Poison Apples (2 page)

Worse, they knew he was a flatlander, they wanted him to fail. Someone did, anyway! Someone! Who?

He labored to his feet, banged both fists against the barn wall. Leaned there, groaning, feeling the blood boil in his brain. Knowing it was bad for his heart, this anger, but what could he do about it?

“Stan? What are you doing in there, Stan? Dinner’s ready. You said you’d make the salad. And I need your help because—”

“Everyone wants my help! I’ve got that school board meeting tonight and where in Christ’s name do I get a goddamn goat?”

“A goat?” Moira put a hand on his shoulder, rubbed it. “Oh, for the Jamaicans, you mean. Well, there’s a goat farm up in Panton. That’s where they found it last year.. .. Oh, come on, Stanny. Cheer up. I’ll get the goat. If you don’t get mine first.”

He was too upset to acknowledge the pun. He needed a drink. Never mind the school board meeting. That woman would be there, the one he was fighting. That damned right-winger. Trying to oust that English teacher. She’d be a ball of fury, lashing back at him, every point he made. Who was the angry one now? He was a newcomer, she said, his first year on the board, what did he know?

Well he’d had a hell of a lot more experience in schools than she; they’d voted him in last year, hadn’t they? They’d liked the way he campaigned, door to door, shaking hands. Never mind that no one else had wanted to run for the post. Of course his school board experience had been years earlier. Before Carol’s death. BC and AC: Before Carol and After Carol. He coughed. Something in this barn he was allergic to. He hoped it wasn’t the apples.

“Come on, Stan. I’ve got a salmon loaf, you like salmon. Besides, your sister-in-law called, she—”

“Don’t tell me.” He let her lead him up the path to the house. “Lock up, will you?” he yelled at Rufus, who was with Derek, one of the younger men, dragging along a last crate of ripe apples, and the manager nodded. He had a look of long suffering on his square stolid face, as if he could barely tolerate this upstart owner. Rufus was a Vermonter. He’d let it drop once—eyes cast down shyly, of course—that one of his ancestors had fought at Ticonderoga. Well, Stan couldn’t fight that; his ancestors had come over from Russia in steerage—he was Jewish on his mother’s side. It would be easier just to leave the management of the orchard to Rufus. But he, Stan Earthrowl, was the owner, damn it! He had an M.A., almost a Ph.D. He knew more about biology in his little finger than Rufus in his whole brain. About apples? Well, he was learning, anyway. He had a chart up on the refrigerator of one hundred kinds of apples. He was learning. He had to admit, Rufus had him on that score. Rufus knew apples. He had to respect the man for that.

Back in the house he mixed a stiff Manhattan, swilled it down. It burned hot and startling in his chest. He fixed another. “So what’d she call about?” They might as well get it over with.

“Lindley’s back in the hospital. Another heart attack. But minor. They’re doing an angioplasty. Stan, your face is flushed. I wish you’d see a doctor, have your blood pressure checked.. . . That last episode—where you blacked out...”

He ignored that. There was no time to go seeing doctors. He was only forty-eight. Lindley had just turned fifty-five, after all, the older brother. Things would go better—they had to! He’d leave more to Rufus, he knew he had to calm down. After this term he’d resign from the school board. He didn’t need the extra hassles there—that crazy woman, Cassandra Wickham. But he wanted to help that English teacher. For one thing, the man was Jewish. Stan worried that Vermont was so
WASP.

“He’s supposed to have complete quiet afterward and so she wants to send Opal up to us.” Moira helped herself to salmon, passed the platter. He took some, a little spilled on the place mat. He scraped it back onto the plate. He was beyond worrying now. Pile on the complications! Throw another goat at him! He could handle them, as long as he had the Manhattans.

“I suppose you said yes.” She nodded, and he sighed. “Well, we can put her to work around here. Send the girl to the local school. How long she staying?”

“Annie May mentioned a few weeks, maybe a month. And Opal’s hardly a girl anymore, she must be twenty at least. She quit college, Annie says. She’s not easy, I gather.”

Something was banging at the window. “What in hell?”

She had to laugh. “It’s that cardinal I told you about. I suppose I should put up curtains. But I want the light for my work. You said you’d make an owl.”

The thing came back and back, like a flashing red light, like the throbbing he’d been feeling in his head. Thud thud thud. He could hardly stand it. He shoved his chair back. “I’ll make it now, the damned owl.”

