Poison Apples

by Nancy Means Wright

  Ruth nodded, went to the refrigerator to see what was available for supper. She hadn’t thought ahead. She’d let the girl go on with her explanations, then they’d talk. Emily had to realize that she couldn’t lie. True, she was older now, but communication had to be open between mother and daughter. She pulled out a pound of ground chuck, spread it on the table, began to chop onions.

  “Mom, are you listening to me?”

  Ruth said, “Yes, yes! You know I am. I’m waiting for you to convince me that you had to tell an untruth, knowing it would worry the hell out of me if I found out the truth!”

  “I know. Mom, you were worried I stayed out overnight without telling you. You see, it was because of the concert. I thought maybe . .. you and Colm and the boys would go, too. I thought we’d all be late. I didn’t realize how late it was. And then Adam’s car started acting up and I...” She paused, and Ruth waited. “When I’m with Adam...” she began, and then sighed deeply and sat down beside her mother; took a second knife, and began chopping.

  “I think I—I think I love Adam. I know I do. He’s had such a hard life. Mom, he had a stepbrother—a half-brother—who hanged himself. He told me all about it, it was awful. I want to— to fill that hole for Adam. Mother, will you look at me? Will you talk to me? Do you hear me?”

  Ruth put down the knife. The onions were getting to her anyway, she had sensitive eyes; they were watering. “I hear you, Emily. I do! I’m sorry about the stepbrother. It must have been terrible for him.” She took Emily’s hands. “Look, Em, I’m sure Adam is ... a responsible person. Just promise me you won’t... do anything rash. Without telling me, that is. So we can talk, we can listen to each other.” She looked questioningly at her daughter.

  “Mom, don’t look so worried! I’m not getting married. I mean, there’s been no talk about that. I’ll finish school, I’ll apply to college. Everything after that is, well. .. uncertain. But I won’t do anything rash.”

  Ruth got up, her eyes stinging from the onions. She felt there was more that Emily wanted to tell her, but it was all right, she could wait. “I know you won’t. I trust you. And thanks, Em, for helping with the cows. I’d been to see your father, I was late.”

  “What did he say?” Emily pounced on the turn in the conversation. She was still hoping to get her parents back together, Ruth knew that. But it was time to tell Emily about the deal she’d made. So she told her, and Emily was aghast.

  “But how will you get all that money? Is it worth it? We could move into town, it’s all right, I wouldn’t mind. I could walk to school, I—”

  “I gave him the first payment, that’s all I could—can—do. We’re keeping the farm, Emily. Somehow. And that’s that. We’re keeping it.” She found herself standing with the knife in her hand. She laid it down, the onion bits splattered on the table. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Emily’s hand was on her shoulder.

  “I understand, Mom. I mean, I think I understand. And I’ll prep the cows every day when apple season’s over. I’ll clean the barn.”

  “I know. I know. So how was Gypsy? Still skittish, I think. I’m wondering if she’ll ever get back to normal.”

  “Adam told me ...” Emily began—she obviously had something other than Gypsy on her mind. “Adam told me he thought Opal did it, hurt our cows. He says she has a knife, she keeps it with her. And I know why she does! I confronted her, you see. About the cows. She got pregnant by this guy. She was going to marry him, but it turned out he had a wife back in Jamaica. So she rejected him. But he’s been trying to get back together. Stalking her, maybe, I don’t know. So she’s afraid.”

  “Opal? Why would she want to hurt our cows?”

  “But she didn’t, that’s the thing. She said she didn’t, and, well, I believe her, Mom.”

  “But why did Adam say she did?” Ruth was concerned now. “Did he see her over here? If not, it seems odd he’d say that.” She didn’t like it at all, the boy accusing Opal. Why would he make such an accusation? She sighed, tried to busy herself with supper. She felt Emily breathing into her neck.

  “Come on, now, Mother. He was just trying to help. He was upset about the slashing, he was! He said so. Adam just saw her knife, that’s all, with a little blood on it—she probably cut her finger or something. He wondered why she’d have it. You wonder about things, too, Mom, I’ve heard you and Colm. Suppose this, suppose that...”

