Harvest of Bones

by Nancy Means Wright

  “I’m sorry,” he said with an apologetic laugh, as if it were his fault, the wind, the chill.

  She spread her hands, then went over to the cart to look at the sign. She grinned back at him, made a sign of approval. FLINT’S FARMHOUSE B & B, it read. Neatly painted in green and white, with the head of a black-and-white cow on the bottom.

  “I’ve only the one,” she said, waving her arm at the scrawny Holstein out in the pasture. “Cost me forty dollars a month to rent, and I had to pay for six months. But I can pass for a farm, can’t I?” Seeing him look about, confused, she said, “The one cow. It won’t let me near it, but it looks cute out there in the field, doesn’t it? Dandelion’s her name. The woman who lived here had one, but it died. She’s my cousin something removed—Glenna Flint. This is really her place. She lives now with her nephew. Homer, and his second wife. Married, but kept her maiden name. Know her?”

  “Oh, yes, surely,” he said, bowing west as though Glenna, whom Fay had never met, was there in the field, as well. “Nice lady. This was her home all right. I can’t imagine she wanted to leave.”

  “C’mon in and I’ll give you a check,” Fay said. “Cup of tea? I have some Lipton’s, actually. Or would you like a glass of wine? There’s some homemade in the pantry.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t—actually, I have to go. Got another sign to do. For a new lawyer in town. They expect it yesterday.” He laughed, groped in his jeans pockets, then an inside pocket of his dungaree jacket. Then he laughed again. “I must have left the bill at home. But there’s no hurry, no hurry.”

  “Just tell me how much. You can mail the receipt.”

  “No, no. I wouldn’t presume. What we agreed on—sixty, I think? If that isn’t too much? I mean—”

  “That’s fair enough. But if you want to mail the bill, mail it.” Fay was pleased in fact; it would give more time to recoup. She was planning to sell a fur coat the Philadelphia widower had given her—it had belonged to his wife. He was pretty upset when she left, tears running down his face, but he insisted she take the coat. They mustn’t lose touch, he’d said; she’d see how hard it was for a woman alone. The coat was his lifeline to Fay.

  Well, one of them would soon be sinking.

  “I’ll be going, then,” said Willard Boomer, “I’ll send you—when I find it.” He checked his pockets again, shrugged. “You’re sure sixty isn’t too much? I don’t want to—”

  “It’s a sharp-looking sign,” she said, holding up her right palm. “It should do the trick.”

  “Well, then,” he said, pleased, “I’ll drop off the bill. Maybe ... maybe take you up on that tea?”

  “I’d love it. Do you know how to milk a cow?”

  He looked worried. “Well, I... I’ve seen it done. I suppose I... well, yes, I could give it a try. Wait—wait, though. Yes, there’s another farm next door. Nice man—Willmarth. No, no, he’s gone. Wife running it now—Ruth’s her name. She’ll give you instructions. She’ll know how.”

  “But she probably has a milking parlor and all that, right? Does it by machine?”

  Willard laughed. “Oh my, yes. Machine, yes. They don’t do it by hand anymore. But I’m sure, if she had to—”

  “I have to, beginning today. I got Dandelion only yesterday, and she’s supposed to be milked twice a day. Twice a day! They didn’t tell me that till they brought her here. By truck. She’s a big girl. Skinny but big. Huge.”

  “Oh my, yes, I see that,” he said, squinting at the overgrown pasture, getting on his green bike.

  “You’re taking the sign back?”

  He laughed graciously. “No, no, I’ll just hang it out there on the post. You want that old one down? About corn and maple syrup? I don’t think there’s been any syrup sold here in ... well, twenty-five years. Since the husband, um, left, you know. It was my first sign,” he added. “I was just starting up the business. Not as, well, skilled, you might say, in those days.”

  “Down with the old. Up with the new!” she declared, remembering something out of a community play she’d played a part in. He looked startled; his eyes popped, and then he giggled. “And thanks, Mr. Boomer. I’m very pleased with it.”

  “Willard,” he said, and the back of his neck turned red. He half-turned and waved; the bicycle wobbled up the leafy drive, almost tipped, then righted itself. He started out into the main road, then, remembering the sign, wheeled about and waved again. He got off the bike, removed the old sign, and hung the new one, his white thatch tangling in the October wind.

