Death and Honesty

by Cynthia Riggs

  The rooster spread his wings, lifted his head, and crowed again.

  “Goddamn,” said Willoughby again. “If that ain’t Chickee I’ll eat my hat! How’d he get here?”

  The horse van had pulled all the way into the yard, and the boy closed the gate. The driver looked down at Delilah with liquid brown eyes. “Where would you like us to leave your goats, ma’am?”

  “How’d Chickee get here?” demanded Willoughby.

  “Lambert,” said Delilah to Willoughby, “where shall we unload the goats?”

  The driver got out of the van, adjusted his skintight jeans, and strode toward Delilah, who watched with fascination the movement of the muscles of his thighs. He wore a thick leather belt with a brass buckle that looked like the brand of a significant ranch out west someplace. And cowboy boots, of course, dusty, with high heels worn down from rough riding on the range. He grinned at Delilah, showing large white teeth beneath his mustache.

  Delilah gasped and clutched her hands together.

  “Where’d you find Chickee, Miz Sampson?” asked Willoughby

  Delilah didn’t hear.

  Victoria thought quickly and rocked forward on her bucket seat. “I believe Jordan Rivers rescued your rooster.”

  “Rivers … ?” said Willoughby. “Rivers?”

  The driver’s voice was like velvet and steel and mahogany and silk. “Didn’t know if you had the right kind of feed, ma’am, so I brought along some alfalfa hay and a salt block.”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” Delilah chirped.

  “From that mutt?” asked Willoughby. “Rivers rescued my Chickee from that mutt?”

  “It looks that way, doesn’t it?” said Victoria, avoiding his eyes.

  “You want me to unload the goats for you, ma’am?”

  “Would you! That would be so kind!” Delilah said, oblivious of the other conversation.

  “Roy!” called out the driver.

  “Sir!” said the boy, coming to attention.

  “Sounds like I owe Rivers an apology,” said Willoughby.

  The driver said, in his soft voice, “Lower the ramp. No noise, you hear? Gentle, now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Six little black and white goats trotted down the lowered ramp, one after the other. They were about two feet tall with bulging eyes and big floppy ears.

  Delilah clapped her hands together and shrieked, “Darling! How darling!”

  And the six little goats toppled over, one after another, their legs straight up in the air.

  “Oooooh!” cried Delilah, clasping her hands under her chin.

  Willoughby scratched his head. “Where’d the dog get that gizzard?”

  CHAPTER 26

  After several seconds, the goats got to their feet and began to explore their new pen. Victoria, too, started to struggle to her own feet from her low bucket seat. She’d left her lilac wood stick at home and her heavy sweater weighed her down. Willoughby and the driver immediately rushed to her aid and helped her up.

  “Thank you.” Victoria straightened her sweater.

  “A pleasure, ma‘am.” The driver returned to his van and brought out a clipboard that he presented to Delilah. “Sign here, please, ma’am.”

  Delilah looked from his boots to the worn places on his jeans where he’d kept something in his pocket, to his plaid shirt, open at the neck, exposing a white T-shirt and gold chain, and finally to that sensitive, cruel mouth with its crooked smile. Delilah swallowed and glanced up. “Do you plan to stay overnight on the Island?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. We need to get back to town to book a motel room for tonight.”

  “I owe that boy an apology, Miz Trumbull,” said Willoughby. “Jordan Rivers, hey? I never would’ve expected Rivers to save my kids’ rooster. From a mad dog like that.”

  “You never can tell about people,” said Victoria.

  Delilah took a deep breath that expanded her chest. “You’re more than welcome to stay here. In my guesthouse, of course.” Pause. “Both of you.”

  “Don’t want to trouble you, ma’am.” The driver lifted his cap with a knuckle.

  “Oh, please!” Delilah clasped her hands under her chin. “You can help my little goats settle in.”

  The driver looked at the boy, who shrugged.

  “Well, thank you, ma’am.”

  “And what are your names?”

  “He’s my son, Roy,” the driver said, indicating the boy. “I’m Giles. We’ll make sure your goats are settled in before we leave here tomorrow morning.”

  “And I’ll make sure your room is made up.” Delilah bustled away toward the guesthouse where Henry had been banished for the past few nights.

