Mad Season

by Nancy Means Wright

  And so she was planning to storm the place, see that Bertha got to the hearing. Did Colm want to come along?

  He guessed so, he said. “Bertha? Jeez, Ruth. Not again.” But had to sign off—a body had just arrived on the funeral home doorstep.

  She didn’t ask whose.

  She got Vic off to school with his telescope, repaired now. He was something of a hero, telling and retelling the story of how he got away from the car thieves. And an amazing tale it was: she ached to hear it, shuddering to think what might have happened— denying the thought. They’d stopped at a Burger King, locked him in the car, his hands tied with shoelaces. He was able to break the laces, smash a rear window with a jack he found in the rear compartment, and climb out. Then hide in a Burger King trash barrel until the thieves gave up and left.

  Each time he told the story there was another more colorful— scary!—detail, a bit of profanity the thieves had used, and Ruth, smiling in spite of herself, had to ask him to tone it down.

  Of course in his panic he’d left his knapsack in the car, but old Ronsard wasn’t mad at all, Vic said, she even asked him to give a demonstration of his telescope, though Ruth worried about Garth and the others, back in school. A boxing glove left on a creek bank couldn’t prove they’d hurt Willy, was proof only of irresponsibility.

  “I’m afraid they’ll take it out on Vic,” she told Emily.

  The girl was making an elaborate hummus and sprouts sandwich to take for lunch; she and Wilder were turning vegetarian. They couldn’t eat animal meat anymore, Emily said, it was like “being a cannibal.”

  “I don’t think so,” Emily said. “Wilder doesn’t think so. It was Kurt made Garth confess—did you know that? Kurt said he’d knock Garth over the head if he didn’t. He said, did Garth want to be like him, Kurt? And Kurt made Wilder take him down to the station. And Mom, remember, Garth told on the others. So if anybody’s in trouble in school, it’s Garth. Wilder says he’s one scared kid.”

  Ruth guessed she was right.

  Anyway, that fat man was just as responsible for Willy’s death, Emily reminded her mother, waving a spoonful of yogurt. “The police know that, Mom.”

  “More responsible. He’s a grown man!” Ruth cried.

  Her nails dug into her palms to think of Kosciusko, to think of Belle. To think of Harold, even, too weak, too much the victim— of the fat man, of Marie with her new carpet, her orange drapes. Marie had moved in with Lucien now, that was a move in the right direction. At least Ruth hoped so. Only yesterday, when she’d gone over with baked ziti, Marie had a fit of hysteria: she yanked the ice out of the old Kelvinator, flung the watery cubes in the sink, said she couldn’t “look at that thing one more christly minute,” then collapsed in a pink heap on the floor. “Well, you have the insurance, you can get a new fridge,” Ruth had said by way of consolation and promised to help her shop for it.

  Probably Harold had thought of that insurance when he picked up his hunting rifle, shot himself through the brains. The note said Marie could sell his trains, they were antiques, would help pay off the new white carpet. Though Marie didn’t know if she wanted to live in that house anymore. “He helped kill my mother!” she’d wailed.

  “Vic’s going to Unsworths’ after school,” Emily said, shoving her lunch into a paper bag. “Garth invited him. And Vic wants to

  go.”

  Ruth felt a sudden alarm. Was it Garth who’d invited him, or Carol?

  Then squared her shoulders, she had to quit this. Vic had stepped over some magical line now, as though the kidnapping, his running away, had aged him, emotionally if not physically. If he wanted to go he’d go. Carol would be there, at least.

  Carol had called again last week, about renting the north pasture, and Sharon and Emily advised Ruth to let her. For one thing, the insurance wouldn’t pay for two new milking machines. Extra income might even buy that plate cooler she’d read about, one that could save hundreds of dollars in energy costs. It was like getting a month’s power for free, the papers said; the payoff time would be a year and a half at most.

  She had dreams for the place now, as if the fire had been a cleansing, a chance to start over. She was trying to look at it that way.