“Have your dinner first.”

He wasn’t hungry anyway; it was the thought of that meeting, that woman, Cassandra Wickham. Maybe he’d just skip the meeting and stay home and watch TV. Though he couldn’t let her oust a teacher—a good teacher, he’d heard from others. He’d been involved in a similar case down in Waterbury, Connecticut. A group of right-wingers had tried to get some of the classics off the reading lists:
Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye.
Stan had won, too, the books were kept on the list. If a parent didn’t want the kid reading a certain book, that was his problem. The school wasn’t going to deprive others of the experience.

Now it was
Deliverance
by James Dickey; Aaron Samuels, the English teacher, was teaching it. It was vulgar, according to Cassandra and her buddies, overtly sexual. “Unfit for children,” she claimed. On top of that she was accusing Samuels of sexual harassment. That was the worst. He balled his fists. “I’ll do the owl when I get back. That bird’ll quit anyway when it gets dark. It’s almost seven. I’ve got to go. When’s she coming anyway, that girl? Uh, woman. My niece ...” Well, it was the least he could do for his brother. Blood kin.

“Day after tomorrow. On the five-ten bus, up from New York.”

“Jesus,” he said, and jammed on his cap and stalked out of the house.

The pickup was losing its muffler, it sounded like a growling lion. A pair of geese rose up in front and threatened the car with their spread wings. He’d bought the geese for Moira, thought she’d like them, thought they’d be a watchdog for the orchard. Hadn’t Caesar used them to warn against an enemy attack? Now they, too, had turned against Stan.

How much could a man take?

He roared down Cider Mill Road and out onto the highway. A local oil truck blared its horn, but he raced out in front, just in time.

Chapter Three

A thunderstorm coming, he could hear the distant thunder; already it was spitting rain. Perfect. They wouldn’t hear the geese if they squawked—or would think the geese were afraid of the thunder. He pulled the stocking cap down over his hair and face, adjusted the eyeholes; hefted the axe he’d taken from his car. Lightning blazed, illuminating the trees; the apples shone blood red. He chose his trees in the next flash; he didn’t need any other light. They were older trees here, he could tell, taller than some of the others, but still yielding. He had nothing against the trees themselves, the apples: He just needed a way to show that he was here, that he was dead serious. He waited for another flash; it came almost at once, a jagged knife of light. Already it was raining hard, but it was all right, he swung and hacked at the trunk. Again, and again, and the tree groaned and cracked and fell sideways into the grassy path. He could hear the apples smacking the ground; in a fit of anger he stamped on them, felt them squash under his boots. He axed a second tree. The rain was driving down on his head now, he was soaked through his jacket and pants. Two trees were enough. For now. He ran on back to his car, opened the back, tossed in the axe. Already the rain had washed it clean of bark and pith. They’d find the downed trees tomorrow, maybe the following day when they went to pick in that section. He smiled grimly, to think of their stunned faces.

Chapter Four

Moira took her jog through the west orchard at six the next morning and found the trees. “Omigod!” A pair of apple trees toppled, and seemingly in their prime; most of the apples smashed on the ground—not even good for cider. There’d been a storm the night before, the thunder had woken her up, the geese. But was the storm powerful enough to uproot a tree? She couldn’t imagine it. She looked closer, examined one of the stumps. An axe cut, it looked like, not jagged the way lightning would leave it. “Omigod,” she said again, and clapped a hand to her mouth. She wanted to clean up quickly, sweep away the debris, the way she did when a young Carol had broken a favorite cup—before “daddy” saw it and chastised his chubby daughter.

But already she heard them, the Jamaicans, singing their morning welcome, parading out of the bunkhouse, ladders over their shoulders, arms swinging in time to a gospel tune: “I’m so ‘frai-aid I could sit down and cry-y-y . . .” The words suited her mood. The men were splitting up now, moving to the assigned trees; the second oldest of them, Zayon, coming closer, the feed cap sitting high on his dreadlocks. She ran to him. “Zayon, look!” She pointed.

She could see his eyes, widening, shining like lakes as he viewed the damage. He leaned down, ran his hand across the cut, turned his lean brown face up to her. With surprise she saw he had blue eyes. What rapacious forebear had given him those?

“Somebody dey done dis,” he said in that melodious island patois that was a synthesis, she’d read, of old English, Spanish, African, even Irish dialect. She loved to hear it.

