by Barry Rachin
An elderly woman with a wrinkled face and platinum colored hair emerged from a jewelry store with several bags. She was carrying a funny looking dog that resembled a cross between a Shiatsu and a pug. The dog had a face like an exploded cigar with dark, spiky hairs sprouting in a dozen different directions. The pooch wore a collar studded with garish stones. The woman hurried past with a preoccupied expression, on her way to some hoity-toity tea party or socialite function.
“Such a slave to fashion,” Maddie muttered under her breath.
A Boston Brahman with a pampered pooch - not the sort of woman who would ever have to beg the courts for chump change. But still, the weather was delightful and it felt wonderful to get away. Two doors down was a store with a blue awning. The sign over the door read Cape Cod Collectibles. Maddie stepped over the threshold. Metal sculpture and small statuettes in various medium rested on tiered displays. Wash in a soft sheen of track lighting, glazed pottery and an assortment of porcelain figurines rimmed the far wall. From a speaker in the rear, Clifford Brown's limpid jazz trumpet was navigating through the melodic chords to Joy Spring. The smoky horn leaped into the upper register, hammering out a barrage of staccato triplets before settling back into the final chorus of the tune.
A man came out from behind the counter. He was casually dressed in a V-necked sweater and hush puppies. “That sculpture you were admiring is by a local artist.” The fellow had a boyish appearance despite a barren patch on the back of his skull where the hair had thinned away to a mere wisp. “It just sold yesterday.”
The piece, which stood four feet high, had been executed entirely in thin-gauged, brass. Using multiple strands of wire to recreate the instrument and performer, the artist had literally drawn the figure of a jazz saxophonist in silhouette. Off to the side was a trumpeter, a skier and a ballerina up on her toes. A five hundred dollar prima ballerina!
Maddie budgeted everything. Now, without that extra twenty-five bucks from Jake, there was no margin for error. And yet, some people could blow five hundred dollars on a brass ballerina and never give the extravagance a second thought. The Kennedy compound was less than a mile down the road. The senator from Massachusetts could, on a whim, buy the ballerina, jazz saxophonist or an entire sixteen-piece big band without breaking a sweat.
“Clever concept, don’t you think?” The proprietor explained how the artist drew a rough sketch in charcoal in order to visualize each figure. Then, using the drawing as a template, he shaped, rolled and twisted dozens of metal strands bringing the figure to life. “They’re three-dimensional,” he added. “Each image has depth despite the thinness of the metal.”
The garrulous owner knew Maddie and her daughter had no intention of buying anything but didn’t seem to care and Maddie appreciated that. To meet someone without an agenda or ulterior motive was refreshing. He handed her a business card. “Feel free to stop in any time.”
* * * * *
The winter that Maddie dumped her husband - the decision was unilateral - Jake was making regular pilgrimages to the social security office on Cooper Avenue, angling to get on medical disability for an old back injury. A herniated disc in the lumbar region - that was the provisional diagnosis. "Why don't you lose some weight and try physical therapy?" Maddie offered.
"I was hoping you’d support me on this." Jake's face assumed that hurt, little-boy expression that in recent months caused Maddie to flinch inwardly and avert her eyes. "When we married, you were out on workman's compensation."
Jake had tripped over a bunched rug in the lobby of the Libby Fruit Processing Center. A bunched rug - he milked that one for a year and a half until the medical board autocratically ordered him back to work or out on the streets. Three years later, Jake argued with his immediate supervisor at the plant over vacation pay and finessed the squabble into sixteen months of unemployment benefits. Now, with his latest get-rich-quick scheme, he hobbled around the house wearing an elaborate back brace.
"What if they offer you a desk job?"
"Yeah, well… that hasn't happened and I need a paycheck."
The company couldn't offer Maddie's husband a desk job. He lacked both the personality and tact to oversee other people. The saddest thing of all, perhaps, was that Maddie felt absolutely no empathy for her soon-to-be ex-husband. He wasn't a bad person. He was just... Well, what difference did it make?
