Poison Apples (13 page)

“Not ‘supposedly,’ Ruth. She
did
run toward him. Ruth, can’t we go in the kitchen? This ground is all uneven. I don’t remember it this way when I was a girl.”

“It was worse, Bertha. We’ve filled in a ton of woodchuck holes since then. What did you see?” Ruth did want to hear what Bertha saw. Or thought she saw. Bertha was impressionable: You could plant an image in her head and it became “reality.” “Answer me, please, Bertha.”

“If you’ll stop walking—”

“All right, I’ll stop. Now speak. Please.”

“Well, Cassandra ran toward him and—oh, it was terrible, she was lying there on the ground, all bloody, she was hit in the  back—”

“But you said she ran ‘toward’ Stan. He wouldn’t have hit her in the back, then.”

“Stop being so technical, Ruth! Maybe she turned her back at the last minute, I don’t know. Anyway, I got out of the car after I heard the scream, I felt her pulse. Our minister went to call an ambulance. But when it got there it was too late. She was, she was . . .” She drew a large flowered hankie from her purse, blew her nose loudly into it.

“Wait a minute, Bertha, back up. You were in a car? What car?”

“We were going back to the church. I mean, we hadn’t left yet. I was sitting in the back between Gertrude and Alma. We had cushions, you see, it was quite comfortable, though I kept telling our minister we needed a larger vehicle. . . .”

“If you were in the back between two women, you couldn’t see, then, could you? You didn’t see the actual moment of impact? You can’t say it was definitely Stan Earthrowl’s car that struck her? You can’t prove she wasn’t, well, pushed in front of his car?”

“Of course she wasn’t pushed. Who on earth would push her?”

“But you didn’t actually see the moment of impact. Answer me that, Bertha.”

Bertha looked about her wildly, her orangy hair was flying on end in the wind, her hat had blown off; she went back to retrieve it.

“Answer me, please, Bertha.”

“No,” Bertha shouted back. “No, I didn’t see that very moment! I was looking at something else, I don’t recall exactly. We were all, well, talking. But it had to have been Stan Earthrowl. That’s what Reverend, um, Turnbull said.”

“Then tell the police that, Bertha. If you don’t, I will. You tell them you didn’t actually see her hit by Stan Earthrowl’s car. This is a human being you’re accusing, Bertha. A man who has lost his own child to an automobile accident. Maybe he was wrong to break up your damn vigil. I can’t figure that one out in my mind. But maybe you and those other women were wrong to go on Aaron Samuels’s property and pray! I mean, right on his porch? Oh, I heard that, yes I did. A neighbor saw it, she told the police. You weren’t praying
for
him, but
against
him. He’s out of the coma, I hear—lucky it was a low-velocity bullet—but it will be a slow recovery. He’ll give up teaching, he says. Is that what you wanted, Bertha?”

She turned on her boot heel and stalked on ahead through the pasture; put distance between herself and this officious woman.

“That’s enough, Ruth,” Bertha shouted after her. “I won’t listen to that talk. I only came here to warn you about Emily working in that place. I thought you cared about...” Her voice grew thinner, the wind blew the words back in her face.

Ruth walked on into the cornfield. Several rows had been knocked down, chewed, the corn stripped and bare. It was annoying, yes, but they were only raccoons. They were hungry, Ruth was willing to share. She’d take a raccoon any day over Bertha and her group of exterminators.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Bertha trudged slowly back across the pasture. She was upset, oh she was. Ruth had no right to speak to her that way, no, to put down her friends, her fellow parishioners. They were her life now, since she’d found Christ. All those years growing up on this farm, the blur of days that followed—mundane jobs, charities, endless trips to the grocery store, the beauty parlor—were nothing compared to now. She was doing important things: keeping babies from being murdered, men from taking to drink—at least she was trying. Sometimes it was discouraging, oh my, so discouraging. Why, they shoved right past her and into the liquor store!

Ruth didn’t understand. Ruth would never understand, she was too hotheaded, too . . . too—Bertha searched for the word. “Godless,” was the word she came up with, “godless.” Yes, openly godless. What was this she was planting now? Bertha leaned down, broke off a stem, sniffed it. It didn’t smell like corn. The tag said
HEMP
. Wasn’t hemp illegal? Yes, she’d read about it in the paper. She’d take it to Pete, that’s what she’d do. Let Pete decide. Or her pastor. Should they go to the police? Should she warn Colm Hanna? But Colm was in league with Ruth. That was what hurt the most. Her wonderful Colm, who’d danced with her, kissed her once by her locker. Back in high school it was, she’d never forgotten it, never. It was near Christmas, someone had hung mistletoe in a doorway. She’d stood under it and suddenly there was Colm, his dark fuzzy head bending over her. Was it a long kiss? She couldn’t remember. She’d gone over and over it a thousand times through the years. Had he spoken? Had he said he’d . .. loved her? How, why had he changed? Why did he ignore her now? Oh, Colm, Colm .. .

