Harvest of Bones

by Nancy Means Wright

  Suddenly, he was there, a .22 in his quivering hands. “Outta my house,” he said, but she stood her ground. He wheezed, and the rifle went off. A bullet zinged past her ear and through the top glass of the door. The glass splintered into her hair. She jumped back. The man was crazy; he’d lived too long alone. And to think Emily had been here.

  “Hey,” she yelled, “I only wanted to ask you a question—about that sign, that logo. It’s interesting, and I just wanted to know the story behind it. I heard the design came originally from your family. I’m not trying to—”

  A second bullet thudded into the floor at her feet.

  “All right, all right, you’ve made your point,” she said, her nerves shattering like the glass, and she spun out the door; she raced, crazy-legged, across the lawn to her car. Already the women were dashing out on the porch, panicked; they’d heard the shots. Marna was screaming at her. She heard someone say “Police”; they would phone the station. She ran back to the Healing House, tried to calm them. “It was just that old man; he’s lived too long alone. He saw me coming the back way. I was prying. I can understand. Of course he wouldn’t shoot me; he only meant to scare ... Now calm down, Marna, calm down. I’ll explain to the police. They’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

  But Marna had flung herself into a sofa, was sobbing. Another woman dropped down beside her, cradled her in her arms. “It’s all right, Ma’am, we’ll get to the bottom of this....”

  But it wasn’t, was it? Angie had been poisoned, maybe Rena. Glenna was still missing. And there was an unknown skeleton in the hole in Glenna’s backyard. It wasn’t all right at all.

  * * * *

  Back home, Ruth skipped her errands; she’d send Emily to the food co-op. She switched off the engine, ran straight for the barn. She just wanted to be with the cows, wanted to do the evening milking. “Go home,” Tim said. “I’ve got it under control.” But he didn’t understand. She needed the work; she wanted to smell the cows, breathe them in, clean the manure off the floor, fork the hay into the troughs. She knelt down by Jane Eyre’s calf. It burrowed into her, mooing softly. She put her arms around it, smelled it; its body was warm and full of throbbing blood. “I love you, baby, I love you,” she told it, and it stood absolutely still then in her arms. If it were a cat, it might purr. Purring, mooing—that was giving back, returning love. That’s what she needed. Love. Work.

  She sat there until a shadow fell over her outstretched feet. It was Tim. When had his beard gotten so gray?

  “Well, make up your mind, lady, you gonna milk or not? ’Cause if you are, I got other things I can do. I’m still hurting from that root canal. This farm …”

  She stood up, gazed out the barn window. “I know. This farm. But we’ll make it work. We will, Tim. We will.”

  “Sure, we will,” he said, his whiskery face softening. “So go do the milking, will ya? The fences are holding—so far. Good luck!” And he shook his head as she smiled. “Women,” he said, for the hundredth time. “No man’s never gonna understand ’em.”

  This time, she laughed out loud. She didn’t understand herself—so how could any man?

  * * * *

  When Fay asked the hitchhiker to tell about himself—she loved to hear other people’s stories—she could feel him shrink back into his spine. “It’s okay,” she said, “you don’t have to tell. We don’t have to talk. It’s just that—well, I’ve been to visit my daughter and grandson, you see. I left them, you know, and I felt bad about it. I mean, I left my husband, and that meant leaving them, too. Though she’s not young. Patsy. I’d never have left her as a child, you know. I wouldn’t—couldn’t!— have. Though there were times I was tempted. Because of Dan, I mean.”

  “Dan’s your husband?” She felt him coming back out of his shell, interested in what she had to say. What she felt compelled to say, like some ancient mariner, back from the murky deeps.

  “Uh-huh. He’s a good guy, really—everyone says so. It just didn’t work out, that’s all. I felt kind of, you know, squeezed in that relationship.”

  “Yeah,” the old man said in his funny gruff voice. “I know that feeling. Had it myself. I suppose there was—pardon me—somebody else? Another woman? For—what’s his name?”

  “Dan? Now, oh yes. But not then. I mean, he adored women, and they adored him. Especially the elderly ones. He was always on call for coffee, bridge—I don’t play bridge—he’d fix their furnaces.”

  “Their plumbing?”

  She caught the joke, laughed. “Really, not that I know of, but he liked to be away, you see, out of the house—anyplace but in it, with me—even though he had all those chickens. We had an egg farm.”

  “Farm? Any horses?” the man said.

  “No horses. But how’d you like to live with a thousand chickens? Roosters crowing every dawn, so you can never sleep in late when you want to. Dan loves those chickens, those hens, those roosters.”

  “No horses, though.”

  “No. You had horses?”

  “The wife did. A horse. God, she loved that horse.”

  “More than you, you mean,” Fay said, thinking of Dan’s chickens, how he’d crow over them, their colors, their shapes, the size of their eggs.