  But the thought of the other fires still nagged at her. “Mice, huh!” she said aloud, remembering Colm’s crazy solution, the “strike anywhere” matches. Maybe Charlebois used those matches in the kitchen, thought he might, possibly, have left some in the barn, but the Ashers definitely didn’t, they said, and their barn burned. She’d heard they were thinking of simply selling out. And the police were interrogating everyone—kids, Marie (about Harold), Esther Dolley—and no one would admit it. Of course they couldn’t even get to Bertha to ask her. She was locked up in her house. Well, Ruth determined, she’d get a confession out of that one. The anger spit up again, like undigested milk, into her throat.

  * * * *

  She picked Colm up at the funeral home, his Horizon was “down” again. At least he’d had his glasses straightened, he looked human now, more or less. He was pushing a corpse into a back room, a glimpse told her it was an old woman, her face was the color of sour milk. She didn’t look closely in case it was someone she knew. Bertha?

  He winked, he was so cavalier about death. She was glad when he wheeled the body out of sight, went to clean up. She waited in a shabby parlor, on the edge of a horsehair sofa that scratched her legs; the wallpaper wept with a hundred willow trees. Appropriate, she thought, for a mortuary. She could smell the formaldehyde. Why hadn’t she waited in the car?

  “I’ve got a battering ram in the garage,” he said, emerging in royal blue corduroys and a kelly green sweater. “We can knock her door in.” And she had to laugh, though she worried. What if Bertha had killed herself, lay dead even now, in the house? If that was why she wouldn’t answer the door, the phone?

  “I mean, her car’s still in the driveway, she hasn’t pulled a single dandelion in her yard.”

  She nodded at Colm’s father, emerging from an inner sanctum in a gray jacket and wide blue tie, slightly askew. His hair stuck straight up in the back, like he’d been hit by lightning. A middle-aged couple was tiptoeing up on the porch, to pick out a box, she supposed. She wondered if Marie had chosen the oak, with Harold’s train money. Only immediate family: Marie, Harold’s relatives (Esther with the acrylic fingernails?) had been at the burial. Michelle stayed home with Lucien (poor Michelle, her daddy dead). Kosciusko—who’d finally implicated Harold, but not his sister, Esther—was in custody.

  The bereaved woman’s sleeve brushed hers; the woman looked in her eyes, as if for sympathy. But Ruth couldn’t relate. With Vic back, there was life in the house again, the daffodils were in bud. She nodded and plunged down the steps.

  “And I’m glad,” she told Colm, coming back to the present, to spring. “Bertha has a war on dandelions, you know. Even pulls mine up, and I like them. All that furry yellow stuff springing up in the grass! We’ll have to make wine. Vitamin C for the cows.”

  “Won’t they get drunk?” And then, when she tried to help him down the steps: “I can do it myself. See?” He jumped a step—then flailed his arms and banged into the side of her pickup.

  “But I’m worried about what we’ll find in the house.”

  “You’re getting paranoid, Ruthie. We’ll have to commit you and Bertha together. You’d give those nurses the runaround.”

  “I would.”

  She watched him ease his body into the pickup, groan, and rearrange his legs. “You could have helped,” he accused.

  Bertha’s doors were locked, front and back. The house was shut up like a tomb, the shades were drawn on the windows. She feasted her eyes, though, on the dandelions, popping up everywhere on the greening lawn.

  “What good will it do to break in?” Colm squinted at the shut-up house. “The woman is loony, we know that.”

  “I’m convinced some of this is an act. She was in a couple of plays in school, remember?”

>   “Sure. She played Grandma in The Sandbox. Threw sand in people’s eyes.”

  “In Community Players,” she went on. “She did one show, small part, she has trouble memorizing lines. But she likes the limelight. Like I said, this could be an act. I’ve known her a long time.”

  “I knew her too. The way she hunted me down, she was loony back then. Add a megadose of religion—”

  “Enough,” said Ruth, and hushed him.

  Bertha was inside, she was watching them, Ruth was sure of it. They had to get to her, make her talk to her lawyer, appear at the hearing. Pete would arrive at the last minute, he had an overnight sales meeting across the lake in Malone.

  She didn’t care what Colm thought. Bertha had to account for her actions, admit she was in the wrong. Harold had, hadn’t he? By his suicide? But she didn’t want that for Bertha.