Buyer beware! Let Jake Timberland become someone else's burden. Maddie endured his vacuous pipedreams for eight years. Enough was enough!
* * * * *
A week after they returned from the Cape Cod mini-vacation, Trevor Osborne's slate blue Toyota was gone from the driveway across the street. The following month a 'For Sale' sign went up on the front lawn. Kimberly abandoned the property to a real estate broker and went to live with her mother.
Five years passed. The new owners were dark-skinned Hispanic, quiet unassuming people who always greeted them with a friendly wave. Maddie never heard from Kimberly, but a neighbor two streets over, who was also a fitness buff, reported that, within eight months of the final divorce decree, she married an orthodontist on the rebound, so to speak, and was living in a mini-mansion south of Boston.
Maddie had this schizoid fantasy of Kimberly Osborne power walking down the aisle while in the background, a massive pipe organ was belting out the opening fanfare to Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. The well-toned, middle-aged woman was decked out in eggshell white, just like the first time around but with one minor deviation from social decorum: in her left hand was a mug of steaming Bigelow tea drizzled with honey and a slice of lemon.
With this ring, I thee wed. Of course the former Kimberly Osborne would have to shift the cup to the other hand in order to receive the wedding band, but that was just a minor inconvenience. The woman had devoted her life to doing as little as possible. Her college degree in elementary education was probably moldering in a storage box crammed under the crawl space in her palatial new digs. She had never worked a day in her life, not even as substitute teacher, and, in the end, everything had worked out splendidly.
* * * * *
In June a small bubble envelope arrived in the mail.
Found this paperback in the 'remaindered' bin at the local bookstore, and, after reading it, immediately thought of you.
All my best,
Trevor
Maddie didn’t know why the flimsy note – less than two dozen words all taken together - upset her so, but her hands were trembling when she laid it aside and reached for the well-thumbed paperback. The Field of Mustard by A.E. Coppard.
Who the hell was A.E. Coppard?
Placing the book on her bedside table, Maddie went out to do the grocery shopping. Later that night she read the title story then drank half a bottle of Chardonnay to settle her nerves. Over the next week or so Maddie read through the other stories. Then she went back and reread The Field of Mustard. Five more times she read it.
“On a windy afternoon in November they were gathering kindling in the Black Wood, Dinah Lock, Amy Hardwick, and Rose Olliver, three sere, disvirgined women from Pollack's Cross."
What could an unsuspecting reader say about an author who opened a story with such a sentence? They were all ‘disvirgined’- Maddie included Trevor Osborne in the mix as well - by life's vicissitudes. To become disvirgined has little to do with the human anatomy; in Coppard’s grasp of the vernacular, it meant losing one's sense of the astonishing.
Sere – such a strange word! Maddie hadn’t a clue what that meant and had to pull out her cherry red, Webster New World College Dictionary for a proper definition of dried up, shriveled, withered. Such a nice way to describe the fairer sex!
Tuesday evening Trevor called. "How did you find Mr. Coppard?"
"I liked him just fine." Maggie was thinking about Dinah Lock and her best friend Rose, two country women who had loved the same man, each in their own special way. All this took place in the textured fabric of a fairy tale fiction that felt more real
than everything else. "Rufus Blackthorn, the gamekeeper… was he a good guy or a lothario?"
"He cherished women,” Trevor answered without hesitation. “Rufus was a decent sort."
"I thought so," Maggie replied, “but just wanted to be sure, that's all."
"Would you like to get together?" Trevor interrupted her bookish reveries.
"Yes, I'd like that very much."
"How's this weekend?" he pressed.
"Why wait? Come now."
"Even better!"