  She wondered how old he was. Milk white hair but smooth pink cheeks, a nice lean shape—all that hiking, she supposed. She wondered if he owned a car. For all her bad experience with men—well, Fay liked men. She did, she had to admit it.

  But she wasn’t getting involved. No way. Thirty-odd years of living someone else’s life—now she’d live her own. She pulled her long cotton underwear firmly down over her white cotton socks. She’d make do. Her husband had called her a cockroach once when they’d had a fight. Because she was tough, she was sneaky, he’d said. She was a survivor, wasn’t she? She had to be.

  “Come on, folks,” she shouted into the wind. “Flint’s Farmhouse B and B! Smelly cheese and sticky syrup.” She’d have to buy those, she realized. “And fresh milk from a horny old cow. Hurrah!”

  * * * *

  Three days, the sign flapping in a north wind and no “guests” for Flint’s B and B. The leaf-viewing season was over. Who’d want to be in Vermont, Fay asked herself, when your boots sink two inches into mud and dead leaves every step you take? Already, Fay had gone through three cans of beans left in Glenna’s pantry (tops slightly rusted, so she was alert for botulism), two jars of applesauce, and a box of stale oatmeal cookies. Desperate for income, she’d gone first to the local craft center, where she was told, “We already have a hooked-rug artist but we’ll keep you on file.” Then she’d gone up to Burlington to audition for an advertising firm—they were looking for a woman to sell freezers. And she’d dressed her frozen best in a red wool pantsuit and fleecy boots. But they chose a young female in a low-necked pink silk blouse. So if nothing else turned up, she’d have to clean houses. Not that she minded that really; it just wasn’t on the top other agenda. She didn’t always see the dirt, that was the trouble. It was hard enough to keep things neat, but now she had to be prepared for a guest.

  When someone knocked on the door, she jumped. It was either a guest or a greyhound—she’d ordered one from a newspaper ad—a woman alone needed a dog. “Young greyhounds are being shot, clubbed, starved, hanged, electrocuted, and worse,” the ad read; “forced to race rather than enjoy a run. The greyhound is meant to live in a home like other dogs, not at a racetrack.”

  Fay identified with that ad. To take in a greyhound, she felt, was like taking in a victim, a clone of herself. How could she not respond? A woman alone, she’d feel safer with a dog. She’d heard about that business with the French-Canadian farmer, knocked on the head one muddy spring night.

  But now it was neither greyhound nor guest at the door; it was the woman farmer down the road. She announced herself at once in a husky, sensible voice: “Ruth Willmarth.” Good-looking woman, Fay thought, in her forties somewhere. “I’m here to help with your cow,” Ruth Willmarth said, holding her ground on the threshold of Fay’s kitchen. When Fay invited her in, she refused, politely taking a step backward in her sturdy brown boots.

  “I can’t stay. Can we take a look at her now?”

  “If we can catch her,” said Fay, shoving an arm into her heavy purple sweater. “She skitters away when I come near, even with hay. I have to leave it in the stall. Reminds me of Cousin Glenna—what I hear about her, anyway.” When Ruth raised an eyebrow, Fay said, “Oh, we’re related. Very distant, something-something-something removed. You knew her?”

  “Oh, yes.” Ruth looked interested. “She’s coming back? They came up and hauled her off. I understood she was reluctant to leave.”

  “Not coming back,
oh no. She’s going into a nursing home down there. Losing her, um, faculties, according to her nephew.”

  “Really? I never noticed it. Too bad. I suppose Homer will want to sell, then. Is Glenna agreeable with all this?”

  Fay shrugged. At the moment she had other things on her mind. Like learning to milk a cow. The farmer she’d rented it from had pinch-hit for a few days. Now it was her turn. “Do I need anything? Pail?”

  “That might help.”

  They moved out toward the barn in silence. She saw Ruth looking at the leaning silo. Any minute, it could topple over on them. And the foundation was slipping away beneath the barn and adjacent trailer—into the stream, it seemed, that ran close by. But that wasn’t her responsibility, was it? The Willmarth woman was a Vermonter all right: robust, pleasant enough, but one-track. So was the cow, Dandelion. For a ten-year-old, though, the cow was quite agile. Fay rather admired the way she skipped away from Ruth, her white switch whipping about her skinny ribs, her brown eyes snapping.

