Poison Apples (27 page)

She felt giddy, she felt free; chores, jobs, schoolwork dropped away with each moment of Adam’s company. They watched the parade: A clown tossed a lollipop at her and she stuck it in her mouth, sucked down its cherry sweetness. They watched the horse pull: sturdy draft horses pulling flat sleighs full of concrete—two pounds of rock for each pound of horseflesh—it was like old-time farming, a man said behind her. “That’s how it was clearing land two hunnert years ago, and no tractors, by God.” She felt the immensity of it, the smallness of the self among all these people who were descended from Russian, Irish, Polish, Hungarian immigrants. She thought of them coming over in steerage with small hard potatoes and smelly cheeses in their flour sacks. Even a dozen people with Humane Society placards protesting the horse pull didn’t lessen her joy.

Or the thought of rattlesnakes, when Adam said, “This is tame. I’m for the snake pit.”

“Why not?” she said, feeling a frisson of cold in her spine. She let him pull her over to a tent that announced the West Texas Rattlesnake Show. They took adjoining seats close to the arena where a man in a white cowboy hat was stuffing a diamondback snake into a plastic tube. “Believe me, folks, they live better than I do,” he bawled through the loudspeaker, and the crowd laughed. He told them that almost four hundred years ago Samuel de Champlain sent a dispatch to his native France from the Champlain Valley in Vermont, saying, “The snakes in this new world have bells on their tails.” The crowd roared and clapped. And Emily felt history humming around her.

It was a scaly copper and brown snake, maybe two feet long— the snake man displayed its rattle, and Emily could hear the ratatat hiss; it sounded like a playing card stuck in a window fan. There were nine more snakes in a plastic garbage pail, waiting to be hooked up with a long-handled prong and shown to the crowd. They came from a man in rural Texas who was known as Rattlesnake Jim. He got his rattlers, the snake man said, by dragging them out from under the houses. There were as many as two or three hundred rattlers for every house! Emily gasped, while Adam laughed and wriggled out onto the edge of his seat, eyes squinting, to see the reptiles. It was as though he loved the danger of it. For a time he seemed to forget she was there.

After a while, though, she was ready to leave; the snakes were getting to her. She wished they hadn’t gotten that front-row seat! “Let’s go to the petting zoo,” she suggested. Even now, at almost eighteen, she loved the petting zoo at Field Days. The soft snuggly bunnies, the goats with their silly pointed beards like Chinese mystery men, the peacocks unfurling green and blue tails like giant fans, the sweet baby lambs and chicks. Who could resist?

But Adam said there was no time for the petting zoo if they were to eat supper at his friend’s place and get to the rock concert by eight o’clock. And didn’t she want at least one ride—on that Flip’n Out?

Of course she did. Anything to get out of the snake pit and back into the good smells and sights and shouts of the fairgrounds. Back to the rides: the great slide, the Ferris wheel, the bumping cars, the roller-coaster, and oh, the Flip’n Out.

“Come on, scaredy pants, you’ll love it,” Adam said. “You’ll be with me. I won’t let you fall out.” And he didn’t, of course, though she thought she’d lose the hot dog she’d eaten for lunch, the cotton candy—it felt queasy in her stomach. Up and over and under in the long shiny bucket—for that’s what it looked like, felt like, a bucket on the John Deere tractor, recklessly hurling itself into space. Even with Adam’s arm tight around her waist she was a rocket heading for a black hole somewhere. “Adam! Make it stop! I’m getting sick!”

But Adam just laughed, held her tighter; she was on a one-way flight, the wind shrieking in her ears. . . .

Back down on the ground, she was physically sick. There was a Porta Potti nearby; she barely made it, heaved up everything, the basin was pink with throw-up. Afterward she was spent, she let an amused Adam lead her to the car; she didn’t know where he was taking her, she was in his hands.

“Jesus,” she heard him say, as he yanked her along. “Your mother and that guy. Get in the car!” She caught a glimpse other mother and Colm Hanna, climbing out of his blue Horizon, along with Vic and his friend Gerry Dufours. Oh no, she thought, she’d told her mother she was spending the day and then the night with a friend. She’d told her Adam wasn’t coming, after all. Now Vic was waving, hollering her name; bad luck. She pretended not to see him, ducked into the white Volvo. Adam threw her bag and the Pooh bear he’d won for her in the backseat—it was crowded with stuff, something spilled on the floor. She tried to clean it up and he said, “My talc, I’ll do it later,” and she shrugged. They careened out of the grassy parking lot, onto the highway; she leaned back against the seat. It was as though she were on that Flip’n Out again: She gave up all control.

