“Yes. That’s why he changed, you see. People would think he made it up. It sounds almost. . . well, sacrilegious. But he doesn’t think of himself as Christ, oh no. He’s a modest man, he’s only a disciple of Christ, he says—until—the real Christ returns. But we think of him as Christ. Oh yes, it’s so fitting.”
“He’s a good man, you think, Bertha?”
Her sigh told him she did. “Better than the other one.”
“Other one?”
“The minister before him. That one is still in prison.”
She pursed her pink lips. She had thin lips, the artificial color went over the line of her natural lips to make them appear more generous, he supposed. Instead, she looked clownish.
“For embezzling funds in his former church,” he reminded her. “You picked a good one there, Bertha.”
She looked downcast. “Sometimes we’re fooled. He seemed such a nice man. He did help me out.”
“Sure. He helped you right into Rockbury.” She was looking away, embarrassed. He couldn’t help that one. Rockbury was the state mental institution. Bertha’s lawyer had pleaded temporary “insanity” for her part in an illegal scheme, and the judge bought it, ordered her into psychiatric care. Obviously it hadn’t helped. She was back to the devil again. He couldn’t help adding, “You think this Chris Christ is more honest?”
“With a name like that!” she cried. It was the final proof, of course. How could he doubt her word?
“If you say so,” he said. “Well, look, Bertha, I’m on my way. Thanks for the coffee and brownies.” He stood up, the crumbs fell to the floor. He was sorry about that, she kept a pristine house. He tried to pick them up, but she protested.
“I have to vacuum anyway, Colm, don’t worry about a few silly crumbs. But you’re not going? I thought we’d have a nice talk. Not about this orchard business. I mean, I suppose that’s why you’ve come, the other women told me. You’ve talked to them all, oh, I know you have. And we don’t know anything, any-thing about what’s going on in the orchard. Except...”
“Except?”
“That falcon,” she said solemnly. “The devil. He’s in that orchard, oh yes. That apple orchard! Apples, sacred to Saint Dorothea! And for good reason. He was called there. By that man. That Stanley Earthrowl.”
“Come on, Bertha.”
“It’s true, Colm. He’s sold his soul. He’s in league with the devil. Look what he did to Cassandra Wickham!”
Bertha should be back in Rockbury, Colm understood that. He was sorry now he’d eaten her brownies. God knows what was in them. But he had one more question. He’d almost forgotten. “I understand Cassandra and your, um, Chris Christ—”
“Michael Turnbull, Colm, I told you, his real name’s a secret. Oh, I shouldn’t have told you.”
“Turnbull, then. Cassandra and your Turnbull didn’t always get along.”
“But it was nothing, Colm. Just a little argument about church funds. It was just, I think, well, Cassandra felt she didn’t have to tithe like the rest of us. I mean, she wanted him to pull her along on his purse strings. That’s all. In the end she paid her share. Oh, we all saw to that. She had the money, too, she was just... well, there was some offspring, a daughter she had, who needed the money, she said. But she saw the light. She left it to the church like the rest of us.”
“You’re sure of that? She left it to the church?”
“Oh, definitely. We all did our wills together. It was last summer. Take some brownies with you, Colm!” she cried when he stood up to go. “Come to dinner next week! We’ll have steak, there’s a new meat market in town. Colm?”
“We’ll see,” he said, wondering if he was the meat market she had in mind. Then, as he paused by the front door, “Thanks, Bertha, thanks a lot,” and this time he meant it.
She looked so pleased to hear his words that for a moment he was actually sorry for her. She handed him a pile of church pamphlets, and he took them. “I’ll read them, Bertha, I promise I will.”
“Oh, Colm.” She twinkled.
Chapter Forty-nine
Emily and Adam were taking a walk through the orchard. It was a section Emily had never seen, she hadn’t even realized the orchard extended this far. “Do they really own all this?” she asked, and he shrugged. “I guess so. I’ve never walked through here, either.”
He took her elbow when she tripped over a small rock. There were only old trees here, raggedy, overgrown; they were probably not bearing apples anymore. At any rate, they hadn’t been pruned. All at once the path came to an end and Emily gave a shout. “A cemetery!”
It was a small family cemetery, a dozen moss-covered stones poking up in seemingly haphazard fashion.
“Bone orchard,” Adam said, and she said, “What?” But he was serious, “That’s what my, um, sister used to call a cemetery. Bone orchard.”
