Mad Cow Nightmare (16 page)

“She had a tumor, I understand, that’s why she was in the hospital. She’s lucky to be alive, Ritchie taking her out early like that.”

He rose from his stool. He wasn’t going to let a man take all the blame. “Should of gone straight back when they told her to. Let ‘em test her. Find out she don’t have no disease. Now she got us all in trouble; coming to look at my herd just because a her. If I find her, she’ll know it all right!”

Ruth didn’t like the threatening voice. But he’d struck a common note. They both wanted to find the woman, have her tested, find her negative. Get back to work on their respective farms. For a moment she felt warm toward him.

“Though it was Ritchie’s fault,” he said. “He wasn’t good for Nola. I told her that. She wouldn’t listen.”

Couldn’t listen maybe, Ruth thought, with Ritchie dominating her. But who knew what the relationship was? Relationships were complicated. Ruth had heard of women going back to the lovers who beat them. Was it just out of fear? Or something else ... Did women think they deserved the beating?

She couldn’t think. All Ruth wanted now was a normal day. Get up at four, milk the cows, put them out to pasture, then coffee and cereal and homemade doughnuts for breakfast. She had a new recipe from her beekeeper friend, Gwen, for honey-dipped doughnuts— she wanted to try it out.

She could hardly imagine that normal day: how idyllic, how life-giving.

“She’ll show up, poor woman,” Ruth said. “One way or another.”

“Sure, but when? After they’ve got my herd? They got ‘em all in quarantine now, whole goddamn two hunnert of ‘em.” He said nothing about
her
herd, and she frowned. There was no kindness in the face, just the eyes, like a cold lake. She disliked him. Felt sorry for Nola, for Ritchie even—what kind of childhood had Ritchie had? The uncle hadn’t asked about Ritchie’s body: if he could take it back, bury it on the farm—he had expressed no remorse.

“I’m sure you’ll want his remains,” she said.

“Oh, I do, sure, yeah. Want to give um a good Catholic mass, a burial. Got a burying plot on the farm, goes back to the Revolutionary War, you know. Got a soldier in there fought at Manassas.”

“I believe that was the Civil War.”

He smiled, spread his fingers. “War’s war.”

“True,” she said. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the body. The state medical examiner has it now, they’re doing an autopsy.”

“What? Who give ‘em permission for ‘at? Nobody asked me.” He rose halfway from the stool, met Zelda’s penetrating eye, and settled back down again.

“I’m afraid the police have jurisdiction in a homicide. They’ll need to know what he ate that day, what was under his fingernails; if there were any hairs or fibers on his body. They’ll take prints off the reins Ritchie was strangled with, check the DNA.”

“Oh?” He looked confused, worried, as though he hadn’t expected such meticulous research, the body cut up and examined, the fingerprints. There might have been concern for his nephew, though she rather doubted it—not from what Maggie had said about the man: how he preferred Darren to Ritchie, how Ritchie and the uncle never really got along. There was evidently something dark in that past between the uncle and Ritchie, maybe between Tormey and Nola. Maggie hadn’t said and Ruth hadn’t wanted to pry. Some things you didn’t want to know.

“So you left Buffalo yesterday, did you? As soon as Darren contacted you with the news? Friday morning—or early afternoon? It’s a long drive—maybe eight hours?”

“Tonawanda,” he corrected.

But he didn’t say when he had left. Darren had called a cell phone, he said, so Tormey could have been anywhere. Where
had
he been? “Of course, you were concerned when you heard Ritchie left here and didn’t show up at your farm,” she said, swatting a pesky fly. Though she kept one eye on him, to read his face.

The face was inscrutable. He was a man who knew how to control his expressions.

He was getting up on his squeaky shoes, and she rose to meet his eyes. But the eyes were gazing elsewhere: at the milking machine, the stalls, out the window at the calves in their white pens—two of them siblings or at least cousins of his animals, who authorities said might already have BSE. She’d isolated her calves, just in case.

“I need to see Darren,” he said in a thick, guttural voice as if he’d been swallowing phlegm. “I was told he’d be here.”

“Far down in the fields. Mending fence.” She waved her arms in a vague direction. “I hope you have boots with you. Furze, briar bushes, nettles—you know what a pasture can be. And we’ve had almost no rain this spring so the ground is dry and rutty. I doubt we’ll get a second cutting of corn.”