When they parked on a side street minutes later, she gave him her hand, let him lead her up three flights of stairs. He had a key, he turned it in the lock and they were in a medium-sized room, its walls and windows hung with tie-dyed sheets. Adam flicked a switch and a dozen red and blue bulbs lit up. The room smelled of pot, and for a quick moment Emily wished she were back on the Flip’n Out, soaring up into clean, bright space.

Adam went into the bathroom, stayed there for what seemed a long time, and when he came back, she saw he was bare-chested. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked.

“With you in the room?” he teased, and she smiled. She took the Pepsi he thrust at her—he was pouring something into it from a green bottle. She put up a hand to protest, she was still woozy from the rides; but when he looked at her, with scolding lips, she tasted the drink. It was bitter, but afterward, warm in her stomach. She felt more relaxed now, a little relaxed, anyway, in this strange one-room apartment; she sat down on the king-sized bed—there wasn’t another place to sit in the room, except on the floor. Adam dropped down beside her, leaned back on a pillow, sipped his drink. His eyes looked bleary, tired, and she wondered what he’d been doing in the bathroom, if he was on something. She and her school friends didn’t do drugs—maybe it was their 4-H training.

“Your eyes look old,” she said. “Old and wise, like Father Time.”

“Not me. I’ll never be old,” he said. “Trevor didn’t get old. He didn’t have a chance.”

“Trevor? Who’s Trevor?” she said. He was sounding maudlin—the alcohol seemed to do that to him, it made him maudlin. She pushed close beside him on the bed, she could feel his lungs working through the thin ribs. “My brother,” he said. “Was.”

She said, “What? You never told me you had a brother.” “I couldn’t. Not till now,” he said. “I tried once—but it hurt... . We were born the same day, November seventh. Weird.” He turned his head away from her, seemed to drift into another world. He groped for an apple he’d brought, bit into it.

She propped herself up on her elbows, amazed. “You were twins? You never said!” Twins were like one person. When one fell in love, the other fell in love. When one died, the other .. . What had he said about not getting old? What was he thinking of? “What? What happened, Adam?”

He offered her the apple and she bit into it, it was warm and sweet-tasting where he’d eaten.

“Not twins,” he said. “We were half-brothers. My father was in love with another woman the time I was born—she had his son. Then when my mother died, he married her—the other woman, Julie’s her name—she was good to me. That’s what was so weird about it, so sort of... predestined. She brought Trevor to the marriage, we pretty much grew up together. I didn’t know we were half-brothers till I was eighteen! Then they told me. We were close right from the start. Trevor had brown hair. When I was twelve I dyed my hair brown. I wanted to
be
Trevor. Sometimes ... I was.”

“Really?” She couldn’t imagine wanting to be Vic and run around chasing stars and chickens. She gave back the apple, and Adam turned it around to the place where she had eaten. He bit into it with a crunching sound.

“You can’t imagine what he was like. He had smarts, more than me. Great looks—the girls went bonkers over him. He played the piano, the guitar—like the music came out of his soul. That was Trevor—all soul. We did everything together. Music, drugs, we thought alike. If he wanted to leave a party, it just took one look and we were gone. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It was his car, the old Volvo. And then—then he fell for that girl, that Carol....”

She was beginning to understand. The girl took Trevor away. Adam was hurt. Alone. It was like he was half a soul. Oh, the loneliness! She wanted to help him, to show him he wasn’t alone, that he had her. She didn’t want him to talk about Trevor anymore. She’d be his Trevor. She stroked his chest, traced the soft hairs down to his belly button. She felt bold now, needy, like she was swimming through wild seas. She unbuckled his belt and he let her; he lay back like a baby. She slipped her hand down into his underpants, felt the thick wiry hairs. He was still eating the apple. She touched his penis. It was like a small animal, pulsing, growing under her hand. She felt her own chest expand, her breasts taut and heavy, like a whole tree full of apples.

He dropped the apple; she heard it squash on the bare floor. “You going to wear that chastity belt?” he said, leaning over her, and she smiled, of course she wasn’t. She got up and pulled off her shirt, her jeans. She felt suddenly shy, standing there in her bra and panties. But he pulled her down on top of him, he’d take care of the rest, he said, slipping on a condom. And he did.

