Mad Cow Nightmare (30 page)

He didn’t understand about Uncle and Keeley, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

She pulled back her hand and went to the door. “Think about it,” he said, his voice sounding passionate. “Don’t be hasty.  Consider your soul.”

She kept on going but he didn’t pursue her. When she turned at the door to thank him, tell him she
would
turn herself in—in time, that is—he gave a sad smile and made the sign of the cross. Another soul lost, the sad smile said. He’d done all he could. It was time for the next victim. The woman who’d been in the confessional was tiptoeing toward him with an adoring look on her face. She’d obey him.
Her
soul would be saved.

Out on the back porch a hand grabbed Nola’s. She knew the rough grip of it, she turned to face the janitor. He motioned her toward his motorbike that was leaning against the back fence. He took off his light jacket and handed it to her. It had a hood and she pulled it up over her hair. It was a risk and she had to take it, she was that desperate.

His hands were warm and strong on her back. He smelled of pipe tobacco and honest dirt and motor oil. They sped down Main Street and no one called out.

* * * *

The priest was frustratingly true to his calling. He would divulge no confidences to Ruth and Colm. He would only repeat, “She was here, and she’s gone. Two hours ago perhaps. I asked her to give herself in and she said she would—’in time,’ she said.” He spread his hands, what more could he say? He had a dimple in his left cheek. With his blondish hair he resembled a youthful Santa Claus. But there was a hard glint in the blue eyes. Don’t mess with me, don’t push me, the eyes said.

Yet as Ruth and Colm left his office, and he ushered them out the back way, he patted Ruth on the shoulder and said, “I can’t tell you which way she’d have gone, but I did show her the news clipping. She seemed angry, upset. She made a, well, a gagging sound when she came to the end of the article.”

“What did it say?” Ruth asked. She couldn’t read all the papers. The local
Independent
was enough—maybe the
Free Press—
now and then the Sunday
Times.
But did she want to know what the world was saying about her and her cows?

He was creasing his brow, trying to remember. “She took my copy. But I believe it was something about her uncle’s farm—and yours.” He patted her shoulder again; she could smell the incense on him, that high church aroma that always struck her when she attended funerals in those ritualistic places. After a while, she       supposed, it got into the bones. He spread his faith as he walked.

He snapped his fingers, a surprising gesture, almost childlike. “Keeley. It was the name Keeley that surprised her. She repeated the name with her lips. I read lips,” he explained. “My janitor is deaf and dumb—a period of torture in Vietnam. But he can move his lips. He observes.”

“Is he around?” Colm asked. “He might be able to help us.”

The priest smiled indulgently. “Can you read lips?” he asked.

“Oh,” said Colm. “But you can. If we ask him questions?”

“I’m afraid he’s taken leave as well.” The priest poked a thoughtful tongue into his cheek. “I heard his motorbike drive off.” He caught Ruth’s eye “It’s unusual for him to take off in the morning. He hasn’t cleaned the sanctuary yet.”

“I see.” Ruth thanked the priest and he held his hands palms up, as though he had a soul caught in them, but was giving it space to fly off. The eyes looked softer now, like summer lakes.

“By the way, Mrs. Willmarth”—they turned obediently at the door—”if you do catch up with Miss Donahue, you might want to be sure the, um, uncle she worked for is not around. I can’t tell you why, of course—and she never said exactly—it was all in the reaction, the attitude. But, well, be warned.” Wishing them luck, he turned to greet a tall woman who was waiting in the doorway with a lit candle.

“East, I presume,” Colm asked as they walked around front to her truck.

“East, of course, Colm. Toward Vermont. To find Keeley. And the uncle—before she does.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Sharon was beside herself. A part of her was swabbing the barn floor like one of the ancient furies; the other replaying the whirlwind visit of the feds—oh, the terror and outrage of it! Darren was bringing in the first of the cows for the late afternoon milking: Zelda as always in the lead, then Jane Eyre, Dolly, and Oprah, all with red circles painted on their foreheads. Death circles! That’s what the red meant. They were destined for the slaughterhouse. And all because of two calves who tested—so they thought—positive. Yet positive, she’d read, was not positive at all because there was no science to this, just fear, possibility, what they called probability—a list of ifs and maybes.

