Harvest of Bones

by Nancy Means Wright

  She told him what she knew, which wasn’t much. “The farm has been around a long time. The owner is on the premises—briefly, that is.” When she poured him a glass of wine, he took it and, with a subdued little laugh, thanked her. She saw how white his hands were, though there was the palest bruise on a left knuckle, a broken nail. She followed his glance; he was looking at the phone.

  “No charge for local calls,” she said. “But out-of-town ones, I have to charge for, of course. You’ll want to call your wife, I’m sure.” Her hands trembled as she said it; she squeezed them together in her lap.

  “Just local calls.” He stared into the drink as if he’d see something there, a vision. “My wife, yes. That’s why I’m here.”

  And suddenly he was up, nervous, gripping his hands. “I flew, you see, from Chicago. That small plane into the Burlington airport! I’m full of Dramamine. I get airsick.” He laughed, a self-deprecatory laugh. “I need a walk, really, around the place. To clear my head. You know.”

  “Those shoes,” Fay murmured as he rose from the table. They were dress shoes, black and shiny-new; she imagined them wading through manure. And now the ground was slippery with wet leaves and a dusting of fresh snow. “They’ll get ruined.”

  “Agh.” He waved away her worry, then plunged outside.

  Chapter Five

  Emily Willmarth was trying to be patient. She wasn’t getting very far with Glenna Flint. Frustrated, she pricked her palm with the sharp point of her pencil. She was sitting in the shabby living room of the Flint farm, on a black horsehair sofa that looked as though it had been whipped too often. Across the room, Glenna was ensconced in an ancient overstuffed chair in purply red plush, her feet planted on a Turkish carpet worn from decades of shambling shoes.

  But the old lady kept digressing. One minute, she’d talk about her mother: “Bit of a thing, four-foot-ten, but tough as the beef she cooked to death—ninety years old and out there chopping wood. That’s how she died. Chopping wood. Keeled right over into the kindling. Is that a way to go or not?”

  Emily wasn’t sure, but she nodded politely and shifted position. The horse hair sofa was torturing the backs of her legs.

  Then with no transition at all, Glenna was talking about her horse Jenny; “As pretty a mare as you ever saw, took me all over the county when I was a girl. Once, we rode right into church—you should’ve seen that old minister’s face!” Next, she’d hop to the present, her nephew Homer’s wife: “That biddy, trying to put me in a home. I wouldn’t be alive five minutes there, I tell you, can’t breathe in those places. Well, I kept Mother with me till the last. Never mind she thought I was Father, told me to ‘shave that mustache, Henry, it don’t become you.’ ” Glenna laughed hugely.

  “I heard you married when you were working down in New York. He was a newspaper man?”

  “Huh.” Glenna snorted and crossed her legs. Her pants wriggled up her thighs when she moved. “He was no reporter—though he wanted to be. Kept writing up articles for the New York Times op-ed, but they never took a one. I used to wish I could get a piece in there just to show him. But I never got around to it, I guess. No, he didn’t know what in hell was going on—at home or in the world. He was just a proofreader, that’s all. If you asked him, though, you’d’ve thought he’d just won the Pulitzer.”

  “Did he like it up here—when you brought him to Vermont?”

  Glenna was quiet. Her mind seemed to make a trip back into time, and get stuck somewhere. She drew a hand through the thick nest of her hair. From the neck up, she looked dramatic, Emily thought, like an aging actress with a romantic past. “Well, he hated my horse, that’s what—Jenny Two. ‘Cause he couldn’t ride her, that’s why. Got on her once and Jenny threw him. Right into a heap of manure. Why, he went and dug her grave!” And when Emily gasped, Glenna said, “Oh yes, he did, oh yes. Dug it right beside the hired man’s shack, facing the barn, right where I’d see it every day when I went to milk. We only kept two cows then—for Mother really—she still pretended to farm.”

  “But he didn’t... kill her ... Jenny Two?”

  “Not exactly, no, no, he didn’t kill her. I’d’ve killed him first.” Glenna stopped, seemed confused by her words, her memory struggling out of a long-ago abyss. “He just wanted to upset me. He was good at that. Upsetting people.”

  She paused again, blew her long nose into an oversized handkerchief. “Did I tell you about my great-grandfather? This was his farm. An acre down by the creek—they called it ‘Petticoat Strip,’ you know that?”