Emily understood the bone part, but, “Why orchard?” she asked. “Orchards bear fruit, they’re living things.” When she looked at him, he was staring down, his face pale as bone itself. “Maybe,” she offered, “it’s because they’re planted in rows like the fruit trees. But these stones are in a semicircle.”
“Bones can bear things,” he said, his voice sounding almost macabre. “They bear lies, they bear hates.”
She didn’t know why he was so gloomy today. They were taking a walk, she wanted them to be happy; it was a prelude to their weekend together. She said, “But they’re dead: Those things are buried, done with. You can’t dig them up.” She knelt down, rubbed the moss on one of the stones. “Adam. Look! It says ‘Barrow.’ That’s Rufus’s last name! This cemetery must belong to his family.”
Adam looked interested; he dropped to his knees. “Yeah, you’re right. I heard his grandfather started this orchard. There’s no secret about that. Hally Butterfield told me.”
“Ebeneezer Barrow, 1852-1893. Why, he was only forty-one years old! They died so young in those days.”
“They die young these days, too,” he said, and she felt he was talking about his mother. She reached over to squeeze his arm.
“Ebeneezer was such a ridiculous name,” she said. “Though they probably called him Eben. I like that. Eben. Rhymes with heaven—well, almost. And look, this smaller stone: It was Eben’s wife, Cassandra. She died even younger—only thirty-three. In childbirth, maybe? Anyway, they must have been Rufus’s great-grandparents. You think?”
“Maybe. Let’s get out of here.” He was being impatient. She’d noticed that air of impatience about him. She supposed it was because he had high dreams that he hadn’t yet realized. She wanted to help him realize those dreams. . . .
She bent to examine a marble stone—free of moss, it looked recent. She gave a cry. “This one says Earthrowl. Carol Earthrowl. Why, that’s the daughter who died in that accident. Oh, how sad! And look, Adam! Oh, Adam, she was only my age!”
“I’ll take you,” he said. “You’re alive. Let’s get out of here.” He pulled on her arm.
But she wasn’t ready to go. She wanted to linger, think about this girl—her own age, who’d died so horribly. There was an inscription: Carol O’Grady Earthrowl, b. April 7, 1979, died April 8, 1996. “Why, she died the day after her birthday, Adam!” Our beloved daughter, Carol, who loved the light.
“And they brought her all this way,” she said, “to bury her here instead of down in Connecticut where they come from. Why, do you think?”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “To keep her with them, so they could visit her grave. That’s why.” She smeared her damp cheeks with the backs of her hands.
She turned to Adam, where he was examining an old gnarled tree; put her arms around his waist, her face into his neck. “That’s why they don’t want to lose this orchard—I mean, one big reason for it. They can’t leave her behind! This is their orchard now.”
“It’s just as much Rufus’s,” he said, pulling down a scarred apple, even while she still held him. “All those other stones belong to him. His family.”
&nbs
p; “But he works here now. He lives a couple miles down the road. He can see them whenever he wants. And they’re none of them his children. I don’t think he’s even married.”
He turned around, handed her an apple. “Here. Try. It’s a Gravenstein, an old variety. Fits this place, right? They don’t grow them now in this orchard. Open your mouth. Bite.”
She saw he’d already taken a bite himself. The flesh looked tender, juicy. She took a bite. It was a significant moment, she felt. They were sharing an apple, one of the most ancient of fruits. They were Adam and Eve. No, Adam and Emily. She smiled. Only this time it was Adam who ate the apple first.
She handed him the apple and suddenly he flung it away. “It had a worm in it. Near the core,” he said, and made a face.
She laughed; she wouldn’t let him break the mood. He was beautiful, her Adam was beautiful. She traced the curves of his face: the strong squarish chin, the rounded cheekbones, the pale pouches under his eyes—too little sleep, the pouches said, the way it was with her, too, lately. The fantasies she’d been having! She was still a virgin—technically, anyway. Didn’t she love him enough? Wilder would ask, and now she realized: No, she didn’t, didn’t really love him. She was saving herself for the right person, the real love. She was saving herself for Adam.
“Saturday morning,” she said, “I’ll bring my suitcase and hide it in the back of your car. We don’t have to tell Moira Earthrowl we’re going to the fair together, I’ll just make an excuse about that afternoon, and Sunday. To my mom, too. I’ll say I’m staying over with a friend.”