After that it was the Flip’n Out again, she was out of control, spinning dizzily; he was inside her, they were going sideways, upside down, an upheaval of love and pain and blood—and then, as suddenly as it started, the ride stopped. There was that sensation of flipping off into an aching space, of floating in cramping sheets, sinking.. . .

The spread was damp under her buttocks, but it was all right; finally she was at peace. She tried to make herself believe it had been wonderful, beautiful, but it hadn’t been—not for her. Maybe next time it would be better. Of course it would. It was nice just lying here with Adam, being part of him the way his brother had been part of him. She felt an enormous tenderness for him. He’d lost his brother. Could she fill that space? After that girl took him away? What was her name—Carol?

Carol, she thought. That was the name of the Earthrowl girl. Carol. Could it have been the same? No, too much coincidence. She’d bring it up another time, not now. Not while they were lying here together; not when she was beginning to feel so warm, so beautiful, even—she tried to think of pink and white apple blossoms. She could smell what was left of the apple, the sweetness. . . . She bent over to kiss him—and discovered he was fast asleep. Asleep .. .

Why, then, did
she,
all at once, feel so alone?

Chapter Fifty-six

“I saw her, I did, getting into a Volvo,” said Vic, who knew his cars, and Ruth pressed her lips together. Emily had said she’d changed her mind about going to the fair with Adam, was spending the night with her friend Hartley Flint. And Hartley had a Colt, Ruth had seen it only a month ago. Not a Volvo.

“So they borrowed someone’s car,” said Colm, “decided they’d go to the fair. She’s not a kid anymore, Ruthie. Jeez.”

“It was just that I invited her to come with us, and she said no, that fairs were boring. That’s what she said, ‘boring’! She didn’t say that when we all went to Field Days this summer.” She walked on ahead of Colm, she didn’t want him making excuses for Emily.

He caught up with her, of course, with one more excuse. “With us it’s boring. With one other peers it’s not. Right, Vic?”

“Right,” said Vic, who admired Colm and for the moment was planning to be a policeman one day—an astronomer on the side, of course, maybe a veterinarian. These careers were more exciting to him than farming.

“Oh, I guess so,” said Ruth, and waved away the worry. It was silly, of course, Emily had her own life now. It was just, well, all these things that had happened lately. And in her own life: the cows slashed, Pete’s demands, the hemp torn up—although now she was convinced that Bertha and her cronies had something to do with the hemp.

Vic and his friend Gerry wanted to go to the petting zoo, so that would be the first stop. Then they’d take in the sheep shearing, her friend Carol Unsworth was taking part in it. There was the cattle tent, of course, and for Vic, the demolition derby. She’d had her choice, Colm said, between the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert and the demolition derby, and since neither was exactly a priority, she let Vic decide.

She loved the petting zoo herself: all those furry baby animals with the huge wild eyes. Vic and Gerry headed for the angora bunnies, while Colm pulled her over to the llamas. “This is what you ought to breed, Ruthie, instead of growing hemp. They’re an all-purpose beast. You can milk ’em, breed ’em, ride ’em, shear ’em for wool. They make good golf caddies, too.”

“I don’t play golf,” she said. “I don’t have time.”

“They’re a clean animal,” he went on, ignoring her indifference. “They use a communal potty pile. You can bring them indoors for parties. Vic’s next birthday: a llama in the kitchen.”

“No, thank you. They roll. They spit.”

“Only when they’re mad. You got to humor them. You’d love the milk.”

“Can you sell the milk? Whoever heard of drinking llama’s milk?”

“That’s just it, Ruthie. You have to use your imagination. Start a trend. I’ll bet it would go over big in the natural foods stores.”

“And you’ll help? Buy me one to start?” The price for a baby llama, she saw, was two thousand dollars. Whoa! “Fork over,” she said, holding out her hand, and saw him grin, pull out his wallet, flutter a dollar bill in his fist. Colm was so impulsive, so impractical. Back in high school he’d treat ten kids to hamburgers and milkshakes, then go without lunch for three days.

Was this why she wouldn’t marry him now? His impracticality? She didn’t want to downright discourage him. She loved Colm, she truly did, but in a sisterly way—at least for now. After all, she’d only been divorced for a short time; divorce was like a little death; it took months, years, it seemed, to come back to life.