Poison Apples

by Nancy Means Wright

  “Join the Marines,” Adam said.

  “What?”

  “Just kidding. I don’t know. Go to New York, I think. This winter. After I save up enough money. Get a pad there. Greenwich Village, Soho. Do some music. Make some money.”

  “How? Doing music?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll think of something. Things happen in the city. Opportunities. You don’t get them in a place like this.”

  “What brought you up here, then? To this orchard? If you like the city so much?”

  But he was being silly now, doing a little dance step with the ladder over his left shoulder, looking like a fireman about to throw it against a burning building. His ponytail danced behind him. She could imagine him in fringed leather breeches and beaver cap, the way her forebears had looked two hundred years ago. They cultivated apples on their land, too. For now, though, Adam was gorgeous in his jeans and the periwinkle-blue shirt that matched his eyes. “The wind,” he threw back over his shoulder, “the wind blew me here. The wind will blow me back.”

  She laughed, and ran after him as he moved to the next tree. “But what’s that idea you had, that you wanted to talk to me about?”

  He turned suddenly, looked serious, his eyes blue-green lakes. “A trip. A little trip. Not far. To the Valley Fair, up in Essex. It starts next week. I have a friend there, we can spend the night. Maybe go to Montreal Sunday.”

  She gasped. “But the apple picking? How can we stay the night? They need us here.”

  “Oh, just for a short weekend. We can beg off.”

  She took a quick breath, her heart galloping in her chest. “When?”

  “Week from Saturday? We get Sunday off anyway—half of it. There’s a guy in Montreal I want to see, he has a band. I sing a little, you know. I drum. I was in a band back home. I thought he might need an extra guy. After apple picking, I mean. I need to earn some bucks before New York.”

  She was thrilled. “I didn’t know you were in a band!”

  He smiled, came toward her, kissed her lightly on the lips. She heard Millie hoot, up in a tree. “Mmm, nectar,” he said. “So you’ll come along?”

  She thought of her mother, the chores. She couldn’t tell her mother she was going for a weekend with a boy—with a man, she amended. Where would they sleep? Her mother would want to know that. And then she’d look into Emily’s eyes and Emily would back down. She couldn’t tell her mother she’d already slept with a guy, with Wilder, before he’d left for private school—though they hadn’t gone all the way. Wilder had wanted her to, but somehow. .. she couldn’t. For one thing, he didn’t have a condom, and she didn’t want to get pregnant! And then Wilder got mad, and she was angry, too, that he didn’t understand her concerns, and they parted with hard feelings.

  No, she couldn’t tell her mother she was going to Essex, and then Montreal with Adam. But she was going, she knew that, oh yes, she was going, all right. It would be fun—more fun than she’d ever had with Wilder, who was so serious. He wanted to be a dull old lawyer—unlike Adam, who was a musician, an artist, a poet... well, as good as. He was grabbing her two hands now, looking deep into her eyes, and, “Yes,” she said, “yes, I will. I’ll find a way.”

  “So let’s get picking,” he said, boogying off, as if he were hearing a rock beat in his head, and she danced after him, the bucket bumping on her chest, echoing her heartbeat. She would pick, pick, and with every apple she’d make a wish.

  And every wish would have Adam Golding’s name on it.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When Colm Hanna stopped at the Willmarth farm he found Ruth with Tim and Tim’s foster boy, Joey, planting hemp. They were putting in a dozen plants in a square foot of earth; the result, according to Ruth, who looked flushed and perspiring in a blue cotton shirt, would be tall, thin, reedy plants that would produce “a modicum of THC.”

  “Meaning ‘Tender Heartfelt Care’?” Colm asked facetiously. And Tim, an aging hippie in a cowboy hat that Colm found an amusing antidote to the traditional feed cap, explained, “Tetrahydrocannabinol. What gives you that marijuana high.”

  “Ah,” said Colm. He’d read about the controversy in the legislature. Hemp and marijuana were the same plant; it still wasn’t legal to plant hemp in Vermont. “My conservative dairy farmer,” he said, putting an arm around Ruth. Her shirt was damp in the center of her back; she smelled slightly bovine. Even so, there was that corn and milk fragrance about her throat—it was on her breath. He withdrew his arm, squeezed her elbow.

