“No. But we never knew how to do it before you came, and the magic went away again after you moved out. The magic was all you, Demon.”
We were quiet for a minute. I warmed myself on a little bonfire of remembered ridiculousness, and hoped she was doing the same. “I still have that ship. In the bottle. Everything else I’ve ever owned, I’ve lost by now or thrown out. But I kept that. You thought I was going places. We just didn’t see the bottle part coming.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. Opened her empty right hand and looked at it, like something was in there. Then put it behind her back. “I’m sorry you and Annie didn’t get your book thing put together,” she said.
“I’ll get it figured out. And I’m sure she’ll get back to me eventually. I mean, how long can one baby last?”
She laughed. But something was winding down here.
“We could give it another go,” I said. “Christmas. What do you want?”
“A big fat check for this house.”
“You know my price range. No real improvement there, sadly. I might have notched up a little on the naughty-nice scale, though.”
She leveled me with a stare that stirred something up I couldn’t name. Or was scared to admit to. “Okay. I have a present for you,” she said. “It’s not wrapped. I just thought of it.”
“Okay. Where is it?”
“Um. Five hundred miles from here. Directly adjacent to a bunch of sand.”
I laughed. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious. I’m giving you the ocean.”
“It’s winter.”
“You know what? They don’t roll it up and put it away. It’s just sitting there. Take it or leave it, home skillet. One goddamn Atlantic Ocean on offer.”
“Can I get that to go?”
She pulled down the earflaps of her hat with both hands, like she might otherwise levitate, and got up in my face. As nearly as she could, being a foot shorter, reaching up at me with the big gray eyes: Not kidding. She said she had the week off work, due to testing schedule or something. She asked if I had a deadline on getting back to Knoxville. I didn’t.
“So what do you say, Demon. Time to say grace and blow this dump?”
I followed her back to Coach’s apartment so she could grab what she needed. We took the Beretta, as the slightly less risky option. She said that sea-blue car was asking for it, and she was a good sport about it smelling like an ashtray. We kept the windows down as far as Gate City, which was damn airish in that weather, but by the time we got on the interstate it was fine to roll them up. And I was still yet shivering for some reason, ready to jump out of my skin. Angus was a couple of steps out ahead of me, as she always and ever would be. So happy. Utterly chill.
She rifled through her bag of car snacks. Opened a bag of M&Ms and threw one that bounced off my face. I called a traveling penalty. She picked it up off the floor and popped it in my mouth. “So, to get this straight, as far as your motives. You’re not in it for the suntan, right?”
I told her I was not. Just wanted to look at that big drink of water.
“Good,” she said. “Because it’s going to be cold. But there are lots of advantages to going in winter.” She named them: No crowds. No strutting peacocks in Speedos. We’d have the place to ourselves. Motels would be half price. This was Angus trusting the ride, we were staying in a motel. I was extremely unclear about where we were headed. Was she still my sister?
She smacked her forehead. “Oh my God. Oysters.”
“What about them.”
“You can only eat them in winter! June, July, August, they’re poison. You have to wait till the months that have the letter R.”
This sounded highly doubtful. “Why is that?”
“Believe it or not, with my amazingly advanced degree, I don’t know. It’s one of these things you pick up. I went to New Orleans a few times with friends.”
There he was, the friend. “And you’re saying it’s worth the wait? Because I’m saying Mrs. Peggot used to cook them in soup at Christmas, and I was not a fan.”
“This is nothing like that. At the beach they’re fresh. You crack them open and drink them right off the shell. Raw. Technically I guess still alive.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“You won’t believe how good. It’s like kissing the ocean. Demon.” She leaned forward so I could see her face, and drilled those bad-girl eyes into me with a look that threatened my perfect driving record. “And it’s kissing you back.”
Oh my Lord. The girl has set her cap. Not my sister.
We talked the whole way through the Shenandoah Valley. The end of the day grew long on the hills, then the dark pulled in close around us. Snowflakes looped and glared in the headlights like off-season lightning bugs. Ridiculous nut that I’d been to crack. I drove left-handed with my right arm resting on her seat back, running my thumb over the little hairs on the back of her neck. The trip itself, just the getting there, possibly the best part of my life so far.
That’s where we are. Well past the Christiansburg exit. Past Richmond, and still pointed east. Headed for the one big thing I know is not going to swallow me alive.
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to Charles Dickens for writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Those problems are still with us. In adapting his novel to my own place and time, working for years with his outrage, inventiveness, and empathy at my elbow, I’ve come to think of him as my genius friend.
Many generous people helped me sketch out and color in the frames of this novel, offering their expertise on subjects ranging from foster care and child protective services to the logistics and desperations of addiction and recovery, Appalachian history, cartooning, and high school football. Mistakes are mine, authenticity is theirs: Camille Kingsolver, Reid Snow, Silas House, Kayla Rae Whitaker, Linda Snow, Amanda Freeman, Christine Dotson, Sue Ella Kobak, and Art Van Zee. Beyond the scope of this novel, we can all thank Dr. Van Zee for his groundbreaking exposure of dangerous prescription opioids, ultimately bringing the crisis to public attention. I’m in awe of his dedication to his patients.
The Origin Project, cofounded by Adriana Trigiani and Nancy Bolmeier-Fisher, enriches our schools and inspired my fictional Backgrounds project. Parts of this story came from my own Mammaw and Pappaw, Louise and Roy Kingsolver, and great-aunt Lillian Wright Craft, who still speak to me with the confidence of the living, in a language that my years outside of Appalachia tried to shame from my tongue.
Every draft of this book was improved by advice from insightful readers, especially Sam Stoloff, Terry Karten, Silas House, and Louisa Joyner. Judy Carmichael calmed the stormy seas and kept my little boat from sinking. Steven Hopp, in addition to reading and talking me through every page, kept me fed at my desk, accompanied me on fact-finding adventures, and pulled me outside into the sun, time and again, to get me back from the dark places this story needed me to go.
For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day, who’ve lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish they were: this book is for you.
About the Author
BARBARA KINGSOLVER is the global prize-winning and bestselling author of ten novels, including Unsheltered, Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays and creative non-fiction. Her work of narrative non-fiction is the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She has both won and been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.