Spit Delaney's Island

by Jack Hodgins

  She climbed down off the roof and backed her pickup truck out of the garage, ran it up beside the house, and left it idling in neutral while she got out. The way Mrs. Starbuck was galloping across the field, waving her arms and ki-eye-ing like an immigrant, she was sure they would be heading off somewhere in the pickup and thought it wouldn’t hurt to be ready. What would people do if they didn’t have her to fall back on?

  “What is the matter with you?” she called.

  Mrs. Starbuck was halfway across the nearest field. She stopped running but, instead of answering Mrs. Wright, put her hands on her knees and stood still with her head down like that, breathing heavy, for a few minutes. Then she jerked upright and moved forward again, not running, dragging her feet through the hay stubble as if she were ready to drop.

  Dress like a woman for a change and you could move faster, Mrs. Wright thought. But Edna Starbuck hadn’t worn a dress in a year. Coming up towards Mrs. Wright’s fence now, she had on a too-large pair of man’s pants, heavy black gumboots, a plaid mackinaw, and a greasy baseball cap. Except for her broad hips and enormous thighs she could have been a man, somebody’s old hired hand staggering across the field, drunk.

  Mrs. Wright put her foot on the bottom strand of barbed wire and pulled up on the next so there would be a space for Mrs. Starbuck to crawl through without getting her clothes all caught up in the fence. Mrs. Starbuck fell through and lay panting on the grass at Mrs. Wright’s feet. Her baseball cap fell off and Mrs. Wright could see pink scalp through the thinning grey hair, plastered by sweat to her head.

  “What’s wrong?” Mrs. Wright asked. “What’s happened?”

  Mrs. Starbuck got to her feet and put her hat back on. She put one hand on the chestnut tree and leaned all her weight into it. “One of my calves,” she said, and paused a while to catch up on her breathing, “down the well.”

  “Down what well?” Mrs. Wright shouted.

  “Way out back, the dried-up one.”

  It was proof to Mrs. Wright that Mrs. Starbuck, even if she could clear land, wasn’t capable of running a farm by herself. A man would have checked that well to make sure it had a decent top on it. She knew the one. She could remember her first husband putting a good solid cap on the top, but you couldn’t expect it to last for ever. That was a good twenty years ago and wood does rot.

  “Why didn’t you get Porter over to help? He’s closer.”

  “I did,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “He told me to get you too. It’ll take all of us.”

  “Well that’s a surprise,” Mrs. Wright said. “I thought he could do anything. Why didn’t you drive over?”

  Mrs. Starbuck blinked. “I never thought of it,” she said. “Do you have ropes?”

  Mrs. Wright ran back to the garage and took down a coil of new rope from a nail on the wall. When she got back to the pickup Mrs. Starbuck was already inside, ready to go.

  “Too bad my husband isn’t home,” Mrs. Wright said as she started the pickup moving down the driveway.

  “Oh, I don’t need a lawyer, just plain weight. Somebody to pull.”

  Thank you very much, Mrs. Wright thought. But that was typical of Mrs. Starbuck. She couldn’t see that an intelligent person could figure out a better way of doing things. She thought when a thing had to be done the best way was always the obvious way—bull work. She probably couldn’t see any sense in a man like Mr. Wright existing at all, sitting in an office thinking of ways to help people and never lifting a manure fork from one day to the next.

  “If it’s just more weight you want. I can’t see why you came to me.”

  Mrs. Wright looked down at her little body perched like a child behind the wheel. Her legs were so short her husband had had to wire thick wooden blocks onto all the pedals so she could drive. Her arms were like the thin scaly legs of a Rhode island rooster.

  “You always sound and act like you’re bigger and heavier than you are,” Mrs. Starbuck said.

  There was admiration in her voice. Mrs. Wright was sure of it. Mrs. Starbuck, even though she was incapable of understanding a woman like Mrs. Wright or carrying on any kind of intelligent conversation with her, had always had a real respect. She’d always known, it seemed, that Mrs. Wright was no run-of-the-mill, that she was a person with depth and someone you could count on.

