The Unforgiven (17 page)

“Pretty good,” said the girl, indicating a metal cash box filled with change.

“Actually,” Maggie spoke up, “I came by now because you said you might need some help.”

“Oh,” said Evy.

“Do you still?” Maggie asked, fearing a dismissal.

“Yes. Sure.” She gestured for Maggie to come around behind the table. Relieved, Maggie quickly complied. “Alice,” said Evy, addressing the woman behind her who was busily stacking cookies on a plate. “Why don’t you take a break? I’ve got some help here now.”

The woman straightened up and rubbed her back with a grimace. “I could use a break,” she admitted. “Thanks.” She addressed her smile to Maggie.

Nonplussed, Maggie smiled back. “You’re welcome,” she said.

“This is Maggie Fraser,” said Evy. “She works at the paper.”

“Nice to meet you,” said the chunky woman pleasantly as she untied her apron and handed it to Maggie. “I’m Alice Murphy. Here, you’d better wear this.”

Maggie donned the apron as Alice departed her post to plunge into the festivities. Maggie looked around at the piles of confections and spoke to Evy. “What shall I do?” she asked.

“Finish fixing those cookies, and then you can make price tags. Alice has the list on that pad.” Obediently Maggie knelt down and set about her task, while Evy waited on the people who approached the booth. For the most part, Maggie kept to her work. Evy’s conversation with the customers flowed comfortably over her bent shoulders. She paid little attention to what she said, until her attention was caught
by a familiar voice. She looked up and saw Jess chatting amiably with Evy.

“Which one of these is yours?” he asked the girl, eyeing the array of baked goods.

Evy hesitated, and then pointed to a mound of chewy-looking bars on a plate. “I made the apricot bars,” she admitted.

“Let me try one,” said Jess, putting a quarter down beside the plate. Evy handed him a bar wrapped in a napkin.

“Mmmmm.… They’re wonderful,” he told her. “Apricot’s my favorite.”

Evy’s shy smile and awkward stance betrayed her pleasure. “You really like them?” she asked.

“They’re great,” he assured her.

Maggie straightened up from behind the table and smiled at him. “Hi,” she said.

“Hey, I didn’t even see you there,” he said. “How ya doing?”

Evy’s face tightened as Maggie returned his smile and nodded.

“Hey, Maggie, you should try one of these. They’re great,” he told her, indicating the apricot bars.

“I couldn’t,” Maggie groaned. “I’ve been sampling the cookies. They look delicious,” she said to Evy.

The girl shrugged off the compliment, looking away from her.

“Well, I’ll buy a couple and we can have them for dessert tonight,” said Jess, putting a dollar down beside the plate. And then without thinking—“Or breakfast even.”

At Jess’s remark, Evy stiffened as if she had been slapped. Maggie felt her own face begin to burn. The awkward camaraderie between her and Evy seemed to have vanished.

“I’ve got to get back to the firemen’s booth,” said Jess. “I’ll see you girls later.”

“I’ve finished those prices,” said Maggie. “What do you want me to do now?”

“I don’t know,” said Evy coldly.

Just then Grace came waddling up to the bakery booth, breaking the silence between them with her greeting.

“How’s business?” she said to Evy.

“Okay,” said Evy.

“Bobbie make her lemon soup this year?”

Evy laughed thinly. Grace launched into a retelling of the story of an ill-fated lemon meringue pie filling that had not set and swamped the pie plate every time a slice was cut. “She’ll never live that down,” Grace concluded about the unfortunate baker.

Maggie forced a smile but was acutely conscious that Evy was ignoring her. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, feeling excluded from the conversation.

“Oh, look who’s coming,” Grace cried.

Maggie followed Grace’s pointing finger. She saw Sadie Wilson approaching the table, holding the hands of two boys, one dark and one fair-haired.

“These two belong to anybody here?” Sadie joked, stopping in front of Grace.

Grace put a protective hand on each of their shoulders. “What have they been up to?” she asked.

“No good,” said Sadie with a laugh as she turned to go. “They were looking for ya.”

“What’s the rush?” Grace asked her friend. “Have some cake.”

“Ned’s selling squash out of the truck. I gotta help him,” Sadie explained as she started off into the crowd.

“Hi, Mom,” said the older, blond-haired boy.

“Hi,” echoed the younger.

Grace turned to Maggie. “These are my big boys,” she announced proudly. “This is Raymond,” she said, pointing to the larger, blond-haired boy. “And this is Martin.”