  Emily whipped over a page in her notebook to write down the story of old Matilda, who sued for breach of promise when Glenna’s great-grandfather ditched her. But because of the lawsuit, he had to promise an acre of his land—the best acre.

  “And then he got his revenge when he fertilized the hell out of a rocky strip and she fell for it,” Glenna said. “Was she mad!” Glenna thought the tale hilarious; she laughed and laughed. Emily smiled, tried to take notes, until Glenna struggled up from the sofa and said, “Enough said, girl. Is there no privacy around here? Can a woman keep her life to herself?”

  “I’m sorry, it was just...” Emily jumped up, hugged her notebook to her chest. “I mean, this is so we’ll understand the past—that’s what my teacher says. They’re going to print it up in a booklet.”

  “Print it up!” screeched Glenna. “You let me see it, hear? Before you go printing it up. And I’ll decide. Go see somebody else, you want a whole life printed up. Some of them love to prattle on about themselves.”

  “I am interviewing someone else,” Emily said, tears springing to her eyes in spite of herself. She wanted to be out of the house now, away from this volatile woman. “Alwyn Bagshaw. He lives up the mountain in East Branbury.”

  “Bagshaw! I know where he lives. He has a brother, too.” Glenna was suddenly quiet. Then in a minute, she said, “Anyway. I get them mixed up. Alwyn Bagshaw. He’s a fool.” Glenna stood up, leaned close to stare at the girl; her voice softened. She looked frightened, confused. “You stay away from him. Young girl like you. He’s mean, hear? Your mother know you’re going to see him?”

  “She knows. She didn’t say anything.”

  “You take her with you, then, when you go. Don’t sit in there alone with him. Not with a Bagshaw.”

  “Why? What would he do? He’s in his seventies now, my teacher says.”

  “Your teacher’s a fool, too. Tell her I said that.”

  “Him.”

  “Whatever.” And Glenna padded out of the room and upstairs on those long, thin bare feet, without looking back.

  “Thank you,” Emily hollered up. She took a deep breath to summon up courage. “Can I talk to you again? Maybe once more?”

  But she got no reply. Discouraged, she sat down on a kitchen chair—no one was about except the cat, asleep on top of the refrigerator—and tried to make sense out other notes. She had to get a good grade on this project. She’d had a slow start in history this term—all that worry about Wilder and the diamond nose stud. Well, she’d catch Glenna in a quiet mood sometime—after she saw Mr. Bagshaw. They were almost of an age, she guessed. Her mother had said Glenna must be around eighty years old, so she’d write that down.

  Funny: sometimes the old lady seemed out of it, and other times right with it. But the way she dressed! Just didn’t seem to care how she looked. Or couldn’t see. Those tiny spectacles she peered out of. She was such an odd duck. For one thing, Emily wasn’t used to hearing old ladies swear.

  Well, of course she’d go alone to the Bagshaw place. She wasn’t letting any cranky old lady intimidate her.

  ****

  Alwyn Bagshaw was spying through his binoculars. He’d got them for the grackles, so he’d know when the fall flock was on the wing. See, the critters dropped all over his barn and garden, polluting, gobbling up his stored cattle corn. And he needed the corn to sell to the farmers. Well, he’d give ’em their comeuppance, sure. But now the binoculars had another p
urpose. They could see into the main room of the house next door. The Healing House, they called it; they’d been over to “make his acquaintance” when they started up the place. Some fool woman, buttering him up so he’d keep quiet about their shenanigans. Isis, her name was—no Christian name at all, like she was some priestess—as if women could be priests. Alwyn had no use for the Pope; Alwyn had been brought up in the white church in town—before his ma dropped dead one Sunday coming out of that church, and he’d never set foot in it again, not even to bury her. But by Christ, the Pope had the right idea about women. A priest— hah! And a midwife? Worse still. He’d seen a pamphlet she put out—it was in the local grocery. Witches they was, midwives. Ma’d said so. She took to the hospital to have him and his brother born; she didn’t hold with midwives.

