and gives him a kiss that turns into a bite, Beth chewing on his lower lip. On the walk to the truck, he casually swats her heart-shaped behind. Such casual intimacies make Jack sick at heart, and for an instant he’s sorry that Connor ever came back from Afghanistan—such an evil thing to wish, he feels he might wilt with shame. Longing should be a sweet thrill, but for Jack it is a worm in a rotten apple.
They are two miles from the farm and two miles from town when Beth casts a wild look out the window and shrieks, “Pull over!” as if she has seen someone mangled and bloody at the side of the road.
Connor jerks the wheel, the ex-soldier handling the truck like a man who has had to drive through gunfire more than once. The pickup flings a milky cloud of dust into the air as they batter to a tooth-rattling stop on the shoulder.
Beth cranes her head to peer through the rear window at a farm stand. “The sign says she’s got quail eggs.”
Connor stares at her.
“Don’t you get sick of eggs out of a chicken’s butt?” Beth asks. “Don’t you ever wanna eat something different?”
“I just did,” Connor says. “I just ate the goddamn steering wheel.”
Beth and Jack walk hand in hand to the farm stand, with the morning sunlight on their faces.
The stand is no more than a plank table on wooden trestles, covered with a green-and-white check tablecloth. Wicker baskets contain masses of radishes and bunches of kale. An elderly woman sits in a folding chair, looking as if she has nodded off, chin touching her chest. Jack can tell she’s elderly because she wears a striped T-shirt that leaves her arms bare, and those arms are hatched with wrinkles, pale blue veins showing through the skin. But he can’t see her face because she wears a wide-brimmed green straw hat, and with her head down her features are hidden beneath the floppy brim. The hand-lettered cardboard sign reads:
Quail Eggs! Yum yum good!
Tobacco-Leaf Hunny!
Apple Butter!
Small cakes, big tomatoes,
Seeds for the Garden
Beth peers into a shoe box stuffed with hay and oohs over the speckled eggs inside.
“I’ve never had quail eggs before,” she says.
“I have the remedy for that, dearie!” says the old lady, and she straightens and lifts her head.
The sun shines through the thin material of the green straw hat and casts her face in an otherworldly green light. When she grins, her mouth opens so wide it’s like she’s been poisoned by the Joker. She keeps her gray hair pulled tightly back off her high forehead, and she has a Roman aquiline nose, and it comes to Jack that she looks something like George Washington. No sooner has the thought crossed his mind than she winks at him, as if he has spoken out loud and she wants him to know she isn’t offended in the slightest.
“I heard about you folk. You’re the tax resisters, over there starting your own nation. I hope you don’t want to buy quail eggs with your own money—I only deal in American tender.” She laughs, a dry cackle that sends a shiver through Jack.
“Glad to pay in American,” Beth replies, her smile tightening. “Why not? It isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Hasn’t been since we left the gold standard in 1933. You’d be better off taking payment in cigarettes. At least they’ll still be worth something when the country falls.”
“Did you want to pay me in ciggies?” the old woman asks. “It’ll spare me a trip to the Citgo after you buy my eggs.”
“I know most of the people round here. Where are you from?”
“The federal guv’mint!” says the old lady. “I am an undercover Eff Bee Eye agent, and I’m wearing a wire right this instant!” She cackles again. “I’m the oldest Eff Bee Eye agent in history. J. Edgar Hoover gave me my badge his own self, and the dress I’m wearing, too! We had the same taste in clothes.”
Beth inquires how much for a dozen quail eggs, and the old woman tells her four-eighty. Beth asks what tobacco honey tastes like, and the old woman says just like honey.
“Well, what’s special about it, then?”
“Eat enough and it will give you cancer,” says the old doll, keeping herself entertained.
Beth opens her hemp purse and produces a crumpled ten. “I need change.”
“Are you sure? Didn’t we just agree U.S. money is only worth what we imagine? How about I give you