Mad Season

by Nancy Means Wright

  His aunt would be sorry then. Aunt Bertha: he balled his fists to think of her. Closed up all those nights with Aunt Bertha and that kooky man, while they sang hymns and read aloud from the Bible. And talked about how he’d been saved. Saved!

  And then that woman at his father’s place. Locking him in a bedroom that first night because his father was gone. And both women sweet as honey. Sweet as poison, he thought, and took a gasping breath.

  Oh lord, oh jeezum, it could be his last.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ruth’s heart was racing, it hadn’t stopped since the battle with Bertha. And now the calls every hour from Pete, insisting he had nothing to do with the kidnapping—was he nuts, wanting the boy in New York City? For a visit, yeah, but to live? He was furious with Bertha, upset with his woman for not getting back to Ruth, for letting the boy run off. Well, Ruth had to believe him, didn’t she? It was his guilt, she told herself, his guilt doing the talking.

  And Colm talking, too, insisting she come with him now, to Marie’s. He couldn’t walk on the leg, he said, he needed support, more than his father’s cane—he’d clutch her arm and hop. Besides, he argued, she knew Marie and Harold better than he did. Sharon could stay by the phone, he said, still talking. The police were on the job: New York Thruway, Northway, the Taconic, Route 22, all the towns west to east, Rhinebeck to Hoosick Falls, Manhattan to Vermont.

  “You have to get your mind off things, Ruth,” he insisted, “you’ll have a coronary.” She was alienating people, he told her: the press, the police, her family. “You’ll alienate Marie, but I need you with me.”

  Though it wasn’t really Marie, he explained, but Harold they were after. It might be a dead end, it might not. The intersection where Kurt supposedly dropped the man off was a half mile from Harold’s house. And Harold was a relative of Kosciusko’s. They’d discovered that when they found that Esther Kosciusko Dolley was the fat man’s sister, and Esther was a something removed of Harold’s. And Colm had heard through a colleague that Harold had a job now, in Esther’s new office. Though Colm said he couldn’t imagine the man selling anybody anything.

  “Something might be jelling on that end, Ruth. You never know. What can you do here today?”

  “Build the barn back up,” she said. “Help Tim and that guy he hired. I can handle a hammer, you know.”

  She wanted things right again, back on a routine. She had the cows out in the muddy pasture, they had to be hand-milked till the barn was rebuilt, new milking machines installed. There were insurance claims to complete—the inspector was crying “electrical” while she claimed “arson.” There was the manure bunker to be cleaned out: there was a demand for composted manure, the papers said, you could market it as potting soil. She had to think of ways to diversify, stay alive, keep the farm.

  She was going to keep the farm, she was, wasn’t she?

  But what was the farm without her son? She’d felt relieved at first to hear he was with Pete, he was safe. But now he was on his own, in that wilderness between New York and Vermont. He could have elected to stay with his father—was she glad that he’d run off? But worried sick.

  “It’s only a couple of miles from here. We can have you back in minutes.”

  “Oh, all right,” Ruth snapped, “all right. Just to shut you up, Hanna.” And began flinging orders at the girls. She’d make a terrific army sergeant, he told her.

  She wasn’t prepared for Marie’s house, it had a complete new look. The walls were freshly painted, off-white, with an off-white carpet no farmer would have—a plop of manure and it was gone. Orange drapes and matching upholstery. It looked like a showroom from Sears.

  It was Sears, Marie informed her, looking smart in black pants and a yellow silk blouse. “We made the down payment. Harold’s got a job! He’s in real estate now. When he sells a house we’ll pay off the rug.”

  “Is he here?” Ruth asked. Marie shook her head. “Can we talk a minute? We know he got work with Esther Dolley—Colm’s in the business, you know. She wants to buy my farm.”

  Marie said, “You’d be smart. Let Harold sell it, he’ll get an exclusive. I got to convince Dad. We tell him, me and Harold, he’s got to give up that farm, it don’t pay, for Pete’s sake. Say, you got that guy in jail, who killed Mom? He won’t get off?” She looked scared, bit her lower lip.