Pete wasn’t there when she got home. She kicked off her heels, they pinched, her feet had expanded over the summer. She fixed herself a cup of herb tea—they weren’t allowed caffeine, Christ called it a stimulant, like wine, like whiskey, like cigarettes. That had been the hardest, giving up her cigarettes! They were to be pure, like their Christian saint, Dorothea.

She gazed at the print of Dorothea she’d hung on the living room wall. The reverend had given them each one, he’d had it copied from a portrait by Francisco de Zurbaran; she rolled the name over on her tongue. Fran-cees-co de Zur-bar-r-ran. How beautiful Dorothea was, in her rich red gown with the pale yellow sleeves, her dark hair flowing like water over her shoulders, and in her hands, the tray of apples. Golden Delicious, they looked like, yellowy, with a cheek of red. Uncle Howard used to grow them in the family orchard: She remembered her own dear mother slicing them up into salads. The orchard that was being contaminated now by that murderer, that Jewish Antichrist!

How innocent Dorothea looked. How sweet, how courageous, as she walked to her execution, her martyrdom. Her path to paradise. For it wasn’t this life that counted, no, but the next. Christ had taught them that. Good deeds in this life—joy everlasting in the next. As though Heaven were an orchard full of sweet-tasting apples, like nectar.

She imagined meeting Colm Hanna there, sharing an apple with him. If she could only loosen Ruth’s hold on him, show
him
the true light! She sipped her raspberry zinger tea and closed her eyes. And there was Colm ...

Chapter Twenty-eight

Now Emily knew who had let the goat go that first time. Because it was happening again. It was seven o’clock Thursday evening and she was on her way to the tool hut in the east quad of the orchard where she and Adam had a trysting place (she loved that word, “trysting,” she’d come upon it in a nineteenth-century poem they were reading in English class). And just as she was coming through the trees she saw Opal—well, not exactly cutting the rope, but, knife in hand, shooing off the goat. Only the goat didn’t want to leave; it kept coming back to the grassy spot where it had been feeding. So Opal grabbed it by the rope fragment and pulled it down the path. “Nasty thing,” she hissed, and gave a little shriek when it suddenly backed up and banged into her thigh. Emily stifled a laugh.

Opal was wearing a red T-shirt and cutoff jeans, in spite of the evening chill. Her black pigtail bobbed like a feather where it was pinned up. Several times Emily had caught Adam looking at the girl, and Emily didn’t like that. Adam was hers. Weren’t they planning a trip to Essex, and then Montreal, the very next weekend?

Emily coughed. And Opal shrieked again. “You’re following me!” she shouted. “You’ve no business. I was just—”

“You were just letting that goat go. For the second time, right? And I know why. It’s because of the Jamaicans. What do you have against them, huh? What?”

Opal didn’t answer; she just stood there, her dark eyes blazing, her pigtail quivering with her indignation. Suddenly the goat lunged and broke free; this time it loped ahead through the trees.

“Look what you made me do!” Opal cried.

Emily was floored. It was Opal’s fault that the goat was loose. “Help me catch it,” she told the girl. “We’ll bring it back to the bunkhouse. I think you’d better do that,” she said when Opal stood motionless, her mouth open, a bit of spittle on her sallow chin. “Where’d you get that lethal-looking knife, anyway?”

“From the Earthrowls’ kitchen, of course,” Opal said, as though it were the dumbest question she’d ever heard, and dropped the knife in the grass. It gleamed there like a streak of moonlight.

“Well, you better put it back,” Emily snapped, and started after the goat. She heard Opal tramping slowly behind her. Hearing voices, she turned, and there were Derek and Bartholomew, Derek’s gold earring glinting in the waning light. She saw that Don Yates was nearby as well, picking up drops.

“It broke its rope,” Opal told the men. “I saw, I came after it.” Emily was stunned at the lie, but said nothing.

“It a feisty one,” Derek said, “it know what’s comin’. Smart ole goat.”

“It went that way,” Emily told the men, pointing into the darkening trees. “Opal and I were chasing it.” She glanced at Opal, but the girl was staring straight ahead.

