Free Gee Whiz by Jane Smiley Page B

can curl up pretty good, too. I saw him last night when I went outside—he was so bright you could hardly miss him. He had his legs all tucked up and his head and neck curled around. He’s healthy. He’ll be fine.”
    And, I thought, he has a nice coat of dirt on him to break the wind.

Chapter 5
    S UNDAY MORNING , WHEN WE DROVE OFF TO CHURCH , WE DID see snow—not around us, but on the highest peaks, crusting the grass and edging the tree limbs. Our oaks don’t lose their leaves in the winter, so to see the green and white sprinkled together is oddly beautiful. It was our turn to bring some of the food, so Mom had made two pecan pies and a pork roast. They filled the back of the car with fragrance as we drove to church, and the fragrance itself was warm and cozy.
    Brother Abner was sitting in his seat when we got there, smiling, holding his Bible. He stretched out his hand to me as I walked past, and said, “Well, Ruth Abigail, it’s nice to see you again.” I smiled and gave him a little hug, but Mom and I exchanged a glance. He looked pale and thin. He didn’t singalong with the hymns, and when it came time for him to read his passage, he didn’t stand up, the way he always had in the past. There was a long silence while everyone waited for him to open his Bible and start reading. Usually, Dad prepared his passage the night before, but Brother Abner always let the page present itself. I looked at Mr. Hollingsworth, who kept smiling, and at Dad, who continued to stare at his own Bible, and at Sister Larkin, who seemed worried. But finally, he let the Bible drop open and put his finger on the page, took a breath, and read, “When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son, and said to him, ‘My son’; and he answered, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me, and prepare for me savory food such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat; that I may bless you before I die.’ ”
    We knew this story—what happened next was that Esau’s mother ran and got Jacob, her younger son, and had him kill a pair of goats, which Rebecca then cooked just the way Isaac liked them. She had Jacob take the dish of food to Isaac while wearing a piece of goatskin so that Isaac would touch him and think he was Esau, who was hairier than Jacob. When Isaac had eaten the food, he gave Jacob the blessing—that is, all of his things. Then Esau came back and found out that he was too late, and cried. I’d always thought this was a sad and confusing story, but after Brother Abner read his part, he paused a moment, and started laughing. Everyone smiled, the way you do when you are uncomfortable. Brother Abner finishedlaughing, coughed, and said, “Now, we all know what happened. There was a big fight, and it lasted for years and for generations. That’s what happens when there is a big fight in the family—everything just feeds it, and pretty soon, no one knows why they’re mad, they are just mad. Well.” Now he shifted around in his chair, dropped his Bible, and reached down, very slowly, to pick it up again. I could see the sisters exchanging looks. He said, “What would have happened, I ask you, if Esau had done what old Isaac told him to do? If he’d taken his bow and his arrows and headed out into the wilderness, and made a new life for himself, instead of stewing and fussing? Or what if Jacob had stuck around, and had that fight with Esau, and taken his punishment and gotten it over with? What would have happened then? I tell you, everything seems important at the time, so important that you can’t stand it if you don’t do something, anything, to show how angry you are, how insulted you are. But then you get to be an old man, and you can’t remember for the life of you what you were so mad about. An insult isn’t an insult, you