Poison Apples

by Nancy Means Wright

  “Yes, sure. I know. So there’s nothing else? No strangers who’ve appeared on the land? And Don Yates—why does he volunteer there, you think? Is he always friendly?”

  “Yes, Mom. He’s a nice man. He clowns around with the school kids—the few that have come since the spraying!” She stood up. “Now I’ve got to go, Mom. If I’m late, Rufus will be mad. He’s taking stuff to the Shoreham Co-op today, he wants to make his quota.”

  She turned at the bedroom door. Her mother was still sprawled on the bed—it was unlike her to act so lazy. Emily had to smile.

  “Mom, it’s that minister to blame, that’s what Adam and I think. He’s got a thing against Mr. Earthrowl—like he thinks he’s some kind of devil. Adam was telling about something that happened down in Massachusetts. In a high school it was, a satanic group that sprang up and put the fix on a kid they didn’t like for some reason. They didn’t kill him, they just played all kinds of mean tricks. Adam and I don’t think anyone is trying to kill anybody here, it just happened poor Bartholomew ate that apple. The minister’s trying to make Mr. Earthrowl realize he can’t go around trying to do in the church or its members. But now that Mr. Earthrowl’s had his stroke, we think the bad stuff will stop.”

  “What about my cows being slashed?” Her mother was sitting up now, looking angry. Emily knew that look. She tossed her jacket over her shoulder, glanced at her watch. It was ten of ten, she’d barely get to work in time.

  “Mom, there’s a gang of kids in town that vandalize mailboxes, things like that. It’s probably them.”

  “My cows aren’t mailboxes!” Her mother was up now, looming tall behind her, her cheeks were shiny-mad.

  Emily took off then, she had to. “I’ll be home at five. If I hear anything new, I’ll tell you. But nothing else is going to happen. And next weekend, Mom ...”

  She could hear her mother waiting behind her. Breathing hard.

  “I’m going to, um, the Valley Fair with Adam. Just for the day, of course,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, was it? It was Essex they’d spend the night in. She couldn’t explain the whole thing now, but at least she’d give it a start. She’d tell her mother the truth, well, later on. Maybe. Her mother was such a fuddy-duddy!

  “I’ll drive you, we can talk about it in the pickup,” her mother said, but Emily said, “No, thanks,” and ran heavily down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the chill morning. She gasped it in. When her brother Vic came along and hollered, “I got two baby chicks just out of the eggs. Wanna come and see?” she couldn’t answer. She couldn’t seem to breathe.

  “What in heck’s the matter with you?” he said, hands on his bony hips. There were rips in both knees of his pants and his sneaker laces were untied. He seemed to think it made him look cool.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” she gasped back. “No, everything’s the matter. I don’t know! Tie your dumb shoelaces. Or you’ll fall on your silly face.”

  “Jeezum. Get a life,” Vic said, and shuffled his way over toward the chicken pen. And then, when he saw the familiar red Ford Explorer cruising up the driveway, “Hey, Dad!” he cried. “I got baby chicks—I hatched ’em myself. Come’n see!”

  Chapter Forty-six

  “Well, you might have spent more time with Vic. You never looked at his chicks,” Ruth said, but Pete was obviously here on another mission. She knew what it was: It was an old tune on an old instrument. He wanted her to sell her half of the farm acreage. So he could sell the whole and develop it.

  But he was determined to go through the amenities—something he’d apparently learned from Violet, or Iris, or Tulip, or whatever the woman’s flowery name was.

  “We talked,” he said, “and I did see his chickens. He’d better keep them out of the barn, though—the inspectors don’t like chickens in with the cows. Hey, these doughnuts are better than ever. I’ve missed them.” He stuffed one in his mouth, smiled at her through sugary teeth. She caught the “them.” He never missed her, of course. If he had, if he’d shown the slightest remorse for leaving her . . . they might be friends. She wanted them to be friends: for the children’s sake, as well as her own. But it hadn’t worked that way. Still, she coughed, tried to smile.