  “Could be my Zelda’s sister.” Ruth slapped the cow’s rump—quite familiarly, Fay thought. She laughed when Ruth told the story of the newborn, how Zelda had just taken off and dropped her calf in the bushes. “Sounds like a good old girl,” Fay said, and Ruth nodded. Dandelion kicked up manure and they both jumped back.

  Ruth cornered the creature with a headlock, pulled her into the barn, and pushed her into the only stanchion that wasn’t broken down. “You’d think she’d want to be milked. They usually do, get cramped carrying it around inside. Now stand there and I’ll show you. Haven’t done this in awhile myself, you know. We have a milking machine. But I guess it’ll come back to me.” She grabbed a three-legged stool and plumped down on it.

  “Looks like years since they ran this as a farm,” Fay said, wanting now to slow the lesson. Anyhow, she was suddenly curious about the place. Her guests would want to know its history.

  “Last time was when Glenna came up with her husband. A city fellow. He stayed maybe six or seven years. And then—” Ruth flung up her hands.

  “Dead?” In the tiny spare room that was hardly more than a closet, Fay had found a man’s black overcoat, quite fancy-looking, with a white silk scarf in the pocket, faded to yellow—a B. Altman label. The husband’s?

  “Died in some rooming house in New York City was the word. Left her, people say. Others say Glenna did him in, buried him here. You know, small-town rumors.” Ruth looked amused. “I liked her, though. She was her own person. Eccentric but tough.

  Okay,” she said, getting down to business, “you take the teat between your thumb and forefinger, like this.” She gripped the long pinkish teat. “Relax the grip, and push up, see? Then start pulling down as you squeeze”— the milk squirted into the pail—”with the first finger, then the next, then the last two. You’ll force it from the teat through the streak canal.”

  “Streak canal,” Fay repeated. She watched the milk squirt into the pail, then squealed when a stream hit her foot.

  “Sorry. It’s been awhile.” A tiger cat appeared out of nowhere, and Ruth took one of the teats and squirted it into the cat’s mouth.

  “I never knew that cat was here. Where’d it come from?”

  “Barn cat. Must be several around.” Ruth whistled, and, sure enough, two more came running up, clones of the first.

  “I have to feed them, too?”

  Ruth laughed. “They eat mice. Except that one.” She pointed at a dead mouse, lying in rigor mortis, its short legs upright like a turned-over chair. “Could have poison in him or something. Cats know.” She patted the cat. “Now you do it.”

  Fay sat down gingerly on the stool. The pink teats looked like stalactites on a cave she’d seen once, only warmer-looking. She’d nursed her own child, but briefly. At the time, she hadn’t fancied having long pink teats hanging down to her waist. Now the daughter, Patsy, who was divorced, with a ten-year-old boy, accused Fay of ignoring her, of never being around when she’d needed a parent. Was it true? Fay wondered. But who had changed her diapers, she wanted to know, read to her, cared for the child when she was sick? And where was Dan those times?

  “Don’t be bashful,” said Ruth, sounding impatient.

  Fay frowned at the cow. When she’d rented it, she hadn’t thought of having to milk it. She just wanted it as a kind of ornament for the B and B guests. Dandelion twisted her head, peered back suspiciously. She smelled warm, like sweaty flesh. Fay gingerly took a teat in her hand. Nothing came out. She was reminded of those newfangled faucets that never worked right in the ex-lover’s house.

  “You have to squeeze. Like this.” Ruth grabbed a teat in each hand and pulled, hard, close.

  Fay squeezed, and got a drop out. The cow sensed her frustration and urinated. Ruth snatched away the bucket just in time.

  “Jesus.” Fay felt weak in the knees. “I’ll just have to practice. Twice a day, you say?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The farmer woman was glancing at the barn door. “Look, I’d like to stay, but I can’t. I have my own cows. Maybe my daughter Emily can come over and help when school’s out. I’ll give you a call. The older one, Sharon, she’s pregnant—due next month. In the awkward stage now.”

  Fay remembered how happy she’d been when Patsy got pregnant. The thrill of the birth! The boy growing up, and then Fay went and left. How could she have done that?

  Fay followed Ruth out, carrying the pail. It was half-full, although Ruth told her a cow had to be milked “clean— shouldn’t leave a drop in the udder.” And then what? She’d have to pasturize it or something? She didn’t want to think about it. She found Glenna Flint a more interesting subject, actually. After all, the woman was her relative. “Glenna never said anything—about what happened to the husband?”