  Lambert said, “Miz Trumbull, I want to tell that boy Rivers how sorry I am I misjudged him.”

  Victoria thought about Jordan’s new role as hero. “He would appreciate that, I’m sure.” She’d better warn Jordan. “Shall I go with you? I can hold Chickee.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Miz Trumbull.”

  Victoria looked around, but Delilah was already at the door of the guesthouse.

  In a short time Henry emerged carrying a half-open gym bag with a shirtsleeve waving out of it. Delilah followed. Victoria heard Henry say, “You warned him about the snapping turtles, I trust?”

  “I can bring you home, Miz Trumbull,” said Lambert.

  “Thank you.”

  Victoria settled herself in the passenger seat of Willoughby’s battered red pickup, clearly identified as his because of the mismatched blue right front fender. She waited for him to capture the rooster.

  Willoughby finally cornered Chickee in the goat pen. He gathered the rooster up tenderly, holding Chickee’s feet with one hand, wings with the other. He elbowed a new-looking towel off a hook just inside the barn door, caught it with his teeth, wrapped it around Chickee somehow, carried the now docile rooster over to his truck, and handed the towel-wrapped rooster to Victoria.

  “He won’t hurt you, Miz Trumbull.”

  The rooster lifted his head and tilted it to stare at Victoria with first one beady eye, then the other. Victoria smoothed the ruffled feathers on his head and neck.

  “See? He likes you.” The truck started up with a rattle. Delilah and Henry, partway up the marble stairs, deep in conversation, had their backs to Lambert’s truck and didn’t appear to notice.

  Giles and young Roy unloaded bales of hay from the van, and the tiny goats nuzzled the boy and the hay.

  When it seemed possible that the truck might get them as far as Simon Look Road, where Oliver Ashpine, Lambert Willoughby, and Jordan Rivers lived, Victoria asked, “Does Chickee have a new coop?”

  Lambert slapped the lamb’s wool cover of the steering wheel. “That goddamned mutt—excuse me, ma’am. Tore the old one all to pieces.”

  Victoria nodded. Jordan had asked her about predators breaking into chicken coops.

  “Will it take you long to build another?”

  “I can get enough of it done in an hour. I reckon I’ll put the new one on the other side of my property. Ashpine’s side.” Willoughby thumped the wheel again. “That’ll show him.”

  “I’ll be glad to watch Chickee while you work on the new pen,” said Victoria.

  “Chicken sit?” Willoughby glanced at Victoria with a sly grin.

  “Certainly.” Victoria continued to stroke the rooster’s head. Chickee extended his neck and made a kind of gurgling sound.

  “Well, if you don’t mind, Miz Trumbull. He’d like that.”

  Willoughby turned off Old County Road onto Simon Look. The truck rattled over the washboard surface and finally stopped at one of three houses in a sort of rough cul-de-sac. The yard was cluttered with an assortment of old cars and plastic toys that had weathered from red, yellow, and blue to sickly shades of pink, beige, and gray. Victoria looked beyond the broken cars and toys to the house.

  “Good heavens!” she exclaimed.

  The house was nowhere near the size of Delil
ah’s, but it was every bit as big as Victoria’s huge rambling old farmhouse. Except Willoughby’s house was brand new.

  “Built it myself,” said Willoughby, proudly.

  Where had he come up with the money for this three-story edifice with its tall brick chimneys, slate roof, and shiny copper gutters? A greenhouse extended off to one side. Victoria could see an indoor swimming pool beyond with stained-glass windows along one side. It occurred to her that she might look at Willoughby’s property card. Had the assessors assessed this grand house? And for how much?

  “What d’ya think?” said Willoughby

  “Astonishing.” Victoria stopped patting Chickee, who twisted his head around and pecked her hand.

  “Wants you to keep doing that,” said Willoughby. “Well, I better go on over to Rivers’s place. Apologize. Take my medicine.”

  “May I come along?”

  “Glad to have you.”

  Victoria tucked the bundled-up rooster, who was making cooing noises, under one arm and she and Willoughby dodged between the old cars and broken toys.

  Willoughby stopped at the corner of his property. “Scene of the crime. Look at that, will you.”