  She watched him swallow two doughnuts; he mentioned the “unusually warm weather for late September,” reminded her to tell Tim to put “more wood chips around those Scotch pines,” and complained about the way the calf pens looked: “Need repairs, Ruth, a little paint would help. Barn needs painting, too, if we’re going to sell.” She sucked in her breath. He leaned his elbows on the kitchen table, bent his head forward, narrowed his pale blue eyes, and said, “You know why I’m here, Ruth. You know what I want.”

  “You’re here about those slashed cows. It was in the paper.” She didn’t know why she’d brought that up, but she had a sudden concern. “Three of them, last Thursday morning. Gypsy was cut in the belly, she hasn’t given a drop of milk since—the shock of it! What do you know about that, Pete? What do those developer friends of yours know about it?”

  He drew back quickly, hands gripped in his lap; he was hurt. How could she suspect him or his colleagues? “Gypsy?” he said, as though he’d never known the cow, when he was present at her birth! Gypsy Rose Lee was a ridiculous name for a cow, he’d said at the time, the stripper would “turn over in her grave” to hear of it. “Yeah, I read about it. Kids. Ever hear about kids tipping over cows? That Unsworth kid, I bet, or one of them. Police better get on this one quick.” He shook his head, shook the cow right out of his thoughts; if she was making an insinuation, he wasn’t going to pick it up, he didn’t want any arguments today.

  “Ruth,” he said, sounding overtaxed, weary—he’d come all this way to settle something and she was bringing up dry cows. He looked at her brightly. “All the more reason we should sell, Ruth. Bad stuff going on around here. The orchard—already one death over there. Our kids, Ruth. They don’t care for farming— you have to face it. Emily’d love nothing more than to live in town, be like other kids. You got to think of the children, Ruth.”

  He reached idly for a doughnut; it stuck in his mouth like a round 0. He was twisting her thoughts again. He was good at that: twisting things she said into what he wanted to hear, what he wanted for himself.

  “Pete, if this visit is about selling the farm, I won’t do it. I’ve told you that before. I’m not selling. You can’t convince me that Emily and Vic are better off living in town than on a farm. Anyhow, Emily will be in college next year—with your help.” She saw him grimace. “You can slash my cows, but you’re not going to make me give up farming. Any more than the Earthrowls are going to give up that orchard—I wonder how much you have to do with that, too! They came up here to heal, and that’s what the orchard is going to do for them. Now, this farm is my healing place. Since you left. So the subject is closed. Finished. Period.”

  She shoved back her chair, stood up, still waving her arms for truce. She stumbled backward into the refrigerator, folded her arms, and glared back at Pete. He was standing now, too, his big face a black cloud, his arms at his sides, fingers curled into loose fists.

  “Then you’ll have to buy me out, Ruth. You’ve got the house, the cows, but I own half the land. You agreed to that. My lawyer will let you know how much you owe me.”

  He grinned a pumpkin grin and went to the door. “Thanks for the doughnuts,” he said, and let the screen door bang twice behind him.

  Ruth sank into a chair, Pete’s fists squeezing her heart. She knew how her cow felt, slashed in the belly. Unable to give milk. What was there left to pay for his half of the land—except blood?

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Stan was home: Moira didn’t know whether that was a good move or not. On the one hand, he was in her care, in his own home, where she could oversee his diet, his exercise, his medications; where he could look out on the apple trees. On the other hand, because he could see the apples and all that needed to be done, he’d worry. Already he was sitting by t
he window, staring out morosely.

  Suddenly he shouted, “He drob it! Budder drob a napple. All thumb, goddammee.” The pickers were working close to the house: She saw Rolly Butterfield laughing with his brother, who was juggling two apples. She seemed to be the only one now who could tell the twins apart. It had something to do with attitude. Hally had the better sense of humor, was the clown. She smiled. What was a bruised apple when laughter was in the air? Laughter was what the orchard needed: Laughter was healing.

  He was only joking, she told Stan. “He’s back to work now. The brothers are good pickers. They’ve picked all over New England. You were smart to hire them.”

  He growled, pacified a little by the compliment. Opal tripped down the stairs at that moment and he swiveled in his wheelchair. She gave him a sweet smile. She could be nice when she chose. “I’m going out to pick apples,” she announced.

  Stan wasn’t sure about that. “Ooh don’ know ‘ow,” he said, shaking his head. “Shtayn’ help Moir ina how.”

