Poison Apples

by Nancy Means Wright

  “Have your dinner first.”

  He wasn’t hungry anyway; it was the thought of that meeting, that woman, Cassandra Wickham. Maybe he’d just skip the meeting and stay home and watch TV. Though he couldn’t let her oust a teacher—a good teacher, he’d heard from others. He’d been involved in a similar case down in Waterbury, Connecticut. A group of right-wingers had tried to get some of the classics off the reading lists: Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye. Stan had won, too, the books were kept on the list. If a parent didn’t want the kid reading a certain book, that was his problem. The school wasn’t going to deprive others of the experience.

  Now it was Deliverance by James Dickey; Aaron Samuels, the English teacher, was teaching it. It was vulgar, according to Cassandra and her buddies, overtly sexual. “Unfit for children,” she claimed. On top of that she was accusing Samuels of sexual harassment. That was the worst. He balled his fists. “I’ll do the owl when I get back. That bird’ll quit anyway when it gets dark. It’s almost seven. I’ve got to go. When’s she coming anyway, that girl? Uh, woman. My niece ...” Well, it was the least he could do for his brother. Blood kin.

  “Day after tomorrow. On the five-ten bus, up from New York.”

  “Jesus,” he said, and jammed on his cap and stalked out of the house.

  The pickup was losing its muffler, it sounded like a growling lion. A pair of geese rose up in front and threatened the car with their spread wings. He’d bought the geese for Moira, thought she’d like them, thought they’d be a watchdog for the orchard. Hadn’t Caesar used them to warn against an enemy attack? Now they, too, had turned against Stan.

  How much could a man take?

  He roared down Cider Mill Road and out onto the highway. A local oil truck blared its horn, but he raced out in front, just in time.

  Chapter Three

  A thunderstorm coming, he could hear the distant thunder; already it was spitting rain. Perfect. They wouldn’t hear the geese if they squawked—or would think the geese were afraid of the thunder. He pulled the stocking cap down over his hair and face, adjusted the eyeholes; hefted the axe he’d taken from his car. Lightning blazed, illuminating the trees; the apples shone blood red. He chose his trees in the next flash; he didn’t need any other light. They were older trees here, he could tell, taller than some of the others, but still yielding. He had nothing against the trees themselves, the apples: He just needed a way to show that he was here, that he was dead serious. He waited for another flash; it came almost at once, a jagged knife of light. Already it was raining hard, but it was all right, he swung and hacked at the trunk. Again, and again, and the tree groaned and cracked and fell sideways into the grassy path. He could hear the apples smacking the ground; in a fit of anger he stamped on them, felt them squash under his boots. He axed a second tree. The rain was driving down on his head now, he was soaked through his jacket and pants. Two trees were enough. For now. He ran on back to his car, opened the back, tossed in the axe. Already the rain had washed it clean of bark and pith. They’d find the downed trees tomorrow, maybe the following day when they went to pick in that section. He smiled grimly, to think of their stunned faces.

  Chapter Four

  Moira took her jog through the west orchard at six the next morning and found the trees. “Omigod!” A pair of apple trees toppled, and seemingly in their prime; most of the apples smashed on the ground—not even good for cider. There’d been a storm the night before, the thunder had woken her up, the geese. But was the storm powerful enough to uproot a tree? She couldn’t imagine it. She looked closer, examined one of the stumps. An axe cut, it looked like, not jagged the way lightning would leave it. “Omigod,” she said again, and clapped a hand to her mouth. She wanted to clean up quickly, sweep away the debris, the way she did when a young Carol had broken a favorite cup—before “daddy” saw it and chastised his chubby daughter.

  But already she heard them, the Jamaicans, singing their morning welcome, parading out of the bunkhouse, ladders over their shoulders, arms swinging in time to a gospel tune: “I’m so ‘frai-aid I could sit down and cry-y-y . . .” The words suited her mood. The men were splitting up now, moving to the assigned trees; the second oldest of them, Zayon, coming closer, the feed cap sitting high on his dreadlocks. She ran to him. “Zayon, look!” She pointed.

  She could see his eyes, widening, shining like lakes as he viewed the damage. He leaned down, ran his hand across the cut, turned his lean brown face up to her. With surprise she saw he had blue eyes. What rapacious forebear had given him those?