  Ruth said, “Over my dead body. Look, Marie, you were brought up here. Your mother used to say how she couldn’t do without you. You filled a wheelbarrow full of stone once, proud as any farmer, you were ten years old. Belle told the whole neighborhood.”

  “That was then,” said Marie, pulling on her curled hair.

  “It’s now. He needs you. It’s all he’s got, that farm.” Ruth felt the anger building up again.

  Colm was having a coughing fit—pretty obvious, Ruth thought, but Marie just looked at him, offered water.

  “Point out the kitchen, I can get it,” he said. “Can I take a look at Harold’s trains? I used to have some myself.” And Marie said, “Sure. Just don’t try to run ‘em. Harold’s particular.”

  When the phone rang Ruth jumped, though of course it wasn’t hers. It was someone Marie wanted to talk to, she glanced at Ruth, shrugged. “Annette,” she whispered into the receiver, “I got people here, I can only talk a minute. Help yourself to a soda,” she told Ruth, waving at the kitchen.

  The kitchen chairs had been freshly painted, orange. Ruth’s spine hurt to look at the straight, stiff backs. The basement door was open, she heard Colm moving around down there. She got a Pepsi out of the refrigerator. She hated the stuff but needed the caffeine, Vic was always trying to sneak it into her cart at the Grand Union. Marie’s voice droned on in the living room. A few minutes later Colm came stomping up. “Harold’s got some setup,” he said in a loud voice.

  She made a face, but he wasn’t looking at her, he was squinting down at a piece of paper. It was important, she saw, the way he was holding it close to his glassy eyes, he looked excited. If they could find that third assailant, she thought, she could get Vic back. An irrational thought, but it stuck in her head that all that had happened—murders, fires, kidnapping—were all connected. Like victims, thousands of them, all over the world.

  Though Vic’s disappearance was Bertha’s doing, she knew that for a fact, didn’t she? Or was anything fact in this mad world?

  Colm was waving the paper in her face, she saw it was a bank deposit. “Cash,” Harold had scrawled on the pink slip. “Plattsburgh.” Colm’s lips formed the word, his eyes were exclamation points behind the thick lenses. She squinted at the date but couldn’t seem to focus.

  The living room was quiet now: she hurried back in, feeling nervous, met Marie in the doorway. “Marie, this isn’t the time,” she said, groping her way back to the old conversation, wanting to sound calm, feeling her heart scream. “It’s too soon. I want you to tell Harold that. It’s Harold pushing your dad to sell, right? And that broker he works for, his cousin?”

  Marie looked coy now, suspicious. “Second cousin, that’s all. He never even met her till a month ago, it’s just a way to get a job. We gotta eat!” she said, looking put-upon. “He hated not having a job. He talked about killing himself, I was scared out of my gourd! He hated what it did to me and Michelle. I’m not going back to that. I’m not taking over any farm, if that’s what you’re getting at. It’s a deadbeat farm, Jesus, look at it!”

  Her eyes glazed over, like she could see the stony pasture juxtaposed on the new white carpet. “This is nothing new. I been telling ‘em for years. You think I listen to everything Harold says, do you?”

  She got up then, still pulling on her hair, went to the stairs, hollered, “Michelle! Time for Brownies, you hear me? Get on down here.”

  Michelle came down, dressed in a brown cotton uniform; it had been Emily’s before she joined the Girl Scouts and then quit. The girl halted on the third step when she saw the visitors, nodded shyly.

  Ruth held out her hand and Michelle came to
her, slowly. Her knees weakened: Belle used to bring the child over to play with Vic. The girl was three or four years younger, but they played well together. When she slipped out of Ruth’s grasp, Ruth felt her own head hard on her shoulders, a mossy rock.

  “Remember what I said,” she told Marie. “Think about it. Think about your mom.”

  Marie’s face crumpled. “I’ll talk to Harold,” she said, then looked back at the orange rayon drapes like she wanted to take them down, she really did, but they smelled so good, so fresh and new, and the color cheered her up. She needed orange in her life.

  “Where did you get that spot on the dress?” she snapped at the girl. “Where’s the scarf? You look like a tramp.”

