Mad Cow Nightmare (34 page)

Maggie held up a palm, as if she were taking the fifth.

“They’ll ask you in court,” Ruth said. “You’ll have to take an oath. You could call this a rehearsal.” She poured the young woman a cup of black coffee, put away the moonshine. It wouldn’t do to have two of them in their cups.

Maggie took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. “He was in a clearing, not far from that healing place I knew Nola was in—I’d gone looking for her. Near the swamp—not in it. I hit him and he yelled and knocked me down. He was laughing, drunk. He’d always been after me. You might call him a stalker—next thing to it anyhow. I hated him. I hated that Nola stayed with him. I could of drawn and quartered him, I was that full of rage!”

“So you both struggled with him? Tightened the reins around his neck?”

Maggie was nodding and talking right through Ruth’s questions. Her passion told Ruth that what she was saying was truth. “I saw he was dead. I guess we were shocked at that. It happened so fast! But we didn’t want to leave him there for the world to see. I mean, Nola needed to get away, she needed time. She thought she’d take the mare as far as she could without somebody seeing. She thought the swamp was the safest place to hide.”

“You didn’t take the mare into the swamp?”

“Sure we did. Partway anyhow—we hoisted the body up over the horse. You ever pick up a dead body? Weighs like ten tons! The mare had a hard time in that swamp, so we dragged the body the rest of the way. Look, Willmarth, I hated the bastard but I wouldn’t of, like, wanted to kill him. Not in my right mind, anyway. But then he waved that letter at me—after I hit him, before he came down on me, that was. Bragging, you know, like only Ritchie could do—”

“Letter?”

“Yeah, the one Ritchie wanted me to give Darren.” Maggie sipped her coffee, then poured in milk to cool it down. “He was going to send it to you. Tell you Darren knew about the calves being sick. He was trying to blackmail Darren, get him to leave here. So Uncle would keep Ritchie in his will—’stead of leaving it all to Darren. I mean, Uncle never knew he had a son—Nola kept that from him. From all of us! And then Uncle knowing Ritchie killed that guy in the bar—all that bad stuff, you know. Everybody blackmailing everybody else. But nobody, I mean nobody was going to blackmail my Darren!”

“You have that letter?”

“Tore it up afterward. Little shreds. Wind’s got it.”

“Mmm.” Ruth gulped her coffee. “But why did Nola want to kill him?” She was beginning to feel the moonshine. Maggie’s voice was sounding far away.

“I told you! He was after
me.
It was part of Nola’s and my blood bond. If anyone tried to hurt one of us, the other would come running. That’s when Nola wrapped the reins around his neck. Nola and I—we’re bound together, like I said. I pulled too—I did! I couldn’t help it. That filthy man! I should go to prison with her. I should!”

Keeley tramped down the stairs and Maggie stopped talking. The boy looked up shyly at the two women. Maggie put an arm around him, fussed over his breakfast. Keeley looked like a bull calf Ruth had treated once with an injured leg. She’d cured him, only to see him shipped off to the slaughterhouse. She couldn’t keep bull calves, no matter how much her son pleaded. Not for long, anyway.

“He was trying to hurt you,” Ruth said to Maggie. “He was trying to hurt Nola. He’d already endangered her life taking her out of that hospital. He was a woman beater, I gather?”

Maggie nodded. “Not as bad as some, but yeah. The verbal abuse! You know, a control freak.”

“He tried to force you. It was self-defense for both of you. We’ll make a case out of that. Get a good lawyer—that Bingham fellow Colm knows.”

Maggie was hugging Keeley, weeping over him. They were both weeping.

Finally Ruth said, “Nola was the one who put the reins around his neck. You only helped drag the body into the swamp. They’ll get you on that, but you won’t be away long. We’ll keep Keeley here with us for that short time.”

Even without the cows, she thought, she could keep the boy. He might be a companion for Vie—he was only a year or two younger.

“What about Darren?” Maggie asked. “If I’m in the lockup and you’ve lost your cows? What’ll Darren do?”

Ruth couldn’t answer that question.

* * * *

Ruth walked out of the barn after milking and into a sea of faces. It was five-thirty the next morning, the sun a lemony glaze on the Green Mountains. She stopped, and stared. Forty people here at least, holding a candlelight vigil. And more arriving on motorbikes, in pickups, and old cars. Franny and Henrietta riding together on a large chestnut Morgan, like a bicycle built for two. Glenna Flint and her kooky cousin Fay squatting on the porch with Fay’s rescued greyhound—the beast with a red flag tied to its scrawny tail. Carol and her son Wilder leading the llama up from the pasture. So much for conditions number one and two, Ruth thought.