  Ruth turned, gave her daughter an oniony hug. She guessed she had played the supposing game. Probably that’s all Adam was doing. She had to think that.

  “The only thing is,” Emily was saying, getting a Pepsi out of the refrigerator, “Opal wants to get back at Adam now. She saw him with a key once in the storage shed, and now she’s planning on telling Rufus. To put suspicion on Adam for that spraying.”

  “Oh? She has no proof of anything, has she?”

  “Of course not! Don’t get any false ideas, now. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I mean, I was there, Mom, when Opal saw him. He was just going after a bandanna he’d left when he was in there with Rufus. Why, I saw it in his hand myself.” She started up the stairs with the Pepsi. “Where’s Vic?” she called down. “Isn’t it time for his chores? The barn needs sweeping—you wouldn’t believe the mess. It’s that crazy Zeida. She knocked over the wheelbarrow when I went to grain her. I don’t know why you keep that cow, Mother.”

  Ruth had to smile. She’d knocked over a few wheelbarrows herself lately. Her ex-husband was still trying to turn his upright. And what about Opal? Was she getting people in trouble— Adam, for example? Or was she right about Adam—that he had something to do with the poisonous spraying? She wondered. Maybe she should see Rufus and Adam. Before there was some kind of explosion.

  Emily was in the upstairs hall, hollering down. “Don’t you get any crazy ideas in your head, Mom. I know you. Don’t you go suspecting Adam of anything. He’s a good person, a sincere person. I love him, Mother! Don’t you do anything to hurt him.”

  Ruth froze in front of the refrigerator. What could a mother do after an impassioned speech like that? But good God—her cows knifed, her hemp torn up, that old man dead from a poisoned apple . . . Could love excuse all that?

  But now she was supposing again. What would make her think that Adam was behind the malice at the orchard, at her own farm? There was no evidence. Only a mischievous girl’s report that she’d seen him in the storage shed where the paraquat was kept. Opal had let the Jamaicans’ goat loose, hadn’t she? And never owned up. Maybe Adam was right, and it was Opal, after all, who’d come after the cows with her survival knife. Jealous of Emily, maybe.

  “Hey, I was about to call you,” Colm said when she phoned him at his real estate office. He was writing up a contract for a trailer, he told her, it was a cobroke with another Realtor. “It means beans, not real cash. But what does mean something is the latest report from headquarters. Fallon got word from the FBI— some abortion clinic task force they’ve put together—that Turn-bull and Chris Christ might be aliases for a guy connected with a rash of bombings—and shootings—of abortion providers over the past dozen years. Jeez, you wouldn’t believe it. An Army of God, Lambs of Christ. Lambs with rifles?”

  She shuddered at the thought: the world gone sick. “Have they picked him up yet? Whoever he really is? Is he aware they’re looking for him?” She thought of Moira and Stan, any involvement the minister might have with their orchard. “I don’t want him getting away!”

  “They’re on their way right now, couple of FBI guys. I’ll keep you posted. So what’s on your mind, Ruthie?”

  “It’s Rufus, Colm. He’s the third partner. Pete told me this afternoon.”

  “You saw Pete?”

  “I went for that purpose, damn it, Colm. No other reason. And to give him the first payment on the farm. He wasn’t happy. He still hopes I’ll sell. I said no way.”

  “Good. I’d like to have seen his face. They’ll be building on Lucien’s farm soon. I’m sorry, Ruth. They’ll be using y
our road. Cow Hill Road. Not so many cows now, though.”

  “Mine! My cows will still be here.”

  “You’re shouting, Ruth.”

  She didn’t care. Her nose was running—those damned onions. She wiped it on a paper napkin. She wanted to talk to Colm about Adam, about Opal. But Emily was upstairs, she heard the girl in the bathroom, running a bath. She’d want a hot bath after working in the barn, she’d want the smell off her body. Ruth understood. She hadn’t had the problem when she was a girl, hadn’t been raised on a farm herself. Now she understood.

  “I’ve something else to talk to you about,” she told Colm. She listened: The water had stopped running in the bathroom. She lowered her voice. “It’s about the orchard. Another thought, another possibility. Besides Rufus. Have you talked to Honey Fallon? About Cassandra and that minister? I half thought he might have been the third partner. I don’t want the FBI running him out of state till we find out what he’s involved in here. He’d been married to Cassandra, we know that. And she’s related to Rufus, I think.”