  Mrs. Wright drove the pickup along the highway to the end of her property and then turned onto the road that led back to Mrs. Starbuck’s. She tooted the horn as she passed the little cabin where the Larkin triplets lived, Percy, Bysshe, and Shelley. Shelley was at the door shaking mats when Mrs. Wright drove by, but the two brothers were nowhere in sight. Probably off on their motorcycles, she thought, seeing how many cars they could pass in an hour, burning up gas paid for right out of the taxpayer’s pocket. If Mr. Wright’s ideas were ever put into practice those two wouldn’t know what hit them, the welfare cheques would stop so fast. They were twenty-four years old and perfectly capable of working at something, even if the three of them together didn’t have as much intelligence as a Jersey cow. Mrs. Wright believed that people should be forced to contribute if they want to hang around breathing air and taking up space.

  “At least,” Mrs. Wright said, “you didn’t ask them to help. They’d manage to get your whole herd down the well before they were through.”

  The road was shaded from the sun by the heavy alder trees that grew in close to the sides and made it almost like a tunnel. An old Model T Ford, abandoned years ago by someone who just drove it in and walked away, sat off to one side with bracken and alder shoots growing right up through it, as if it belonged there. Farther on, the road crossed the bridge over a little stream, so shallow in summer it barely moved, and then divided: left to Mrs. Starbuck’s and right to Mr. Porter’s. In the wedge of land between the two branches of road a half-dozen cars—stripped of everything but body and frame—sat as if dropped there at the same time by a giant hand to shoot off sparks of sunlight from pieces of broken glass. Mrs. Wright’s first husband dragged them there years ago when she got fed up with seeing them around the yard.

  Mrs. Wright cringed every time she got a close-up look at Mrs. Starbuck’s house. When she and Mr. Left lived there they cared for the place, were proud of it. They bought it off an old Swede when they were first married, and for years had kept it up. She always said that if the house were closer to the highway it would be a showpiece. But Mrs. Starbuck and that husband of hers had never given two hoots about the place. That white handsome two-storey house had been covered over with cheap grey artificial bricks bought in rolls and hammered on in a single afternoon. Her beautiful gardens had been walked all over by cattle and never weeded; the only flowers still alive were those strong enough and determined enough to push up through weeds and not mind being trampled on by cows. Mrs. Wright could hardly bear to go inside. Whenever Mrs. Starbuck cornered her into an invitation she always encouraged her to serve tea in the sun porch so she wouldn’t have to look at the way the inside of the house had gone downhill. Everything old was rotten; everything new was in bad taste.

  “Turn here,” Mrs. Starbuck said.

  “I guess I know where we’re going,” Mrs. Wright said. And swung the pickup truck down the lane towards the barn. She let Mrs. Starbuck get out to open the gate, then drove through and waited for her to close it and get back inside the truck. Then they drove, bouncing and squeaking, over the grazing land—around stumps and blackberry bushes and over cedar rails piled up in shallow drainage ditches—down hill nearly to the still solid edge of the timber and pulled up alongside Mr. Porter who was trying to get the calf out of the well. His daughter Charlene was under a tree drinking from a quart jar of water.

  Mr. Porter looked up when they got out of the pickup and pushed his hat back on his forehead. “Here’s something for your column, Millicent,” he said. He had been chopping away at the broken boards but laid his axe aside when she arrived.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Nobody wants to read about calves.”r />
  “Well this one’s stuck good. I hope you brought rope stronger than this piece I got here. It won’t pull a thing without snapping.”

  The rope he had tied around the calf’s neck was hardly thicker than binder twine. Mrs. Wright wondered if there was a man alive in this world, aside from her two husbands, who could do things right. It seemed every time she turned around there was somebody else doing something the wrong way and needing her to set it straight.

  “I don’t know how you keep that place of yours from falling apart, John Porter,” she said, “if that’s the kind of equipment you use.”