  “Heck, industrial hemp has less than one percent THC,” she said. “And it’s only a matter of time before they legalize it. We’re just getting ahead of the crowd, that’s all.”

  “But in September? I mean, who plants in September?”

  “That’s just it. They won’t think of looking now.”

  “We’ll cover ’em up good,” said Tim, packing in dirt around the roots.

  “Cover ’em up good,” said Joey, who loved to repeat Tim’s words, but with a slight whistle because of missing teeth. Tim pulled a packet out of his pocket. “Hemp brownies. Try one?”

  “Jeez,” said Colm, “better not. I’m off to Dad’s. He needs help laying out. A new body. I can’t be ... like, on a buzz.” Colm had been in college in the sixties, he’d tried it all: pot; LSD—once, though he was still subject to panic attacks; speed to get him through those physics exams....

  Ruth smiled, and winked at Tim. “Green Horizons Hempseed Snackfoods Company,” she announced. “They sell brownies, edible hemp seeds, sneakers, hats, you name it. That new hemp store in Branbury—I bought Vic a pair of socks. Look, I’m not going out of dairy farming. I just need to diversify. They use industrial hemp for food, cloth, rope. We’re starving here, Colm, you know that. Pete’s making noises about my buying him out. Now eat the damn thing and relax. And tell me what body you’re laying out. I hope it’s not Aaron Samuels. Or is it that school board woman?”

  He nodded. He was on his way over now, he’d dropped in for a quick cup, hoping she was between milkings; didn’t know about “this illegal stuff. I’ll call you, Ruthie.” He started off across the field, waved.

  She ran after him. “Colm. Sorry about the coffee, but we have to get these plants in. Look, that woman—Cassandra. It’s Moira Earthrowl’s husband who’s being accused of running her down. They’re investigating now. Have you heard anything about it down at the police station?”

  “They’ve got a new detective on it, I think. Guy named Bump.” He grinned. “It figures.”

  “Well, see what you can find out. There’s something weird going on in that orchard. A lot of stuff that might be accidental, might not. I worry about Emily, for one thing.”

  “What’s the orchard business got to do with the dead woman?”

  “I told you, didn’t I? Stan is paranoid. According to Moira he thinks Cassandra’s church is behind some of the shenanagins. He’s had hate calls from that Messengers minister.”

  “Jeez. I’ll talk to Fallon about it.” Though the chief was talking retirement again; more and more he was off fishing or bowling, leaving it to the underlings.

  She held out her open palms in a gesture of not knowing. “Oh, and Colm, check out a developer named Mavis Dingman, would you? I’ll tell you more when I’ve time to sit down.” She ran lightly back to where Tim was stamping in the plants.

  Hemp, he thought, Ruth was crazy. Someone would tell, she’d be fined, or worse. He imagined visiting her in the local lockup. He’d take her hemp brownies. Where’d she say they made them? Some snackfoods company? He laughed out loud and bit into the brownie Tim had given him. It was damn tasty. One percent pot, but hell, he’d chance it. He jogged over to the blue Horizon—his Irish cap blew off and he chased it down an incline, clapped it back on. Then stepped into a puddle that splashed his new plain blue Lands’ End shirt.

  Now it was striped with mud and cow shit.

  * * * *

  Home at the mortuary, he found his father and the cos
metic woman putting the finishing touches on Cassandra Wickham’s face. It was oddly unbruised, considering the fact she’d been hit in the back, they said, and would have Fallon face down. Though she might have Fallon on her side. At any rate, he had his father photograph the body front and back, just in case. It was to be an open casket, of course, her church would want that; it would want the blooming cheeks, the lipstick, the eye shadow. After all, she was a martyr now.

  “Gorgeous,” he said, and Fern, the cosmetic woman, beamed. His dad scowled, he knew an ironic tone when he heard it. “We’re doing our best. This is the way they want it,” his father said, sounding tired, off his sense of humor. When the phone rang: “Answer that phone, Colm, will ya? And then I need help setting up chairs.”

