Martin and Mr. Perkins spoke to everybody we passed. A summer storm was blowing up by then, as you may recall. Wind whipped down the sidewalk, clouds tore across the sky. Mr. Longstreet Perkins had to hold on to his famous straw hat. It started thundering. Suddenly I felt the way I used to feel when Sissy and me were kids. We’d run up on the top of the mountain to whirl around and around whenever a storm came up. You can smell the lightning in the air, which is real exciting, it doesn’t smell like anything else in the world. So that’s how I felt, walking down the sidewalk to this jail. Drops of rain as big as silver dollars splattered on the sidewalk. We were getting real wet. My hair lay plastered in strings all down my face. Lightning flashed. It kept on thundering. But my heart rose like a bird with each step we took until I was flying, flying up through the electric air and out among the clouds.
Ultima Thule
Y ou’ll remember to get the Thule put on top of the Volvo, then?” On his way over to the university, Jake turns back to ask her. “And make sure the key works?” He hands her this little bitty key.
“Sure,” Nova says, rubbing her eyes, wearing a black number three muscle shirt that used to be her brother’s, and nothing else. She knows she can get Theron to do it. “The drug boys are coming today,” she says, and Jake nods. He is on the board of Agape, the residential drug treatment program which runs the landscaping and lawn care business that comes to work at their little farm outside Charlottesville, which is not really a farm, any more than they are really farmers, or Jake is an average graduate student, or they are a regular young couple just trying to make ends meet.
No. The big surprise is that Jake has turned out to belong to a very rich family, rich enough to own an entire island in Maine, for instance, which is where they are heading tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn in the Volvo with the Thule on top of it like an enormous coffin filled with their clothes because the dogs will be taking up all the space in the car — Thor, Jake’s old black lab, in the backseat, and Odin, the big husky pup, in the back-back. Everybody in Jake’s family owns big dogs that wear bandannasand go to Maine. Nova has been there once, last year, when she and Jake had just gotten married.
Everybody in Jake’s family called her “The Bride” in a tongue-in-cheek way that made her nervous at first, until she figured out that’s just how they all talk, like they are putting quotation marks around everything. Nova recognizes irony, which is what Mrs. Stevenson, her senior English teacher, defined as, “Irony is when the fire chief’s house burns down.” Part of the irony in calling her “The Bride” came from the fact that Nova was already pregnant, she knew this, too.
“No, this is great, this is awesome, this is seriously great,” Jake’s brother had assured her in Maine. “We always figured he was gay.”
Now Jake blows her a kiss from the yard before he drives off in his old truck. Nova has never known a man before who would blow anybody a kiss, ever, under any circumstances. She rubs her flat stomach, fingering the navel ring. Jake took pictures of her pregnancy, every few days. He used rolls and rolls of film. She lost that baby at five and a half months, and it was a girl, they said. Nova had wanted a girl, she would have taken such good care of it, not like her own mother at all. Nova and Jake had already bought a crib, and gotten Agape to paint the extra bedroom tangerine, her idea. Nova has plenty of ideas, she is not dumb at all. Jake has made her realize this. Now they have closed the door to the little tangerine room, until later.
Good thing they’ve got these two dogs, which keep her busy, sort of. Nova likes the dogs, but she did not like Maine, an entire state that smells like Pine-Sol, especially Blueberry Island, a very cold and foggy place that is far away from everything,
Ultima Thule
Y ou’ll remember to get the Thule put on top of the Volvo, then?” On his way over to the university, Jake turns back to ask her. “And make sure the key works?” He hands her this little bitty key.
“Sure,” Nova says, rubbing her eyes, wearing a black number three muscle shirt that used to be her brother’s, and nothing else. She knows she can get Theron to do it. “The drug boys are coming today,” she says, and Jake nods. He is on the board of Agape, the residential drug treatment program which runs the landscaping and lawn care business that comes to work at their little farm outside Charlottesville, which is not really a farm, any more than they are really farmers, or Jake is an average graduate student, or they are a regular young couple just trying to make ends meet.
No. The big surprise is that Jake has turned out to belong to a very rich family, rich enough to own an entire island in Maine, for instance, which is where they are heading tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn in the Volvo with the Thule on top of it like an enormous coffin filled with their clothes because the dogs will be taking up all the space in the car — Thor, Jake’s old black lab, in the backseat, and Odin, the big husky pup, in the back-back. Everybody in Jake’s family owns big dogs that wear bandannasand go to Maine. Nova has been there once, last year, when she and Jake had just gotten married.
Everybody in Jake’s family called her “The Bride” in a tongue-in-cheek way that made her nervous at first, until she figured out that’s just how they all talk, like they are putting quotation marks around everything. Nova recognizes irony, which is what Mrs. Stevenson, her senior English teacher, defined as, “Irony is when the fire chief’s house burns down.” Part of the irony in calling her “The Bride” came from the fact that Nova was already pregnant, she knew this, too.
“No, this is great, this is awesome, this is seriously great,” Jake’s brother had assured her in Maine. “We always figured he was gay.”
Now Jake blows her a kiss from the yard before he drives off in his old truck. Nova has never known a man before who would blow anybody a kiss, ever, under any circumstances. She rubs her flat stomach, fingering the navel ring. Jake took pictures of her pregnancy, every few days. He used rolls and rolls of film. She lost that baby at five and a half months, and it was a girl, they said. Nova had wanted a girl, she would have taken such good care of it, not like her own mother at all. Nova and Jake had already bought a crib, and gotten Agape to paint the extra bedroom tangerine, her idea. Nova has plenty of ideas, she is not dumb at all. Jake has made her realize this. Now they have closed the door to the little tangerine room, until later.
Good thing they’ve got these two dogs, which keep her busy, sort of. Nova likes the dogs, but she did not like Maine, an entire state that smells like Pine-Sol, especially Blueberry Island, a very cold and foggy place that is far away from everything,
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