Mad Cow Nightmare (15 page)

And Darren. Darren, who hadn’t picked up an instrument in two days to practice with her, was back in the barn, working up a sweat like he owed The Willmarth a month’s work to be done in a day. What was his problem anyway? “We’re supposed to be rehearsing. Why isn’t Darren here?” she hollered to anyone who’d listen.

“You know, don’t you, Mag?” It was Mammy Boadie, rocking away, peeling potatoes, the piggy squealing where she had it hemmed in with her feet. Maggie had given her grandmother that potbellied pig for her seventy-fourth birthday, and now the creature was driving Maggie nuts. It ate too much for one thing. It was growing an enormous belly that waggled when it walked, like a pendulum in a grandfather clock. Boadie slept with it in her cot—one day she’d find herself on the floor, and serve her right.

Maggie waited. Boadie usually answered her own questions.

“Guilt,” Boadie said. “He hated that brother of his, and now he feels guilty. Oh sure,” she went on when Maggie held up a finger. “You know bloody well, Mag. Ritchie got to you first, and Darren’s never forgot it.”

“They’re brothers. They got blood ties.”

“Half brothers. That don’t make ‘em bosom pals and you know it. Then Ritchie got in all that trouble back in ‘92.”

“What trouble?” Maggie asked, though she knew. Though she didn’t know how much her grandmother knew about the affair. She picked up Darren’s guitar, strummed it. Glanced out the window to be sure Liz was outside the trailer and not listening. She wanted Liz brought up right; it wouldn’t do for the young girl to know all these things. And Liz had bad genes to fight as well.

“Damn it all, Mag, you know what trouble. It was that high school teacher. The one got to Ritchie in the first place.”

Now Maggie’s blood was up. “Wasn’t the teacher’s fault. It was Ritchie started it. Seduced the teacher and the janitor caught them making out and she got fired. She was a good teacher, too, it wasn’t fair.” The teacher was only twenty-one—too young for pupils like Ritchie. And then she took an overdose. It was a scandal that rocked the town and gave a bad name to travellers—like travellers weren’t already bad-mouthed enough. He’d come crawling back to Maggie after that, said he took on the teacher because Maggie had refused him; said he was in love with her and there’d never be anyone else. And the worst was, it was true. Some loves were just plain destructive.

“Guilt, okay,” she said, to placate her grandmother. The potato peels were flying. The pig was shrieking, it was being bombarded. “So let’s drop the subject, huh? I’m sorry I started it. Darren’s glad Ritchie’s dead, have it your way. I just don’t happen to believe it, that’s all. You know what family is to us travellers.”

“They got an outsider mother. Outsiders get in, blood’s polluted.”

Maggie didn’t hold with all that—sometimes outsiders brought in good blood. Besides, Darren’s and Ritchie’s fathers were second cousins with the same name, so that made the tie closer. Though Darren’s dad was an honest fellow and Ritchie’s father a petty criminal. The New York uncle was a brother to Ritchie’s outsider mother. If there was an outsider who polluted, it was the uncle.

“Sometimes,” she agreed, “sometimes there’s pollution.”

“Always,” said Mammy Boadie, who nurtured her prejudices the way she fed her pet pig. She was getting up, knife in one hand, pig in the other. Her wiry frame was stooped—there was osteoporosis there, arthritis in the right hip, yet Boadie was strong. She could carry that potbellied pig for miles if she had to. And back in New York she’d split wood without breaking a sweat. She favored the left leg now as she limped to the sink, kicking aside a pile of magazines, and dropped the peelings into a wire basket. The pig leaked on her dress and Maggie grabbed it and opened the trailer door.

“No! Don’t let it out! Someone’ll steal it—no-oooo,” Boadie screeched.

Maggie let it go, watched the urine ooze into the grass. The pink ribbon around its plump neck hung wet with pee. She sighed, propelled the pig back up the trailer steps. Damn thing weighed a ton and it was still a youngster. “Better take off that dress,” she told her grandmother. “It’s soaked.”

“What else I got to wear?”

“I’ll find you something.”

The trailer door popped open and Liz appeared, her slight frame wriggling with what she had to say. She was wearing the teenage uniform, as Maggie called it: tight green tank top that outlined her small breasts, and bare midriff over tighter jeans. She looks like a praying mantis, Maggie thought. Maggie waited while the girl poured out her news.

“. . . Yeah and he’s here, Uncle’s here. Darren called him about Ritchie, I was here when he called—he got Uncle’s cell phone. I know it’s him, I know the truck. It’s got a New York license. He’s in the barn with The Willmarth. She don’t like it, I seen how she looked when he was talking. I looked through the barn door—I been feeding the calves.”

