Mad Cow Nightmare (26 page)

“Well, James,” she said, “I see you’ve been in the papers recently. Those letters to the editor? Was that a good idea? Putting yourself in front of the public like that?”

He wondered how she knew. He’d used a fictitious name. But he didn’t respond to her innuendo. There was no point, she’d just shove him back on the hook. “I have to get to a meeting, Maureen. I can’t stand here and talk.”

A young woman was hustling down the aisle, pushing a cart with a baby in it. She was an attractive woman; she caught James’s eye and smiled. He smiled back. He was embarrassed to be seen with Maureen. He turned away, but the ex followed him with her voice. He loathed that voice, it was always accusing. Like there was still scum on the dishes he’d washed; upstairs toilet not flushed; front door unlocked—they might’ve been killed in their beds, according to Maureen.

“I’m Irish, remember?” Maureen said. “On my mother’s side?”

How could I forget, he thought, her mother was all she talked about, her “darling” Irish mother, who brought her up “the right way”—Roman Catholic. And he, born to a Jewish father and a Methodist mother, both of them nonchurchgoers and proud of it.

“Those O’Neill brothers aren’t real gypsies at all,” she went on—”the papers said so. They’re Irish, James. You can’t paint everyone with the same brush just because you hate me. That’s prejudice, James. P-R-E-J—”

“I can spell, it,” he said. He kept moving. He’d forgotten what he’d come for. He had two items in the cart, he’d push it to the   express checkout. He’d get in his car and go home. He didn’t really have an appointment, he just needed to get back to his sheep.

“You’re spreading rumors, James—you did that in the Buffalo hospital, remember? It was one of the things got you in trouble? Rumors about the head nurse? When you had no cause, you were just getting back because she’d caught you—”

He wheeled about, stared into her made-up face. “Who’s spreading rumors now, goddammit! What’d you tell everybody on the street about me back then? Why’d we have to move, huh? Because of you. You! It’s not rumors I’m writing about—it’s facts. You read the papers lately? Those calves got the BSE thing. It could spread to my sheep.”

“Sheep don’t get BSE, they get scrapie. You should know that.”

“Never mind. The feds are already after me, they paid me a visit. It wouldn’t of happened if those Irish travellers hadn’t  appeared. And they’re still there! That Willmarth woman lets them stay.”

She was pushing her hot pink face toward his and if there hadn’t been two carts between them he’d have slapped it. “And don’t you spread any Christly rumors in this town, you hear? I don’t want to have to move again. You keep your mouth shut, hear?”

The lipsticked mouth was leering at him, made him sick to his stomach. He ran with his cart and accidentally rammed the cart with the baby. He nodded his apology and the young mother frowned at him. They were all alike, women. He was glad, yes, glad to be living alone. There were three people lined up at the express checkout. He thought he heard Maureen breathing behind him. He hated the woman. He hated the poets’ names she was always dropping, like she was some genius herself when she couldn’t put two lines together—he’d seen the crappy verse she wrote each year for their daughter’s birthday. Moon, croon, swoon and all that mush. He hated the Irish she gabbed about—their boozing, their poetry, their blue eyes (his were coffee-colored brown), their talk, their endless talk talk talk like they were some brilliant misunderstood race and superior to the mixed English Protestant and    Russian Jew he stemmed from. “Never mind Shakespeare and Dante,” she’d said to him one day. “Read Yeats and Shaw, they say it all.” And that was the beginning of the end with him. Never mind he couldn’t understand a word of Shakespeare—the Bard was his fellow man, and he didn’t want him slighted.

Who was Dante, anyway? Well, never mind. He threw the Charmin triple roll of toilet tissue, the Gillette foamy shaving cream, and the latest copy of the
Independent
on the counter and tugged out his wallet. While the three women ahead of him were checking out, he eyeballed the paper and nearly choked. There was a photo of the Willmarth woman, her finger pointing right at the reader, right at him, James Perlman, like he was to blame, like she too looked down on him. Like he was her next victim.

And then the headline: WILLMARTH CALVES BELIEVED TAINTED WITH BSE. It was like a grenade exploded in his face. It was here then, they’d proved it. That off-balance, brain-rotting disease that could translate into even scarier initials, TSE and CJD. Already
he
might have it; it was like a bomb ticking inside the heart, and one day—bango! It went off and you wasted away, fast, like a top spun out of control.