  “No, she was always closemouthed, Glenna. Even more so after Mac disappeared—like she’d been violated somehow. Psychologically, I mean. Well, it could even have been suicide. Vermont has a high suicide rate in winter, you know.”

  “Oh,” said Fay, contemplating a winter without guests. And her daughter, Patsy, calling up every other night to tell her mother to come home, that little Ethan needed a grandmother. Each call, she felt the stabbing wounds.

  “My theory, though”—Ruth smiled at Fay—”is he went back to the city and died there. Of old age.”

  She started to leave, then swiveled to look at Fay—suspiciously, Fay thought. “You from the city yourself?”

  “Oh, no,” Fay said. “I mean, once, yes, but not for a long time. I lived in the Northeast Kingdom, near Cabot. My ex-husband has an egg farm there. I came down here—alone.”

  Ruth looked more sympathetic now. Fay had heard she was a single parent; obviously, she’d struck a note. “My son keeps chickens. Vic would like a whole barnful. We need to diversify, you see. We grow Christmas trees; I rent a pasture out for a friend’s sheep. These are hard times for farmers. Well, look, Fay, I’ll send Emily over; you needn’t call.”

  Ruth started out through the stubbly field, stepped across the narrow stream that snaked between the barn and the hired man’s trailer. She pointed, turned. “He lived there, they say, the husband. Rumor has it Glenna wouldn’t allow him in the house.” She laughed aloud. It was a nice laugh, generous, deeply amused. She disappeared back across the rocky pasture, where scarlet sumac, Queen Anne’s lace, and goldenrod still held on. Beyond, the mountains rose up, deep lavender and then the color of blood where the sun was trying to push out of the darkish clouds.

  Fay peered into the trailer but could see nothing, because the windows were boarded up. The whole place seemed to slant to the rear—like if you sat on a chair on the front porch, it would soon slide down and out the back door. What was she doing here, anyway? What had she been thinking of, renting this derelict ghost of a place where a man had disappeared?

  Chapter Three

  Tim, the hired man, was taking down the diseased elm Ruth had marked. She hated to see it go; it had been there for the twenty years she’d
lived on this farm, probably more than a hundred years before that. But they needed the wood for winter—used as many as eight cords for the old farmhouse with its poor insulation, which Pete had never gotten around to replacing. Tim had the Bush Hog splitter hitched up to the secondhand Harvester he’d persuaded her to buy, though it had put her in debt, and she hadn’t paid off the last loan. The Bush Hog maneuvered nicely in the woods, Tim argued, had an efficient hydraulic system to power the splitter. He was struggling with the limb logs: They were dry, gray, and split off like popcorn. But full of bark-beetle tunnels—beetles partly responsible for killing the tree.

  Beetles, she mused, were like people: big, bumbling, tunneling into the heart of things and festering there. Like her God-fearing sister-in-law, Bertha, who a year and a half ago had stirred up a brew of mischief in the name of God. But that was done with. They’d gone through more than a year without mishap. And her second grandchild due in a month’s time. She’d feel better when Sharon delivered safely; Ruth wasn’t sure about Sharon’s determination to have a midwife, a home birth in Ruth’s own bed, because the town apartment had thin walls. When Branbury had a perfectly good hospital. She’d had three safe deliveries there. Though she’d hated those stirrups they’d imprisoned her legs in. They reminded her of the eighteenth-century stocks. And just as much a punishment!

  “You think this will do it for the season?” she called out. “We probably have another six cords stacked up already.”

  “Got my eye on another tree up in the woods, an elm. Farmer’s Almanac predicting a tough winter. Pays to be safe.”

  “You’re the boss,” she said, and Tim smiled, put two fingers in salute to the brim of the cowboy hat he wore as an act of independence—most hired men wore the traditional feed cap. He was a fiftyish ex-hippie, had been through the sixties rebellion, dropped out of the establishment, “found himself.” Pete had hired him in the late seventies, and he’d stayed on when Pete left. He seemed happy enough now as a hired hand, helping foster kids like Joey. She couldn’t do without him. Nor could Vic, her eleven-year-old. Tim was something of a father figure to him now that Pete was gone. Though she knew the boy missed his own father.