Once things were settled, the conversation about A.E. Coppard rambled doggedly on a bit longer. Maggie especially like Dusky Ruth, the tale about the traveler who slept with a bar maid but never quite got around to consummating the act. Trevor thought Arabesque - The Mouse was far and away the best of the bunch. No writer had ever described a mother weaning her child by squirting breast milk into a sizzling hearth. And then, of course, there was The Higgler. Both agreed that the peddler's story, which opened the volume, was a masterful work of art.
The queer thought occurred to Maddie - a half hour passed and they had spoken only about make-believe characters from an obscure text written in the early nineteenth century. Five long years had flown by and she hadn't thought to ask about Trevor’s children or personal affairs.
"Why wait?" Maggie didn't realize that she was repeating herself. "There's no reason that you shouldn't come over now."
Back to Table of Contents
Judith the Obscure
“You gotta basketball-size swarm of honey bees needs removing?” A scruffy, middle aged woman with an angular jaw stood on the stoop just outside the front door. She wore a pair of faded dungaree several sizes too large for her skimpy frame and a blue-checked cotton blouse. A moment passed. The affable grin abruptly faded to enigmatic blankness. “Maybe I got the wrong house.”
“My folks are away on vacation.” Judith Nussbaum ushered her into the living room. Alone for the weekend, the girl’s parents were on a three-day junket at the Foxwoods Casino, just over the state line in Connecticut. Her mother favored the slot machines, while Mr. Nussbaum flitted back and forth between the black jack table and gaming parlor lounge until he became low on funds. “I went to retrieve the newspaper this morning and heard this unnerving sound… like the hum of a jet engine.”
“Jet engine with fifty thousand pairs of wings.” The gray-haired older woman’s fluid features relaxed in a bland smile. She glanced out the bay window where thirty feet away a huge mass of insects hung precariously from a low-slung hemlock tree. “I’m Francine Franklin,” she blurted by way of introduction. Judith didn’t bother to introduce herself.
“Let’s have a look.” Pivoting on her angular hips, the woman headed for the door.
Crossing the yard, Francine stopped within a few feet of the boiling mass. “Italians… that’s what you got… fifty maybe sixty thousand Italian honey bees.” A blur of insects that momentarily broke free of the tight cluster swirled overhead within inches of her wrinkled forehead, but the garrulous woman appeared unruffled, in no great hurry to give ground.
“How would you know their nationality?” Judith’s sardonic humor was unintentional.
“The yellow and black banding.” She waggled a taut index finger at a portly straggler. “Italians are very docile… gentle. They’re good workers but have insatiable apetites, so, when settling my girls down for the winter, I always put extra honey aside anticipating the winter dearth.” “Myself, I favor Russians or Carnolians.”
Judith had no clue what Francine was talking about. Without further explanation, the woman retreated to a green van parked near the mailbox and removed a six-foot ladder, pair of long-handled shears, a white bee suit and leather gloves. Slipping the suit over her clothes, she pulled the veiled headset down over her face.
“Might need a little help here,” Francine announced once the ladder was set alongside the branch.
“I’ve no protection,” Judith blurted, retreating another ten feet back from the swarm. Despite the throbbing, bass-register hum, the bees showed no interest in the humans. Francine repositioned the ladder within a few inches of the swarm.
“I’ve got no protection,” Judith repeated a second time with a more pronounced sense of urgency.
“Okay… here’s the deal.” Francine ascended the ladder and was tentatively exploring the far end of the branch with her gloved left hand. Reaching across she slipped her right hand under the swirling mass and grabbed the portion of branch closest to the tree. “Get the shears,” Francine counseled, “and cut the limb an inch from my pinky finger.”
“You can’t be serious.”
