Hunters and Gatherers Read Online Free PDF

their jeans and long dresses—whereas Martha had been wearing only a bathing suit and shirt.
    “Bullshit,” said Joy. “We all saw what happened. But people are going to give you a hard time because you beat them to the punch. You dove in and rescued her while they were standing there scratching their butts. I can afford to say that: there was nothing I could do. Plus, having been pretty heroic myself, and with this cast to prove it, I’m not threatened by courage, I can respect it in other women.”
    “Thanks,” said Martha.
    “Thank you ,” Joy replied.
    Martha was motioning for Joy to precede her down the hall when Joy’s door flew open and a willowy young woman appeared, glaring, in the doorway. She had red hair caught in elaborate pre-Raphaelite loops and a pale, tear-streaked face.
    “Diana, Martha,” Joy said. “Martha, Diana.”
    “Good to meet you,” said Martha.
    “I know her name is Martha. I was there on the beach today. How stupid do you think I am, Joy? Just because I…” Diana’s lower lip trembled.
    “Sor-ree, babe,” Joy said. “Diana thinks every conversation is about her leaving grad school and having a shitty job now like the rest of the world, and everyone assuming she’s stupid—”
    “Not everyone ,” said Diana. “Just you, Joy.”
    “Oh!” said Martha. “Diana, what were you studying in grad school?”
    “Anthropology,” said Diana.
    “How interesting,” said Martha.
    “ Après vous .” Joy pointed her crutch along the hall.
    Making an awkward quarter-turn, Martha continued down the hall, followed by Joy’s tapping crutches and, after her, Diana.
    In the living room a half-dozen women sat on the pillows around the low round table. They partly stood and smiled when Martha and her new friends walked in.
    At that moment a clock chimed. Everything stopped till it struck six. The tall clock was painted with planets, stars, and faux-medieval landscapes.
    “Our grandmother clock,” Diana said.
    Martha ventured into the room, expecting the others to follow, but they stopped in the doorway and left Martha to enter alone. She wandered over toward Isis Moonwagon—the only person she knew by name.
    Isis was talking to a substantial woman with a mop of curly gray hair and a flowing pantsuit in blue-and-purple tie-dye.
    “Titania, dear,” Isis was saying, “we’ve been through this before. Pollution is pollution, and it makes no difference who puts it in the river, low-caste Hindu women who have been dyeing saris for centuries or a petrochemical plant in Gary, Indiana—”
    “ I’m from Indiana,” Martha said.
    “Not Gary, certainly?” the tie-dye woman said.
    “No,” said Martha. “Bloomington.”
    “Oh,” Isis said. “I’ve lectured there. Were your parents academics?”
    “No,” said Martha. “My dad sold insurance. I mean, until he died.”
    “What a terrible job,” said Isis. “Trafficking in fear. No one wanting to pay premiums or getting any returns till something devastating happens, and having to deal with everyone’s pain for some faceless corporation…”
    How did Isis know the tragedy of Martha’s father’s life? People assumed that selling insurance was just a boring job, but they hadn’t heard her father at dinner, his nightly litany of bad luck, illness, house fires, and head-on collisions. No wonder he had stopped talking much—and had a heart attack at fifty. He had died on the front lawn, on the riding mower; everyone said it was fortunate that he hadn’t been run over but had fallen off before the mower slammed into the hedge. After five years, Martha still couldn’t think about his death without experiencing a great shocking jolt of bewilderment, grief, and sorrow. It was awful to lose someone in a way that seemed odd or funny. She almost never told anyone the part about the mower and would certainly not tell these women, who might say that having a coronary while mowing the lawn was the inevitable outcome of typically