Maggie stared down at the two children before her. For a moment she squinted, struggling to place them. Then it came back to her. The children on the dock. The boys who were tormenting the turtle. She looked again in amazement at their innocent faces.

“This is Miss Fraser,” Grace informed them. “Say hello,” she prodded.

Maggie forced a smile. She ran a hand nervously over the mounds of baked goods. “You boys hungry? You want something?”

“Never mind that,” Grace said sharply, hoping too late to douse the eager lights in their eyes.

“Sorry,” said Maggie. “I just thought…”

“Maggie baked a pie,” Evy offered.

“We want pie,” the younger, Martin, began to whine.

“What kind of pie?” Grace asked curiously.

“Apple,” said Maggie.

“I want apple pie,” cried the boy and tugged on Grace’s sleeve.

Grace rolled her eyeballs and sighed. “You two won’t want a thing for dinner.”

Maggie wiped her hands nervously on her apron and then lifted up the server to cut into her pie. She remembered the story of the “lemon soup” and fervently hoped her filling held together. Carefully she lifted the two slices out onto paper plates.

“They need forks,” said Evy, relieving her of the two plates and nodding toward a box of plastic utensils under the adjoining table.

Grace and her boys tracked Maggie around the outside of the booth and eyed her as she crouched down and began to hunt under the counter for the plastic forks. “These kids never eat dinner anyway the night of the fair,” Grace sighed. She rumbled in her pocket-book and came up with two quarters. “They’re always full up on junk.”

Thanks,
Maggie thought ruefully as she pawed through the box under the table. She located the forks under a pile of paper bags and brought out two of them.

“She found ’em,” Raymond observed.

“Here you go, Evy,” said Grace. She walked around the booth and offered up her two quarters.

Evy, who was standing with her back to them, the plates on the table in front of her, turned and removed her hands from her apron pockets. She accepted the quarters and deposited them in the open cash box.

Maggie straightened up and gave Evy the forks. Evy placed them on the fluted edges of the plates and then pushed the plates toward Raymond and Martin. The
two boys grabbed them and began to shovel forkfuls of the pie into their mouths.

Grace examined the other items on the table. “I’d love to have some of this,” she said to Evy, “but Charley says I’m getting a spare tire.”

“Sponge cake’s not fattening,” said Evy.

“I don’t know,” said Grace. “Whose is it?”

“Carla’s.”

Maggie’s attention wandered, and her eyes drifted back to the boys, who were noisily chewing on her pie. Suddenly, as she watched, Martin’s face assumed a curiously disturbed expression. He brought his hand up hesitantly toward his mouth. Just then, the older boy started and let out a guttural noise.

“What’s the matter?” asked Grace, turning to them.

Maggie looked at Martin’s face. The little face was pale, his large eyes staring up fearfully. His mouth worked automatically, like a machine he couldn’t stop. As Maggie watched in horror, a little speck of foamy blood appeared under his upper lip. At the same instant, a gash seemed to open spontaneously in his tender lower lip, and a rivulet of blood began to seep down the shiny chin.

Grace shrieked and ran to the boy. Maggie’s eyes darted to Raymond, who had dropped his blood-spattered plate and was bringing his hands up to his own face. He parted his lips, and she could see the blood outlining his teeth in scarlet. Slowly it began to stream out of each corner of his mouth.

“Martin!” Grace cried.

“Raymond too,” screamed Alice Murphy, who had materialized out of the crowd that was gathering.

“Spit it out,” Grace screamed at her son. “Don’t swallow it.” Forcibly she opened the child’s mouth with her fingers. The pulpy mass of apples and pastry was stained through with blood. Grace reached in and scraped out what she could with her fingers. The curly-headed child began to gag violently.

A man in a flannel shirt had Raymond pressed up against his knee, and he was thumping on his back. “Spit it out,” he commanded. “Whatever it is, boy, get rid of it.” The older child’s eyes seemed to bug out of his head as he expectorated the pie filling, then began to vomit.

Grace clutched her youngest’s pale, sweaty forehead to her breast and tried to shake the offending apples congealed in blood off her fingers. As she rubbed her fingers she cried out, then looked closer.

“Glass,” she whispered. She looked up slowly at Maggie, who had watched the scene from where she stood, rooted to the ground behind the table. “There’s glass in this pie,” she muttered, her eyes widening first in horror, then in a gathering fury.

