Barbara Kingsolver - Animal Dreams

For quite a while now Nicholas had been cruising the perimeters of his world, walking confidently from house to tree to lawn chair to wall, so long as he had something to hold on to. Sometimes what he touched was nothing more than apparent security. Today I watched the back of his red overalls with interest as he cruised along a patch of damp, tall four-o’clocks, lightly touching their leaves. He had no idea how little support they offered.

He spotted a hummingbird. It buzzed around the red tubes of a potted penstemon that stood by itself in the center of the courtyard. His eyes followed the bird as it darted up and down, a high-strung gem; Nicholas wanted it. For a long time he frowned at the brick path that lay between himself and the bird, and then he let go of the wall. He took one step and then more, buoyed up by some impossible antigravity. After two steps the hummingbird was gone, but Nicholas still headed for the air it had occupied, his hands grasping at vapor. It was as if an invisible balloon floated above him, tied to his overall strap, dragging him along from above. He swayed and swaggered, stabbing one toe at a time down at the ground, pivoting on the ball of one foot, and then suddenly the string was cut and down he bumped on his well-padded bottom. He looked at me and screamed.

“You’re walking,” I told Nicholas. “I promise you it gets easier. The rest of life doesn’t, but this really does.”

I stayed out there with my book for the rest of the afternoon, surreptitiously watching as he tried it over and over. He was completely undeterred by failure. The motivation packed in that small body was a miracle to see. I wished I could bottle that passion for accomplishment and squeeze out some of the elixir, a drop at a time, on my high-school students. They would move mountains.

The Stitch and Bitch Club was now wealthy beyond historic measure. On the heels of the blockbuster piñata sale came a steady flow of donations from the outside. Loulou Campbell, the treasurer, had always kept the club’s funds in a coffee can in the back of the Baptist Grocery where she worked. But when the volume of cash filled twelve baby-formula cans she grew nervous. Loulou opened an account at the bank and turned the passbook over to Doña Althea, whose years as a top-notch restaurateur had made her somewhat more comfortable with affluence.

The cash languished in its vault while the women pondered its meaning. Having sent their peacocks out into the world like Noah’s dove over the flood, they waited for the world to inspire their next move.

Inspiration came in the guise of an art dealer from Tucson. His name was Sean Rideheart, and he was a funny, charming little man who understood people as well as he understood beauty. The spectacular popularity of the Grace piñatas (some had been resold for as much as five hundred dollars) moved him to make a pilgrimage to the source. Mr. Rideheart was already an expert and he became a connoisseur; before he ever set foot in Grace he could already recognize the works of several individual piñata makers. Of particular value were those made by Mrs. Nuñez, who had been so resourceful with her Compton’s Children’s Encyclopedia. He wanted to know this town better.

I met him on his third visit, when he came to meet Viola. There was no school that day-I believe it was the birthday of a President-and I was staring at clouds. Emelina didn’t bother me on my bad days; I was allowed to do nothing, not even pretend to feel better, which I recognized as a rare act of human kindness and I appreciated. I spent the morning sitting on Emelina’s front porch, watching our neighbor, whose roof was on the same level with our floorboards. We were having another brief break in the rain, as if the clouds had called a time-out to muster their resources. Our neighbor Mr. Pye was taking advantage of the moment to climb up and inspect his roof.

“Got a few leaks,” he called out in a friendly way. I waved back, unsure of how to answer. I watched the top of his engineer’s cap bob down the ladder out of sight, and shortly thereafter, appear again. Mr. Pye negotiated the ladder with one hand while balancing a small, old-looking cardboard box against his hip. It made me think of the surprises coming out of the kiva at Santa Rosalia Pueblo. Mr. Pye knelt near his chimney pipe and opened the box like a birthday present, carefully lifting out some shingles. They were green, and shaped like the ace of spades-an exact match to the ones on his roof, only a little brighter. Grass-green rather than the green of old bronze. I remembered once, months ago, looking at that roof of antique shingles and assuming them to be irreplaceable.

Curiosity overcame my lassitude. “How’d you match those shingles?” I called out.

He looked at me, puzzled.

“Where’d you get the new shingles? They’re a perfect match.”

He examined the shingles in his hands, as if noticing this for the first time, and then called back, “Well, they ought to be, they’re all from the same lot. I bought two hundred extras when I put this roof on.”

“When was that?” I asked.

He looked up at the clouds. I don’t know whether he was divining the weather or the past. “Right after the war,” he said. “That would have been forty-six.”

Just then Mr. Rideheart came walking up the road under a navy blue umbrella. Maybe it was still raining down the way, where he’d just come from. He walked directly to the front porch where I sat, jauntily hopped up the steps, stomped his feet delicately a few times as if to knock off mud (though his shoes were immaculate), and extended his hand to me. I’d expected to spend the day in numb, depressed solitude, and now I felt uncomfortably honored to sit at the end of Mr. Rideheart’s long line of effort-like a princess in a tale of impossible tasks. Although I was fairly sure he hadn’t come all this way looking for me.

“Sean Rideheart,” he said. He had white eyebrows and bright green eyes; an appealing face.

“Codi Noline.” I shook his hand. “I’ve heard about you. You’re the piñata collector.”

He laughed. “I’ve been called many things in my time, but that’s a first. I’m looking for Viola Domingos.” At my invitation he sat down in the only other chair on the porch, wicker, of doubtful character.

“She’s not here,” I said. “Nobody’s home today. Viola and the kids have gone down to the church. They’re having some kind of a big party down there today, painting the saints.”

“Painting the saints?” Mr. Rideheart extracted a largish blue handkerchief from the pocket of his tweed jacket and cleaned his wire-rimmed glasses with extraordinary care. I watched for a long time, mesmerized, until he glanced up at me.

“The statues of saints, in the church,” I explained. “I guess they have to get freshened up every so often, like anybody else. The women paint the saints and the kids paint each other.”

He replaced his glasses and observed the rooftops and treetops that led stepwise down the hill. Mr. Pye had his back to us now. He was industriously tacking down shingles he’d secured for this purpose ten years before Hallie was born.

“Quite a place,” Mr. Rideheart said, finally. “How long have you lived here?”

It wasn’t an easy question to answer. “I was born here,” I said slowly. “But right now I’m just on an extended visit. My time’s up soon.”

He sighed, looking out over the white path of blossoming treetops that led up toward the dam. “Ah, well, yes,” he said, “isn’t everybody’s. More’s the pity.”

At firstthe Stitch and Bitch was divided in its opinion of Mr. Rideheart. While he was graciously received into the kitchens of half the club members, where he drank tea and stroked his white mustache and listened in earnest while the piñata artists discussed their methodologies, the other half (led by Doña Althea) suspected him of being the southwestern equivalent of a carpetbagger.