  And now this healing place, all women—it was unnatural. First thing you knew, they’d be committing some mass suicide and he’d have to smell the bodies. He wasn’t having none of that. The grackles—hundreds of ‘em sweeping through his land, spring and fall, pecking at his crops—was enough. Why, he lived off that vegetable stand, and what he could sell to the local grocers!

  So he was keeping an eye on next door.

  Eight, ten of them now maybe, squatting on mats in the big room, heads down. Unnatural, he called it, and it was. No one saying a damn word, seemed like. Meditating on the devil most likely. No children there at least. First young’un in there, he’d be over in a shot, see firsthand what was going on. He knew the dangers, his only child gone west to join some guru, got hitched along with two hundred others. Mass orgy after, he supposed. He’d disowned that one. She wasn’t getting none of his land.

  Land. That’s all that mattered now. What was left of what used to be a hundred acres of land—no more’n twenty acres now, less even. But his own, since the Battle of Hubbardton, yessir, when his great-great-great-granddaddy put in his claim. Indians camped here, yes they did. He’d found things. It was old, old land. And they wanted it, that sect. That’s why that priest woman’d come over, asking questions about his land. Wanting more land, more victims to sacrifice.

  Maybe a human sacrifice at that. He’d read of it. It happened. By Christ, it did, too!

  He felt chilled all over to think on it; his chest ached, legs trembled. His legs, getting weak, his whole body sliding downhill. No more strength the way he used to when he was a young fellow and women running after and he had his Ford, rode all over town, and then the truck when he got the job as milk tester. He was young and randy then, sure, the women heating up to see him coming.

  Those women getting up now, folding up the mats, walking single file out of the room. He lowered the binoculars. Christ, he was trembling all over. But it was his duty. His duty. His mother would’ve wanted it. To keep watch.

  * * * *

  Hartley Flint was moving into the trailer—she didn’t care. That man was occupying her room, and she couldn’t sleep one more night with Aunty’s mumblings. Something screechy last night about a “booby”—what was a “booby” anyway? Hartley was so sleep-deprived today that she didn’t even feel like walking. So she piled up the sweaters and jeans and books she’d brought from home and loaded them into the Colt. A pretty small pile, actually, but what did she need, really, except Tolkien and a change of underwear now and then? For good measure, she threw in a pail of soapy water, a broom, and a dustpan.

  But when she was all ready to go, the Colt wouldn’t start. It growled and grunted and squealed. It didn’t like this Vermont weather—too cold. A freezing rain last night had killed even the stiff orange marigolds Fay had stuck into the ground in front of the farmhouse. Now they looked like a row of old people, sitting cockeyed in their wheelchairs.

  She pumped the pedal, yelled, “Shit, shit, shit!” and the Colt came to life with a roar and a jerk. It flew forward: past the outhouse, the empty henhouse, past the—hey! Something white and furry came dashing out. She braked. The car screamed, then skidded on an inch of black ice, spun about, and crashed, rear-end-to, into the side of the trailer. The ancient structure sagged like a popped balloon; she could hear the foundation crumble into the icy dirt. Aunty’s cat slowed to a dignified walk and hopped up onto the farmhouse porch. She could swear it was grinning.

  “Look what you made me do!” she yelled out the car window. But the cat just sat there, pulling burrs out of its tender paw.

  She looked around to see if anyone had heard the crunch, but all was quiet. Aunty was inside being interviewed by the girl next door, so she wouldn’t have heard. And Fay was in the barn, probably cursing the old cow. Only Gandalf came trotting out of the barn, excited to see her. “Good boy.” She was safe for the moment anyway; she’d inspect the damage later. She hugged the dog, unpacked her stuff. No, she’d sweep first. She didn’t want to sleep in mouse turd, did she?

  “There’s one, Gandalf. A mouse, see? In the grass over there. Go sic ‘em. Good boy!”

  And she smiled to hear the dog digging as she swung her broom.

  She was mopping up the bedroom floor of the trailer—it sloped more than ever since the car had hit the side—when she heard a scream nearby in the barn. She arrived, to find a pail of milk knocked over and streaming along the sawdust-covered floor. Fay was doing some kind of dance, one foot in the air, and the other solidly on the floor—oh, and pinned down by the Holstein’s left rear foot!