She gave an angry shout and hurled her mop across the room. It struck Charlotte 2’s heifer calf in the butt. The calf wailed and she rushed to apologize. At least this one had no red circle. The feds had passed it by when they came—just after her mother left with Colm, thank God—her mother would have gone mad again. Maybe Charlotte had hid it behind a bush. She’d take this one home if her mother would let her, breed a new herd of cows. A brave new herd for her mother out of Charlotte Bronte’s belly.

Pigtailed Willa came running into the barn, grabbed Sharon around the smelly waist, and whimpered. “It’s all right, baby, all right, sweetheart, Mommy’s just mad, that’s all. They painted red circles on Rooster’s cows.”

“Red circles?” The child’s eyes widened.

“Not play circles. Real circles. They want to take the cows away.”

“Take Rooster’s cows away?” Willa stood a moment, head cocked in thought, a girl in red shorts and halter, small for her age—a throwback to a five-foot grandmother. Then she howled, a whirlpool of tears and rage. Sharon pulled her into her arms, hugged her, let the tears soak her flowered shirt.

“We won’t let them do that, will we, Mama?” The green eyes implored, a pool of protest.

“No,” said Sharon. “We won’t. We’ll get help.” She didn’t know why she hadn’t called for help before this. Her mother had been so scattered; she helped everyone else but never asked for help herself. Some had offered, of course, but Ruth hadn’t asked them. Well, Sharon would remedy that. She’d call the neighbors, everyone her mother had helped—and others besides. It was time they put their money where their mouths were, as the saying went. She would summon an army. They would lock the gates against the enemy, defend the castle to the last stone.

In the kitchen, armed with a hot chocolate—Sharon had a weakness for chocolate—she made a list of her mother’s closest friends and neighbors. There were crotchety old Glenna down the road and her kooky relative Fay who rented a scrawny cow for her farm B&B. There were Moira Earthrowl and husband, Stan, who owned the orchard Ruth had liberated from a poisoner. There were beekeeper Gwen and her volatile husband who would bring along some of his Abenaki cronies—they knew what it was to have one’s land and animals taken away! There were Henrietta and Franny, the latter still mourning her precious mare and ready for a good fight. There was Carol, whose sheep and mama llama as she called it, were still grazing on Ruth’s land but quarantined, kept to a two-acre radius. There was old Lucien Larocque, whose assailants Ruth had brought to justice, though he’d been forced to sell his farm, and was living now with his bossy daughter. There was that man with the sheep—James Perlman—surely he’d want to help? He might soon need a neighbor’s help himself if the feds kept pursuing everyone who’d ever breathed in the same stratosphere with Nola Donahue.

And there were the Irish travellers. Already, sympathetic clan members had been popping up on the pasture like Jacks and Jills from their boxy pickups, contributing pillows, curtains, rugs, and shawls, along with pans of apple crisp, mashed turnip, brownies, and what else Sharon didn’t know—she’d only seen the cargo disappearing into the new used trailer.

Then there was Aunt Bertha, tripping up the steps this very minute in her shiny black pumps, knee-length pleated blue skirt, and scarlet lipstick that made her look all mouth. Which she was, of course.

“Sharon! Where’s Ruth? I need to see her. I don’t want her thinking for one single minute
we
set that fire. Because we didn’t, Sharon, we wouldn’t!”

“Who did, then?” Sharon asked, sweeping doughnut crumbs off the table into her palm and onto the floor. She’d vacuum before her mother returned.

“Why, God! It was God’s will, Sharon, who else could you think was responsible?” Bertha plumped down on a chair, legs slightly apart in their coffee-colored stockings—Sharon could see clear up to her baggy cotton underwear, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Bertha thrust a doughnut into the red ring of her mouth.

Here, Sharon thought, is a true miscreant. She’s the one should be sent to the knackers. “He just sent down a zigzag of lightning, did he, Bertha?”

“Yes, yes, that’s what He did, absolutely! Retribution! ‘I will punish the world for their evil and the wicked for their iniquity.’ Isaiah 13:11,” she quoted.

“But you helped, huh, Bertha? I mean, God needed a helping hand, right? From you and your lady friends, who left your charming signs down in front of the trailer?”

“Oh, no, not that, Sharon,
I
didn’t. I told you it was—”

“But if God didn’t want those people there, why did he send them a new trailer? Through a church charity, as well. A group of Unitarians—”

“Oh, Unitarians have no connection with God,” Bertha said, “oh no. They don’t kneel to anyone. Why, pagans meet in that place! Just read the paper, Sharon, they make no bones about it. They teach free choice and take in colored people. And innocent children—a hundred of them, I heard. What are they teaching those poor children?!” Bertha poured herself a glass of milk and swilled it down.