  Back home, the phone rang just as Ruth

  was answering the door: a farm neighbor

  bearing a casserole, like someone had died in this house. Wanting to sympathize: about Vic, the burned barn. Ruth thanked her, shut the door.

  “Yes, we’re building it back up, there wasn’t so much damage after all,” she told the neighbor. “No, I won’t sell. She’s been to see you, too, that broker, Esther Dolley? No, Joan, I won’t, believe me.”

  Did she mean that? Only an hour ago she’d told Sharon she wanted to sell, go back to school, anyplace, away from burnings, kidnappings, the Ku Klux Klan—for that’s what Bertha was, wasn’t she? A Klanswoman? Burning barns and stealing children in the name of God?

  She dashed back to answer the phone. Where was Sharon?

  “Ruth? Where’n hell you been? I’m calling from the Plattsburgh bank. I’ve confirmed it, Harold’s deposit. The seventh of April, day after the assault. And all in cash—barn money maybe, though nobody can tell me. His payoff, I suppose. And the police never checked over there, across the lake. Jeez. Though the whole thing was on Plattsburgh news. ‘But this was a deposit,’ the teller insisted. Incompetence?”

  She couldn’t think now about the implications. Harold mixed up in the assault—maybe Marie? It was impossible to think about, it was like incest. No, she couldn’t imagine that. Not either of them, really.

  Someone was banging on the door again, a policeman. She felt swept away, down Otter Creek like Willy, over the falls ….

  “Someone’s at the door,” she yelled, and dropped the phone while Colm’s voice shouted something unintelligible.

  The man was dragging a child with him, two, in fact, one in each hand. One in a blue parka; her heart leaped.

  But it wasn’t Vic.

  The boys had been found, said the officer, lurking around the burned barn. He’d come himself, looking for clues. One boy had a canvas bag in his fist. “Tried to get away but I got ‘em.”

  The faces were familiar, she blinked. Under the dirt, one of them was Billy Marsh.

  “It was just some old feed, some broken old bag,” Billy said. “But you can have it.” He dropped it on the porch, the feed spilled out in a round heap.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for returning what belongs to me.”

  “It was just sompin’ to do,” said the other, sticking up his pointed chin. “We didn’t take anything important. You can’t hold us for anything.”

  “You’re in Vic’s class, aren’t you. What’s your name?” she asked the second one, a lanky boy with hair hanging in his eyes like a poodle.

  “Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy who?”

  “Jimmy Southwick,” he said, sticking up his chin a little.

  “Your father’s a lawyer? Hampton Southwick?” She’d seen the fancy sign up on Cherry Street. The name had struck her as something out of a romance novel.

  The boy nodded, looked at her, arrogant, then glanced at Billy Marsh.

  “That kid, that Joey, Willy’s dumb friend,” said Billy, standing there with his hands on his skinny hips, “said we can come, there’d be some old burnt stuff you wouldn’t want. We’re building something. We talked to him last night, down by the Alibi.”

  “The Alibi?” she said. “You go there? To a bar?”

  “Not to the bar. Behind it!” Billy took a step back, nudged by his friend. “Mostly we fool around. That field down by the creek.”

  Something leaped in her head. But it wouldn’t come together, some thought, some premise. Some second sight, Colm would call it, his dear old great-gran.

  It was too late, anyway. The kids were running off; the policeman yelled, “Stop! Hey!” and ran after, but they were too sleek, too fast, they were gone before he could catch them. She saw them stop at the road, look back, then run again, jumping up and down, like they were boxing each other.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I know where one of ‘em lives, that lawyer’s kid. They’re scared, I could see it.” She nodded, distracted by the nagging thought.

  “You have the bag back,” he said, like the situation was resolved. “Don’t think they took anything else.”

  “Yes, they did,” she said, her brain still trying to tell her something. “Not anything you can see. Not anything material.”

  Back in the house Colm was still on the line, hollering at the top of his lungs. “Why’d you break off like that,” he yelled. “I was worried, damn it!”

  She pulled the window shade, and the room was flooded with light.

  “I think I might know how Willy died,” she said.

