Mad Season (8 page)

“Maybe. But not if he sees us in here. Belle’s friends?”

“How would he know?”

“Interrogators have a way of getting known.”

“Yes. Shall we go, then?”

“Can I finish my beer? Just because you’re an alkie,” he poured a little more in her glass. “You can help.”

She wanted to hit him, she didn’t know why. But she drank the beer. What was wrong with her tonight? She watched him tip the glass to his mouth, calm as a cow chewing; any minute he’d wipe the hay off his chin. Colm Hanna!

Ha! He’d spilled beer on his shirt. He was dabbing with a paper napkin. Served him right. It felt good to laugh.

* * * *

When Vic woke the next morning the telescope was beside his pillow. He sat up and glanced about, like someone was in the room, might beat down on him. But it was only six-thirty he saw by his clock, and the house was still. Though he could smell coffee brewing down in the kitchen and knew his mother was back from the barn.

His heart jerked. Was it his mother who got the telescope? Jeezum. Had she been to see the Unsworths or Marsh’s mother the way she always threatened? She was out late last night, she could have gone. He was worried now. Didn’t she know she could make it worse for him? He’d decided not to tell her about the episode in the woods. He made Gerry Dufours’s pa promise not to tell, and Mr. Dufours said he understood, but if it happened again he might go out with a shotgun after those snotty kids and “larn ‘em a lesson.” Vic didn’t want that either. They’d take it out on him and Gerry afterward, wouldn’t they?

The telescope was bent, he saw. The glass was broken in the butt of it. And he’d spent a month’s allowance to buy the special glass. He punched his pillow. What was wrong with farmers, anyhow? His dad went to a college good as them. He’d said that once, and one of them said “Cow College,” and maybe it was true. His dad studied agriculture. What was wrong with studying agriculture?

A car pulled up outside, and he squinted out his window. It was a thin man in baggy cords and dungaree jacket, that Hanna guy. His mother said he’d be around again, to talk to him. Well, he was glad. He had a theory. He had a theory that whatever happened in the woods yesterday was mixed up with what happened to the Larocques.

He didn’t know just how, of course, kids that size couldn’t beat up an old man, could they? An old lady like Mrs. Larocque? But maybe enough of them could.

But how could he tell Mr. Hanna without saying what happened? The guy was too much in cahoots with his mother.

Then he remembered that Mrs. Larocque was dead. His belly ached to think of it. That was how he was able to slip past his mother without any questions. She had that phone call. He didn’t like that. Jeezum. Nobody had any business beating up on an old lady.

“It’s not fair,” he said aloud.

“What isn’t fair?” It was Emily, sticking her nose into his room, smelling of barn. He moved away, he didn’t want to get the smell on him before school. “Little boy got to get up in the morning? Do chores? Sweep a floor? Poor little abused kid.”

She was being sarcastic, he was annoyed. “I don’t mind chores. I can work as good as you any day. And you were late yesterday, Mom was pissed. Mom—”

Then he realized he still had the telescope in his hand. He saw her looking at it.

“What happened to it, Vic?” she said quietly. She came in the room and sat on his bed, looked at the broken glass, the bent shape of it. “Somebody take it from you?”

“Who’d take it from me? I dropped it, is all. I dropped it in school and the glass broke. I can fix it. Today, after school.” He slapped it down on his desk. “Get outa here now, I gotta get dressed. Tell that guy I’ll be right down.”

“Okay.” She got up off the bed. “Make sure you go to school. Stay home, they’ll think you’re chicken. Anyway, I had a little talk with Garth yesterday. At Wilder’s house. I got a feeling they won’t bother you today.”

“Who bothers me? Don’t you talk to Garth about me. Wilder either. I don’t like that! I had a cold coming on yesterday.” He sniffed. “It’s all the way on now. But I’m going to school. I always go. Now, get outa here, I said.”

“I’m out,” she said and shut the door behind. A minute later he heard the shower going. Emily didn’t want the barn smell on her either.

Sisters were a pain. All these females telling him what to do, what to eat. Vic wished his dad were here. Did he think those Saturday night calls made up for his being away all these months?

“I hate you, Dad,” he cried, “hate you. And I won’t come live with you. Ever!”

He stuck his short bony legs into yesterday’s underpants. His mother hadn’t done a wash lately. What was going on in this world, anyway? It was all out of sync.