He nodded, concentrated on her lips, ran his hands thrillingly down her breasts, her hips, held her tightly to him until she could feel his growing erection. “We could make love right here in the bone orchard,” he said.
But the thought of Carol Earthrowl came between them; she couldn’t, couldn’t, not here. “Saturday,” she promised, and pulled away—though she still had his hand—and started, dazed, up the path.
Chapter Fifty
Tim Junkins stood in the barn doorway, his ranch hat in two hands where it had blown off in the wind. He spoke haltingly, trying to catch his breath. It was six A.M.; he smelled of hay and cornstalks. “Got that fence fixed,” he said.
“Good man.” Ruth reached up to remove a reddish leaf that was caught in his hair. She was graining the cows—trying desperately, since Pete’s visit, to concentrate on work. There was a great mewling and bawling, the cows wanted to be milked—needed to. She remembered what it had been like with her three children: her breasts full, oozing, demanding release. And she’d always had plenty. Maybe that was one reason women identified with cows, there was that affinity.
But Tim had more to say, his hat twirled with it. “Out with it, then,” she said. “What now?” The old feeling of panic invaded her chest, although the children were safe in the house, eating breakfast, getting ready for the school bus.
“The hemp we put in?” Tim said. “It’s gone, uprooted. It can’t be woodchucks, coons. Not this time. I can understand the corn, it’s a fair competition with the critters. But this is the work of human thieves.” He blew out his breath, slapped his hat back on his head, leaned against the door, awaiting her reaction.
“Is that all?” she said, relieved.
“What? Lady, it took half a day to get those damn plants in. Now they’re gone. It’s a muddy mess. I wondered if...the police got wind of it. A raid on hemp?”
She shook her head. She felt numbed. “Police would have come to me. This had to be vandals. Maybe the same ones who hurt my cows. . . . Kids.”
“You really think that? Kids? Lookee here, Ruth, I work with kids. Kids are foolish, they vandalize mailboxes. Joey was in on that once. No more, though. I told him . ..”
He went on about the foster kids he worked with after hours. Tim was an optimist. Ruth knew what kids could do, the cruelties some were capable of; how they’d hurt Vic a few years back. “Marijuana,” she said, “that’s what they might have been after.”
He allowed as to how that might be. “Hell, they won’t get much outta these plants if it’s pot they want. Ruth, we had five hundred plants in there, that’s a lotta work, a lotta money. I thought you’d hit the roof. Here you are standin’ there like I just told you a coon got in the corn.”
“It’s not Vic,” she said. “Or Emily, or Sharon, or the grand-kids. Or your Joey. We can replant hemp. It’s just money.”
Money: something she didn’t have enough of—not if Pete went through with his plan to have her buy him out. She pulled at Cleopatra’s teat and the cow mewled, as though it were something sexual, familiar, like taking a hot bath or having a rubdown with alcohol. “I’ll do the milking this morning,” she told Tim. “You go ahead with the corn. And the John Deere needs a new battery, it hardly starts. Can you go to town for that?”
“Sure, sure, ma’am, it’s on my list anyway,” he said, giving a hoot that brought Joey running. “You up for a ride to town?” he asked the boy, and Joey’s eyes shone.
“Can we go to Ben and Jerry’s?” the boy said. “Getta fudge sundae?”
“Maybe next time. Today we got business.” Tim patted the boy’s shoulder. To Ruth he said, “You’re not going to replant the hemp, then?”
“Maybe in spring. When all this blows over.”
“All what blows over?”
She shrugged. How could she explain it? Money, money to buy the farm back. Solve the orchard problems. Tim didn’t know about that—not all of it, anyway. Like others in town, he probably knew about the spring spraying of Roundup, or the paraquat fiasco—it had been in the paper after Bartholomew’s death. And she’d downplayed the cow-slashing for the reporter in the Independent. She didn’t want the spotlight on her farm. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know about the hemp. But someone did.
She thought of Bertha. Bertha’s rouged face and her orangy-red permed hair came into focus in her inner eye. Bertha had come by just after they’d planted. For Bertha it was just a step to the minister’s ear.
When Tim and Joey rode off on the balky John Deere, she called Colm. She’d woken him up—that was obvious from his mutterings.