  “Somebody dey done dis,” he said in that melodious island patois that was a synthesis, she’d read, of old English, Spanish, African, even Irish dialect. She loved to hear it.

  She nodded. “You’d better get the bossman,” referring to Rufus. “Just don’t tell Mr. Earthrowl. Not yet.” They could chop up the trunk, scoop up the smashed apples; maybe Stan wouldn’t notice that this had happened. He was in the apple bam, making cider.

  Zayon turned and ran, his legs like propellers, the bucket bouncing on his chest. “Bossman!” he was shouting. “Hey, boss!”

  She waited by the felled trees, as if they wouldn’t find them if she left. Who could miss? She picked up a couple of drops that were still whole: yellow green apples, with a crimson flush. They weren’t Macintosh or Greenings or Golden Russet—almost the only varieties she could distinguish at this point. She polished them on her jeans; they were bruised on the side where they’d struck ground, it was a shame. She’d cook them into applesauce.

  Rufus was there in minutes. His face, as usual, was expressionless. Even after the Roundup fiasco last spring, Rufus hadn’t changed expression. He’d quickly terminated the relationship with that sprayer, although the man had claimed innocence. Now he turned and glared at Bartholomew, who was close behind. Bartholomew looked back, equally fierce. Surely Rufus didn’t think Bartholomew had done it—that sweet old man! She touched the Jamaican’s arm, and Rufus’s eyes narrowed. “We better clean it up,” he said. “You get back to work.” He nodded curtly at Bartholomew. “I’ll get some of the locals. Golding! Butterfield!” he shouted. He never used the twins’ first names: just seemed to treat them as the same person.

  A moment later Adam Golding came loping along. There was nothing quick about the young man, although he picked well enough, and he seemed to have stuck with it, in spite of his rather thin build. He seemed to Moira a pleasant, self-assured fellow. Something about the accent suggested a monied background. He’d attended Branbury College for a year, he’d said, then dropped out for one reason or other. It wasn’t unusual for former students to gravitate back to the area; the town was full of them— urban dropouts. And here was Emily Willmarth, right behind: a pretty dark-haired farm girl—anything but self-assured. Emily made Moira think of Carol, always eighteen, it seemed, naive, trusting; and her nose filled.

  “You’ll be late to school,” she reminded Emily.

  The girl flashed a smile at her. “I don’t have classes Friday mornings, Ms. Earthrowl.”

  Moira said, “Oh,” and patted the girl on the shoulder. “Your mother’s coming over for cider this morning. She called us to save her some. Your little brother having a scout troop over or something.”

  “Vic, yeah. He’s working on some badge. Birds or stars, one or the other he’s always into.”

  “Good for him. Involvement’s important.” If Carol had been more involved with birds or stars . . . she might not have taken up with that boy, the one who killed her. No, she mustn’t say “killed.” It was Stan who’d used that word. She’d never seen the boy again after the accident. Yet what torment he must have gone through, what remorse! Who was to say he wasn’t really in love with Carol, young though she was? But she couldn’t convince Stan of that.

  “Rufus, you tell Stan,” she started to say—then changed her mind. One more chance for a confrontation, for accusations. Stan had come home impossible to reason with after the school board meeting last night. He cou
ld only rant about the Wickham woman this, the Wickham woman that—she was a narrow-minded bigot, he claimed, she had “gall enough for twenty people.” Moira had given up trying to placate him.

  “I’ll tell him myself,” she said, changing her mind. “I’m on my way to the barn this minute.” She swiveled about. “Or don’t you think he’ll notice?”

  Rufus turned his brown-cow eyes on her. His face was immobile, she couldn’t read him—his shyness, perhaps. “He’ll notice,” he said. “You better tell him.” A glint in the eyes said that he didn’t want to be the one to tell.

  She found Stan in the apple barn, cranking out drops into cider with Don Yates. Don was a tall, lean man with close-cropped white hair, a laid-back demeanor. He was a former engineer, now retired to the area, and the quintessential volunteer:

  church, hospital, library, orchard. She was glad of Don’s calming presence: A third person might hold back an explosion.

  “A little accident,” she said, “over in the west quad. No, maybe more than an accident.” She had to admit it. “A pair of trees, cut down. Mature trees, someone might have thought them ready to go. Rufus had been marking the old ones. I don’t know the variety.” She held out the drops.