  It was Roy Fallon. “You’re just the one I wanna talk to,” the chief said. “Afraid I’d get your dad, he never gives a straight answer. Not that you do,” he added. “Anyway, just wanna say, Stan Earthrowl’s car hit something, all right—marks on the front bumper. We’ll check ’em out. But we need the body, want an autopsy. It can’t go underground yet.”

  “The church won’t like that,” Colm said. “The wake’s tonight, funeral tomorrow. You should’ve told them right away.”

  “Hey, we thought it might’ve been an accident, you know that, Colm. But we got a witness, see? Some woman called up, saw the whole thing, she claims. She says Earthrowl deliberately swung around to hit her—that dead woman, I mean. So it’s murder. We gotta investigate, um, we might find the way the tires—the way the body, um...”

  Roy Fallon seldom finished his sentences. It drove Colm nuts. It reminded him of his brief schoolteaching days where he never finished a sentence himself, left it open for the students to respond. “In the Battle of Gettysburg, the South .. .” And the students would shout out, “lost,” or “fought like madmen,” or whatever. Jeez, it was a zoo. The principal came in one day and accused Colm of losing all discipline. He’d quit before he was fired.

  But his father was hollering. “What was that call, Colm? Not another body, I hope. I mean, Fern here says she can’t do any more this week. And I can’t put on lipstick. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary! I can hardly bend over to do the embalming, Colm. This arthritis, it’s in my right hip. Sometimes the leg just collapses. Collapses, Colm! Hey, you got a tongue? Who called?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, if you’ll stop talking. It was Roy Fallon. He wants an autopsy on the body. They suspect homicide.”

  “What? My God! They’re coming at seven tonight for the viewing. She’s all ready for them. That minister will sue, you watch, he’ll hit the ceiling. He’ll sue, I said.”

  “Go ahead and have the wake. But the burial will have to be postponed. Dad, it might be homicide. You can’t obstruct—”

  “Justice,” his father finished. “Justice, hell. Why didn’t he tell me in the first place? Before Fern came all the way down from Winooski. Right, Fern?”

  “They don’t care,” Fern said, snapping shut a tube of red lipstick. “They don’t care about nobody but themselves.” She pushed away “the police” with both hands. The pointed fingernails, Colm observed, could gouge out anyone’s eyeballs. It was fortunate she was working on a corpse.

  The phone rang again and Fallon said, “I forgot to say, they’re coming for it now.”

  “It?” said Colm, although he knew. There wouldn’t be any seven P.M. wake. The Messengers of Saint Dorothea would be hopping mad. He rather wished he could be there to see the reaction. But he had to show land. Some New Jersey executive wanting ten acres “to play around with.” As though the earth could stand up and dance. He chuckled to himself. Then remembered that Vermont was on a fault, they’d had one minor quake already in his lifetime. There could be another.

  “Quit the police and run this place, will ya, Colm?” his father pleaded when he stopped swearing about the sudden change of plans.

  He might as well tape the response, he’d said it often enough, but Colm said anyway, “Sell it, Dad. Sell the place. Buy a condo. They’ll mow the grass, shovel the snow for you. You can go to Ireland. You’ve always wanted to see the homeland.”

  “Nobody over there anymore, Colm. Nobody who knows me. I’ll stick to Branbury. Play with the grandchildren.” He squinted meaningfully at Colm.

  There were no grandchildren, wouldn’t be. Unless Ruth—her kids. Her own two grandkids. How long could a guy keep the faith? “Guess you won’t need those chairs set up after all,” he told his father. “So I’ll be taking off. Let Fallon call that minister. Let him take the gaff. You take a nap after lunch.”

  “That’s just what I’ll do, damn it.” His father sank into an easy chair with an “Oh boy, oh boy.”

  “I get paid anyway, right?” said Fern, sticking her skinny arms through the sleeves of a black vinyl jacket, and William Hanna said, “Oh boy.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The students and friends of Aaron Samuels were holding a vigil in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall, where he was a member. He was still in a coma, could “go either way,” according to the report Moira had read in the local Independent. If he lived, she hoped there’d be no brain damage. He wouldn’t want that.