The man in the flannel shirt lifted Raymond up in his arms and spoke sharply to Grace and to the people in the crowd who were watching helplessly. “We’ve got to take these boys to the hospital. Somebody help Gracie there with Martin.”

Urgent hands pried the swooning child free from his mother’s viselike grasp and helped the woman to her feet. “Come on, Grace,” said Evy, who had joined the group surrounding her.

Grace looked at Maggie in uncomprehending, unspeakable
fury. “Come along with your boys,” insisted Alice Murphy soothingly.

Grace tore her wrath-filled eyes away from Maggie’s. “Martin!” she cried out plaintively. “Raymond!”

A tide of people bore the mother away, close behind the men who were hurrying toward a nearby station wagon, carrying her sons.

Pale and stiff, Maggie watched as the commotion obscured the injured boys. Her head felt light and dizzy. Slowly she noticed that several of the people who remained had turned toward her and were directing menacing glances at her.

“What kind of a monster would put glass in a pie?” cried a woman with frizzled blond hair, glaring at Maggie.

Maggie brought her hand to her chest, as if to shield her heart from their penetrating stares.

“I don’t know,” Maggie murmured.

The frizzled blonde jabbed a finger near Maggie’s face. “You made that pie. I heard you telling them.”

Maggie shook her head in dumb protest as more people in the crowd turned to look at her.

“Didn’t you make it?” the woman demanded.

A party of people were shepherding Grace and her injured boys toward a waiting car. Maggie watched their movement as if she were a statue with a living brain. She struggled to make her mouth work. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and at her hairline.

“Didn’t you?” shrieked the woman.

Among the people in the crowd, Maggie’s eyes suddenly focused on Evy, who stood to the side of the people hovering over the boys. Evy seemed to sense
that she was being watched, and she looked up. She returned the stare for a moment and then turned her back. In that moment Maggie discerned a flicker of scorn in her eye that galvanized her.

Maggie’s hand shot out in front of her like a bayonet. She poked at the red-faced woman who was blocking her path and shoved her away. A hand reached out for her but she shook it off. Eyes blazing, Maggie advanced on the knot of people who were arranging the boys in the backseat of the car. Peripherally, she could see a weeping Grace being forced into the front seat, then the door slamming. Maggie trained her eyes on Evy and strode toward her. She could hear shouts coming from behind her, but she could not make out the words through the pounding in her own ears.

A hail of dirt and gravel shot out behind the tires as the car started and shot away from the curb. The bystanders watched it go, distress etched in their faces. Evy turned and saw Maggie barreling toward her, wild-eyed. Quickly she pivoted and began to hurry away from the approaching woman.

Maggie broke into a run and overtook the girl. She grabbed Evy’s thin upper arm with a force that jerked the girl back to a position where they were facing each other.

“Let go of me,” Evy insisted, avoiding Maggie’s maddened stare.

“You did this,” Maggie cried out hoarsely, tightening her grip on Evy’s arm.

Evy’s eyes widened. Her pale skin was like tissue paper, and a blue vein throbbed in her forehead. Fear
rose like a vapor in her eyes. “You’re crazy,” she said.

Maggie shook the girl, grabbing her other arm and drawing her face up close to her own infuriated visage. “Don’t play the innocent with me. You told me to bake that pie. Then you put something in it. You wanted to get back at me because of Jess. Because you’re jealous. Admit it. I won’t let you go until you do.”

Evy squirmed to free herself from Maggie’s grip, but the older woman only shook her harder. The stunned silence of the bystanders who had heard Maggie’s shouted accusations began to dissolve into an angry buzz. “Let her alone,” one man called out.

Evy’s head lolled back and forth as Maggie shook her. “Tell them. Tell them what you did. I’m not letting go until you tell them.” The girl suddenly went limp in Maggie’s grasp. Maggie gave Evy’s unresisting form one last jerk, and then she stared, still clutching her arms, into Evy’s pale eyes. For a moment their eyes met, Maggie’s furious, Evy’s vague and stunned. Then, as Maggie watched, the girl’s blue irises rolled back, and the lids came down to almost cover them. A thin, crimson drop appeared in Evy’s left nostril, and then a trickle of blood began trailing down her upper lip.

Maggie released her immediately, as if her flesh burned, and the girl slumped over. Another stream of blood, scarlet against her white skin, rolled from Evy’s right nostril.