But before that—his sheep, his precious sheep he’d spent his savings on, the precious little money left over from the divorce . . . She’d socked it to him, wanting half of everything—their former house, their sailboat, his annuities, his hospital pension—even though she was the one who left him. Christ, it wasn’t fair!

She sailed past him with her cart, chin high, like he was some scum she’d stepped in and then wiped off her shoes. He hated her, the Irish bitch. Hated her!

“Sir? Do you have a Shaw’s card?” The girl behind the counter was frowning, waiting for him to pull out his card. She couldn’t be more than sixteen, a plump teenybopper. He’d have to watch her or she’d overcharge. Her name was Eileen, according to the name tag she wore on her maroon blouse.

Irish, he thought, and slapped the orange Shaw’s card down on the counter.

Let her pick it up.

* * * *

Franny was out on bail, but there was no bail for her mare. The child lawyer was no help at all. He couldn’t stand up against the feds, they had Ophelia—wouldn’t say where. It might be the knackers for all Franny knew. She was sick at heart. She was just going through the motions now with the other horses, long cheerless rides in the countryside. Hamlet was quiet this Sunday afternoon as they entered the swamp woods, like he knew what was going on. He was off his feed; she worried he might go on a hunger strike. Horses knew, they couldn’t speak but they knew, they intuited, they were smart. She dismounted, leaned her head against him to hear his heart beat, and he nickered softly, cocked his head. They stood like that for long minutes. The swamp was almost dry here from the intense heat: leaves and brush crackled underfoot. Ophelia was gone, Hamlet knew that. The feds didn’t care, they saw things in black and white, there was no gray. It was like being lesbian, Franny thought: a label they slapped on you because you were different. Lesbians burned their bras, lesbians hated men, lesbians were aggressive, they were antisocial, they wore their hair short and their boots low-heeled with spikes to kick men with.

Franny wore her hair long and so did Henrietta. Franny liked men to talk to—at least she had until the feds came along—now she was wholly disillusioned. Henrietta had been married once, had a grown son living down in Jersey—a son who no longer spoke to her after she divorced her husband and had a civil union with Franny. Hen didn’t mention him very often now, but Franny knew it was a sore that wouldn’t heal. The bastard. The blind, biased bastard.

Well, that was one man Franny could do without.

She’d poured all this trouble into the ears of the congregation in the local Unitarian Universalist church, a place where lesbians, blacks, Jews, gypsies—you name it!—were welcome. Everyone groaned during the Joys and Concerns when Franny told about the feds taking her horse. People rushed up later to fling their arms about her, wanting to help. All kinds of compassionate people: straight, gay, black, yellow, white.

But what could they do? The feds had the mare. It seemed hopeless.

She tethered Hamlet and trudged through the brush to the area where she’d found the dead man, the one who’d stolen Ophelia. The place was still beaten down, a yellow crime scene tape strung loosely around it and partially ripped. This was the second time she’d been here since the terrible discovery; something kept drawing her back. Like there was more to know, more to find. She bent her back to it, poured all her concentration into the dumb work of searching the bushes. Stems and limbs snapped, leaves dropped off, withered from the heat. She pulled up broken nests, dead branches, an occasional empty bottle, although few, it seemed, had come here.

She found nothing; she hadn’t really expected to. She made her way back to Hamlet, offered a carrot from her pocket, and this time he took it. He’d been pawing in the dry muck, made a hole with his hooves: dry leaves, prickly limbs, and dampish earth were heaped up on either side of the hole. And in the center of the  debris, something shining. She leaned closer to examine it, and sucked in her breath. It was a small gold cross—attached to a narrow black leather ribbon. She held it up to the sun, squinted. It looked like it might have been bitten, the way the leather was all jagged as if from teeth—a mare’s teeth? As if the mare had fought back, tried to bite the hand that kept it captive. She turned it over, but saw no initials. The word “evidence” came to mind. This was evidence, something the police had not found. The cross might have belonged to the person who stole Ophelia.

Would that Ritchie have worn a cross?

Yet it was a small cross, like one a woman would wear.