  Colm had found an opening: the cellar doors had no lock; they were warped, like their owner. Together they yanked, and the doors screeched open. She followed him down into the basement that smelled of dry rot and mildew. It was crammed with junk: a rusted iron bedpost, boxes and boxes of damp discolored cardboard, a warped pair of cross-country skis, three worn snow tires, a plastic tray of apples, wrapped, rotting. The chaos was unlike Bertha, whose house was usually immaculate, like she was determined to meet her maker with a scrubbed floor, a starched blouse, clean underwear.

  Ruth wanted to run back out in the fresh air. Why had she come here? What was she thinking of, anyway?

  Colm was on the narrow steps that climbed to the kitchen. He turned at the top. “Locked,” his lips read.

  She looked again at the cellar doors, at the apple tree at its entrance; already there were pale rosy buds that would break into the sweetest of spring scents. That very day Carol was to plant apple trees on the edge of her rented meadow. Would sheep eat apple trees? Nibble a bit, maybe.

  Overhead the floorboards cracked, a voice squeaked through. “I know you’re there. But you can’t come in my house. I already have a visitor. He won’t want to see you.”

  Colm said, “Who won’t? Who’s this visitor?”

  “God,” said Bertha. “God’s here.”

  “Bertha, let us up,” said Ruth, feeling the old alarm in her chest—was God here to take Bertha away? “We need to talk to you, Bertha. There are things you have to do. Do them for Pete— he’s coming tomorrow. Now let us up.”

  There was no answer.

  Ruth made a kissing sound in Colm’s ear. He grimaced. But caught on.

  “Bertha, it’s me, Colm. I want to talk to you, Bertha. I’m sorry for—for a lot of things. I want to help you now, Bertha. You can let me up.” He glanced back at Ruth. “Just me, Bertha? You said you wanted to see me?”

  The silence upstairs was total. Not even a board creaking. Bertha was thinking it over. Ruth held her breath. They had to get the woman out of here, whatever it took.

  Colm said, “Unlatch the door, Bertha.”

  Bertha said, “All right. But Ruth can’t come. Only you, Colm. God doesn’t want Ruth in here.”

  Ruth lifted her arms in surrender. Did Colm look smug? Well, she didn’t want to be here either, she thought. She didn’t want Bertha’s god, a god that stole young boys from their mothers! Her own god was, well, out in the pasture with the cows, wasn’t she?

  But when the door opened, and then slammed again after Colm squeezed through, she panicked. It was like the walls were closing in on her, any minute they’d crush her into a mash of blood and dust.

  Behind her something moved in a pile of old newspapers. A rat?

  She hammered on the door, she wouldn’t be left behind. “Colm! Bertha! Let me up, dammit! Let me in!”

  The bolt slammed.

  * * * *

  Colm was face to face with a woman he’d never seen. The outer trappings maybe, the short pearlike body, the dyed orangy hair, though it was hardly groomed now. He could see the gray where the dye had worn away with washing.

  But it was the face he was least prepared for, something out of myth—Medusa came to mind, her snaky hair. Would she turn him to stone? She grabbed his lapels, a cigarette in her fingers; any minute he’d be on fire.

  “I know you,” she said. “I know your kind. Love them and then stamp on them.”

  “Bertha, I never—”

  “Don’t tell me. I have eyes. I have ears. I know how you all laughed at me in school, I know what you and that woman—”

  “Ruth?” he said, he had to particularize, keep this dialogue grounded.

  “Ruth,” she said, crushing the cigarette into a saucer. “You’ve been scheming against me, you two. Trying to prove I set fires.”

  “Ruth’s was electrical, Bertha. Nobody set it. We know it wasn’t you. Elder’s was set, though. Asher’s, maybe Charlebois.” He watched her closely. He was serious about those “strike anywhere” matches. But who put them there?

  That stopped her a minute, she stumbled back against a chair; it tipped, he righted it,

  then moved off. For one thing, Bertha smelled—not of scent, but unwashed body. He could think of several figures of comparison.

  “Charlebois,” she said. “That French Canadian.”

  He was almost relieved to hear it, the old prejudice, she was sounding like Bertha again. He tried to make small talk, told about Marie moving back with her father.

  She looked up at him, coy. “How do you know it wasn’t Harold took Victor?” she said. “He’s a Polack, you know that!” She corrected herself. “Was.”

  “Come on, Bertha, we know it was you. Ruth talked to Pete. He confirmed it, his lady friend. We have to face things. They’ll go light on you if you own up.”