He grunted something and got off his stool. He didn’t look so handsome now; she could see the folds of dry skin, wattles at the jawline. She walked him to the door and saw him go over to examine the Friesian calves, critically, the way a farmer would, but without touching them. Then he stalked off, jerking a thumb to indicate the boy should follow. The boy did, but slowly, reluctantly, plodding along as though he had chains on his ankles. This was Nola’s boy, he’d said—a sad-looking lad who hadn’t yet uttered a syllable in her presence.

The Friesian calves were part black and white Holstein, hardly different from her own Holsteins, maybe a little smaller; flat-muscled, long-legged. Like her Holsteins, they had faces like maps: black islands on white seas. She’d loved them at first sight; they didn’t look sick to her, not a bit. But because of this man and his suspect calves, they’d be taken away for testing, maybe slaughtering. Like those East Warren sheep, driven off at dawn to Ames, Iowa, and slaughtered—”euthanized” was the word. She didn’t want that. She couldn’t accept that without proof. She wouldn’t allow it!

She squared her shoulders and went back to work, grabbing the shovel, throwing manure back into the pails, cleaning stalls. She gave Zelda a hug. She could never bear to lose Zelda, her ornery beloved cow! She’d had enough worries without all this Mad Cow scare. It was like a triple whammy; a year of low milk prices, poor crops, and limited feed supplies because of drought. When she finished the barn chores she went out to feed the calves but found the grandmother already there on her knees, nursing one of the new calves with a baby bottle. She was crooning to it, some Gaelic lullaby. The song might have come down from her mother or grandmother perhaps—over the seas and into the mountains of North Carolina. The language sounded strange, Ruth couldn’t possibly reproduce it. Yet it fascinated.

“Good morning,” Ruth said, and as though nothing had happened—murder, the bereaved uncle’s coming, a missing woman, disease—the traveller woman stopped singing and grinned, exhibiting two gold-filled teeth and an upper middle one missing.

“Nothing to smile about, I reckon, not with that bastard come to stir up trouble,” Boadie said. “Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if
hisself
didn’t kill Ritchie O’Neill. Just to get him outa the way. He’s mean enough to do it, you better believe it.”

“Out of the way?” Ruth asked, something choking her throat, settling in her chest like a swallowed object.

The woman didn’t answer, just went on feeding the black and white calf, clucking at it. “Little darling,” she said, “oh you little sweetheart, you.”

* * * *

Maggie found Darren mending a fence in the far pasture. There were a dozen sheep there, along with a llama to keep out predators. Maggie loved that wooly-haired llama—it had soft upright ears and large soulful eyes. It never spit at her. The animals belonged to Carol somebody, a friend of The Willmarth. The Willmarth rented out the pasture, she’d told Maggie, to help pay off the money she owed the ex-husband who walked out on her one day like the bastard he obviously was. Maggie wouldn’t have been surprised to see the sheep gone, whisked away because of the scare. But there they were, all fourteen, heads down in the summer grass, the llama keeping watch beside them. They’d nibbled the field bare, looked like. She waved at the blond-haired woman who was tending them—a woman in a pale blue shirt and designer jeans who looked more like she ought to be pouring tea at some charity than tending sheep. But who ever knew? Maggie had been around long enough to know you couldn’t judge by appearance alone.

She stuck a tongue in her cheek, looked hard at Darren. She supposed he’d find the sheep woman attractive. She’d seen the way he looked at Nola sometimes. He was a good man, faithful to her as far as she knew, but men were horny, they were fickle—her mother had taught her that. Nola had a pretty face, one could say a beautiful face. There were a few times back at the farm before Nola took sick when she’d caught Darren talking to her, once with his hands on her shoulders. And Maggie had looked away. It was better that way, keep the peace. Her mother had taught her that, too.

But then Maggie wasn’t about to kowtow, whimper around him, wrap herself in Saran Wrap like she’d seen in some magazine ad just to keep him home. She’d take her chances.

“You know who’s here?” she said.

“You’ll tell me.” He was on his knees, straightening an old post that had fallen and left an open, saggy space in the fence.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see him—dear Uncle Tormey. Come to find you, my lad.”

“He’s here ‘cause of Ritchie. Even so, won’t do him a bit of good to talk to me. I’m not going back.”

“He’s lost Ritchie, he’ll be after you hammer and tongs, you wait.”

“He won’t get me, I told you.”

