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And so they did, on a ht Noah to h Road, she was surprised to see how iven that no one lived up there: a flat-sided plastic bottle, bright yellow under its ancient patina of dirt White shreds of plastic grocery bags A large, ruled with barbed wire, froarette butts, also traces of some personal past, possibly hers
Pete hiked in front, talking quietly with Ovid in what seee she alation, soirl, Bonnie, asback to ith her and ask about her kids, whether she had grown up here, things on that order It was a conversation that emptied out pretty quickly, but Dellarobia appreciated the effort She had never been around people from out of state, and ildly anxious Really she’d hardly been around people at all since she quit waiting tables, before Preston was born As silly as it seemed, she had worried even about what to wear today Her old, leather-soled farh-tech boots, which hadsoles that looked like astronaut wear They were like kids on TV shohose so-called ordinary faners and never wore the sa twice Farm boots and jeans, however, hat Dellarobia had She’d noticed that Bonnie usually wore a bandanna on her head, tied in the back under her ponytail, so Dellarobia did the sao to preschool?" Bonnie asked
"Preston’s in kindergarten, half-day, so he gets hohteen months, so she’s a full-tio to work today He’s babysitting" Cub hadn’t been keen on it, but didn’t have other plans, having worked only two full shifts in the last teeks Gravel deliveries were the last thing anybody wanted in a downpour These were facts she did not mention to Bonnie She wanted to in And she wanted a cigarette so badly her gums ached People looked down on smokers nowadays, or these people would, she suspected, so she’d decided to go cold turkey for today’s adventure To iht any cigarettes Now, all of fifteen nized the insanity of the plan and was ready to jump out of her hair Like the day she’d first hiked up here, in secret Then, too, she’d felt ready to explode from the combined forces of fear and excitement
She alone, and no one else in her family, had played penny poker with scientists and done their laundry and gotten invited to see what they were doing here Hester was dying to know She’d confessed as much, insofar as Hester ever tipped her hand She complained that Dr Byron barely spoke to say hello, when she crossed his path with her tour groups up there, saying little and keeping to his work Dellarobia thought of the night he’d come to supper, so modest about his expertise they’d nearly missed it "You kind of have to draw hi Hester wouldn’t have, endowed as she ith the glory of knowing it all The students were also standoffish, in Hester’s opinion Dellarobia would have said the same at first, but could hardly do so now that she’d folded their underwear That was an icebreaker
A new creek had insinuated itself on the High Road For a while they ed to jump the puddles and rivulets, but soon their path around and pinned sideways, backing up the flow Pete and Dr Byron went ahead to find a place where they could safely cross or get around the water Pete seemed to have seniority over the other two students And Mako seeest, maybe because of his dense black hair that stood up all over his head like a child’s He had lovely, exotic features, Japanese she would have guessed; California is what he told her Actually none of the helpers was all that young, probably close to her own age Pete ht even be older But Cub referred to the Because they were childless, she supposed Free to look at bugs all day
It was cold out today, she could see her breath Hunting-jacket weather She and Mako and Bonnie waited in silence by the washout, staring at the rugged brown roar Unseen objects under the rushing waterat the shapes of what lay underneath She thought of the day she and Cub stood in the flow of butterflies, objects inbodies This water was fierce and dark Clots of foa at the banks like dirty dishwater suds A tattered ribbon of vivid orange flailed in the current, snagged on a twig, and it took her atape fro That was a shock From way up there it had traveled to here, this was the path of the flow Next stop: her house She’d done so on the Internet about the town in Mexico where Preston’s little friend and her fa was a part of it They had clear-cut the mountainside above the town, and that was said to have caused thephotos showed houses and the twisted ether like sandwiches in theShe’d had to shut off the coured out what they were seeing She told hi way fro the way around Theextent They left the trail and then caher up the valley, in a place where two separate rivulets caether Pete pointed out to her how the two different streaed, one yellowish and silty from the road cut, the other one clear, fro parallel for several yards before they blended The forest protected against erosion, was Pete’s point, but this one felt a little wrecked Shattered sticks lay all over the drenched leaf carpet Running water made leaf-banked runnels that scoured the forest floor down to gravel and bedrock How strange, she thought, to see the forest floor laid bare that way It gave an impression of the earth as basically just a rock, thinly clothed
She kept her cold hands in her pockets, and kept up She was surprised when they left the road and descended into the hollow on a trail she had not known about Possibly they’d made it themselves It led directly to the heart of the valley where the fir trees and the butterflies were She’d seen cluredient of the flotsaround was co every which way, like a strange linoleum pattern The butterflies never lay open, as she’d seen the, but invariably were dead in the folded position, like praying hands She hated walking on theh, soently like tiny books to read so there Bonnie showed her how to tell theborders than the fe