Mad Season (3 page)

* * * *

After the afternoon milking, Ruth went to the hospital. They wouldn’t let her see Belle, only relatives, and the daughter, Marie, was with her. Belle was still in a coma. The nurse couldn’t tell her any more, nor the son-in-law Harold, who stood in the lobby turning and turning his red checkered cap in his hands. Drops of sweat shone on his brow. He could tell her only that the police had come and were sent away.

“A bad business,” he said in his high-pitched voice. “I never imagined something like this. It shouldn’t’ve happened.” Ruth nodded and went on down to Lucien’s room.

“Help me,” an old woman squealed. “Help me!”

“I’m sorry. Ruth brushed past the wheelchair, feeling guilty; there was a dampness in her underarms, in the creases of her neck.

She met Colm Hanna in the doorway of Lucien’s room. He was dressed in an open-necked blue shirt, olive corduroys—nothing matched, nothing hung right on that thin body. He was holding a blue cotton cap in his hand. Colm was crazy about hats, it was rumored he had a hundred in his closet.

“There’s a concussion, multiple lacerations,” he said. “He’s still confused. So I didn’t stay. But I found out one thing: they called him by name. Whoever it was, called ‘Lucien,’ like they knew him.”

He’d seen Belle’s daughter and her husband when he came in. Marie was distraught about her parents but couldn’t shed any light. The husband, Harold, had little to add—as inarticulate a man as he’d known. “Marie mentioned your boy, Willy. In a funny way, you know, like he might be—”

“Implying what? That Willy’s involved?” The blood swelled in her cheeks. “That’s absurd. We all know that!”

“Hey, I’m just reporting. We have to think of everyone. Anyone who knew Lucien well, his habits. Your man Tim as well?”

Her dander was up now. “He’s a good man, Tim! He never takes a nickel from Lucien, just helps out in his spare time. He’s there now.” She felt her neck stiffen.

“He might have seen something, Ruth, that’s all.” He held up his arms in truce.

“Oh, yes, yes, okay, I suppose you’re right.”

“Maybe I could drop over in the morning, we could both talk to them. Kids’ll be in school, I suppose.”

“They wouldn’t suspect my children!” She took a step back into the corridor, knocked into a door, rubbed her shoulder.

“They might have seen something. You said Emily came in late, with the boyfriend. Who knows? Hey!” He dropped his hands at his sides, like the criminal mind was beyond his ken.

“They get home around four. But Vic, he’s only in fifth grade. I don’t want him upset. He’s had troubles enough in school.”

“Troubles?”

“He and a couple of other kids. Because they’re farm kids, they smell of the farm. They call him . .. look, Colm, I came to see Lucien. I have to get home to get Vic in bed, help Emily with her paper. I studied history, remember? Before I turned into a farm wife?”

He looked serious. He’d wanted to marry her, she kept forgetting that. He couldn’t seem to forget, though. The way he looked at her sometimes, like the sun hanging over Bread Loaf Mountain, not wanting to go down.

He waved his cap at her, smiling now, stuck it on his head at a jaunty angle. He was really quite attractive, with his cheeks filled out. She watched him go down the hall. He sort of bowled along, like his legs wanted to go in a different direction from his body, but shoulders back. You wondered if he’d make the door all right.

He turned to doff the hat again. And whoa! He was walking into a supply closet. He looked back, grinned at his error.

She was smiling herself when she went in to see Lucien.

The man was too confused to identify the assailants in any way, and she dropped the subject. It was shock enough to see him:

bruises, odd swellings, the broken nose she hadn’t seen when she picked him up that first time. But then she’d been in shock to find him like that: he’d looked so small in that ditch, like a shrunken potato, and behind him, his meadows swelling up to the foot of the Green Mountains. In the hospital bed now he seemed larger, or maybe it was the bandages that bound his limbs, his forehead.

“Belle?” He reached out his arms.

“Belle’s here, Lucien. In another room. She’s going to be all right.” The wet oozed up under her arms as she spoke. “How are you? Pretty early to be going to bed, isn’t it?” She looked at her watch. “Seven-eighteen?”

He didn’t smile. He couldn’t, of course, there was a nasty cut at the corner of his mouth, red pit marks on his cheek like a machine of some kind had stamped it; some teeth seemed to be missing. He didn’t take care of his teeth, Belle said, didn’t want to spend the money. “You want them all pulled out, do you?” she’d say. “You want to spend a thousand dollars on false ones?” Ruth had heard the complaint more than once.