  “What? You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Emily’s seen the family cemetery. At least there’s a Cassandra buried there, and that’s an unusual name. There might be some connection. With Cassandra’s death, I mean, with the orchard mischief. All of them, mixed up together: Cassandra, Rufus, that alias-alias minister?”

  Colm was quiet a minute. “Could be a connection. But what?” He said he’d look up Rufus’s background anyway. And then, yes, he’d go see Honey Fallon. “Pump her a bit.”

  She smiled. “Pump her? Really? I thought you and Fallon were friends.”

  He snorted. “You have a dirty mind, you know that, Ruthie?” She didn’t know why she’d said that. Sometimes dumb things dropped out of her mouth. But sex was on her mind more often of late. Maybe she wasn’t the prude, after all, that Pete said she was.

  But here was Tim coming up the back steps, that meant another problem. He had something metal in his hand, a broken part. Good Lord! His shirt was bloody. She put down the phone with a quick “ ‘Bye,” flung open the kitchen door. “What happened?” she said, running to get a clean towel, to see where the blood was coming from.

  “Brakes gone,” Tim said, waving away her concern, “on the John Deere.” He sank down into a chair, holding his chest. “We were going down a hill, Joey and me, Joey sitting on the fender. That hill behind the barn, you know, where we planted a new acre of balsams? I left him in the tractor, had it in gear, but angled, I thought, so it wouldn’t move—while I went to check the trees, next thing I hear Joey yelling, damn thing’s moving! Joey’s on his way downhill. He jumps in the driver’s seat, but the brakes are gone! Ruth, I’m in a sweat! Joey’s hollering his head off. No brakes! I’m running after, running like hell, grab the wheel, my shirt’s caught. I’m dragged along and the back tire rolls over me before it runs into a clump of bushes. Probably busted a couple ribs.” He dabbed at the blood with the towel. The blood she saw was largely surface, but he was undoubtedly right about the ribs.

  “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

  “Christ no, no hospital. No way! I’m alive, I’m okay, Ruth. But somebody did this, I bet. Somebody messed with the brakes.” He swallowed the coffee she’d handed him, grinned at Joey, who was bursting through the kitchen door: excited, breathless with the tale he had to tell. “I woulda been kill without Tim, he save me, Tim!” he shouted through his whistly teeth. “Tim, you aw right, Tim?”

  “What is it? Who’s hurt?” Emily dashed down the steps in her blue cotton bathrobe. “Tim, what happened?” Then Vic clomped in, home from soccer practice. And Tim and Joey had to tell the tale all over again. They were laughing now, as though it were nothing: tampered brakes and a heavy tire rolling over the chest...

  “See the marks? See, Ruth, see Emily, see Vic, where it rolled over on ’im?” Joey bawled, pointing at Tim’s chest, the mauled shirt. “Lookit. Big black tire marks. An’ blood!” Awed, he sat down beside his foster father, stroked his arm. Ruth would keep an eye on Tim—at least make him see a doctor, bandage those ribs.

  She put an arm around Vic. It might have been Vic in that tractor, or Emily, Ruth thought. They knew how to drive it; there might not have been a Tim there to throw his body at it, stop it in time.

  “Quit squeezing, Mom, you’re hurting me,” Vic complained, but Ruth couldn’t let him go.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Colm met Honey Fallon at Calvi’s, the local soda fountain, established 1910. You could get a black and white soda there, or a butterscotch sundae with nuts and cherries—which was exactly what Honey did. Colm had a moment of panic that he didn’t have enough cash and ordered a glass of water for himself. “It’s all right,” he told Honey, “I’ve already had my sugar fix for the day. At work, you know.”

  Honey said, “At work? I thought it was a funeral parlor, not an ice-cream one.”

  That remark set the tone for the interview. Honey was in a jolly mood, she’d just won one hundred fifty dollars from the state lottery. “A hundred fifty!” she squealed. “Now I can buy that new winter coat I’ve been wanting. It’s seal. Roy likes me in fur, but he never puts up the money. He’s getting chintzier with every new year.” She giggled and dove into the sundae; her nose came up butterscotch.