  She took the coil of rope from the back of her pickup and walked over to the well. The calf, which was not really a calf at all but one of Mrs. Starbuck’s Hereford yearlings (only half the size it could have been if it had been cared for properly and given good feed) was not even down the well. Only its back end had fallen in and got wedged; the head and front feet were above the ground.

  “Judging by the racket I would’ve guessed this thing was down at the bottom at least, twenty feet down and wedged crosswise.”

  Mrs. Starbuck had run over and crouched down by the calf. She started running her hand down its forehead, between its white bulging eyes, and crooning soft words at it. “I just hope it’s not hurt,” she said. Her big florid face was down level with the calf’s as if she were trying to hypnotize it. “I could kill the so-and-so who broke that well cover.”

  “You’re looking at him,” Mrs. Wright said. “That white-face beef there stepped right through the top.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “No cow is stupid enough to walk on a wooden well cover.”

  Shallow. That’s all Mrs. Wright could say about her, just shallow. And she could have added “Is your cow so stupid it’ll walk on a well cover that’s already been broken through?” but she held her tongue. There were some people you just couldn’t talk to, they knew it all. To set them straight only brought out the meanness in them.

  And Mrs. Starbuck could be mean. Mrs. Wright had seen her catch a dog in the chicken run and beat it with a stick of wood until her arm ached. That Mr. Starbuck when he was alive had taught her meanness. It was because he was such a little man and so weak—he tried to make up for it by nastiness and he taught her to be the same way. To tell the truth, Mrs. Wright thought that, big as she was, she had been scared of that miserable little man and eventually took on some of his characteristics for her own protection.

  Right now, though, she was looking at that calf as if she had never struck a living thing in her life, as if she were the kindest person in the world. Talk about two-faced. Well, no, Mrs. Wright wouldn’t call it exactly two-faced because Mrs. Starbuck never tried to hide it. She could love and hug that calf right now and then as soon as it was out of the hole, kick its ass for being so stupid as to fall in. Mrs. Wright had seen people treat their children like that but when she was bringing up her own two she tried to be consistent so they could always know what to expect.

  “All right,” Mrs. Wright said. “Get away.”

  She meant Mrs. Starbuck but they both moved. Mr. Porter and Mrs. Starbuck backed right up to where the girl was sitting at the base of the tree. They crouched down and watched her.

  She made a lasso of the rope and dropped it over the calf’s neck. Then she worked it under the legs until it cinched up around the chest.

  “Okay John Porter, come here.”

  Porter lifted his hat and scratched, then walked up and took the coil of rope from Mrs. Wright’s hand. “Tie it to the truck,” she said. Make yourself useful is what she meant. She couldn’t stand to see a man doing nothing while a woman worked. Even if a woman like her nine times out of ten could do a thing better, it still wasn’t right.

  She watched him uncoil the rope and walk with it over to the pickup. Moving fast just wasn’t in him so she watched while he walked over and crawled under the truck and ran the rope around the axle. But before he could pull the rope taut, his hand slipped and banged against something. He came out from under that truck holding onto his hand and biting his lip shut as if he were afraid of what he might say if he once opened up.

  “You’re all right,” his daughter said. She ran over to him and held the hand and muttered something to him that Mrs. Wright couldn’t hear.

  It’s a good thing it’s only skinned knuckles, she thought. What would you do if it was broken and you had to go to a doctor? Mr. Porter belonged to some religion (she could never remember the name) that didn’t believe in going to doctors or getting inoculation shots or anything like that.

  Mrs. Wright couldn’t imagine herself not wanting to go to a doctor, they’d always done so much for her. And she figured there was only one reason for people like the Porters to refuse the benefit of modern medicine. No, there were two reasons. First, they were probably scared of what doctors could do, needles and knives and things. But more likely, it was just that they wanted to be different from other people, set apart. They were using religion as an excuse. Just wait until the crunch came, just wait until they were in real trouble; they’d be high-tailing it down to that doctor’s office like anyone else, and be grateful for all the advances of medical science.