Leroy Boulanger careening in on his bicycle, a hive of bees in his hand—oh dear, that could mean trouble. Gwen Woodleaf and her husband, Russell—the latter in full Abenaki regalia, wielding a spear. Their son, Brown Bear, drawing a red circle on his forehead, calling others to his palette. Old Lucien Larocque hobbling on his cane, shaking a fist: “We’ll get ‘em! There’s fight in the old man yet!” Moira Earthrowl with a pail full of apples; her husband, Stan, shaking his crutch.

These were people Ruth had helped in the past, come to help her in turn. She felt the tears push against her eyeballs. To hell, she thought, with her resolution not to fight. To hell with the feds’ four conditions.

A pickup crammed with colorful travellers veered into the driveway—cousins, double cousins, would-be cousins, no doubt, to Maggie and Darren—all hugging and weeping and shouting. Boadie danced among them, brandishing a pitchfork, like she was godmother to the world’s cows, calves, and pigs. Here was the media:
Free Press, Branbury Independent,
a WCAX television truck: men and women leaping out with cameras, notebooks, cell phones—already working the crowd.

And then—unbelievably—her son, Vic, came running up to hug her, long knock-kneed legs outgrowing his pants, hair a pile of hay in the wind; furious he’d had no word until Sharon called him. “Jezum crow, you were gonna leave me out of all this? Unfair, Mom! Am I your son or not? You’re not gonna let ‘em take our cows, are you?”

“Our cows,” Ruth thought. Her son, who said he wanted nothing to do with cows, called them “our” cows! Ruth was weeping buckets, she couldn’t help it. Vic was here! And all these friends and neighbors and sympathizers. It was like old home week. Only daughter Emily was missing. Why, Emily would love this. Ruth was always doing the wrong thing. Keeping things from her children. What kind of mother was she? She wept for her failings. She wept for the joy of reunion. She would call Emily tonight.

“You’re impossible but I love you,” Ruth told Sharon, who was emerging from the kitchen door with coffee, lemonade, and cookies to distribute to the crowd—as though they were all here for a tea party or a breakfast brunch—not a battle with the feds.

Sharon grinned at her mother and went on passing the treats. “Everyone should have a red circle!” she shouted, and Vic and Leroy lent painterly hands to Brown Bear. Soon everyone’s forehead was painted with red dye—except for Glenna, who said she was “goddamned if I’ll look like an aborigine.” Until Glenna’s niece Hartley rode in on a bicycle and planted a red lipstick kiss on the stubborn lady’s forehead. And Glenna left the lipstick mark there.

“Hey!” It was Colm at the upstairs window, pulling on a T-shirt. Seeing the crowd, he hollered, “Jeez, I’ll be right down. Feds here yet?”

“No, and they said ‘dawn,’ and it’s already after six o’clock so they might not come after all,” Ruth shouted back. “You’re a cop. You going to let the crowd get away with this?”

“Fifty against one, you crazy?” Colm hollered back, and disappeared from view. Moments later he was outside in sunglasses, straw hat, a pair of denim cutoffs that were too short for his bony legs.

“Listen, listen everyone. Listen!” Ruth yelled, and waved her arms. Then blinked, for fifty-odd persons with red dots on their foreheads were staring at her. It was as if they’d all floated down out of outer space and she was the only rational being left on earth. She planted her legs farther apart for balance. “They’ll bring marshalls—armed marshalls. That’s what they did up in East Warren at that sheep farm. Your pitchforks and bees and apples won’t do anything against bullets. I appreciate your concern, your coming here to help me—”

She was close to tears again and she tried a new tack: “I mean, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. But don’t try to attack the authorities. You’ll just get hurt. Dragged off to jail— do you want that?”

A loud “Goddammit, why not?” from octogenarian Glenna. “Always said I wanted to experience everything in my lifetime. Never been to jail.”

“Free the cows or jail! Free the cows or jail!” the crowd chanted. They were getting out of control, there was nothing Ruth could do. Even Colm was chanting with them. Franny was on her high horse—King Harry in the field: “They took my mare,” she screeched, “are we going to let them get away with that? Are we going to sit here and let them take these healthy cows? Cows fed on grass and grain? Put an end to a farm that’s been here eight generations?”

“Four generations,” Ruth murmured, but no one heard her.

“Well, are we? Yes or no?” Franny shouted and the crowd shouted back “No! No!” A voice hollered, “Free the slaves!” And Russell Leblanc waved his spear; his silver earrings gleamed in the early sun. “They come here with their plagues and kill my people. We’re not gonna let ‘em do it again!”