The chase went on for another fifteen minutes until they found the goat chewing on a clump of grass under a tree. Derek laughed and caught it up. “You don’t get away dis time, ole goat,” he said. “You mek my harvest soup, oh yea.” Bartholomew laughed, too, and snatched an apple off a tree and bit juicily into it. “Bossman won’t miss one,” he said. “Maybe two will make good luck,” and he put another apple in his pocket.

“Good luck get dis here goat bek,” said Derek, picking one of the apples for himself, and he and Bartholomew trotted with the goat back up toward the bunkhouse. Night was coming on quickly now. Don Yates followed, carrying a bag of drops he’d picked farther down. “Good evening, ladies,” he said, doffing his tweed cap. “I’m sure the men appreciate your help.”

Opal grabbed Emily’s elbow. “If you don’t tell on me, I won’t tell where you’re going—what you all are up to.” She pointed in the direction of the toolshed. Then her voice got all husky. “Someday I’ll tell you why. Why I really let that goat go.”

“Because you like goats?” Emily said, still shaken by Opal’s insinuation about the toolshed.

But Opal only motioned with her hand as though she’d swat a fly and ran off to retrieve the knife, like an Amazon charging an enemy.

Chapter Twenty-nine

When Moira went to the bunkhouse Friday evening with a special dessert she’d made—apple strudel with whipped cream and cherries on top—she found the group playing a quiet game of dominoes. The raggedy lines of dominoes seemed to have been built up in virtual silence. It was odd; usually the men were laughing or arguing or chattering about their women and children. But when she asked why they were whispering, Desmond pointed to the bed in the far corner and said, “Ole fellow sick,” shrugged as though it were somehow expected of an “old man” like Bartholomew, and went on with his game.

Zayon came up behind as she stood by Bartholomew’s bed. “He eat too many apple, that why. Got a bellyache.” He clutched his stomach and made an oohing noise.

“Bartholomew?” she said, and he opened his eyes. “It’s your stomach that hurts?” He nodded, then pointed at his throat, telling her that, too, was causing pain.

“Open,” she ordered, and when he did, she saw that the inside of his mouth was scarlet, as though a fire had been kindled in his throat. His eyes were oozing a yellowy liquid; he clapped a handkerchief over his nose, then bolted out of bed and over to the bathroom in the far corner of the bunkhouse. The men chuckled, as though he were a small child and had the runs.

“How many apples did he eat?” she asked, and Zayon held up two fingers, still smiling.

“Well, that shouldn’t make him so sick. After all, we can drink several glasses of cider and not get ill.”

“Mebbe other ting, don’t know, he tek medicine, too.” Zayon pointed to an array of small bottles on the stand beside the bed. “Too old now, too sick fer be picking. He belong home wid his childrens. Can’t pick like us,” he confided to Moira, and she turned away; she didn’t want to hear a complaint against another picker. Anyhow, she was fond of Bartholomew, he was there when they bought the orchard, he was always cheerful. She glanced at the bottles. Aspirin, warfarin—warfarin? A blood thinner? She remembered her Aunt Eileen, who had blood clots in her legs. There were things one couldn’t mix with warfarin. Bartholomew had gotten them, she saw, at a drugstore in Florida, where he’d been picking oranges before he came to Vermont.

He staggered now out of the bathroom and fell heavily into the bunkbed, a lean, dark figure in overalls and a T-shirt that read, REGGAE MIAMI. He’d gone to bed right from work, Zayon told her; he hadn’t changed into his nightshirt or whatever he wore to bed. She glanced at her watch. It was only seven-thirty.

“That’s all you ate—two apples?” she asked. “What did you have for supper?”

“A few beans,” he whispered. “Then the apples. I get them off a tree las’ night. Derek eat one, too.”

“Derek?”

“Yes, mum,” Derek said. “I make a run for it.” He pointed at the bathroom. Zayon smiled.

“Where? What tree did these apples come from?” Silly question, she knew, but she was paranoid herself these days. She didn’t want anything else to happen to the orchard. Stan’s thin psyche couldn’t take it. At least there had been no more visits from the police. Ruth’s sister-in-law, the so-called “witness,” turned out not to have seen the moment of impact at all. Ruth had called to tell her that.

Bartholomew was groaning now with pain, he was perspiring profusely; she saw it was serious, this heart condition. She ran back to the house to call the hospital. She’d take him there in her car. She remembered, as a child, the doctor coming to the house when her mother had pneumonia. That didn’t happen anymore. Too bad. Even in Vermont, life was in a fast spin. Sometimes— sometimes, she just couldn’t keep up with it.