  Whatever the coop had been, it was now only a pile of chewed-up sticks and twisted chicken wire. The ground was splotched with what looked like blood. Stray feathers wafted up as they stood there, circled and settled again. Willoughby picked one up.

  “Looks like a duck feather,” he said. “The kind you find in pillows.” He rubbed the feather between his fingers.

  “Is that where Jordan Rivers lives?” Victoria asked, pointing across the dirt road to a modest Cape with a solar panel on its roof.

  “That’s his car, but I don’t see his bicycle. Got one of those kinds where you sit down like a Barcalounger.” He turned and started down the road to his place. “I’ll get going on that coop, long as he’s not here and you don’t mind holding Chickee.”

  They’d only gone a few steps when Jordan returned, bicycle helmet sparkling in the patches of sunlight that filtered through the oak trees, his dark glasses reflecting Willoughby, Victoria, and Chickee.

  Jordan’s face paled as he stared at the rooster. His jaw dropped. His feet slipped off the pedals. The bicycle tilted and he stuck out one foot to keep it from falling over.

  “What … ? Who … ?”

  On the way from Delilah’s Victoria had practiced what she would say

  She gave Jordan a broad, false smile and winked her right eye. “Jordan, Mr. Willoughby is thrilled that you saved Chickee from that dog next door, isn’t that right, Lambert?”

  Jordan stared at Willoughby

  Willoughby held out his hand. “I’m man enough to say I was wrong about you, boy.”

  Jordan slipped his fingerless doeskin glove off his right hand. “But …”

  Victoria said quickly, “That was clever of you to take Chickee over to Delilah’s where you knew he’d be safe.”

  “I apologize,” said Willoughby. “Come have a beer with me while I build a new pen.”

  “New pen … ?”

  Willoughby grunted out what passed for a laugh. “Ashhole’s turn.” He nudged Jordan with an elbow. “Get it? Ashhole! I owe you this one. I’m putting the new pen next to his house. That mutt’s not gonna break down this pen.”

  Jordan looked from Victoria to Willoughby and back again. He swallowed. “A beer? I don’t suppose you have a Sam Adams?”

  “Bud Lite,” said Willoughby. “Better get used to it. You’re coming over more often. I don’t usually misjudge people like I did you.” He slapped Jordan on the back. “Good man.”

  “I’ve got to put my bicycle away.”

  “I’m starting on that new coop,” said Willoughby. “Can’t keep Miz Trumbull holding the bag, so to speak.” He disappeared around the corner of the house.

  “What’s going on?” said a dazed Jordan.

  “As they say, go with the flow,” said Victoria. Chickee made another cooing sound. Victoria patted his head. Willoughby reappeared with three cans of Bud.

  He held one out to Victoria. “Miz Trumbull?”

  “Later, thanks,” she said.

  “You can set him down. Done up in the towel like that he can’t move.” Willoughby headed toward the back of the house again. “C’mon, Rivers, old buddy.”

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” said Jordan.

  “While you’re building the new pen, I’ll pick up the mess the dog made.” Victoria scowled at Jordan. She’d seen a rake leaning against a scrub oak.

  Willoughby stopped. “No, ma’am. Don’t you touch that. I wouldn’t let a lady clean that mess up. No way. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, she’d be about your age now. I wouldn’t let her lift a hand. Us young folk can take care of the heavy work, right, Rivers?” Jordan hadn’t made his escape yet. Willoughby slapped him on the back again. “Your job is to take care of Chickee, Miz Trumbull.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Victoria felt her face flush. Old lady, indeed. Willoughby’s voice echoed in her mind: Leave the heavy work for us young folks. She set Chickee, still wrapped in his towel, under the beach plum bush. She waited for Willoughby to disappear around a corner of the house, and immediately started to disentangle the rake from a honeysuckle vine that had grown around it.

  Chickee’s coop had been small, too small, Victoria thought. No wonder he’d crowed all the time. The coop had been about the size of the coffee table in her parlor and about the same shape. Clearing up the wreckage would be a simple task.

  She puzzled over the ends of the broken wood frame, which seemed to have the sort of marks a hammer or a crowbar might make. She thought about that as she worked.