People cheered. Cameras flashed. Sharon was dancing in and out of the throng, urging them on. Colm flung an arm around Ruth. “You might’s well get with it, Ruthie. You can’t win against this crowd.” His arm was squeezing her waist, pumping it.

“You’re the cop,” she said. “Remember that.”

“Not today. Got on my real estate hat. My undertaker’s cap.”

“Don’t say that! We don’t want any mortalities here. I mean, someone can get hurt. Crowds have a weird mentality. Individuals get lost in the shuffle.”

“Not as long as you’re here, Ruthie. But better get ready for a fight ‘cause here they come!”

Two cattle trucks: rumbling into the driveway. A dozen SUVs behind them—agents jumping out—Colm was counting out loud. Thirteen USDA agents in black Carharts and coveralls; the Leafmiller woman in a blood-red suit. And then the local police. Whose side were they on?

Ruth’s heart was a sump pump, it wouldn’t quit. The protesters were on their feet, moving toward the feds, signs and placards waving, voices at high pitch. The red dye on the foreheads: they were Abenaki on the attack. Boadie rammed into a Carhart with her pitchfork, the llama kicked loose and spit buckets. Apples flew through the air like bees. Or were they bees?

Ruth was an Amazon now, waving her arms at the crowd to “Get back. Let me handle this!” She faced the feds: the anger up in her toes, knees, elbows, neck, throat. “If you want my cows you’ll have to go down in the pasture and get them. You’ll have to go
through
them. Run the gauntlet.”

She flailed her arms at the crowd. The protesters thought she was waving them on, and they rushed the truck. Boadie’s pitchfork stabbed at the huge tires. Russell’s spear forced a pair of agents back in their car. Franny’s stallion charged the steel monster: “We won’t let them take any more innocents!” When the pair tried to get out the back door, Fay sicked her rented greyhound on them. “Go git ‘em, baby, git ‘em, I said!”

“Killer bees!” Leroy screamed. They were only honey bees, but they were angry; they flew at the crowd, stung unprotected necks and faces. Glenna shrieked and took to the house. “Damn fool! Now see what you’ve gone and done!”

Darren came running up from the barn. “I hid that unmarked calf, ma’am. They won’t get him. Like you said, cows are still in the pasture. Feds’ll have to go down there if they want ‘em.”

“Good,” she said. “But I don’t think the feds are going anywhere this minute. The crowd has them—well—”

“Cowed,” Colm said with a grin, and Ruth laughed at the pun. She felt exhilarated from the cheering and protesting and hollering. She was part of the crowd now. She knew that excitement, that cry for blood, for revolution. When Vic drew a red circle on her own forehead, she let it stay.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. “Hey hey, USDA,” she yelled with the crowd, “how many farms did you wreck today? Hey, hey, USDA ...” There might be a hundred people here now, folk dropping in from the sky, it seemed, cars and pickups all over her lawn. The trucks would never get out. She could hardly speak, swallow even, with the thrill of it. She wanted to fall on her knees and hug each one.

“Love you,” she shouted, flinging her arms in the air, “love you all!” Colm grabbed her, held her tight against him. “And I love you,” he said. “But don’t look. Don’t look, because here come the big guns. The armed feds. Twenty-six,” he counted, “no, twenty-seven of ‘em. Black leather jackets. Guns. Jeez. You were right. We got to calm this crowd.”

“What did I tell you?” Ruth cried, her moods shifting like shadows on a windy day. “Stop!” she screamed at the crowd. “Sharon— help me! It’s the Big Guns. Someone will get hurt. Leroy, Russell, Franny, Boadie, all of you—stop, I said! You’ve done all you can. You can’t win over guns. We’ll have to fight it some other way— some peaceful way.” She felt like she’d fallen two hundred feet out of a giant pine. Only hurt and humiliation when she hit bottom. That awful awareness of how small you are, how helpless in the face of guns and billy clubs and black-jacketed authority.

Sharon and Colm were circulating among the crowd, shouting for order. Gwen wrestled the spear out of Russell’s hands—but not before he gave one of the feds a jab with it. Folk were dodging out of the range of Boadie’s pitchfork. Agents forced back the crowd with their weapons. A fed sprayed tear gas, and everyone screamed. Out of their cars now, the agents rushed down to the pasture, herded the bewildered cows up the hill, into the trucks. Uniformed men hustled away the pierced tires; feds trampled signs and feet that got in the way. Everyone was hollering. Ruth could hardly tell human beings from the bawling, bellowing, kicking cows. Cows and protesters, all with red dye on their foreheads. All of us, Ruth thought: victims.