  Opal smiled her enigmatic smile and waltzed out the door. Minutes later Moira saw her running down to the tree Adam Golding was picking. Emily Willmarth was on a ladder in the tree beyond Adam’s; Moira saw her look over at Opal. Then Adam glanced at Emily. Rufus came along and motioned Opal over to a young tree where she wouldn’t need a ladder. He gave her a stick with a small basket on the end for hooking the apples, and gestured. The girl’s body showed her irritation; she wanted to pick like the others; wanted, Moira thought, to impress Adam. But Rufus was firm. The girl was a liability, his face said, she’d do what he ordered. And finally Opal grimaced and hooked an apple into the basket.

  The apple world seemed serene then. The Butterfields were raking the apples off with lightning fingers. Adam and Emily were picking, under Rufus’s stern gaze, with solemn faces. Farther down in the orchard the Jamaicans were perched on their ladders like extensions of the trees. “Steal away, steal away ho-ome ...” Moira heard them sing. Zayon came up the path with a bin of apples, bearing it lightly in his brown arms, his face glowing as though it were an offering of myrrh and incense.

  Stan’s head was dropping into his chest, he was napping in his chair—the medication made him drowsy, and Moira felt at peace. The police had stopped questioning Stan—for the time being, anyway; the interviewing was over, and there’d been no mischief for a few days now, not even a menacing phone call. She should be relieved. All seemed well with the apple world.

  But then something thudded against the window. Stan’s head jerked up. He said, “Wha? Whazit?” And Moira sighed. It was the cardinal again, his feathers blood-colored, slamming again and again at the window where Stan sat in his wheelchair. She pushed her husband away from the window, into the kitchen.

  “It’s all right,” she soothed. “It’s just that foolish bird. I’ll get you some juice. We’ll sit in here.”

  She settled back into a kitchen chair. The room was dim with the curtains pulled, and she closed her eyes, breathed in the moment’s quiet.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Colm had saved Bertha till last. Not because he wanted to savor the interview—no way!—but because he couldn’t face the woman until the end. Jeez, it had been embarrassing back in high school:

  She’d send him notes, sidle up, bump her tray against his in the lunchroom. One day she’d knocked the tray right out of his hands and he’d had to clean it up, pay for more. What was it, he’d ask himself, looking in the lavatory mirror, that attracted her to him? He was a beanpole then, those hunger lines in the face . .. he was kind of homely, let’s face it. Maybe that was it: Bertha had a hankering for homely men, the underdog—someone who might notice her. Well, he looked better now, he thought he did—Ruth said so, anyway. His face had filled out, he’d grown out the old crew cut. Not because he wanted to, but because Ruth said he was behind the times; today’s men had a full crop of hair. He’d conformed—for Ruth’s sake. And it only seemed to attract Bertha the more. Jeez.

  Actually, he hadn’t seen the woman for almost two years, since she got in trouble for trying to “save” young Vic Willmarth. She was on probation now. But the probation itself and the aftermath of that affair, according to Ruth, had increased her fear of the “devil” and the “images” she conjured up of that fictional figure. Colm didn’t want to be any part of those images.

  Well, he thought, here goes, and he rang the bell—ding dong—on the door of the pink-shuttered house on 9 All Saints Lane. Bertha knew he was coming; still she oozed surprise when he showed up. “Why, Co-olm Han-na, you’re ear-ly!”

  He checked his watch. It was true, he was early, damn it. She’d think he was eager. Was she really still holding the old torch? Just because he’d danced with her once at a freshman dance back in school? And she was a couple of grades above him then. He was pushing fifty now, a baby boomer. Well, he liked the sound of that: baby boomer, at least he was in somebody’s swing of things. But half a century. Jesus.

  She ushered him in: practically yanked him in, her fingers were steel. She was dressed in purple: a purple sweater that emphasized her saggy breasts, a purple plaid pleated skirt, a purple-and-pink-flowered scarf. Her piano legs were stuffed into shiny black pumps. He supposed purple pumps were hard to find.

  “I know how you like your coffee,” she murmured, trotting after a pitcher of cream.

