“You’d ask for your dollar back when I was done,” she says.

Cash eases the pressure on her hands. “I wouldn’t. Even if you did sound like a turkey buzzard, I wouldn’t care.”

Alice leans her head back against him at the same moment he lifts his arms across her chest, holding her there and dropping his face into the crown of her hair.

“Cash,” she says.

“Hm?” He turns her around, keeping her within the circle of his arms. She looks up at his face, which at close range without her reading specs is blurry, except for the window-shaped lights in his eyes.

“You might be able to knock me over with a feather,” she tells him. “It’d be worth a try.”

Cash’s cabin is in deep woods, a quarter-mile behind Letty’s back garden. From his iron bed out on the screen porch, Alice wonders how it would be to wake up every morning to the sight of nothing but leaves.

“Did you hear what happened to that Mr. Green?”

“The ostrich rancher?” she asks. “I heard his ostriches like to sashay around and drop their feathers on the wrong side of the fence.”

Cash runs a finger down Alice’s nose. Without his glasses his eyes look soft and hopeful, like they’re in need of something. Alice honestly can’t remember the last time she was naked under the quilts with a man who was awake, but even so, neither she nor Cash seems to be in any big rush. It’s such a pleasure just to realize they’ve gotten this far. And to listen to talk.

“He tried to break into Boma’s house to get that feather back,” Cash tells her.

“Lord! Was she home?”

“No. They was all at a wedding. Can you imagine? Reading about a wedding in the paper, he must have done, because he sure wasn’t invited. And going over to burglarize the groom’s own grandma?”

“Well, did he get it?”

“He got it all right.” Cash rolls over onto his back and laughs, then clucks his tongue. “I oughtn’t to laugh. He’s in the hospital.”

“With what?”

“Nine thousand bee stings.”

Alice gasps. “And still no feather, I’ll bet.”

“Naw. It’d be like Boma to send it to him in a big vase of flowers, though. With a get-well card from the bees.”

“Hope you’re back in the pink soon, honey,” Alice says, getting the giggles.

“We’re bad.”

“We are,” Alice says. “What would our kids think of us?”

The lines around Cash’s eyes go soft, and he seems to drift for a moment. She traces the honed ridge of his breastbone with her finger, feeling deeply sad for whatever it is that takes him away, sometimes, at the mention of his family.

She would do anything to ease that burden. She finds his hand, which was resting on her waist, and holds it against her lips. “I’m sorry,” she says. “For whatever it is.”

Cash moves forward to kiss her. He tastes like woodsmoke and the color of leaves. When he touches her breast, she feels the skin of her nipples gather itself in. She is pierced with a sharp, sweet memory of nursing Taylor, and when he puts his mouth there she feels once again that longing to be drained, to give herself away entirely. Slowly Cash moves himself against her, and then very gently into her, and she feels the same longing coming through his body to hers.

They rock against each other, holding on, and the birds in the forest raise their voices to drown out the secret of creation.

30

SIX PIGS AND ONE MOTHER

ALICE WAKES TO THE SOUND of voices inside, in the kitchen.

Half of Cash appears in the doorway to the porch, his shirt-tail out, a smile on his face. He holds a spatula in his left hand, poised like a flyswatter. “How do you like your eggs?” he asks.

Alice, feeling confused, looks around as if she might have laid some eggs she’s not aware of. “Who’s that in your kitchen?”

“Kitty Carlisle.”

“Kitty Carlisle lives in Oklahoma?”

“Naw. She’s on ‘Good Morning America.’ ”

Alice runs a hand through her hair, trying to get her bearings. She was in some dream with water and furry animals. “What do you need the TV on for?”

Cash shrugs. “No reason. Just for the company; I reckon.”

“Well, I’ll get up and keep you company.” She begins to gather up her limbs, testing to make sure of their four separate locations.

“No, you just set there another minute. I’m going to bring you breakfast in bed. I’ll bring your coffee on out, as soon as you tell me ‘sunny side up’ or ‘over easy.’ ”