The door cracked open and it was Emily again, wrapped in a blue towel. “If you dropped that telescope in school, how come Garth Unsworth had it? It was in his room. Wilder found it.” She looked fiercely at him. “Something you’re not telling us? Mom won’t like that.”

He kicked the door shut, hard, and she shrieked. He’d caught her bare toe.

Ha. She wasn’t getting another word out of him.

* * * *

Colm Hanna found a glum teenager and a sullen boy at the breakfast table. He glanced around for Ruth, he wasn’t sure he could cope. As though sensing his worry she came in the room with the coffee cup that seemed an extension of her right hand. At once the atmosphere warmed. She seemed to have gotten over whatever pique she’d had with him last night.

“He was late getting his chores done,” she said, excusing her offspring’s attitude. “It’s not you.” One shoulder touched his as she leaned over to offer coffee; he felt his bones separate.

“She’s right,” said Emily. “It’s not you, Mr. Hanna. Though I don’t mind the chores. Not when I don’t have a test. Today I have a test.”

“What’s the subject?”

“Geometry. My worst subject in the world. If I get through it I’ll never look at another theorem in my life.” She actually smiled, and he smiled back. She looked like her mother then, the same broad cheekbones, the wide dark eyebrows. They had a way of smiling out of one corner of the mouth like they were about to confide something to you.

He turned to Vic. “You’re the scientist in the family. I understand you’ve made your own telescope.”

It was evidently the wrong thing to say. The boy scowled. “It’s nothing,” he said, “just a dumb homemade telescope.” He punched his sister, and she punched back, with a tight smile.

“That’s not true.” Ruth was standing in the doorway of the pantry, the coffeepot still in her hand. “It’s a very well made telescope. It won a first prize in Field Days last summer.”

Still Vic glowered, and Colm gave up on the subject. He was glad when Emily and Ruth left for the barn and he was alone with the boy. He made a few more efforts to coax a smile; that failing, said, “I want to thank you, Vic, for the lead you gave. We’ve already had one follow-through.”

“Oh yeah?” The boy looked up, interested.

Colm told about the barn money in the Alibi. “Of course we don’t know who it was, but someone’s bound to show up again with it—somewhere. That was good thinking on your part.”

The boy examined his cracked fingernails. “I got another idea too.” He coughed, like he’d got a piece of toast stuck in his throat. He rammed a finger down after it.

Colm waited. But the boy was turning redder from whatever he’d swallowed. Colm patted him on the back. “You okay?”

Vic had hiccups, and Colm picked him up, held him high, then swung him down.

Vic was so surprised he stopped hiccupping. “Jeezum,” he said. “They never stopped so fast before.” He gave Colm a look of something like admiration.

“My father’s remedy. Now what’s your idea? Your mom and I can’t find the bad guys without help from you.”

“All right,” Vic said finally, laying his thin arms on the table, carefully, like they were a part of his telescope. The hands at the end of the wrists were disproportionately large, like soup ladles. “I’ll tell you. It’s just a thought. But it might have something to do with, well, what happened to me yesterday. I mean, the same kind of had stuff.”

His eyes seemed to shrink back in his head as he told his story, like it was forcing its way out of his mouth. When he finished he made Colm promise to keep it to himself. “Not ever, ever” to mention it to his mother, and Colm promised.

Though it was true the connection was vague. What could a bunch of kids have to do with a theft of several thousand dollars and a killing? But just the same... “You can’t give me the names?” Colm asked.

“Not really.” The boy’s voice was so hushed Colm had to lean over the table to hear him. “Just say that one of them might be called Unsworth.”

Colm kept smiling. “Would any of them have worked at Larocque’s after school any time? Unsworth, or any of the others? There was a high school student, Tim told me. He didn’t know the name.”

“Them? I guess not! Jeezum, they wouldn’t be caught dead on a farm. Though Unsworth’s mother has sheep. And he’s stuck with them.” He gave a satisfied little smile.

Then he said, “That was Gerry Dufours’s big brother who worked over there at Larocque’s. He’s dropped out of school now, works down at that furniture factory. So does Unsworth’s big brother—not Wilder, the other one.”

“Thanks,” Colm said, getting up to leave. He’d drop in at that factory. “I’ll let you get to your chores now. You think of anything else, you get right to me or your mom, okay? I’ll keep this other business, about the telescope, between you and me. Must have been a nasty business to go through.”

Vic looked inward for a moment, froze. Then he sighed heavily and took the hand offered him. He gripped it hard, the grip quite strong for a little fellow.