  “William Crump,” Don said. “It’s a dessert apple, crisp and juicy. You don’t see it around here very often. I’ve a couple trees of it myself.”

  Stan was staring at her. He was unusually quiet. Suddenly he threw up an arm and Don raced over to catch him from falling. Moira rushed a stool under him. Stan’s face was as patchy red as the apple skins.

  “It’s been a shock, these . .. accidents,” she told Don, and he nodded, he knew.

  Stan came slowly to life then. “Accidents, hell,” he muttered. “Malice. That’s the word you want. Malice. Someone wanting to do me in. That woman on the school board. Cassandra Wickham.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Stan. Just because she holds a different opinion from you.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Stan staggered up, knocking the stool sideways against the barn wall. Before she could open her mouth to warn him back, he was striding off into the orchard, into the west quad, toward the debris. She prayed the young people would have cleaned it up by now. She heard him shout, “Rufus!”

  Don grabbed her elbow, held her back. “Let him go,” he said. “He’ll have to see it sooner or later.”

  “You saw it?”

  “No, Zayon told me—I was on my way here. It wasn’t one of the marked trees, he said. It was still yielding.” Don looked worried. “Stan should see a doctor. He doesn’t look good. Anyone check his blood pressure lately?”

  “It was high when we came here. You knew about our daughter.” Don nodded; everyone knew. “He was just beginning to heal when that spraying accident...” She looked at her neighbor. “If it was an accident...”

  Don was silent a minute. “I hope it was. I hope to God it was.”

  Chapter Five

  Emily Willmarth’s mother was already at the door when Moira got back. Ruth was a tall, robust-looking woman . .. well, robust, yes, but lithe, dressed in loose-fitting jeans, a yellow denim shirt open at the neck, brown leather boots redolent of barn. She was most likely in her mid-to-late-forties. She lived on a hardscrabble farm on the road behind the orchard—they’d met off and on at the local food co-op. Ruth was divorced, Moira knew, with two children still in the house, if you could call Emily a child. She must be at least seventeen, maybe eighteen. The girl’s breasts were bursting out of her denim shirt as she ran up behind her mother to collect a packet of sandwiches Ruth had brought.

  “I have to go now, Mom. I haven’t got to the picking yet, we had a little .. . accident. I’m helping to clean up.”

  “Uh-oh.” Ruth smiled. “I hope it wasn’t anything you were involved in.”

  Emily glanced at Moira. “Most definitely not,” she said, and raced off, her denim shirttail flapping behind her.

  “Someone cut down a couple of our trees,” Moira told Ruth. She paused, coughed, she hardly knew this woman. Then, seeing Ruth’s interest, her concern, she went on. She recalled something Don Yates had told her about Ruth’s help with other victims—an abused woman, an elderly farmer and his wife, that eccentric old Glenna Flint on Cow Hill Road, who’d been kidnapped but, remarkably, survived.

  “Come on in,” she said. “Emily left your cider in the kitchen. Have a cup of coffee with me. I need to talk to someone. Can you spare the time? I know you have all those cows.”

  “I have a good hired man. He can cope for a bit.” Ruth had a nice smile, it lit up her face. “I live on caffeine. One day it will do me in. But for now—it’s fuel, energy, a way of coping. Thanks. I hear you weave, too, something I’ve always wished I could do. I used to do a little pottery. But now—I don’t have any hobbies. Just those thirty cows. Thirty-one, to be exact. We just had a birth.”

  Moira smiled back. She could use a friend. She almost asked, Will you be my friend? They’d been so busy with the orchard these last few years, she hadn’t taken time to join a group or make friends. “Sugar? Cream in your coffee?”

  “Black.” Ruth planted herself down on a kitchen stool, looked comfortable, as if she belonged there. “No frills. So tell me about this latest, um, accident. You look like it might help to talk about it.”

  Moira poured the coffee, stuck her elbows on the kitchen table, stared down at the old pine boards, wondered where she should begin. With the school board, maybe? Or was she paranoid herself, beginning to believe what Stan had said, that perhaps the vendetta between Stan and that woman Cassandra Wickham had something to do with the malice—there was that word again—in the orchard?