  “Get off. Off you miserable beast!” Fay screamed, and the cow looked beseechingly at Hartley, like she’d forgotten how to move her legs. Hartley tugged on the foot while Dandelion bellowed and Fay hollered, her face a mask of pain. But the foot wouldn’t move. Until Hartley pulled an apple out other pocket and rolled it on the floor. Dandelion stared at it a minute, then lifted her hind leg and scooped up the fruit with her plump lips. She turned, chewing, the yellow juice oozing out of the corner other mouth, to stare innocently at Fay.

  “She didn’t mean it,” said Hartley, patting the cow’s rump. “Your foot just got in her way, that’s all.”

  “I’m sending her back.” Fay sank down on the three-legged stool. “I don’t care if I paid a six months’ rent. Jesus, I can’t feel my toes.” She stuck up a limp foot at Hartley.

  “I’ll milk her, then,” said Hartley. “I like the old thing. That farmer girl next door will teach me. The one you said helped you—that Emily.”

  “She’s here now, interviewing Glenna.” Fay was clinging to Hartley’s shoulder, massaging the numb foot.

  “I know. Poor kid. Aunty’s so unpredictable. She’ll be all sweetness and love and make up a dozen stories, or else slam the door on her—who knows?”

  “Uh-oh, what did I tell you?” she went on, hearing the farmhouse door slam. “Aunty’s thrown her out. Rescue mission number two coming up!” She whirled about. Or was it the trailer, fallen in on someone’s head? She’d have to fess up about that.

  “Don’t leave me with this beast!” Fay cried. “She’ll sit on me next.”

  Hartley just laughed.

  * * * *

  Emily was on her way home, the notebook under her arm, when she saw the greyhound at the side of the trailer, peering into what looked like a large hole. She was amazed at the size of the hole; one would think the trailer itself had dropped into a pit. Or was it an earthquake? The foundation appeared to have caved in. Vermont was on a fault, she’d heard. She wondered if the B and B woman knew about it, or that girl Hartley, whom she’d met briefly the night before when she came to set up a time for the interview.

  Emily turned back to take a look. Actually, she was interested in the greyhound; she’d heard about its plight, how badly it had been treated—not unlike putting that old lady in a nursing home, she guessed. She remembered her grandmother before she died—her mother’s mother, who had died of a brain tumor. She’d looked awful at the end, like a shrunken white mouse. A wave of sympathy swept over her for Glenna and the greyhound; they even looked alike, with those pointy noses, though Glenna was whiter and the greyhound grayer. Well, sh
e was sorry already for thinking ill of Glenna. Poor thing.

  Her mother, now she was still young enough to put things right. Pull the family back together. But her mother did nothing, never even asked her father to come back. Just felt sorry for herself, that’s all. One of these days, she and Emily would have a showdown.

  The hound was practically in the hole now. Its gaunt rear end stuck up like the back of a bulldozer. It was good-natured, she’d heard, but she’d keep her distance anyway. The dog looked up when she approached, ears back, like it was afraid of her; then it crouched in the dirt, as though guilty of something.

  “What have you got there, big boy? A nice juicy bone?” She risked a hand, but the dog retreated. She peered in the hole. For a moment, she thought she was seeing double. The bones were connected—and covered with dirt and shreds of discolored clothing. And something like a pointed rock stuck through a filthy shirt! She put a hand to her nose, though there was only the thick smell of earth. A gust of wind blew a pile of dead leaves in her face, and the bones seemed to move. She shivered.

  And then she screamed.

  * * * *

  Glenna was taking a walk across the back pasture. Sun out bright after a night of freezing rain—everything shining: rocks, the rusty maples, the white birches, their leaves spinning like gold coins. The mountains, gleaming purple and black. God but she loved it here. She loved Vermont, and she loved her farm, shrunk though it was now. It was once five hundred acres, rich with merino sheep brought from Spain by Glenna’s great-grandfather; he’d sold their fine oily wool as far off as Argentina and South Africa. Glenna still had a yellowy news clipping of her great-grandfather mourning the loss of Gold Nugget, his best ram, valued at $25,000. She’d like to have that kind of money now! But after World War I, her grandfather turned to dairy cows; when she was a child, a herd of Jerseys grazed in the meadow that still stretched to the foothills of the Green Mountains. Glenna’s father had been no farmer, though. No businessman, either—he’d had a talent only for making the wrong investments.