She nodded. “You’d better get the bossman,” referring to Rufus. “Just don’t tell Mr. Earthrowl. Not yet.” They could chop up the trunk, scoop up the smashed apples; maybe Stan wouldn’t notice that this had happened. He was in the apple bam, making cider.

Zayon turned and ran, his legs like propellers, the bucket bouncing on his chest. “Bossman!” he was shouting. “Hey, boss!”

She waited by the felled trees, as if they wouldn’t find them if she left. Who could miss? She picked up a couple of drops that were still whole: yellow green apples, with a crimson flush. They weren’t Macintosh or Greenings or Golden Russet—almost the only varieties she could distinguish at this point. She polished them on her jeans; they were bruised on the side where they’d struck ground, it was a shame. She’d cook them into applesauce.

Rufus was there in minutes. His face, as usual, was expressionless. Even after the Roundup fiasco last spring, Rufus hadn’t changed expression. He’d quickly terminated the relationship with that sprayer, although the man had claimed innocence. Now he turned and glared at Bartholomew, who was close behind. Bartholomew looked back, equally fierce. Surely Rufus didn’t think Bartholomew had done it—that sweet old man! She touched the Jamaican’s arm, and Rufus’s eyes narrowed. “We better clean it up,” he said. “You get back to work.” He nodded curtly at Bartholomew. “I’ll get some of the locals. Golding! Butterfield!” he shouted. He never used the twins’ first names: just seemed to treat them as the same person.

A moment later Adam Golding came loping along. There was nothing quick about the young man, although he picked well enough, and he seemed to have stuck with it, in spite of his rather thin build. He seemed to Moira a pleasant, self-assured fellow. Something about the accent suggested a monied background. He’d attended Branbury College for a year, he’d said, then dropped out for one reason or other. It wasn’t unusual for former students to gravitate back to the area; the town was full of them— urban dropouts. And here was Emily Willmarth, right behind: a pretty dark-haired farm girl—anything but self-assured. Emily made Moira think of Carol, always eighteen, it seemed, naive, trusting; and her nose filled.

“You’ll be late to school,” she reminded Emily.

The girl flashed a smile at her. “I don’t have classes Friday mornings, Ms. Earthrowl.”

Moira said, “Oh,” and patted the girl on the shoulder. “Your mother’s coming over for cider this morning. She called us to save her some. Your little brother having a scout troop over or something.”

“Vic, yeah. He’s working on some badge. Birds or stars, one or the other he’s always into.”

“Good for him. Involvement’s important.” If Carol had been more involved with birds or stars . . . she might not have taken up with that boy, the one who killed her. No, she mustn’t say “killed.” It was Stan who’d used that word. She’d never seen the boy again after the accident. Yet what torment he must have gone through, what remorse! Who was to say he wasn’t really in love with Carol, young though she was? But she couldn’t convince Stan of that.

“Rufus, you tell Stan,” she started to say—then changed her mind. One more chance for a confrontation, for accusations. Stan had come home impossible to reason with after the school board meeting last night. He could only rant about the Wickham woman this, the Wickham woman that—she was a narrow-minded bigot, he claimed, she had “gall enough for twenty people.” Moira had given up trying to placate him.

“I’ll tell him myself,” she said, changing her mind. “I’m on my way to the barn this minute.” She swiveled about. “Or don’t you think he’ll notice?”

Rufus turned his brown-cow eyes on her. His face was immobile, she couldn’t read him—his shyness, perhaps. “He’ll notice,” he said. “You better tell him.” A glint in the eyes said that he didn’t want to be the one to tell.

She found Stan in the apple barn, cranking out drops into cider with Don Yates. Don was a tall, lean man with close-cropped white hair, a laid-back demeanor. He was a former engineer, now retired to the area, and the quintessential volunteer:

church, hospital, library, orchard. She was glad of Don’s calming presence: A third person might hold back an explosion.

“A little accident,” she said, “over in the west quad. No, maybe more than an accident.” She had to admit it. “A pair of trees, cut down. Mature trees, someone might have thought them ready to go. Rufus had been marking the old ones. I don’t know the variety.” She held out the drops.

“William Crump,” Don said. “It’s a dessert apple, crisp and juicy. You don’t see it around here very often. I’ve a couple trees of it myself.”