“What’ll you do, then? You can’t stay here much longer—the hired man’s coming back in the fall. Where’ll we go? Not back to Carolina, I’m telling you, we burned our bridges there.”

“I got ideas.”

“Yeah? What ideas?”

“Never mind. Just never you mind. But you’re in the plans, love, don’t worry ‘bout that!” The post in place, he sprang up, grabbed her, spun her about, setting her off balance until they fell back together on the grass. A sheep bleated beyond them, a second came to nuzzle its rear end.

“Don’t get ideas from that,” she yelled, throwing a pebble at the sheep. “We gotta talk. He’ll be out here looking for you. The Willmarth’ll be sending him on down.” She pushed his hands away where they were reaching under her skirt. She rolled a few feet in the grass, then jumped up, hands on her hips.

She looked down on him where he lay on his back, sucking on a stem of sweetgrass. She had to laugh, he looked so sweet himself. But she had questions to ask him. Questions the police might want to ask. She didn’t want Darren implicated in this murder! Like where was he last Thursday night when the police, she’d heard, thought Ritchie was killed? Darren wasn’t in bed, she reminded him, when she woke to go out and take a pee. And the pickup was gone. It was three o’clock, too early to get up and milk. How was he going to explain that?

She threw the question at him. “Not that I misbelieve you, Darr, but the police’ll come around asking. Talk to your cousin Colm, he can tell you.”

“They think it’s Nola done it, why’d they want to talk to me?” But his eyes were a scared blue, she knew that look.

“Come on, they’ll want to talk to everybody who knew Ritch— even me—but you was his brother. They find out you didn’t get along, you and him—well, you know.” She didn’t want to tell him she’d deliberately eavesdropped the afternoon before Ritchie died, but she had to make him think about these things. She didn’t want him accused of anything, she couldn’t live with that! “They got a way of making you talk, it’s like giving you ipecac, you know, so you throw up.”

“I was in town at the 7-Eleven, that’s all, getting cigarettes. I woke up, couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to bother you. I was worried about Ritchie, if you got to know. I mean, he
is
family. We gotta take care of family.”

“We didn’t take care enough, though, did we?”

“Reckon not.” He looked distressed. His hands shook a little where they pulled at a daisy in the grass.

She gave it to him straight then. Stood over him, her legs over his legs, looked down at him, made him look up at her. “I overheard something Thursday afternoon. Didn’t mean to, but I did. I might’s well tell you.”

“What? What you hear? Huh?”

He was smiling, trying to belittle her, the way he did sometimes, make her sound dumb, like a nagging wife. She didn’t like that. She said, “Ritchie was here. I heard his voice. I was taking a walk—rehearsing, you know, so they wouldn’t have to listen to me sing up there. Didn’t hear all you said, didn’t want to eavesdrop, you know.”

“Yeah, sure, you didn’t.”

“I didn’t! And didn’t want to see Ritchie, have him see me. But he was here all right. I want to know what you was arguing about. Was it Nola? I need to know. What about you and Nola? If you done something you gotta tell me, and I’ll try and understand— just so you quit doing it.”

“Wasn’t about me and Nola,” he said, jumping up, grabbing her hands hard, till she cried out and he released them. “It was about—well, going back to Uncle, you know, same old thing, and I said I wouldn’t go, you know, all that.”

He was lying, there was more than that. She saw it in his face, the way his mouth twitched, eyes blinking, muscle throbbing in his cheek. But she wasn’t going to tear up the pea patch. She wasn’t going to stir up old family secrets. Enough had happened lately, with Nola gone, Ritchie dead. Their lives all in pieces, in a matter of days. It was like she was living through a nightmare.

“Okay,” she said, “okay. I didn’t see Ritchie here, I didn’t hear him. No problem at all, if the police ask. I was just taking a walk, singing to the birds. Right?”

“Right.” He took her two hands, pulled her to him, nuzzled his prickly cheek in her hair. This time she smiled. She didn’t care what Darren had or hadn’t said or done. She loved him. Darren was hers. He was her man and come hell or high water she’d stick with him. She’d stick like goddamn glue.

* * * *

Ms. Leafmiller from the USDA phoned while Ruth was making herself a peanut butter and fluff sandwich for lunch. The woman’s voice was soft and sympathetic, but firm. “We’re coming for the Friesian calves,” she said. “Tomorrow morning. Please have them available. Furthermore, the State of Vermont, in consultation with our APHIS, will have to put the rest of your herd in quarantine where we can monitor them.”