Poison Apples

by Nancy Means Wright

  Upstairs in the bathroom she could hear the phone ring. It was such a tyrant! Well, let it ring, she thought. Seconds later the voice boomed on the answering machine. It was Colm Hanna. He wanted to come over. He was coming over. Where was she anyway? He’d tried the barn phone, Tim said she was in the house. “Not answering the phone? That’s a bad sign,” Colm’s voice said. “It means you’re getting to be antisocial, withdrawing.” Of course, he didn’t say where he was calling from. The real estate office? His father’s funeral home? The police station, where he worked part time? “Moonlight in Vermont” was Colm’s motto. “Moonlight in Vermont—or starve.”

  “My God,” she said, “that man.” She washed her hands, then put in a call to the mortuary—but it was his father who answered:

  “Hanna’s Funeral Home,” sounding weary, and so she left a message. “In case he comes there first. If not—he’ll have to find me gone,” she said, and William Hanna said, the usual non sequitur:

  “When’s Colm gonna stay home and take over for me here? Is he waiting for me to drop in my tracks?”

  Well, she couldn’t answer that.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Stan rammed the pickup into the curb in front of the Wickham woman’s house. This was the place, all right, he’d driven past a dozen times since last spring, his chest heating up each time, and always it was the same: immaculately kept lawn with one of those cheap pink plastic flamingos stuck in the center of it, a row of stiff orange marigolds lining the straight stone walkway, pink impatiens thick in the two window boxes. The house was a bland white ranch with black shutters, no character to it, according to Stan, who loved his orchard farmhouse—anyone at all might be living here. A chameleon. A criminal. A Medusa with her snaky dyed-red ringlets.

  He’d yank off that wig, expose her for what she was. A killer in the name of God, in the name of morality. A hate crime, that’s what it was. He slammed the car door, strode up to the front door, rang the bell. It gave off a high shrill sound that split his eardrums; it was the bell Cassandra Wickham would have chosen, a dead ringer for her own voice. He rang again. And again. Then rattled the door. It was locked. Like Cassandra Wickham’s mind. Locked tight, so no new idea could get in. He went to a window, peered inside. The living room was neat, bland as the house: a yellow flowered sofa, a matching yellow chair, matching mahogany end tables, a large TV set on a stand on wheels. Sears, Montgomery Ward—one of those. Bought to match. He rang, again and again. No one answered.

  He was annoyed, as though he’d made an appointment and the person had missed it, deliberately so. He ran back to the Blazer, revved up the engine; it raced, like his heart. He was out of vermouth for his Manhattan; it was five-fifty, the liquor store would still be open. He sped through a yellow light, it turned red when he was halfway—why were there three traffic lights in this small town? And a fourth about to go up. Lights, traffic, this was one of the reasons he’d left Connecticut. And of course to find peace, to work with his hands, to calm his heart. And now—this woman.

  The liquor store was in the Graniteworks, down by Otter Creek. It had once been a gristmill, he’d read, built by the town’s forefather, Gamalial Archer, with, he supposed, a waterwheel to utilize the falls that rushed just beyond. The miller wouldn’t recognize the place now, an electric gathering of shops: a pharmacy, a fish store, the Vites Herbs shop, Dr. Raymond Brace, dentist. And next to the liquor store, the Planned Parenthood building. Seemed an irony, as though liquor helped make the babies, and Planned Parenthood undid them. Well, he had nothing against the latter—they helped women in trouble, Moira said, she gave them money now and then.

  There were a dozen figures in front of Planned Parenthood. They were carrying homemade crosses, and placards with huge Magic Markered lettering. MURDERERS, KILLERS, they were labeling the people inside. GOD LOVES LITTLE CHILDREN, one placard read, as though He didn’t love the woman who was walking out now, with her man, her head bowed to avoid the eyes of the protesters. Even the man looked sheepish, as though he’d committed a crime. The protesters were praying audibly, a crew of mostly women. They’d been on Samuels’s porch, he’d heard, before he shot himself. What business did they have there? When the man and woman got into the car, when the lights went out inside Planned Parenthood, the group moved over in front of the liquor store.

