edward cast his own gaze over his shoulder, and saw the moon watching them.
“Now it will blossom,” Lucy said.
That same evening, Lucy announced she was going out.
“There’s a Grange meeting tonight.”
“So soon?”
“It’s an emergency. We have to deal with the gypsy moths.”
“You mean those stupid caterpillars that are chewing up all the trees? I thought there was nothing that stopped them short of spraying. And the town council’s voted against that.”
“Sally has a plan.”
Lucy was gone till after midnight. When she crawled into their bed, beneath the down comforter the country nights still made a necessity, Edward came half-awake.
“How’d it go?” he murmured sleepily.
“Shhh, go back to sleep. I’ll tell you in the morning.”
But in the morning there was no need to ask, for the gypsy moths lay dead in heaps everywhere.
* * *
All work on his book had gone by the board. Edward found he couldn’t concentrate on what had once seemed so important to him. It wasn’t the environment that was distracting him anymore, though. At least not firsthand. He had realized with a start, soon after the wild coupling with Lucy on the garden bed, that his senses had become harmonized to the natural world somehow, had achieved a rapprochement with the forces of sunlight and soil, leaf and limb. These forces did not make the same demands on his attention as they had when they were new to him. He found he could go about his daily life without paying much attention to the bewitching, continually varying play of light and odors around him.
Not that nature had vanished or retreated from the back of his mind or the depths of his gut. No, that had not happened, no more than one’s heart or lungs had ceased to function, simply because they went hourly unheard.
No, what preoccupied Edward now was trying to find out what Lucy had gotten herself involved in.
What exactly was this organization known as the Grange?
Here and now, in mid-June, this question—along with its corollary, Was the Grange good or bad for his wife?—filled all of Edward’s mind. He attacked it the only way he knew how, short of confronting the Grange members themselves (something he was surprisingly reluctant to do), and that was through research.
Every morning, Edward set out for the city, leaving Lucy behind to tend to her garden. He worried about what she might be getting up to, picturing her reenacting their fructifying ritual, only with other partners. Then he would admonish himself for a fool. Lucy, despite her newfound interest in matters horticultural, was still the same woman he had always known, and she wouldn’t do that to him. Besides, any such activity would surely crush the tiny seedlings that now sprouted where Edward and Lucy had tumbled, and even the sturdier shoots of the transplanted tomatoes, and Lucy wouldn’t stand for that. The garden seemed to be her whole life lately. In the end, there was nothing Edward could or would do if she wanted to rut all day, so he dismissed it from his mind as best he could.
On the campus, moving from stack to dusty stack in the various familiar libraries where he had spent so much time—and which now seemed so alien —Edward sought answers to the meaning of the Grange and what it stood for.
He confirmed in detail the brief encyclopedia entry he had read on that day, seemingly ages gone by. The Grange, if this was indeed the same one, had been the brainchild of Oliver Hudson Kelley in 1867. (The word “grange” came from the same Latin root as “grain,” granum, and meant merely a storehouse for grain.) He dug into Kelley’s past. The man had been an immigrant, his father Irish, his mother French. There the personal trail petered out. Edward switched to the public practices of the Grange.
On the surface, the Grange’s history was one of promoting
Similar Books