The woman’s arms splayed out parallel to the ground as she leaned precariously over the top of the ladder. Ping! A solitary bee bounced off the dark mesh veil covering her face. She never flinched. Rather, she hefted the sagging limb gingerly, and, in response, the droning bass tones emanating from the swarm crescendoed by half. “Before swarming, bees gorge on honey. They have no brood to protect so they’re in a mellow, blissfully passive state.” When there was no reply, she added, “Just snip the branch and step away. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Just snip the branch and step away. I’ll take care of the rest. Judith gawked fixedly at Francine’s backside. Finally, she picked up the shears and positioned herself just behind the ladder. Reaching up, she slipped the curved blade around the limb. Judith squeezed gently until the blades contacted the soft pine then increased pressure severing the limb from the tree. Again there was a disconcerting uptick in noise as a hundred or so mutinous bees broke away from the main ball, encircling it like a myriad of moons orbiting a honey-drenched planet. Francine descended the ladder. Arms still extended, she lugged the bees back to the curb. With a deft, downward flick of the wrists she shook the insects into a cardboard box alongside the curb and quickly sealed the top with a lid. Stripping off her gloves and bee suit, the beekeeper folded the ladder and stashed it away in the back of the van along with the shears and swarm box.
“What about them?” Judith indicated a motley collection of several hundred bees still negotiating the empty space that the severed branch previously occupied.
“They ain’t going nowhere,” Francine explained tersely. “Probably fly off in a day or two when the queen’s hormonal scent dies off.”
“The queen’s in the box now?”
She glanced affectionately at the container in the rear of the car. “In the box and off to her new digs.” A handful of stragglers who never quite made it into the container flitted about the interior of the car but Francine paid no attention. “Gotta get these girls home before they dehydrate. Thanks for helping. Couldn’t have pulled it off without the extra set of hands.”
When Francine Franklin and her stash of fifty thousand Italian honey bees departed, Judith craned her neck, peering up into the scraggily hemlock tree, where a fiercely loyal contingent was tracing an endless series of elliptical trajectories around the phantom branch. Their queen was gone – kidnapped, shanghaied, hijacked, pirated away to parts unknown by a craggy-faced, gray-haired woman driving a rusty van with a blown muffler.
Judith wandered back in the house. Nerves on edge, she fixed herself a cup of chai laced with light cream.
Ten minutes later, a key clicked in the lock and the front door creaked open. Judith’s father deposited a Pullman suitcase in the foyer. “How was the casino?” Judith inquired.
“Lost a bundle,” Mr. Nussbaum didn’t seem particularly concerned, “but your mother broke even.”
Mrs. Nussbaum, a squat middle-aged woman with frizzy brown hair, brought up the rear. “What’s new?”
“Nothing. Everything’s just fine.” She didn’t bother to mention Francine Franklin or the swarm that only moments earlier vacated the premises.
“The prime rib at the casino was out of this world,” Mr. Nussbaum noted, rubbing his ample paunch. He lugged the suitcase into the bedroom and began unpacking.
Judit
h slipped out to the back yard and stared up at the tree. The bees that had broken free from the original cluster continued their frenetic, circular flight to nowhere. Francine having absconded with their beloved queen, all that remained was a delicious, hormonal after scent.
The swarm was a blight, a pestilence that flipped the universe upside-down.
Judith fingered a bushy dahlia plant. The previous day five buds, like tightly closed fists, reached high as her thigh. A thunderstorm drenched the yard overnight. In the morning five blood-red blossoms fluttered drunkenly in a warm breeze. Had she ever witnessed anything so glorious – the blizzard of dusky, emerald leaves with crimson blossoms teetering on stalks as fragile as flamingos’ legs?
Phhhht!
Judith felt a sharp pinging sensation – not a sting, just a momentary jab as a disoriented, low-flying inect ricocheted off her forehead, careened precariously close to the ground before ascending to join her doomed comrades. Judith rubbed his head. No, the insect hadn’t stung. Her flight path had gone awry. No harm done.
* * * * *
‘Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.’ Helen Keller
Judith stumbled across the quote earlier in the week while researching a term paper for a sophomore English class. Security was myth, a grandiose pipedream that didn’t exist in nature. Avoidance was no guarantee of safety. Life was either a daring adventure – like capturing a fifty-thousand-strong swarm of feral honey bees – or nothing at all.