  The leader was a man in black: black shoes, black tie, black jacket. Only his shirt was white. Was he some kind of minister? Black and white, that said something about him. The women followed, one of them—yes! the Wickham woman. Protesting the liquor store now. Trying to shut it down. Trying to take away what he loved, what he needed; to leave him dry, thirsty, his lips parched. He got out of the car, ran over, tried to wrench away the sign from the Wickham woman. When she hit him with it, he shoved her against the side of the door and she cried out. He grabbed her arms and shook her: “Who’s the killer?” he yelled. “Who’s the murderer here?”

  Someone grabbed him from behind. He pushed the person off, raced back to his car. His heart was slamming against the walls of his chest, the landscape was a purple bruise. He had to calm down or he’d have a heart attack, his doctor brother had warned of that. He laid his head on the steering wheel, gulped in air. Looked up finally to see them coming, a dozen of them, like blurred ghosts, waving their signs, coming at him from the side. He didn’t want anything to do with them now, he’d be the next victim. Where in hell was the key to the Blazer? He fumbled in his pocket; finally found it. He backed blindly out, then forward, hit something—a curb? He heard the squeal of tires behind him, a lot of hollering; he drove off.

  Then he realized he’d never gone into the liquor store, and he wheeled about in someone’s driveway. A black SUV passed him, fall of people, almost sideswiped him, blundered through a red light. Stan stopped at the light, heard cars honking behind him. He was surprised now to see it had gone green. He lunged ahead. A police car passed to his left, sirens squealing. They were breaking up the picketing, he supposed, down in the Graniteworks. He didn’t want to be there. He’d drive to Vergennes, there was a liquor store there. And no one praying at it, he hoped.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A red car was in the orchard driveway when Ruth arrived— she’d walked the mile and a half from her farm. It wasn’t that she needed the exercise: Exercise was all she got all day, every day, milking, graining cows, calves—she had muscles! But she needed to think. She couldn’t think in the pickup. Cars went too fast. It was the feet that helped the thought process. Left right, left right.. . clear the brain! But Moira had another visitor, someone in a shiny red automobile. Ford, Corvette, Subaru—Ruth didn’t know the difference, she didn’t know cars. Unless it was a John Deere, and who’d ever heard of a John Deere sports car?

  But Moira expected her, and so she knocked. And was practically yanked through the door, the woman was so glad to see her. “She didn’t phone first,” Moira whispered. “It’s a developer. Someone wanting our orchard.” She looked frazzled, her cheeks were apple-pink.

  Ruth had to smile. “It’s routine, I’ve learned that by now. They’re always after my farm. I say, ‘Thank you, but no thank you.’ ‘But you deserve a rest, dearie,’ ” she mimicked in a loud whisper. “ ‘Go to Florida, we’ll pay a good price.’ Sure,” she said to Moira. “Sure. They’ll screw you, turn you into fodder for the pigs.”

  The woman, who’d overheard, gave a false laugh. “Oh no, no, that’s not it at all. We have a business just like you do. I mean, we’re just giving you an opportunity—if you’re interested.... I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” she told Moira. “I’d heard about your, well, troubles. I just thought, um ...”

  Moira was too polite. She nodded, took the card the woman offered. Ruth would have got rid of the woman at once. In the dairy business you had to be straightforward—no time for small talk. Moira was from downcountry. She was still starry-eyed about Vermont living. The good life: apple pies and tofu. Ruth’s flatlander friend Carol Unsworth had been tha
t way, but now she had one hundred sheep, her hands were like work gloves. Carol Unsworth’s sheep on Ruth’s land helped keep the farm alive.

  “There haven’t been any troubles this couple can’t take care of,” Ruth said when Moira just stood there, gazing down at the developer’s card. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have an appointment here, Ms. Earthrowl and me.” She nodded the woman off. The woman looked somehow familiar—why was that? The red clock stockings, the red jumpsuit, the red lipstick. Or did they all shop at the same mall? The developer who’d been partly responsible for those barn fires three, four years ago had left town. A short jail sentence, then parole. She was let go to set more fires. Ruth found it unconscionable. Maybe she was prejudiced. Even so ...

