Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb

She turned it over. “Did we buy this thing?”

“I found it here.”

“Gary.” She watched the bread. “Do you think my mom called the police?”

He watched the beans. “Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Are you going to get in trouble?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Two reasons. You want to hear them?”

She nodded.

“One, I’m really smart.” He cracked an egg over the hottest side of the beans and set the shells in the dirt beside his boot. She grinned and studied the bread.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I! Don’t you think I’m smart?” He held an egg in his palm.

“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”

“Good,” he said. “I know you do.”

“Second,” she said.

He opened another egg over the beans and gestured toward the pan, the yolks of the four eggs brightening in the red beans and sauce. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

She gave him a look.

“Just look at it,” he said. “Think of all the chickens and bean pickers and bean canners and tomato growers and truckers in the world all collaborating to fill your belly and make you strong. It’s medicine. And we’re not worthy of it if we don’t acknowledge it.”

“Okay, it’s beautiful.”

“What’s beautiful about it?” he asked her.

“The yellow and red.”

“And all the work.”

“I guess.”

“All the sun and rain, which is magic.”

She scrunched up her nose.

“It is, Tom. I know I’m right about this. Want to know which part has the most magic in it?”

“Which?”

“The chili peppers.”

“I don’t like spicy like that.”

“You have to taste it carefully. With an open mind.”

“But it burns my tongue.”

“That’s a mistaken point of view. What you’re tasting in hot sauce like this is nothing less than the heat of starlight. Did you know the sun is a star?”

“Do you think I’m retarded?”

“How’s your coffee?”

“Good. But not the cocoa in it.”

“Honestly?”

“Yes.”

“Because typically you take your coffee black.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, you’re my kind of girl.” He pulled the pan away a little from the flames. “Don’t burn our toast.”

“I’m not.”

“You want to hear the second reason?”

“Yes.”

“This is the most important part, okay?”

“Okay.”

“It’s that I have you to help me. Isn’t that right? I’m trusting you to help me in this. We’re fifty-fifty.”

“Right.”

“Didn’t we shake on it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So. That’s how I know. Your mother and Jessie—even though you don’t like him, Em, don’t do that. That’s a nasty habit. I hope you never roll your eyes when someone mentions my name to you.”

“Sorry.”

“They love you very much. How could they not?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t need to worry about it too much. Because this is going to be really good for everyone. It’s good for their love of each other, and it’s good for their love of you. And when you get back to that little apartment, and back to those girls like Jenny and Sid, there’s going to be a new light about you. The stillness of the earth in you. You’ll know so much more than you did. You’ll know about this country’s secret heart. You’ll just be drenched in it. And it’ll get all over everybody.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? Doesn’t that sound good to you? Take this plate. Hold it steady. Got it? This is going to be the best breakfast of all time. Here. One, two, three eggs for you. I know how you are. Should I give you all four eggs?”

“Maybe.”

“Ha. You see? Do I know everything about you, or what?”

“I know. It’s totally weird.”

“Taste those beans for me. Good?”

Nod. “Hot.”

“How about after breakfast we pack for a little hike out toward those hills?”

“I can wear my new boots.”

“We’ll break them in carefully, so we don’t blister your perfect white feet. And you can wear your new jacket. Unless you’re going to stay in that nightgown.”

“Maybe I’ll wear the nightgown the whole week.”

“I’d love that.”

The best way to honor your life is to perform every act with ceremony. Don’t do sloppy work. Tie your shoes carefully. Comb your hair carefully. And right now, he said, honoring our lives means packing carefully for the hike.

“But you’re packing,” she said, “like we’re never coming back.”

“Well, you still talk,” he said, “like you think we’re in a movie.”

He kneeled to the ground whenever they came upon something new in the grass and weeds as they hiked out through the public lands beyond the old and abandoned ranches and along the major river. Tiny bloodred urns of prairie smoke, animal shit marbled with fur, and the slender bones of sparrows and deer mice.

“See this one?” he whispered. “See those little green hearts on the inside? The green middle? The way they all cluster at the top here?” He made a circle with his index finger from the petals to the stamen.

Nod.

“If we dug it up, the roots would be scaly and black.”

“No way.”

“Like the hide of the devil himself.”

She curled her lip.

“It’s so poisonous that a single blossom would kill someone your size.”

“Whoa.”

“Put you right to sleep like a princess in a fairy tale.”

“How many would it take to kill you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m a big guy.”

“But how many?”

“More than someone like you could gather in a single day.”

“I wasn’t saying anything.”

“Neither was I.”

“What’s it called?”

“I can’t remember. Death something. Or deathly something. Do you want to keep one?”

“Is it poisonous to touch?”

He plucked the cluster and they held their breath, both of them eyes wide and tracing its arc through the air as he slowly lowered it between two pages of American elms in her new North American tree book. “You be careful with this.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious, Em. If anyone saw it they’d know you were out west.”

“Okay.”

The meadow between the house and the hem of the mountains was wider than Lamb had reckoned. By the time they had crossed halfway to the swell of hill and trees, it had been nearly two hours of steady hiking, and their pants were soaked to the knees and their boots caked with manure and mud.

“If we hadn’t got you those boots, we’d have had to go back an hour ago.”

“Why?”

“In tennis shoes your feet would be blistered all to hell from wet socks.”

“Oh.”

“This is the part where you say, Gee, Gary, where would I be without you?”

“Gee, Gary, where would I be without you?”

“Tommie. Don’t ever say anything like that to a man.”

The passing day was marked by ravens calling, by constant twittering of song sparrows in the trees and on the fence posts. Acres of dry grass banded by red and gold ribbons of fireweed and yellow gumweed. Sagebrush grew to the height of the girl’s throat, and after once lifting her over a wall of fallen alder he backed up and hurdled it.

“I can still get up there!” he said, panting on the other side, hands on his knees, grinning up into the light at her.

“You’re not that old.”

“Oh, say that again, you sweet child.”

“You’re not. You’re not that old.”

By noon they were climbing the ridge, the aspen groves sporadically shading the sun from their foreheads and arms.

“What are these things everywhere?”

“Cow patties.”