Rudy said. “We could have a baby.”
“Real professional,” I said.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to go back to Seattle,” I said.
“What’s so fucking great about Seattle?” asked Rudy. “You act like you own the fucking Space Needle or some shit.”
“There’s nothing so great about it,” I said. “But it’ll be winter soon. What am I supposed to do, hibernate?”
“That’s what I do,” Rudy said.
“What, just hole up in my camper? I don’t even have electricity.”
“You’ve got twenty acres and ducks,” Rudy said. “No one to tell you what you can and can’t do. No one to bother you. Goddamn. There’s no pleasing some people.”
* * *
Rudy dropped me at the bottom of the driveway just as the rain gathered itself and became a storm. I climbed the hill, fed the ducks, shut them into their shed for the night. They made one downy animal of themselves all plastered together, heads tucked down. I burrowed into my sleeping bag. In the night, the camper sprang new holes, the wind and rain coursed through it. I could hear water rushing and roaring down the gullies all around me, the wind beating against the slope, and behind me in the forest, beech trees snapping, smacking the ground.
In the morning, I came out to face the calm. The ducks climbed into their drinking trough, dipping and splashing in the rainwater. The drainage ditches sent runoff down toward the creek. After all, my place didn’t get hit too hard. It was hiding behind bigger hills, deeper valleys. The big weather passed it over. It was good that way, my place. I was starting to know it.
I wondered how high the creek might be, so I went down the long driveway. I saw a small orange turtle, spotted like a frog. I saw a black rat snake stranded and slow in the cold morning, flung out of hiding somehow. I saw that the persimmon tree had dropped some chalky fruit, and at the bottom of the hill, above the high creek, Lily and Karen leaned against Karen’s pickup, two bright orange traffic cones on the ground at their feet. Karen, her long frame zipped into a big hooded sweatshirt, a loose braid falling out from beneath her hat, stepped forward and stuck her hand out. “We came by to see how you made it through the storm,” she said.
“Fine,” I said, shaking her hand. “You?”
“Not too bad.” She looked around. “You’re living right on the pipeline,” she said, thumbing toward the cleared easement, fifty feet wide, that careened down the hillside and met the driveway. My boyfriend and I had never bothered talking about it.
“Do you know much about it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Probably the same one runs near our place,” she said. “I know it runs all the way from East Texas to northern Ohio. Supplies gas to houses up north. Or used to. A lot of these old lines are abandoned. Though maybe this one’s not. Looks like they still mow it.”
Lily said, “My grandma told me she sat on the bank of the creek and watched them bury this line the same year they buried John F. Kennedy. Those steam shovels turned up arrowheads by the dozen. Grandma filled her pockets with them. By law the line’s supposed to be buried four feet, but you can see it surface in places. Cast-iron.”
“Damn,” I said. “What if it explodes?”
“What if the world explodes?” Karen said.
Lily laughed. “We can help you sex the ducks,” she said.
“Or slaughter them if they turn out to be drakes,” said Karen. “It’s no problem. Might as well do it today, before it gets colder.”
“Thanks, but I don’t have a place to keep the meat,” I said.
“I already thought about that,” said Lily. “You can borrow our pressure canner. Jars and lids, too.” She turned to lift it all from the bed of the truck.
What was I supposed to do? The sun was coming out, and steam rose up off every jutting muddy piece of the land, which sparkled in a great show of democracy. A discarded truck bumper shone just like the sandstone, just like a scrap of metallic insulation and the white of yarrow flowers and the flash of blue jays’ wings, a coil of chicken wire, an old license plate half entombed in mud. Karen picked up the traffic cones. Lily handed me the canner and shouldered the bag of jars. We went up the hill.
“What are the cones for?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Karen said.
“I