Maggie put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, dug in. “What was he saying?” She wasn’t surprised, though. Ritchie was dead; the uncle was here, she supposed, to see his nephew into the earth. Do his duty by blood and family. Maggie was glad they wouldn’t have to deal with Ritchie’s father—he had two years to go, she’d heard, for the latest rip-off.

“I couldn’t hear. I didn’t dare go in close, I didn’t want him to see me. But he was asking for Darren. And Darren went out the back door. I seen him when I went to the barn. Darren didn’t want to see Uncle.”

“Oh Mary Mother of Jesus,” said Maggie. “What now? We don’t have a body. The police got it. Nola’s gone.” She felt her nose filling up. She missed her Nola. She blew into a Kleenex. Liz wiggled out from under her fingers and went to the small fridge to pull out a soda. It was warm, she complained, the fridge wasn’t working right. On the way back she knocked a pan off the sink with her elbow. It clanged, and jarred Maggie’s nerves—this crowded trailer! “And Uncle won’t leave till he takes Darren back with him,” Maggie complained. She clapped her hands to her aching temples. She was up in outer space somewhere with all that had happened. “You can count on that. The man’s a leech. Let him near you just once and he don’t let go.”

Now Maggie needed to find Darren. Darren was a strong man, but he didn’t always use the best judgment. Darren didn’t like Uncle. But he couldn’t bring himself to make a complete break. There was the question of inheritance, she supposed—though he denied he wanted any of it. “Where’d he head, what direction, Liz? Tell me, huh? I gotta find him.”

Liz waved an arm toward the back pasture and glugged her soda. “Somewhere out there, I dunno.”

Maggie knew. She knew where Darren went when he wanted to be alone, when he wanted to think. It wasn’t the beaver pond— must’ve been Ritchie who arranged that meeting. “Liz, help Mammy Boadie with that potato pie, will you? I got to find Darren.” When the girl didn’t offer to move, stubborn, infuriating child she could be—those bad genes again—she raised her voice. “Help her, damn it, I said. Now go!”

Liz curled her fingers into fists, and went to help with the pie. “I hate potatoes,” she said under her breath.

Chapter Twelve

The uncle wasn’t a big man, as Ruth had thought from the way Darren described him. Instead he came on as a handsome but slight fellow: slicked-back graying hair with a little tuft in front like a Walt Disney bird; smooth ruddy skin and that self-confident, mocking, Irish-blue stare that tried to take your measure in a glance. His shoes squeaked as he walked. He introduced himself as “Tormey Leary from the Tonawanda farm. You heard of that, I suppose—whole world has by now.”

Soft-tongued, with a tremulous smile to show he was suffering too, he snatched at her hand, full of apologies before she could utter a word. What could he do? He’d sold her the Friesian calves in good faith; they were born of Netherland’s best, he’d no idea they might be contaminated with BSE. It was the USDA who allowed him to bring in a dozen cows back in ‘93—and then they’d closed the door.

“If
they’re infected,” he said, his tone changing, becoming bitter. “They took my pair, you know, say they could have this dang Mad Cow thing, traced ‘em back to that Dutch farm where they might’ve got bad feed. But got no proof. They got no goddamn proof. Just keep saying they can’t tell us what the proof is. Sound like the White House, eh? They just think, they
think
it’s that Mad Cow—Christ, I hate that word! And now my whole lot—two hunnert cows—in quarantine. Feds threatening to take ‘em! Just to put down the public’s fears—you betcha. There’s no proof. But I’m holding out for real money, I am, they’re not gonna take my cows without real honest-to-god compensation. If I’m gonna retire I’m gonna retire
big.”

Not a word about Ruth, of course: how she must feel, what would happen now to her livelihood. Just rattling on about himself, his cows, his farm, his money. Not a word about Ritchie. Did he care that his nephew was dead? He patted the rear end of the skinny adolescent boy who’d followed him in, and sent him outside. The boy was a big-boned fellow with arms and legs that had outgrown his clothing and huge eyes that seemed to plead for help when they looked back at her. She smiled at him but he averted his eyes.

“Darren told you then,” she said, sitting down on an upturned pail, offering him the three-legged stool Zelda had sprayed when the feds came. The uncle was a farmer, he shouldn’t mind a little cow shit here and there. She noted that he was wearing a good pair of black gabardine pants, nicely pressed and creased, more suitable for a funeral than Ruth’s barn—those squeaky black shoes. “I mean, about Ritchie—the details?”