  “I don’t take cream, Bertha. Haven’t for years.”

  She expressed surprise. “Well, you don’t have to worry. You’re not the least bit fat, for heaven’s sake. This is cream from a Jersey cow. Jerseys give the creamiest milk. I tell Pete he should raise Jerseys, ’stead of those old black and white Holsteins.”

  “Bertha, Pete doesn’t raise anything anymore. Except maybe a little hell down in New York City.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” she protested. “But he’s up here now, in town. He’s back. He was staying with me until. . . his woman arrived and preferred the inn.”

  “You think he’ll stay on up here? In Branbury?”

  “Who knows?” she said coyly. “He has work up this way now.”

  “Oh, really?” Colm professed ignorance. “Doing what?” He watched her pour cream into his cup, gave up on that score. The coffee was weak as it was, a pale ocher color. He preferred Ruth’s strong coffee—it had muscle.

  “Oh yes. He develops things. Farms, you know. He bought Lucien Larocque’s. About time, too. That old fool never did know how to run a farm.”

  Colm wasn’t going to argue. He had other things to find out. “I guess I did hear something about that. He has a partner, I hear. Female. Maybe a third partner, too?”

  Bertha looked coy again. She sank into a plum-colored sofa, patted the seat beside her. He took a seat across the room, stared ahead at a framed print of a woman in a red gown, bearing a tray of apples. Bertha’s frizzled orangy head below on the sofa made an odd contrast. “We-ell, I can’t say. There might be a third. He doesn’t tell me ev-ery-thing. When we were young we were close as this,” and she crossed two fingers. “But then he grew up—up and away.” She lifted her arms as though she’d fly.

  “It wouldn’t be that minister friend of yours, Turnbull, now, would it, Bertha? I hear he has an interest in the Earthrowl orchard. Keeps calling up, I understand.”

  She missed his irony. “Oh, well, the church is his whole life, you see. He gives twenty-four hours a day to it, oh my, yes.”

  “He doesn’t have to sleep like the rest of us?”

  She giggled. “Oh, Colm, you haven’t changed one bit. Of course he sleeps. You always had such a sense of hu-mor! But”— she leaned forward, the teacup wobbling in her hand—”he dreams the church then. Uh-huh, he tells us his dreams. Why, only yesterday he said he dreamed of a falcon swooping down and snatching up a robin that was doing nothing but perching prettily on a branch, and zing! in one snap of the falcon’s beak the robin’s neck was broken. Now, what do you think that meant?” She grinned at Colm, her head bent demurely to one side. She
looked rather like a lady falcon herself. She’d love nothing more, he thought, than to snap him up in her big white dentures.

  “Well,” she said when he didn’t answer, “the falcon is the devil and the poor innocent robin is us, Colm, you and me. If we let down our guard for one single minute, the devil will swoop down on us and carry us straight to hell. To hell, Colm! Think of it! And that devil, Michael said, is here. Right here in Branbury, Vermont. He saw it all in a vision.”

  “Michael?”

  “Well, the reverend, of course. Who did you think I was talking about?” She giggled. “Want to know something?”

  He wasn’t sure. But lifted an eyebrow anyway.

  “Well. Turnbull isn’t his real name.”

  “No?” he said, pretending to a lack of interest, although his heart was pumping away. “What is his real name, then, Bertha?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t tell, really. But—can you keep a secret?”

  He could, he definitely could. He smiled, nodded. “Good coffee,” he said, gulping the last creamy tepid drop.

  “Oh, I forgot the brownies! I made them ’specially when you said you were coming.” She jumped up, sashayed into the kitchen, came back moments later with a plateful of chocolate nut brownies.

  Colm did have a sweet tooth for chocolate, he had to admit. He bit into one, encountered something hard. She giggled. “Oh, a bit of walnut shell. I buy the whole walnuts, not the ones already opened. You can see better what you’re getting.”

  She’d forgotten the question, it seemed—or was she avoiding it? He repeated it, not wanting to sound too eager, put her on the alert.

  “Michael Turnbull,” he said. “Nice name. But not his real one, you say?”

  “Oh no. His name is”—her voice was hushed—”Chris Christ.”

  “Chris Christ?”