  “But it has your name on it,” Moira said when the woman had gone. “Her partner, I mean—one of them—they call themselves Three Partners, though only two are listed. Mavis Dingman, Peter Willmarth. Isn’t that—isn’t he ... ?”

  Ruth snatched up the card. Peter Willmarth. How many Peter Willmarths were there in the world? Peter, her ex-husband, ex-dairy farmer, a developer now? But he lived in New York with that actress. Or would-be actress. The one who’d once ridden elephants in the circus—my God. Was that the way she rode Pete, in bed? Ruth had never met her, didn’t want to. Would the woman have the gall?

  “I’ll find out what this is about. Believe me, I’ll find out,” she told Moira. “This is the first I’ve heard. Whoa . .. now how about that tea?” Someone was knocking on the window; it seemed to be decorated with black cardboard owls. She squinted.

  “It’s that cardinal again,” Moira said. “The bird just plain disregards the owls Stan made. It circles the whole house now, like a wake-up call. Like a warning.”

  “Nice owls,” Ruth said, and they were: cleverly drawn.

  “Stan has a knack for drawing. I’ve told him he should take a class, do something with it. But he . ..” Her sentence trailed off. Moira waved her arms as if to say, What can you do with men? And she went after the tea. Outdoors, in an evergreen, the cardinal stared at Ruth with a beady eye and then flung itself against the window glass.

  “Someone should wring its neck,” a voice said, and Ruth looked around in surprise. A girl paused in the archway between rooms, dark frizzy hair with a pigtail in back, a guitar in her arms—the niece, Ruth supposed. The girl gave a little smirk and then walked with dignity out the front door. Ruth heard her on the porch, tuning up the instrument, then singing to it in a high sweet voice that negated her words about the bird. She recognized it as a Joan Baez protest song. So Joanie was still around. Ruth found herself humming in spite of herself.

  “You, too?” Moira said, coming out with a tea tray. She set a plate of brownies on the kitchen table.

  “It’s almost suppertime,” Ruth murmured, but took one anyway. It was rich and sweet in her mouth. “And, yes, I did the sixties thing. Well, actually the early seventies. I was in college then. But it ended when I got married. Pete supported the war I’d protested. He loved any war, actually. Battle of Saratoga, Battle of Shiloh, Iwo Jima. Armageddon. No, I’m kidding about Armageddon. But he took his maps and books with him when he left.” Left, she thought. But was he back? He’d come back for the divorce proceedings, then left for New York again. He’d said nothing about forming any partnership with a developer.

  Here was a new twist. “I’ll definitely look into it.” When Moira looked confused, she added, “Pete’s being a developer now, I mean. It figures, in a way. He still owns half the farmland here, it was part of our settlement. I get the profit from the milk sales—when there is a profit; he owns half, pays his share of the taxes that I can’t afford. Which makes things... complicated. Of course, he wants me to sell. Maybe that’s why he’s become a developer! My God. Maybe that’s it.”

  Moira looked sympathetic. “The developer’s the least of our worries here. We can always say no. Though I don’t know what Stan would say. He might get discouraged with all this mischief going on. I still haven’t told him about the message from that minister.”

  “It was a minister?”

  “Oh yes, I think so. Some kind of minister, anyway. He’s called twice now. Quoting from the Bible. Sinister kinds of things, apocalyptical—speaking of Armageddon. I’d call the police, but Stan doesn’t want them. That’s why I was glad when you said that you might, well, help a little. I don’t want to exploit you.” She gripped her teacup in two hands as if to steady it.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let you do that,” Ruth said, and smiled. “That minister’s a charismatic fellow, I gather—at least to my sister-in-law. We won’t convince Bertha to speak against him, though—he might send her straight to hell!”

  Moira was still gripping the cup. In a minute, Ruth thought, she’d break it. Ruth told about Emily. How upset she was over the scandal, the teacher’s pogrom. “Emily thinks he was genuinely trying to help that boy. That he wasn’t.. . coming on to him, it wasn’t sexual harassment.”

  “I’m sure not. Once Carol had a crush on a history teacher. She stayed practically every day after school to get help. It’s hard. It’s hard for the teacher. To know exactly how to handle a crush like that. I taught a couple of years myself. The student-teacher relationship is a funny one. Intimate, rewarding. But dangerous. Can be, anyway. You going to eat that brownie? Come on, Ruth. You’ll never get fat in your work!”