Sharon decided right then to send her children to that church. “Now, Bertha, if you don’t mind, I’ve phone calls to make. I’m helping here while Mother’s away.”

“But I need to talk to her, Sharon. Where is she anyway?”

“Gone off with Colm,” Sharon said. “A sort of honeymoon, you know?”

Bertha’s hands clutched her chest as though she’d been shot. “Honeymoon?” she gasped. “But Ruth has only been divorced a few months.”

“Two years,” Sharon said. “Four years since your brother left her. How is dear Violet, by the way?”

“Now, Sharon, I know you’re upset about that woman, but it wasn’t Peter’s fault. Violet was possessed. Absolutely possessed! You know by who. And it wasn’t our Lord, Sharon, it was—”

The phone rang. “I know who set that fire,” a shrill voice said. “And you’d better look to other things he might’ve done.”

“Who is this?” Sharon asked. But the anonymous voice went on—thinking, most likely, that Sharon was her mother. The voice didn’t wait to make certain, just rushed on with her accusations. “He hates your travellers, you should know that. He hates the Irish. Despises us!”

“Who despises us?” Sharon said, wholly confused, but the voice shouted on.

“He’s a small man, he’s done that sort of thing before. Well, not a fire exactly, but back in Buffalo where—well, he did something terrible. Terrible! I won’t tell you what, I’ll just warn you. It was in the papers back there. Those travellers would of read it—that man who owned that farm where they all worked. And he was afraid! Afraid of people knowing around here. He’d do anything, I tell you, to keep them from finding out!”

“He? Who’s he? And finding out what?” Sharon was getting a headache. Two kooks in one hour were two too many. But the phone went dead. Where was her mother anyway? Why did she have to go running off to upstate New York when all hell was breaking loose at home?

At last, Bertha was on her way out, the black pumps tapping a slow exit while the tongue wagged on about retribution, God’s will, the triumph of evil. Sometimes Sharon wished she were adopted, bore no relationship to this bigoted woman.

She slammed the door on the black heels, then picked up the phone and dialed the Branbury Farm B&B. “Glenna?” she said. “Is that you?”

“Who else would it be? I’m busy as hell cleaning up a mess Fay’s hound made on the floor,” the octogenarian said. “Damn beast chewed up a bunch of garlic I had hanging—knocked it down with his skinny tail. Serve him right if he gets bad breath.” She let out a great belly laugh.

Sharon explained the situation, and Glenna hollered, “You just tell me when they show up and I’ll be there with a pitchfork. I won’t have them screwing that good woman. I won’t have it! But just in case they bring in the army and we can’t hold the fort, I’ve got a pregnant goat here. Ruth can use my land, raise goats. You can milk ‘em, you know.”

Goats, Sharon thought. It was an idea all right. Sharon loved goats. She loved the way they frisked about the hillside, like elves, munching up the grass. She and her mother could hire them out— Goats ‘R’ Us they’d call themselves. Anyway, her mother had options now. Sharon liked the thought of options. Her mother had been obsessed with cows. She’d tried Christmas trees and maple syrup, but never any other kind of animal. It was time to break loose, move in other directions. Sharon would tell her mother that. Sometimes good came out of the bad.

Though she knew her mother would never listen. What could you do with a woman who put her cows practically on a par with her own children?

“It’s not fair to equate cows with people,” Sharon told the bowl of doughnuts on the kitchen table. “ ‘S not fair,” as she stuffed one into her mouth.

“Hello?” she said when the phone rang again, and then “What?”

“A court order,” the voice repeated. It was a friend of her mother’s who worked at the local phone company. “I thought your mom should know. So she can be, like, careful from now on, you know, when she talks on the phone?”

“Oh God,” Sharon said when she hung up. “Oh dear God. Now they’re having the phone bugged.”

Who was bugging it—the USDA or the FBI? Or did it matter? Any way you looked at it, it was the feds.

* * * *

Colm wanted to send out a warning to the police about a deaf-mute and a woman on a motorbike, but Ruth argued against it. “If the police pick Nola up, we’ll have no way to question her ourselves. And there’s Keeley. The boy needs her right now more than the police. Think of that, Colm.”