Quite a Year for Plums (21 page)

“They're vegetarians, Daddy, they don't eat people. I read it in
Ranger Rick,”
called Andy.

“Yeah right,” said Tom. “Did you know that a living giant squid has never been seen by human eyes? But that don't mean they're not down there.”

“Human eyes,” said Louise.

“Here I am sending my only son out to Ammonia Spring and you're going to come back with both your legs gnawed off,” said Tom.

“I'll be all right, Daddy,” called Andy, and he wrapped his lips back around the snorkel.

“Well, all I can say is, rub some spit around in your mask to keep it from fogging up, so you can see them when they start coming after you,” said Tom.

Roger's seat mate had talked quite brightly during the first half of the flight, sipping ginger ale and telling him about the meeting she had attended in
Austin, something to do with funding for community colleges. Then, “And what took you to Texas?” she asked. Roger said, “It was a meeting of plant scientists“—only that, but next thing he knew she had fallen asleep and was slumping over onto his shoulder, drooling a little, with her hand flopped against his thigh. He tried to squirm out from under her, but he was trapped in the window seat with nowhere to go; every time he shifted she just snuggled closer. She would be embarrassed when she woke up, he knew that. Two seats up and across the aisle he could see Lucy sitting in the exit row, reading a paper about parasitic wasps and cereal leaf beetles quite coolly, with all the space in the world. Finally he gave up and just stared out the window at the black night and the little twinkling lights of towns down below.

“We are beginning our descent into …” said the voice. “Please—” and suddenly the woman sprang upright, clamped both arms across her chest, and stared wildly at Roger and then at the seat back in front of her.

“You're all right,” said Roger. “You just fell asleep, that's all.” He helped her get her bag out of the overhead compartment and watched her scamper down the aisle away from him, teetering on her high-heeled shoes. He gathered up his briefcase and he and Lucy walked together through the little airport and out to his truck in the parking lot, and then drove off down the lit-up streets of Tallahassee. They talked for a while about a genetically engineered bac-ulovirus they'd learned about in Austin; it had been very effective in controlling cotton bollworms and
tobacco budworms in field tests. Then they talked about the heat and the plums and the trip to Ammonia Spring.

“Meade can't stop thinking about the five deaths in Perote in ‘03/ said Lucy.

“I wonder how many dozen quarts of jam Eula has put up?” said Roger.

“I wonder if Andy has once turned loose of that snorkel since he's been here” said Lucy.

They drove past the shopping centers on the edge of town, and the new subdivisions with their fancy entrances, and the last Publix Supermarket, lit up in a blaze of light like the promised land. Then suddenly Lucy said, “You're a good man, Roger.”

But Roger couldn't think of anything to say to that, and they just drove on in the dark without talking anymore, past the cotton fields and the peanut fields and the woodpecker woods to home.