  “I’m getting to that age.” Ruth patted her stomach, then sucked it in. It was still pretty taut, after all. There. She’d talked herself into it. She did love chocolate.

  Outside, a car pulled up with a grinding of brakes. “It’s Stan,” Moira said, getting up. “I know the Blazer. It needs a tune-up. Thank God he’s back.”

  Ruth rose with her. “I have to be off anyway. I have to get supper for Vic.”

  “No, wait. I don’t know what kind of mood he’ll be in—it’ll be easier if you’re here. Just a few minutes more?” She reddened, sat back down, and Ruth waited, patted the cat that was rubbing against her leg—smelling cream, maybe.

  Stan looked agitated, his shirttail was out. There was a bruise on his left cheek. He nodded at Ruth, went to the refrigerator, yanked out a tray of ice. The women were quiet. He pulled a bottle of whiskey out of a paper bag and shakily poured—and poured—or so it seemed to Ruth.

  “She wasn’t home?” Moira said, sounding hopeful.

  Stan looked at her, as though for a moment he didn’t know who she was. Then he said, “No, no, she wasn’t there. She—I saw her down at the Graniteworks, picketing.”

  “That’s all?”

  “What do you mean, all?”

  “You didn’t do anything? Try to interrupt the picketing or something crazy like that? They resort to violence sometimes, you know.”

  “I did. Of course I did. You know I would. I didn’t come up here to be kept out of any store. Drugstore, liquor store, whatever.”

  The door opened and the niece came back in with her guitar. “We can see that, Uncle Stan,” she said, nodding at the glass in his hand, and he glanced at her, started to retort; then he tightened his lips, sank into a chair, drank. It was as if he’d been walking in a desert, he seemed that thirsty.

  “Opal,” Moira said, “I want you to meet Ms. Willmarth, she’s Emily’s mother. You know Emily, who works here?”

  “Oh yes,” Opal said. “I know Emily. She home?” she asked Ruth, with a sly look. The girl was pretty, Ruth thought, but there was something defensive about the way she thrust up her chin, crossed her arms over her breasts—as if she wore a coat of armor under the red ribbed sweater.

  “I’ve been out of the house,” Ruth said, wary, not wanting to give Emily’s movements away. “Last I knew, she was home.”

  A fleeting smile came over the girl’s lips. She wheeled about and ran upstairs.

  The phone rang. Ruth got up to go. Moira rose, too, spilling her tea into the saucer. “I’ll get it,” she told Stan.

  Ruth waved good-bye. She was glad of a brea
k so she could leave. She had to get home to make supper. Besides, it wasn’t exactly comfortable with Stan here. “Thanks, thanks so much,” she said, and kept going even when Moira said, “No, no, it can’t be!” into the phone.

  * * * *

  Back at the farm, Ruth found Colm’s ancient two-toned blue Horizon parked by the silo—an amateur paint job at best. It was missing a hubcap and a few other essentials. How long was he going to keep driving that thing? She was glad to see Colm, though, she wanted to tell him about Pete. She didn’t like the sound of it, Pete’s involvement with this developer.

  But he had news for her, too. “Moira called,” he said, putting an arm around her waist. His fingers dug a little into her body, like a cat kneading flesh.

  “Moira? But I just came from there.”

  “She said. There was evidently a phone call just as you left, She thought you should know.”

  “What? Know what?”

  “It was from that minister. It seems that woman is dead. The one with the Greek name: Cassandra, the one who was harassing Samuels. She was hit by a car. According to the minister— Turnbull’s his name—it was Stan Earthrowl’s Blazer.”

  “No!” Something struck Ruth in the pit of the stomach. “Oh God, poor Moira. What did Stan say? Was it really his car? I just saw him. He seemed ... all right.” She thought a minute, saw his white face, the way he threw down that drink, his hand trembling. He wasn’t all right, not at all.

  “She didn’t say.” Colm was holding her impossibly tight, and she didn’t object. A moment later she heard Vic skipping down the stairs, too fast, the way he always did, and she pulled away from Colm.