“Look in my pocket there.” He tried to get up on an elbow but fell back down on the pillow.

“Closet,” he said, pointing.

She smelled the coat before she saw it. Funny how she could work with the smell of barn all day and yet it was a surprise when she came on it elsewhere. She reached deep in the seams, where the pocket had ripped, pulled out a stubby pencil, a couple of nails, a handkerchief, some crumpled paper, a pouch of Beechwood tobacco.

“No bills?” Panic spread across his face. “Down in the lining?”

“The police would have it,” she lied.

“Police! Mary and Joe, what business they got. Gemme out of this bed. Who’s milking? Belle can’t do it all, she’s getting old, Belle.”

“My hired man’s over there now,” she promised. “The farm’s in good hands.”

“Help me out of this bed,” Lucien repeated. “I can’t spend the night here. Belle, she don’t like to be alone at night. I say not to worry, but she say you never know who. Look, tell her she can lock the door she wants to.”

He fell back again from exhaustion and shut his eyes; the lids were the color of scratched pewter. She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling helpless.

“Belle,” he murmured, opening his eyes a crack, holding out a hand. “Get that Tim over to help with the cows. You can’t do it alone, Belle. You hear me now? I be down in the morning. Belle?” The eyes shut again, the voice was a whisper.

“Belle? You hear me?”

“I hear you,” Ruth whispered back.

* * * *

Emily was on the phone when Ruth got home. Ruth removed her shoes before she entered the kitchen—she hated scrubbing floors. It had begun to rain outside, and though it was good for the sapling trees, the mud would put off plowing till May. The old John Deere was problem enough on hard ground. And the barbed wire on the north pasture fence, where she wanted to send the cows, needed mending, the cows would have a heyday. It was one thing after the other!

And now the boyfriend, Wilder, that city boy, on the line, she could tell from her daughter’s voice. Ought to have the decency to leave her alone on a night like this. Though Emily didn’t seem to think so. She was lying back on the sofa, the wire stretched across the room and over the sofa back. Another quarter inch, it would strangle the iron lamp. They talked this way every night: anyone else who called in would get a busy signal. It didn’t bother his parents, of course. Wilder and the older Unsworth boy had their own phones, Emily said. Nice to have that kind of money, Ruth thought.

She nodded meaningfully at Emily as she passed. “Mom’s home,” she heard Emily tell Wilder. “I’ve got to do my history paper. I was helping next door—the Larocques got hurt, you hear that? I didn’t know till I got home from school. Somebody in the middle of the night. Must have been after you left. Huh? Yeah, they were hurt bad. Mrs. Larocque’s in intensive. Wilder? You there? She’ll be okay—we hope so! Wilder, there’s still a full moon. Remember? I saw you there in the car, watching. I saw you from my window. You were still there when I pulled the shade. I was with you.” Emily’s voice was almost a whisper, but Ruth could hear. She’d had keen ears since the births of her children. “I mean, I spoke to you, from my room. Didja hear me? Yeah. Well then, see you in class. I miss you. You get there tomorrow, hear?”

She made a kissing sound into the receiver, and Ruth winced where she stood on the top step.

“Wilder wasn’t in school today?” she asked when Emily came upstairs.

“He was starting a cold,” Emily said.

“That was a reason to miss school?”

“He had a science test. He didn’t study for it.”

“Oh.” And the subject was closed.

Vic was in his room playing with the G.I. Joes his father had given him. They’d belonged to Pete as a child, and he’d kept them, along with a Mobil Oil truck and a red wagon. When Vic saw Ruth, he put the dolls away. He knew she was uncomfortable with them—because they wore combat fatigues, not because they were dolls. No one could accuse her of being sexist. She hated women forced into roles. Maybe it was why she rather liked being a farmer now—not a farmer’s wife, but a farmer.

She said, “After what happened next door I’d think you wouldn’t want to play war.”

“I’m not playing war.”

“Then what do you call it?”

“It’s defense. I’m defending our country. Against—” He blushed.

“Against what, Vic?”

“Against the invaders. If I don’t, they’ll take over.”

She sat on his bed. It felt bumpy, like something was stuffed under the blanket. She left it there, maybe she was the invader he was talking about. Though she suspected the invasions had to do with school.

“How was it today?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“Just okay? Things were all right at recess?”