Nola, she thought. It was that Nola. The papers said Nola had killed Ritchie, and now she knew. The scene came clear in her mind. Nola had taken the mare, and Ritchie, the horse trader (according to the papers), had found her. There had been a struggle, and Nola, on the mare, strangled the man with the reins. Ophelia had fought back, pulled the cross from the woman’s neck, bitten through the leather, and the cross dropped into the underbrush.

The traveller woman had had the mare, oh yes. She knew how to ride without a saddle. Gypsies were brought up riding bareback, were they not?

Call the police, an inner voice told her. She undipped the cell phone from her belt, held it in her hand.

But police were prejudiced, too, police were just good ole boys who wore badges. Would they believe her? They’d looked at her suspiciously enough when she found that dead man. She’d seen cops on TV, shooting a dozen bullets into an African-American who was only a suspect—no proof at all! She’d taken part in the New York City peace rally where five thousand cops on foot and horseback piled up barriers to keep her and thousands of other peaceful demonstrators away from the main speakers. Fear in the air like a guided missile.

All that targeting of people who were “other,” like herself and Henrietta.

The thought that she, too, might be prejudiced entered her mind, but she tucked the thought away. Her mare came first, before any person, traveller or nontraveller—well, after Henrietta, that is. She wanted her mare back. She wanted the person who took Ophelia punished. It was only right. The police, she told herself, would bungle the job.

She punched in the number of the Willmarth farm. Ruth had smarts. Ruth would know what to do with the gold cross. Ruth had those travellers there. The travellers, she bet, would know whose cross it was.

* * * *

This time Colm let the phone go on ringing. There was nothing more he could say to people. She’s fine, he’d lied to the few he talked to; she was simply blown away by the bad news. She’d rally and fight—didn’t she always? But jeez, the messages were piling up on the answering machine. Sympathetic farmers, worried farmers; understanding neighbors, angry neighbors.

Something now on the machine about “evidence.” That horsewoman, wanting to speak to Ruth. “Desperately, Ruth, please, something I found. Call me back, Ruth, at once! Oh, Ruth, they won’t let me see my darling, won’t tell me where she is, Ruth I can’t—”

Mercifully, the machine ran out of space.

Colm poured a little booze into his third cup of coffee. He’d taken an afternoon off work, told his dad he couldn’t help in the mortuary, just plain couldn’t. Ruth was his responsibility now. She was upstairs sleeping, she’d slept sixteen hours straight since they’d given her the sedative. Sharon was out in the barn with Darren; she wanted Colm to help. But he had to be here in case Ruthie awoke, didn’t he? Anywhere, frankly, other than in the barn with those huge salivating, defecating animals.

In some ways, he almost hoped the cows
would
go. She’d move to town, they’d rent an apartment or house together, live like ordinary folk. He could train her in real estate. She’d be good at it; she liked people, people liked her.

The phone rang again and the throbby voice filled the room. Franny had been an actress—good thing she’d quit. “Ruth, I can’t just sit here with this thing in my hand. You’re probably down in the pasture. I’m coming over now. Now, Ruth! I’ll find you.”

“Jesus,” Colm said aloud, and poured in more whiskey. Already his hands were shaking.

Someone knocked and then crashed through the kitchen door before he could answer.

“I came to take a shower,” Maggie said. “I need it, Colm. Boadie was giving the pig a mud bath and the bloody thing shook all over me. It was me give her the damn pig and I’m sorry for it now.” Her muddy self confronted him, like she needed his permission to take a bath.

“Be my guest,” he said. They had all the blood samples—why not use the bathroom?

But Maggie wanted to talk. “How’s she doing? She come out of her funk yet?” When he spread his hands, she said, “I had a cousin spent a whole year in her room after she lost her boyfriend, wouldn’t come out. Her mama put food by her door and found the plate empty in the morning, so she must of come out to take the food. But she never went outside, nuh-uh. Mother of God, a whole year this went on!”

Colm didn’t need to hear any more good news. There was a black Mercury rumbling down the road, passing the farm for the fourth time since he’d arrived. Vermont license, but too clean, too free of dust to be a Vermonter in the driver’s seat. He didn’t like it. But what could he do? He waved Maggie into the downstairs bathroom, listened to the shower run, watched the steam pour out from under the door. He went upstairs with his cup, stood over the bed where Ruth was asleep on her side, a fall of hair covering her face. He wanted to talk to Ruth about that rented car. Full of feds, he bet. “Ruthie?”