  So she told about the vendetta. “He came home last night in a fury. Had three Manhattans—he holds his liquor better than most, but by golly, there’s a limit! The woman’s trying to ban a book, she’s ‘crucifying’ some English teacher, he said. Stan’s been involved in censorship before, it’s one of the reasons we chose Vermont; you’re supposed to think for yourself here. No one to dictate: do this, do that. But then he found himself in the middle of another row. The woman is archconservative, she wants us to think her way. She belongs to some church called the Messengers of Saint Dorothea. I’d never heard of it before! I mean, she has a right to her beliefs, but Stan’s afraid she’ll bring a whole group of the religious right onto the school board. They’re the ones who voted her in. They’re organized!” She stopped, drew a breath. Was she getting worked up herself, like Stan?

  The cardinal was slamming at the window again. Ruth was watching it, her tongue stuck in her cheek, looking thoughtful.

  “Bertha belongs to that group,” Ruth said. “My sister-in-law. Or was. Pete and I are divorced now, but Bertha hangs on. Well, she has a right, I guess, my kids are her nieces and nephews. Anyway, she’s been writing letters to the editor. She’s taken an interest lately in the school board. I wondered why. I guess I was naive. I mean, I’ve got a child in that school! I’ve got to get out of the barn now and then, find out what’s going on.” She squinted at the window. “What is it with that bird?”

  “It wants to get in,” Moira said. “It wants to get in and that’s a bad sign.” She laughed to lessen the solemnity of the words, but Ruth was taking her seriously.

  “We won’t let him in,” Ruth said. “We’ll keep him out. I promise you that. I’ll keep tabs on that crazy Bertha. See what I can find out about the school board woman.” She grimaced, then smiled, and swallowed her coffee.

  Chapter Six

  Stan had them lined up in the barn: Rufus, the eight Jamaicans, four of the five local help. The Jamaicans, headed by Bartholomew, stood stiffly against the barn wall, their caps shading their downcast eyes, hands loose at their sides, their work pants stuffed into tall rubber boots. The locals appeared more relaxed, more confident, in jeans and caps stuck on backward the way the crazy kids wore them these days. There was Adam Golding; the twins, Rolly and Hally Butterfield, who had never finished high schoo
l and were exercise freaks—lifted weights, the muscles bulged under their tight-fitting T-shirts; and six-foot-tall Millie from up on the mountain, seated cross-legged on the barn floor. Emily Willmarth was the only one absent: Most days she had a class; today she had a dental appointment. She couldn’t pick on a regular basis—his wife had hired Emily in spite of his concerns for the girl’s inexperience.

  Rufus stood silently beside Stan, arms folded across the barrel chest, heavy legs wide apart as though the stance gave him more authority. Stan could hear his harsh breathing, the occasional cough. Rufus was a smoker; Stan had seen him once or twice in town, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth— though he never smoked on the job. He’d come to Stan with consummate credentials, had worked the orchard seven years before Stan acquired it. It was as though Stan were an interloper. Stan cleared his throat, began the interrogation.

  “You all know by now that two of our trees were cut down, destroyed. I want to hear from anyone who knows anything about this.” Stan glared at the assembled group. The only one who made eye contact was Millie; she seemed amused. No one spoke. Stan hated doing this, interrogating in this way. Back in Waterbury, when a student cheated on a test he’d send him at once to the principal, wouldn’t deal with it himself. He didn’t want to accuse anyone without proof. Absolute proof. You’re innocent until proved guilty, that’s the way he felt about things.

  And that boy, the one who killed Carol—the guilt was absolute. The blood rose up again in his chest. He couldn’t always make Moira see it his way, though. Carol’s death had driven a stake between him and his wife. He’d bought the orchard to help pull up that stake. And now someone, inside or outside this orchard, was driving it in again.

  “Well?” he said. “Cat got your tongues?”

  Rufus coughed. The twins shifted position, seemed less composed. The Jamaicans remained a solid core—until Number One man, Bartholomew, nudged the shorter, leaner man beside him. It was Zayon; Zayon was a Rastafarian, whatever that was—Stan always meant to ask the Jamaican about it. The dreadlocks reminded him of an ancient apple tree, the way the black hair was knotted up in ropelike clumps. It was all but impossible, he’d heard, to unravel them.