* * * *

The woman was barging right into the barn where Ruth was waiting for the vet—he was half an hour late already, and she should be out mending fence. But Cleopatra had to be checked for heat, the heifers vaccinated for pinkeye—it was carried by flies, highly contagious, and Bathsheba’s calf had it. But here she was, a sitting duck for salespeople, or whatever this woman was. Ruth saw a stockinged leg scrawny as a bovine’s, a red polyester suit. She hated polyester. It always unraveled.

The heavily ringed hand tapped on the inside of the barn door. “I’ll only take a minute,” the woman shouted, as though Ruth was deaf. “I’ll get right to the point. I’m Esther Dolley. I’m a broker. I specialize in farms. I called you once.” She slapped a card down on the wheelbarrow where Ruth was scooping out sawdust. The fingers were thick as gloves inside the gold rings, tiny dark hairs grew on the knuckles.

“I know about your husband,” the woman said. “I’ve had correspondence with him. He wants to sell. That’s why I’m here.”

Ruth looked up from her work. “You thought you’d just drop in, did you? On a farmer?”

“I thought I might find you in here.” The woman’s smile outshone the glare from the window, it masked her face.

Ruth said, “I’ve been busy. He left me with everything to do.” She threw a pile of sawdust under the woman’s feet. The woman gave a whooping sneeze.

“Of course,” Esther Dolley said, like she was talking to a hurt child. “And he feels bad. He said so in his letter. All that next door—” she waved a polyester arm, “he’s worried.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“I have an interested party. He’s a developer. Oh, a Vermonter, yes. I have the plans here, very tasteful. Every house will be landscaped. We’ll keep the vista, the mountains.” She fished a map out of her briefcase, unrolled it with a flourish over the wheelbarrow of sawdust.

Ruth looked at it. Her fists pushed up inside the pockets other jeans. “You couldn’t get a hundred houses on my land. Not with trees between.”

“Of course not,” the woman said brightly. “This includes the folks to the west. They’ve already agreed. They’re not making it, you know, even with both working and a hired man. They want to live a little, get out  and—”

“On the north?” Ruth squinted at the map.

“On the north? Well, I haven’t spoken to him yet, Lucien Larocque. It’s too ...” She pursed her lips delicately. “But I’m quite sure, with his wife, um, gone—an elderly man. His daughter is worried, you know, she doesn’t want it. I’ve spoke with her husband.”

“Who has nothing to do with the farm.”

“Well. Well, he came in, didn’t he? Yes, in my office. On her behalf. Looking for a job, actually. It was before, before the, um ... His wife was worried about her mother. And now—” She gave a little sigh, the lips parted like the Red Sea. “The funeral is tomorrow?”

“Mostly family.” Ruth didn’t want this woman barging in in her red suit with the fancy label. It was sticking up at the back of her neck. She’d dressed in a hurry, this woman, a hurry for something. Something more than money, maybe?

The woman threw up her arms; it was all simply beyond her: death and the universe. She rolled up her map, got up, her thighs swished together in the textured stockings. The smile was replaced by sympathy. Realtors throve on divorce and death, Colm had admitted that to her, even while he kept on with it. They were like crows, she’d told Colm (and he laughed), pecking at dead things. At least undertakers disposed of them neatly, burned them.

Two barns had burned, too. She shivered.

“I can see you’re disturbed by all this, and my dear, I understand. Yes, take your time, think it over and call me.” She shoved a card at Ruth. It said
ESTHER
K.
DOLLEY
,
BROKER
.
SPECIALIZING
IN
FARMS
.
PLATTSBURGH
,
NEW
YORK
.

“I just moved over,” the woman explained. “I haven’t got a new card yet. But I put down my phone number. There.” She pointed a sharp fingernail.

Ruth followed Esther Dolley to the door. Outside Doc Greiner’s white pickup was turning into the drive; she was relieved to see him. “How did my husband happen to write you?” she asked. “There are other Realtors here. Ones he knows personally.”

The woman looked down at her leg—had her stocking ripped? She’d stepped in a cow pattie. Ruth smiled.

“Oh, I imagine he contacted us all,” she said, pulling out a cigarette. “Do you mind? I’m one of these bad people—but I’d never smoke in your barn! Darn. Forgot my lighter. I’ll have to—” and giggling, she galloped off, a red heifer, and squeezed herself into a small red car.