  “Why I’m here,” Colm began, “is about Turnbull—uh, Wickham. I’m wondering exactly how you did find out. I’ve a couple more things I want to know about him. But first—”

  “Oh, that was easy,” she interrupted. “I went to see him, you see. It was before that high school thing, my niece was in that teacher’s class, the poor guy who .. . you know.” She made a motion as though to slit her throat, although it was a bullet that wounded Samuels, they both knew that. She popped a cherry in her pink mouth. Colm waited, while she smiled at him through cherry teeth.

  “It was at Michael’s house, he didn’t like us coming there—we held church meetings in Cassandra’s barn. I was already getting disillusioned, you know, because of the way he treated that young woman.”

  Colm shook his head, confused. “What young woman?”

  “Oh, the one with the seizures. A pretty girl. She couldn’t help it, of course, it came on her suddenly, one time, in the middle of one of our meetings. She fell down on the floor, it was frightening—for her, for us. But Gertrude was a nurse before she got religion, she knew how to deal with her, how to pull the tongue out so she wouldn’t swallow it. She called the girl’s mother, she came and got her. Then afterward—afterward, Christ—that’s what he liked us to call him: Christ—said she couldn’t come back anymore, her seizures were a curse. Imagine that. A curse! On that pretty talented girl! She wrote poems, did I tell you? Had some of ’em published. She gave me one, it was about a waterfall. She only joined like me, she was looking for something special, spiritual. Well, after that comment about the curse ... I started wondering. And then, oh, there were other things.”

  “Such as?” Colm was interested, though he resolved to keep the original question in mind—what was the original question? He couldn’t remember—oh yes, how she knew his real name. But he had a question out on the floor. Didn’t he?

  “Goodness gracious,” Honey said, spooning up the sundae. A squirt of vanilla ice cream landed in Colm’s water glass. “Where do I start? Well, a lot of stuff about a nursing home he was going to start up, how prayer was going to cure the old people, cure us. Stuff about picketing Planned Parenthood, all that anti-abortion thing. He handed out literature about Lambs of Christ. It was such a sweet name! I love lambs. But I discovered they were pretty nasty lambs. That’s how I found out his real name. Umm, I lo-ove butterscotch. How many calories you figure in this sundae? I’m keeping count on a chart I have at home.”

  Colm shrugged. “Just enjoy it. You said you found out his real name?”

  She patted her bun, it was falling down, a soft gray curl swung like a pendulum in front of her nose as she spoke. “I went to his house like I told you
. That woman was there, that Cassandra— oh, and I found out something else, too!”

  Colm was dizzy with the sudden swerves in the dialogue; he swallowed his water, choked on it, coughed.

  “That Cassandra, she was his wife! She wasn’t his cousin at all like she told us. She was his wife. Well, Roy said you knew that. You steamed open a letter or something. Naughty, naughty.” She shook a finger at him. “Anyway, they were arguing. It was the cleaning lady let me in. I could hear them in the kitchen. The cleaning lady didn’t even announce me—well, it wasn’t her job, I guess, she wasn’t a butler or something.” Honey giggled. “There was a pile of mail on the front table. Something from Lambs of Christ.”

  She leaned across the table, peered into Colm’s face. Her eyes were a deep hazel, he could see the powder on her nose that was slightly sweating with what she had to tell. “It was addressed to one Arnold Wickham, at that same address. It had been slit opened, that’s how I knew it was him. He wasn’t Turnbull or Chris Christ at all, but Arnold Wickham! Not that I knew who in hell—pardon my French—Arnold Wickham was, it was just that now he had three names, and that was two too many for me. But that argument was going on, and being a policeman’s wife, well...”

  She licked her spoon, slurped up the last of the butterscotch. “You wouldn’t be a good boy and get me a drink of water, would you?”

  Damn, he thought, just when she was getting to the meaty stuff. But he got up obediently, waited while the kid gave change to an adolescent boy, then took the water back to Honey. She was practically gasping. “Mmm,” she said, and swallowed it down as if she’d been walking through a desert. She blew her nose into a tissue. “Where was I?”