  The bland wooden building had been built originally by Jehovah’s Witnesses, a small irony, in view of the ocean of difference between the two denominations. Moira recalled that many Jews, disenchanted with the more orthodox regimen of their faith, turned to the liberal Unitarians—Stan himself had attended a few services and felt comfortable there. The hall was jammed with people. She spotted Emily standing in the back with her classmates—one young boy was virtually propped up by his peers; Moira wondered if it might be the boy Stan had told her about, the one Aaron Samuels had befriended. Her eyes watered to see the anguished lad.

  Stan kept his head down, his lips moving as though he were talking to or arguing with someone—Cassandra perhaps, he couldn’t seem to get over that obsession. When she nudged him, he looked up, startled, as though he’d just wakened out of a nightmare and found himself in an unfamiliar place.

  Toward the end of the vigil one of the students, a lanky boy with dark unruly hair and wide-set eyes, got up and read a passage unfamiliar to Moira. It was about a river that seemed to run only in the writer’s head.

  “ ‘In me it still is, and will be until I die, green, rocky, deep, fast, slow, and beautiful beyond reality. I had a friend there who in a way had died for me, and my enemy was there.’ ”

  Yes, the enemy was still there, Moira thought. But the friend who in a way had died, could that be her Stan? A metaphoric death after Carol, and then his confrontation with the “enemy”? She drew in a long breath. Moira could hear the students weeping openly now, and when the reader announced the title of the piece, she understood. “James Dickey, from the novel Deliverance” he said, and stood a moment, chin lifted, as though in silent prayer.

  She heard a noise beside her, and saw that Stan was weeping, too. She reached over for his hand and he took it, and squeezed, until she wanted to cry out from the pain. He seemed calmer then, and they walked out together, behind the crowd. There was a feeling of solidarity here: that there were still feeling, thinking people who opposed censorship, who wanted an open, democratic world where one could choose for oneself; who respected the views of others: who would live and let live.

  It was almost a euphoria—until they left the hall, and then there they were: maybe seven women and that minister from the Messengers of Saint Dorothea, on their knees in a circle, praying. Praying what? she wondered. That Samuels would remain in the coma? Or that he would live, virtually brain-dead, perhaps, and become one of them? Or were they simply here to torment Stan? She tried to steer her husband in a different direction, but too late, he’d seen. She felt him stiffen.

  “They’ve no damn business here,” he muttered, and for a moment she thought he was going to fling himself on the minister. But he let her pull him back, and she was relieved.

  Just as they were alm
ost past the group—the students steering a wide berth—one of the women cried, “Murderer!” and pointed a pale finger at Stan. Stan yelped, and lunged at the woman. But Emily—thank God for that girl—and one of her male classmates pulled Stan back, each taking an arm, and by the time they got to the car he was quiet again—more or less, but deeply flushed and clutching his chest as though there were pain there, and she worried that there really might be.

  She embraced Emily, thanking her—she was headed back to school, the girl said, and Moira and Stan drove, in silence, home to the orchard.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  He quickly found what he was looking for: the paraquat, a dark, almost black liquid, in a large white plastic container. It was exactly what he needed now. Paraquat was used for burning the tall grasses that grew up around the trees. If sprayed on the trees, it would turn the leaves brown within days. The leaves would fall off and make the apples inedible. If ingested, it would burn the stomach and intestines, cause vomiting, diarrhea, and giddiness. It could even affect the heart, according to the fine print. Did he want to do that to someone? He sighed. He had to think of his long-term objective. The herbicide wouldn’t kill the trees, though it would look to the untrained eye as if they were dying. That was scare enough; he had nothing against the trees.

  He locked the storage shed door, returned the key to his pocket, and loaded the liquid into the plastic sprayer. He strapped on the backpack and plodded down into the west quadrangle, pausing every few feet to listen. It was three in the morning, the deepest, darkest time of the night—an hour almost not part of the day or night at all; an hour outside of time, an unnatural hour. He heard only the hooting of an owl, the rustling of leaves, a fox maybe, stealing through the trees. Something brushed against him, and he jumped. But it was only a barn cat, a tom, looking for game, for sex maybe. He leaned down to stroke it. He bad nothing against any animal—he liked cats, in fact.