“Hemp? Wha’ hemp? You planting pot? Jeez, what time it, Ruth?”
“It’s not pot!” she shouted. “Hemp. Wake up. You were there, for God’s sake, you saw. Well, someone cut it down. I’m thinking that minister has something to do with it. I think Bertha told him, I’m afraid she saw Tim’s HEMP tags. He might have slashed my cows, too. Get to him, Colm. Who is he, anyway?”
He was awake now. “Christ,” he said.
“It doesn’t help to swear, Colm. I asked you his real name. Is it really Turnbull?”
“That’s his name. Christ. Chris Christ. Bertha told me. It’s supposed to be a secret, so don’t tell—not yet. Hey, you got coffee going? I’ll come over.”
“And help me milk,” she said. “I’ve got six of them here in the barn, about to put on the machine. The others’re outside, hollering.” And they were, they didn’t have to be called. Twenty-seven cows, pushing and shoving, bellowing at the top of their lungs. They seemed over their panic now, though Gypsy and Elizabeth were still off their feed.
“Ruthie,” he said, “I’ll swim the length of Otter Creek for you. Go over Branbury Falls in a barrel. I’ll interview that Chris Christ today, yes, I will. But I won’t milk. I can’t milk, Ruthie, I don’t know how to put those tubes on the teats, I’d crucify the beasts. They’d crucify me! Remember I tried it once? And Zelda kicked me? I can’t face that amazon again.”
She remembered. Zelda had got him in a corner, held him there with her big white rump. She’d got laughing till she wet her pants. She was laughing again now. So the hemp was gone. So Pete wanted her to buy him out. But the sun was riding up into the sky, it was the first of October: a gorgeous day, crisp and cool, the purple vetch and goldenrod thriving outside the barn door, chickadees and finches at the feeder, maple leaves turning red— practically as she looked.
>
“Okay,” she said. “Come at seven. Coffee’ll still be hot. We can talk about this Chris Christ. We can figure out ways to crucify him. The false Christ.” She hung up, she couldn’t believe it—she was laughing.
She attached the milkers and turned on the machine. The cows—Dolly, Esmeralda, Bathsheba—stood eager, obedient, grateful, their liquidy brown eyes on their feed, on her. She closed her eyes and it was Emily, Sharon, and Vic on her own breasts; the grandchildren, Robbie and Willa, drinking in life. She, giving it.
Chapter Fifty-one
Wednesday evening and Emily couldn’t look another minute at the Shakespeare book. Hamlet: It had to be read by tomorrow, all five acts, and she was only through Act Two. She was annoyed at Hamlet, frankly, the way he frightened poor Ophelia, hurting her wrist, and then totally ignoring her, when all she was waiting for was a kind word or touch.
Emily would go after that word, that touch. Right now. Her mother wouldn’t know: It was dark—dark so early these autumn days. But Emily liked that. You could do things in the dark you couldn’t do in the light. She sighed, thinking of... things. Her mother was downstairs in the living room, working on farm accounts. She’d set up a table there, tired of doing it in the kitchen. That was convenient. If her mother said anything, Emily would say she’d gone out for a walk, she hadn’t wanted to disturb her mother.
It was a clear cold night, a half moon hanging like a yellowy globe in the sky. The Globe: That was the name of Shakespeare’s theater. His plays were full of love and lust—junior year, they’d read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she liked that. She liked the way the couples got all mixed up and then came back together in the end. She liked to think that was the way life worked: misunderstanding, and then finding out the truth, and coming together with a bang, a hug, a passionate caress. . ..
She got on her bicycle, bumped along Cow Hill Road, down Route 125, and onto Cider Mill Road to the Earthrowl orchard. The farmhouse was lit up; she saw Moira at her loom beside an uncurtained window, the cat curled up beside her. She heard the hum of harmonicas in the Jamaicans’ bunkhouse as she rode past—but the lights were out, it was past nine o’clock; they’d be in bed except for the musician—Derek, probably. She rode up to Adam’s bunkhouse; it was dark except for a single shimmering light that might have been a candle. Was he reading by candlelight? He’d ruin his eyes, that’s what her mother always told her. She smiled. Probably the Butterfields were asleep, that’s why the light was out. She wondered what it was Adam was reading. She grabbed up a handful of pebbles, tossed them at the window. Waited.
Poison Apples Page 19