“Jesus, it’s a turrble thing, turrble.” Tormey Leary pulled out a white handkerchief, cleaned the stool with a deft twist of the wrist, lowered himself onto it. He was attractive, yes, she had to admit that. A little belly, but to be expected for his age—late fifties? Early sixties? Actually, the too-handsome kind she disliked, that didn’t appeal to her at all. She’d had her day with handsome boys in school. Freshman year of college she dated one of them—discovered him one night in bed with a girl down the hall. She measured all handsome men by that experience—fair or not.

“You’ve no idea who dunnit, no?” He squinted those blue, blue eyes at her, cocked his head, straightened his tie. My God, a farmer with a tie? A bright red one at that.

“The police are working on it,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. Her lawyer, too, though she didn’t tell this uncle. At Colm’s urging, she’d told her lawyer the story—she might need outside help. A simple farmer taking on the government? It was crazy! Here was Ruth, dressed in her oldest pair of jeans, ripped in the knees; it gave her a disadvantage and Tormey Leary knew it. He was giving her his saddest, most ingratiating look.

“Somewhere things went wrong,” he said. “I brung him up to be a good boy after his daddy went to prison. My sister couldn’t care for him, she had lupus—it gets you in the nerves, you know, toes and so forth—then something got her brain. But somewhere Ritchie went wrong.”

“Oh?” Ruth kept an eye on the barn door. Any minute those men might come for her calves and she wanted to be ready. Though she didn’t know what attitude she would take with them. Be stoic and let the calves go as Colm and the lawyer suggested? Or fight the agents? It would be a happening, she guessed. But she’d glean what she could out of this man. Ruth was, by nature, nosy.

“Question of a little scam here and there, you know. Ritchie’s father in and out of jail—that should explain something. Ritchie in deeper’n that—now he’s dead, I guess I can say it. Fellow he killed, you see, a bar fight. Ritchie claimed the guy attacked him. But I know. I was there. It’s not a story for ladies.” He smiled to show gleaming white teeth—dentures, she bet.

She didn’t press for details.

“I’m Irish but I’m no traveller,” he insisted. “It was my sister married into that bunch. My grandmother come from Cork couple generations ago. Upright farmers they was, left me a bit to start the farm with. I worked hard, miss, I’m telling you. And now they want to do me in, take my herd, my whole herd, miss! But not without compensation, like I said, unh-uh, no sir.”

Ruth hated to be called “miss,” it made her squirm. “Yes, Mr. Leary. But now my farm is in danger as well, you understand. I wasn’t aware there was a question about the Friesian calves.” She didn’t want him to forget that it was his idea to sell her the calves— she wondered if he’d known they were suspect before he sent them on with Darren. But no, she thought, no one could be that irresponsible. “So someone who Ritchie dunned might be guilty of his death—are you suggesting that?”

He shifted on his stool; his shoes squeaked. “Oh I don’t know that, miss. But maybe, yeah—we should look into that. Though the dunned are mostly in my area—greater Buffalo, you know. That’s where Ritchie mostly lived before he went south to stay with his father’s family. He was twelve then. It was me brung him up as a small boy.”

“So you said. Have you any other ideas? About people who might not like him? He wasn’t a pleasant man, I gather. I only knew him briefly, but he wasn’t kind to his, um, companion. She was trying to get away from him, you think? After he took her out of the hospital? That was cruel, wasn’t it? The woman was exhausted. She might be lying dead in some woods for all we know.”

He looked startled, went almost white. “Nola,” he said, his voice cracking. “We gotta find her, you and me. That’s one reason I come, spite of all the trouble I left behind on the farm. I brung the boy, you know, her son.”

“Ritchie’s child?”

“Ritchie allus said no—afraid of the responsibility, you see—but yeah, I’d guess so. Would’ve been back in ‘91—Ritchie was down in Carolina then. Anyhow, thought that might help bring her back if she knows the boy’s here. If she gets the news from someplace. Missing his mother, sure. And worse’n that.”

She watched him intently. Zelda mewled in her stanchion and she absently pulled on one of the cow’s black ears. Zelda’s tail threw up a flurry of hay.

“Plague,” he said, dusting his hair where bits of hay had landed. “What they say she might have. I don’t believe it. It can’t be from my farm. She just had a headache, that’s all—we gotta prove that. Always this headache—something her pa done to her, I hear.” He rubbed his head as though the pain had rubbed off on him.