  Jordan, still holding the handlebars of his bicycle, cleared his throat. “Mrs. Trumbull?”

  Victoria lifted her head regally and looked down her nose at Jordan. He seemed very young and very slim in his snug-fitting black and green bicycle suit. But he was old enough to know better. No matter how difficult Lambert Willoughby was, and she agreed he was difficult, Jordan had no business leading him to believe his pet had been mauled by a dog.

  Victoria pulled a black plastic garbage bag from another beach plum bush where the wind had blown it.

  “I didn’t want to hurt the rooster, Mrs. Trumbull. I thought I was giving it a good home.”

  She wrenched off a two-foot section of chicken wire mesh from the chewed up boards it had been stapled to and worked it into the plastic bag, careful not to snag her hands on the rusty ends. “Why don’t you put your bicycle away and join Lambert in that beer he’s offered you? He believes you saved Chickee.”

  “If it weren’t for you, Mrs. Trumbull …” Jordan looked down at the ground. He unsnapped his bicycle helmet. “I don’t seem to be able to do anything right.”

  “Chickee’s new coop will be as far away from you as is possible, so you’ve won. Accept it graciously.”

  “I can give you a ride home, Mrs. Trumbull. When you’re through, that is.”

  “Thank you,” said Victoria. “This shouldn’t take me more than a half hour.”

  Jordan wheeled his bicycle across the dirt road to his place. From the far side of the Willoughbys’ property, Victoria heard sawing and hammering.

  She separated out the rest of the chicken wire from the frame, set the plastic bag of chicken wire off to one side, and made a pile of the burnable wood.

  Jordan, in pressed jeans and a collared knit shirt with something embroidered on the pocket, hurried past her, waving as he did.

  In a half hour Victoria had cleaned up the worst of the mess, and began to rake the ground where Chickee’s pen had been.

  She had been raking for only a few minutes when she heard a frenzied yapping, and a medium-sized white dog with brown markings over one eye rushed over to her from the direction of Oliver Ashpine’s house. Victoria braced herself and held the rake at the ready. The dog was trailing a leash that was attached to his collar. The trailing end was obviously chew
ed through and was slimy wet. He skidded to a stop in front of Victoria, stumpy tail wagging.

  Victoria had expected him to jump up on her. When he held up a paw, she took it, and patted his solid flank. “Hello, pup.” The dog wriggled.

  From under the beach plum bush, Chickee made a clucking sound. The dog paid no attention.

  “Do you see that rooster, pup?”

  The dog cocked his head to one side, tongue out.

  She studied the dog. “You didn’t tear up the chicken coop, did you.” A statement, not a question.

  The dog barked once.

  “I saw tool marks, not tooth marks.”

  The dog crouched in front of her, rear end in the air, tail wagging.

  “Let me untie that leash.” Victoria leaned the rake against a tree and the dog stood patiently until he was free, then danced around her in circles.

  Chickee clucked. The dog continued to ignore him. Victoria took up the rake again and raked the sandy soil from the edges of the area toward a depression in the middle. The dog raced back and forth in front of her.

  “Don’t get in my way, pup.”

  The dog bounded over to the pile of dirt Victoria had raked to the middle and started to dig.

  She decided to let him dig. A good time to rest. The dog pawed at the loose dirt, tossing it behind him in a rooster tail spray He barked and occasionally looked behind him at Victoria as though he wanted to make sure she was still watching. She leaned on her rake and laughed. “A mouse! Find a mouse!” she called out, and the dog dug faster.

  In the background she was vaguely aware of the sound of hammering. Chickee flopped around, unwrapping his towel as he did.

  The dog stopped digging, pawed and sniffed at something he’d unearthed, and looked back at Victoria.

  She leaned down to look. “What did you find, pup?”

  What he’d found was a thin metal box about the size of a paperback book. A Christmas candy tin. Victoria bent over and tugged it away from the dog, who stood expectantly.

  Victoria took a folded paper towel out of her pocket and wiped off the tin. The box had only a slight touch of rust. It couldn’t have been in the ground more than a few months because no roots had grown around it. The Santa Claus on the lid grinned merrily.