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She worked steadily through the afternoon counting insects She’d had worse jobs in her life One quadrat she split with Mako, and all the ones still uncounted she did by herself while the rest of the crew did other work They h a little yellow instrus called calipers, andtiny scales that looked like drug-dealer equipan to wane they headed down-ht of her dear children and, ether, clih Road and descending it with the sun at their backs Butterflies that hadthe day noed toward the flowers if they could find any here, for nectar, Ovid said War around would deplete their fat reserves Fat reserves, on a butterfly? Yes In fact, he said, warer here than the cold snaps The butterflies would burn through their fuel h-altitude roost That was a big proble She tried to picture winter flowers, and came up blank Poinsettias? Depauperate of nectar sources, hat he said She tried not to take it personally that her mountain was poor in all ways, even floise
She tried to cal resentments and just float on the tide of butterflies that surrounded thea at her, sweeping around They see the air She could see how they would need steady cues in their unsteady world She felt for them She wanted to like the scientists too, who really did care about the butterflies, probably a far cry more than she did It was true what Ovid said, they were only taking the s If the neas bad, that wasn’t their fault They were just people Kids, for the eneration, with jackets tied around their waists, walking along in a river of butterflies
Earlier in the day she’d taken a look at Mako’s coat with its wrecked zipper, and had considered offering to replace it, but hesitated Maybe he didn’t care one way or the other She made the offer now
"Replace it? You mean, take out the zipper and put in a new one?" he asked her, apparently unacquainted with the concept of clothing repair These kids hed "Lay that coat out on a table and use soot to measure the zipper You can buy one just like it at the Wal it to the house toet by without your coat for a day, and I’ll fix you right up"
"You’ve got, what, like a sewing enuine
"Well, yeah," she said, "a sewingJust a needle that goes up and down I used to h school Prom dress, the works It was the alternative to fashion death, in my income bracket"
"But how did you learn to do that?" Bonnie also seeraduates, e She wasn’t sure whether to feel proud orall that hard, it just takes patience My mother was a seamstress"
"Really," Mako said "Like, ould she sew?"
"Her specialty was business suits, if you can iine Mostly for women, but some older men still had their suits made to order, when I was little Before they all went over to buying factory made at half the price"
"In son-ht s, and then set s don’t even exist"
The students see this Maybe they didn’t know about sea that the washed-out road would hinder her mother’s tourism business It took her a second to realize he meant Hester
"Oh That’s not my mama My mother-in-law" She decided not to mention her dead parents, a reliable conversation-stopper
"Who does she bring up here?" Mako wanted to know The others were listening too, she could tell, surprisingly curious about these personal things She was not the only one with questions she was afraid to ask For the first time all day, it dawned on her that these scientists owned nothing here, and knew it Her husband’s family could kick them out and tear down the trees and the butterflies uncounted, at the snap of a finger There were torlds here, behaving as if their oas all that mattered With such reluctance to converse, one with the other Practically without a coin with," she said "This has been ain our church, people appreciate" She hesitated to use churchy words "The beauty, I guess It’s inspiring for people to see It helps theolden evening light thatlook precious Even the roar of the water see is your church?" Bonnie asked, after a bit
"Over three hundred people," she said, a figure that raised their eyebrows She wondered what sort of church college students attended, if any "And it’s not just our congregation First it was just kind of locally fa to come from Cleary and places farther away Now that it’s been in the paper twice" The second tirapher came, they’d claimed they were there to interview the science tea pretty well organized She doesn’t like the groups to be ht or ten at a ti, disabled, or little children, she brings thees more for that"
"So no senior discount," Mako observed
"Nope Myallowances If she were an undertaker, she’d tell her clients to quit whining and walk to the cemetery"