His life was a marvel, whether he knew that or didn't. His way of seeing a cat in a cold wind, or skeletons pressed flat in the dust. A dead fish thrown in the kitchen slop pail. He could cry for about anything and give it a decent burial. He was so afraid of living, yet live he did. That's a monument. He wrote about those who came before, giving flesh to their cares. He was driven to it.
Now I do the same for him. Even knowing, as I do, how everyone makes firewood from the fallen tree. The professors like to hunt out some sin of Shakespeare himself, and pass that off as the golden store of the learned. I couldn't bear this to touch Mr. Shepherd, or his loved ones or even children, if such a thing has now come to pass. I want time for him. All the paint washed off, bare limestone revealed.
That is my reason for having it locked up and held. Mr. Gold knew how to fix that up. People at a bank do this very thing, holding documents for a set number of years before hauling it out of the vault for the newspapers or what have you. I told him fifty. I had to choose, and that is a sturdy number. Long enough to be sure we are gone. Yet not so long that I couldn't imagine people still walking about in shoes, rather than flying on clouds. People who might want to look back on those who labored and birthed the times they have inherited. But maybe that's wrong, and already we'll be a graveyard of weeds they won't want to visit. You, I mean to say. The times you have inherited. I wonder that: Who be ye?
I dread to do what I do now, commending a man's life into the bleak passage to some other place, be it filled with light or darkness. This is my small raft. I know not what waits on the other side.
About the Author
BARBARA KINGSOLVER is the author of seven works of fiction, including the novels The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Her most recent book is the enormously influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver's work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. In 2000 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through the arts. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.
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Also by Barbara Kingsolver
Fiction
Prodigal Summer
The Poisonwood Bible Pigs in Heaven
Animal Dreams
Homeland and Other Stories The Bean Trees
Essays
Small Wonder
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never Poetry
Another America
Nonfiction
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver) Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands (with photographs by Annie Griffiths Belt) Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
Credits
Jacket design by Archie Ferguson
Copyright
THE LACUNA. Copyright (c) 2009 by Barbara Kingsolver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Diego Rivera, excerpt from "Rivera Still Admires Trotsky, Regrets Their Views Clashed" from the New York Times (April 15, 1939). Reprinted with the permission of the Banco de Mexico and the Instituto Nacionale des Bellas Artes.
The New York Times, excerpts from "U.S. Forbids Entry of Trotsky's Body; Soviet Calls Him Traitor" from the New York Times (April 25, 1940). Copyright 1940 by The New York Times Company. "2,541 Axis Aliens Now in Custody" from the New York Times (December 13, 1941). Copyright 1941 by The New York Times Company. Samuel A. Tower, "79 in Hollywood Found Subversive, Inquiry Head Says" from the New York Times (October 23, 1947). Copyright 1947 by The New York Times Company. The New York Times, "Truman is Linked by Scott to Reds" from the New York Times (September 26, 1948). Copyright 1948 by The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. All used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.
Frank Desmond, "McCarthy Charges Reds Hold U.S. Jobs" from the Wheeling Intelligencer (February 10, 1950). Reprinted by permission.
Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195967-7
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