  * * * *

  They were headed for Saratoga they said, north. Vic remembered the time he drove there with his father, it didn’t take more than a couple hours. Why, he could walk from Saratoga! They were running out of beer now, there’d be another stop, already they were looking. He could breathe easier, even cough: the loud music, the laughing, the profanity. All the way up the thruway he’d prayed for a police car to stop them, he’d pop up—and wouldn’t those guys be surprised! But only one came and sailed on past. He didn’t dare show himself, they were too drunk.

  “Man, by the time that guy knows his car gone we be in Canada,” one of them said. And the other giggled and said, “Better ditch it there. Find us some fresh French meat, huh?”

  Sure enough. It was a Getty station, some small town off the highway, it sold beer. They bowled in, one of them still singing. Vic spotted a phone booth, there was change, he didn’t know how much, spilled on the car floor from the last beer stop. He swept it up, crawled out of the car, raced to the booth. He found a quarter, plunked it in, asked for the Vermont number.

  “Fifty cents,” said the operator. He threw in all the change he had. And the phone rang.

  Sharon’s voice answered, calm, then escalating when she heard him. “Where are you!” she shrieked. When he said, “I don’t know,” she screamed louder: “Mother’s in a panic, and you don’t know where you are?”

  “In a phone booth!” he shouted. “They’re coming out any minute. I left my knapsack inside.”

  He’d just realized. He had to get his knapsack, it had his important stuff: his books, some baseball cards he’d traded. His map of Australia—Ronsard would grade him down if he didn’t turn it in.

  “Who? Inside what? Coming out of where? Vic?”

  “The ones who stole the car.”

  “God, Vic, what car? What are you near? What place?”

  “New York,” he said. That was all he knew.

  He could hear one of them already out, yelling for the other. He’d have to hurry. He leaned into the phone, he had something important to say. “Tell Mother I found the glove by Wilder’s puzzle box,” he said. “It’s Garth’s, I seen it before.”

  “What? What glove? Mother’s out by the barn, Vic, there was a fire, I’ll call her. Vic, where are you?”

  “A fire?” he said. But the operator interrupted. “Another fifty cents.”

  “But I don’t—” He held up his empty palm, and the phone went dead.

  He scooted low, back to the car, hung over the seat to reach for his knapsack. It was wedged in the rear, he had to dive for it. He’d get it and then he’d start walking north, then east. Or hitchhike maybe, back to Branbury. No, not
hitchhike. They might take him back to his father in New York and he couldn’t have that. He’d never go back there, with that woman.

  The barn on fire? Jeezum! He had to get himself home, and soon. He gave a hard yank, and the knapsack came free.

  But he wasn’t. Something had him by the seat of his pants. He gasped.

  “Hey, man, looka this. We got us a little buddy here,” one of the men said, and giggled, like Vic was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, and clapped a hand over Vic’s mouth. “You want a ride? You’ll get one, kid.”

  And the car lurched forward, tires screaming.

  * * * *

  Ruth gave Emily orders to phone the Unsworths if there was another call from Vic. But that stolen car. Who was he with? Had he stolen a car himself? He’d driven the tractor, yes, but he couldn’t drive a car. And where in New York? The police were alerted for a stolen car, somewhere in New York State. It was crazy—why couldn’t he call back, collect? Or hadn’t he thought of that? Didn’t know how? She’d sheltered him, that was the trouble. He didn’t know how to cope with the world!

  But the glove—it was important to him. Important to her. He’d want her to do something about the glove, and she was going to. She pulled up to Unsworths’: Carol smiled to see her and then looked alarmed when Ruth said, “There’s a boxing glove. I want you to find it for me.”

  “What?” Carol said, “Why a boxing glove?” Her face was on alert, a panther with its young in the bushes.

  “I’ll explain. Now take me to Wilder’s room.”

  Wilder was lying on his bed, reading a book. He looked so peaceful Ruth couldn’t believe there was a boxing glove in his room that might have struck Willy. He smiled to see her.

  “Glove? Sure, Garth has a pair. I mean they’re mine. But I let him use them. Mom, it was your present.”

  Carol looked distraught, like she couldn’t remember anything, even her son’s name. The police had been there, she said, found barn money—Kurt hadn’t spent it all. They’d see that Lucien got back the rest.