  “Anyone could say she was me! It could’ve been Marie.” Her eyes narrowed at him, sly: the schoolgirl who’d followed into the locker room to borrow a quarter for a soda, hoping he’d have one with her. And never gave up when he wouldn’t.

  “Bertha.” He looked in her eyes. She looked away, hurt. “When Vic got away from those guys—and he was damn lucky—he walked half the way. Hitchhiked the rest. He was desperate to get here. Anything could have happened to him, Bertha, a young kid like that. Did you think it through, what you did? Stealing him away? Leaving Ruth with that worry?”

  He was leaning into her, never mind the smell. She had to realize something, Ruth was right.

  Bertha was right, too, so she thought. She gazed down at her fingernails, buffed them, an old habit. Then she got up slowly, walked into the dining room. He followed her there. Last night’s supper was still on the table, something half eaten, spilled on the lace tablecloth. A nub of a candle was smoldering in a centerpiece of paper roses. He went to blow it out, and she shoved him back.

  Whoa! He was unprepared for that. The woman had muscle!

  “Don’t come near me,” she said, her back hunched against a window. “I know what you are. You’re a hypocrite.”

  “Bertha,” he said, dropping into a highback chair. “Let’s talk a minute. About you. About what will happen to you. Ruth is concerned about you, Bertha.”

  Bertha laughed.

  “It’s true, believe me. Now that Vic’s back, she’s trying to understand what made you do it.” He’d be patient, try to be. He wanted to be done with this. “You were concerned, weren’t you, about Vic’s safety? That’s why you did it?”

  Bertha’s tongue licked her upper lip, slowly came to rest in the corner of her mouth. “Yes. Why else do you think I did it?”

  He noted the “I.” “You have to be at that hearing tomorrow, Bertha. If you don’t come, they’ll think you’re not sorry.”

  She got up, he could see the vertebrae stiffen, straighten, one by one. “I’m not sorry,” she said, pacing her words. “What am I sorry about? I tried to save him! I almost did. You have to understand, Colm,” she said, sounding reasonable now. “He was in danger, he’d be the next victim. If you hadn’t interfered, he’d be safe now with Peter. It was that woman Pete took up with he ran away fro
m.”

  “Safe from what, Bertha? We know who killed Belle Larocque. Safe from whom? People who can’t face themselves, accept others as they are? Use God as a scapegoat?”

  She was hunched over like she had a bellyache. There was something in the curve of her shoulder that looked vulnerable, soft. He got up, put his hand there.

  For a minute she was still, crying softly now.

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow,” he said. “You can tell your story straight. You have a counselor, but you have to let him see you. Go to the hearing.”

  “I can’t!” She jerked away from him, dashed out of the room and up the stairs. He saw there were holes in the backs of her purple socks.

  He leaned his elbows on the banister. “Bertha, come down this goddamn minute. Quit this charade.” It was getting to be too much. He thought of Ruth waiting, probably pissed, in the basement. “Bertha? Be reasonable, Bertha!”

  There was no answer, though he stood for ten minutes, and he decided to give up. So she didn’t come to the hearing. They’d get her one way or another, wouldn’t they? If the police couldn’t do it, Pete would come get her, she was his sister. In a way Pete was implicated, wasn’t he? It was still possible he had planted the idea in her head.

  He went back to the kitchen, saw a mound of cookies there, dozens and dozens of cookies he hadn’t noticed when he first walked in. That’s what she’d been doing since she’d locked herself in here—baking cookies. Pretty soon she’d run out of ingredients, then she’d have to come out of the house. He took a bite of one, spit it out. What if it was laced with arsenic?

  Stupid thought. The woman wasn’t a murderer, not overtly, anyway. But he threw it in the trash, unlocked the cellar door, and Ruth literally fell in. He grabbed an elbow.

  “She’s upstairs,” he told her. “I’m not going up after her. Suppose she gets me on a bed.”

  “It’d serve you right,” she said. “Okay, it’s my turn now. I’ve got an idea.” She headed back down the cellar steps.

  “Jeez, Ruth, where you going? It’s no use, she’s probably locked herself in.”

  But she was running around back to the bedroom window. “There’s a big maple there. If we could surprise her . . ..”