  Mrs. Wright was a tolerant woman when it came to religion. She admired the Mennonites, sticking together in their little community up the highway a mile or so. She was careful, of course, not to wear a kerchief over her head or leave her apron on when she was outside working in the garden. Not everyone was as understanding as she was, and she didn’t want them to think as they drove by that they were already in the Mennonite settlement. She knew a lot of Catholics, too, and they could cross themselves all they wanted as far as she was concerned, if they thought it would do them any good. And most of the Finns who lived in Cut Off were Lutherans but they never went to church so it didn’t make any difference. No, you could have any religion you wanted and Mrs. Wright would tolerate it. The only thing she couldn’t tolerate was stupidity and as far as she was concerned the Porters were stupid. There should be laws forcing them to go to doctors.

  Mr. Porter hadn’t straightened up yet when Mrs. Wright heard what sounded like two buzz saws running wild and turned to see what was happening. Percy and Bysshe Larkin rode down the hill on their motorbikes. They bounced over the bumps, yahoo-ing and grinning like a couple of drunks, their rear ends leaping off the seats a foot with every bump. At the truck they parted and roared two opposite circles around the whole lot of them, then skidded to a stop and put their legs out to keep from falling over.

  “Just in case this poor calf wasn’t scared enough already from being down a well,” Mrs. Wright said.

  They grinned at her from their two identical empty faces. She couldn’t even be sure they knew what she meant.

  Mrs. Starbuck moved up beside her and put her fists on her hips. “What you two doing on my place anyway? I bet you left every damn gate open for my cows to get out and run all over the country.”

  Bysshe Larkin examined the sky. Searching for birds or wind. “Heard a lot of racket down here, thought maybe somebody was killed.”

  “Nobody yet,” Mrs. Wright said. “Sorry to disappoint you.” Percy Larkin looked at the two women and then at his brother. “You know what she reminds me of, Bysshe?”

  “Which one?”

  “The little one. Mrs. Left-Wright.”

  “What?”

  “A fox terrier. A little white-haired fox terrier always yapping.”

  Mrs. Wright opened her mouth to screech at them but Mrs. Starbuck beat her to it. “You two get on out of here right now!” she yelled. “Go on! Shoo! Get out!” She flapped her arms as if they were two chickens that had wandered into her house. “You don’t come onto my property and insult my friend, not while I’m around. Git!”

  But they didn’t move. Mrs. Wright would have reached down to pick up two rocks and thrown them straight at those empty faces if she hadn’t known how simple-minded they were. There was no sense getting mad when
simple-minded people said insulting things they couldn’t even understand themselves.

  “A fox terrier,” Bysshe Larkin said. “A fox terrier beside a Great Dane.”

  “Get the hell off this place, we got a job to do!” Mrs. Starbuck said. “Go home and learn some manners from your sister, you empty-headed so-and-sos.”

  Mr. Porter left the back of the truck, from which he had watched everything that had gone on, and stood right between those two. He put a hand on the elbow of each brother and spoke so softly Mrs. Wright had to strain to hear. “These ladies are all upset about the job ahead of them,” he said. “If you want to help, how about going back to close those gates so the calf won’t run out onto the road when it’s free? If you come back tomorrow Mrs. Starbuck will let you see if it’s hurt or not.”

  The Larkin boys looked at the women, and then at each other. They started their motors and rode three circles around the four of them before they took off up the hill.

  “Empty as wind,” Mrs. Wright said after them, “flighty as birds.”

  “I hope them two are sterilized,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “I wouldn’t want to see any more Larkins around.”

  “You can’t sterilize people if they don’t want it,” Mrs. Wright said. “And they’re just the kind, them and all the people with no intellect, who would refuse to have it done. You and me are paying to keep them on the road, spreading their low-IQ seeds.”

  “They didn’t come in here to spread seeds,” Mr. Porter said. “They were just curious.”

  Mrs. Wright looked at him. How tolerant could you be? “I’m surprised to see a man with a teenage daughter so free and easy about them,” she said.

  “Don’t be crude, Millicent,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “You’ll make Charlene blush.”