He shrugged, changed the subject. “What happened at the Larocques’? Sharon wouldn’t let me go over. She said you’d want me here. Then you went out.”

He looked accusingly at her. His ankles were stick-thin below the khaki pants. The bones stuck out in his hands where he’d clasped them around his knees. He’d have big hands, Doc Collier promised. But it seemed forever for Vic to wait, she knew that. He was one of the smaller ones in his class.

She told him what she knew, which wasn’t much. She knew only that the pair had been attacked, she didn’t know what time, how hard, by what instrument, though they’d found the maple stick on the floor. But it didn’t look thick enough to do them in that way.

Vic gazed down at the floor as she spoke, clasping and unclasping his hands. His face was pale for all the freckles. She sensed he was empathizing. She wanted to go to him, hug him, say it was all right: Mom was here, no one could harm him.

But he was ten years old. Pete was right, she had to let him grow up. Though it was hard not to interfere, hard!

He licked his lips. Finally he said, “He kept his money in that coat. Lot of it, anyway. I know, I saw once. He sent me for a pipe and it wasn’t where he said, so I looked in his coat. It was hanging up. And there was all that money, way down. A wad of it. A big huge wad.”

His eyes opened wide like he was seeing it for the first time. He looked worried, and she remembered the time he’d been robbed himself, some junior high kids jumping on him, taking fifty cents, a pack of gum—they were local kids that time.

“I found his pipe in there too, but I didn’t tell him where I found it. I didn’t want him to think I saw all that money. There were safety pins, the coat was heavy, like he kept more than showed. Then, then I was afraid—”

“Afraid of what?” She clasped her knees. She saw how thin Vic was. He’d been losing weight and she was only just aware of it. She was too busy, she was a terrible mother, she couldn’t keep up with farm and family. The fear of losing her children crept over her again and she held out a finger to touch Vic. But he shrank away.

“Afraid he’d remember he put the pipe in there. Did they take the money?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m afraid that’s what they were after. The police didn’t find any money in the house, or the barn. The thieves must have looked there. Unless he banked it. Colm Hanna says he’ll find out tomorrow, though I doubt it.”

She remembered Lucien’s anxiety about the coat. “And Vic, Mr. Hanna is coming here in the morning. He wants to help us find out who hurt the Larocques. Maybe we could have a talk.”

“Me, too?” said Vic, locking his fingers together till the knuckles turned to bone.

“You should tell him what you just told me.”

“Why?” The word was almost a shriek. “He’ll think I was the one took it. I was in Cub Scouts last night. Down to the town hall. I’d never take his money, you know that!”

She put out a hand and squeezed his shoulder. The child was getting paranoid. “Of course he wouldn’t think you did. We just want you to try and remember if you might have seen anyone around his house. Anyone who didn’t belong.”

Vic frowned. “I don’t know if I did. I’ll try and think.”

“If you know anything, it will help, Vic. We want to find who did it. It’s important we find out. We don’t want any more victims. The Charlebois barn—”

He glanced up at the urgency in her voice, blinked. He’d been blinking a lot lately, she’d noticed. She stroked his hair, pulled him close, and this time he let her. “Now get in your pjs. We’ll need you for extra chores in the morning. We all have to pitch in.”

“I remember thinking,” he said, yanking his pajamas from under his pillow, “I wouldn’t want money like that in my pocket. All smelling of cows. They’d never let me in the games, ever, Billy Marsh, Garth Unsworth, that gang. They don’t have cows where they come from.”

“Garth Unsworth’s mother has sheep, Emily told me so.”

“They don’t smell like cows. Not as bad.”

“They do, you get a barn full of them. You tell that to Garth Unsworth.”

She sighed, patted the boy’s shaggy head, went to the door. Vic liked to undress in privacy.

“All reeking of cows?” she said aloud as she shut the door.

“That money? Reeking of cows?” she repeated as she went down the hall to her room.

Chapter Three

It was an average farm, for these parts anyway, the farmhouse in need of paint, the two cement-block stave silos with WILLMARTH SONS in peeling letters, the barn sturdy, painted red. Farmers kept up their barns before their houses, Colm knew that from his work in real estate. The land had a bluish cast, like it was about to grass. Decent soil, he supposed. Not the rich loamy black soil the settlers found when they walked up into the Republic of Vermont in the 1700s, but good earth nonetheless.