Free Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver Page B

expertly applied. In almost thirty years of walking around on the grass of the world, she couldn’t recall having spent two minutes alone with a butterfly.
    It flew, and she stood up, meeting the unguarded eyes of both Hester and Bear. They seemed expectant, or even accusing, as if it might be up to Dellarobia to arrange this nonsensical sight into something ordinary and real. She couldn’t imagine it. Cub stared at her too, through the moving light, and then startled her by pulling her to him, his arm around her shoulders.
    “Mother, Dad, listen here. This is a miracle. She had a vision of this.”
    Bear scowled. “The hell.”
    “No, Dad, she did. She foretold of it. After the shearing we were up talking in the barn, and she vowed and declared we had to come up here. That’s why I kept on telling you we should. She said there was something big up here in our own backyard.”
    Dellarobia felt a dread of her secrets. She recalled only her impatience, speaking to Cub in anger that night, telling him anything could be up here. Terrorists or blue trees.
    Hester peered into her face as if trying to read in bad light. “Why would he say that? That you foretold of it.”
    A movement of clouds altered the light, and all across the valley, the butterfly skin of the world transfigured in response, opening all the wings at once to the sun. A lifting brightness swept the landscape, flowing up the mountainside in a wave. Dellarobia opened her mouth and released a soft pant, anticipatory gusts of breath that could have become speech or laughter, or wailing. She couldn’t give it shape.
    “Here’s your vision. I see a meddling wife.” Bear shook his head in weary disgust, a gesture that defined him, like the dogtags he still wore after everyone else had given up on his war. A large and mighty man among the trifling, that was Bear’s drill. “You all need to get down off your high horses,” he said. “We’re going to spray these things and go ahead. I’ve got some DDD saved back in the basement.”
    “You’ve got 3-D in your basement?” asked Norwood.
    “DDT,” Cub told him. “Dad, that stuff has been against the law for more than my whole life. No offense, but it must be something else you’ve got stored.”
    “Why do you think I saved it up? I knew it would be hard to get.”
    “That stuff’s bound to go bad on you,” Hester argued. “After this many years.”
    “Woman, how is poison going to go bad? You reckon it’ll get toxic ?” Bear laughed at his own joke. No one else did. Cub normally cowered like a cur under this tone from his father, but was strangely unyielding now.
    “There’s not enough spray in the world to kill that many bugs, Dad. That might not be the thing to do.”
    “I guess you’ve got money to make the equipment loan, then.” Bear’s eyes were the color of unpainted tin, and exactly that cold. Dellarobia kept her mouth shut. She knew they had received a down payment on the logging, already forwarded in part to the bank and the taxes. Two places, along with the grave, that didn’t give back if you changed your mind.
    “Listen, Dad. There’s a reason for everything.”
    “That’s true, Bear,” Hester said. “This could be the Lord’s business.”
    Cub seemed to flinch, turning to Dellarobia. “That’s what she said. We should come up here and have a look, because it was the Lord’s business.”
    Dellarobia plumbed her brain for what he might have heard her say, but came up empty. Once, in bed, he’d asked what she was smiling at with her eyes closed, and she’d mentioned colors moving around like fire. Only that. Cub now gazed at the sky.
    “It’s like the tenth wonder of the world,” he said. “People would probably pay to see these things.”
    “That they might,” Norwood agreed.
    “We should wait till they fly off,” Cub declared, as if he’d made such decisions before. “I bet we can get that much grace out of the company, Dad.”
    Bear exhaled a hiss of