  He thought a minute. “More than me, yeah. Always pampering it, talking to it, riding off on it. Wanting me to ride. Calling me a sissy ’cause I didn’t.” He banged a fist on his knee. “Fuck,” he said softly.

  “You didn’t talk to her about it? Make her understand the horse was coming between you?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I did. I... I, um, dug a hole, you see.”

  She braked quickly for a dog running across the road. The car swerved. “Sorry,” she said, suddenly nervous. “You dug a hole for the horse. You meant to ... bury it there?”

  “I did,” he said, pleased with himself.

  “But one horse,” she said, thinking of the thousand chickens back in Cabot. “Surely you weren’t jealous of one horse?”

  Now he was angry. She felt him rise up out of his backbone. “One horse. She slept with the damn thing. Oh yes, two or three times I woke up, and she wasn’t in bed. She was in the barn, lying in a pile of hay—next to that goddamn horse.” He stole a look at Fay. “Made me wonder what she did with it. You know about shepherds and their sheep, do you?”

  Fay would have laughed if she hadn’t been so nervous. She thought she knew who this man was. They were driving into Shoreham now. Soon the turn would come up for Branbury, where she’d planned to let him out. So he could hitchhike over to the thruway. Albany, he’d said. He had money enough for a bus to the city.

  “And that wasn’t all she slept with,” he cried. “I could have swallowed that horse thing, I could have. But not those others!”

  “Oh?”

  “So I up and left.”

  “You left her? Your wife? Without saying anything?”

  “I meant to. I think. But... things happened. I never got around to it. I just left. I didn’t come back till—”

  Fay felt the tiny hairs quiver on the back of her neck. It had to be old Mac, Glenna’s husband, who they’d thought was in that hole, but who’d been found down in New York, brought back, and then disappeared. Someone must have done in the bones that were in that hole, and put Mac’s hat on him. Her hands quivered on the wheel. She didn’t want to alarm him. But she had to get him back to the farm. Or to Ruth’s.

  No, either way he’d be suspicious; he’d get out, run off. There had to be another way.

  There was a small convenience store outside of Shoreham. There was a phone, a bathroom. She remembered her Philadelphia lover, his weak kidneys. She’d make a phone call.

  “You mind if we stop?” she said, trying to steady her voice. “I’m dying for a soda. I’ve had this thirst since I left Cabot. They’ve got a bathroom, too.”

  “No soda,” he said. “But you can buy me a Hershey bar. With almonds. I don’t like the plain chocolate. Reminds me of Ex-Lax. My mother made me eat that crap
.”

  “I don’t blame you,” she said, squealing to a stop in front of the store. She dropped the keys in her pocket, just in case. “Give me a few minutes. Sure you don’t want to come in?”

  He was slumped down in his seat. He looked exhausted; his eyes were filming over. “Take your time,” he murmured.

  And she did. She had to. No one answered at Ruth’s or Colm’s, so she left messages. It could be fifteen, twenty minutes before Hartley and Willard Boomer got here. Lucky Willard had dropped by the farm. But already Mac was snoring, little gusts of noisy breaths coming out of his mouth, like steam.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alwyn poured a trickle of fenthion in the cocoa he was making. Oh no, wouldn’t hurt a human, not a bit, said so, he recalled, on the label. Just keep her quiet down there when the police come. He was expecting them, sure. That Willmarth woman, she’d go straight home and call, yes, she would. He chuckled to think of the scare he’d given her. Wouldn’t’ve hurt her, no, just a little scare so she’d learn to mind her own business. He added a spot of milk, stirred in the fenthion. Or was it that? He remembered now he’d used up the fenthion. When the second flock come along, he bought the other stuff—fellow he knew sold it. Put it in the same box, had he? But it was all the same. For rodents, birds, sure. He didn’t want to kill her now, did he? Just wanted to make her realize. She couldn’t laugh at him. She couldn’t push him in the creek like that. Lock him in the cellar with no food!

  Was it Glenna or Annie down there? He couldn’t think. Comes down to the same in the end, sure, he thought. Women. They’s all alike.

  He descended the broken stone steps into the basement, opened the door to the underground room. She was lying there, quiet, Ma’s pill still working, that white hair (for a panicky moment, he thought it was Ma) sprawled across the torn sofa pillow he’d gotten her when she complained.

  “Here, uh, Annie, nice hot cup of cocoa here.”

  She grunted. “Wha?”

  He yanked her up to a sitting position. “Cocoa,” he said. “Now drink it. You won’t get nothing else till suppertime. You’ll have a long wait.”

  She didn’t respond, just glared at him, like a hurt wild bird, reached out as if to strike him. He didn’t need that. So he set it down on the floor beside her.

  He heard a knocking upstairs. They were here. But he was ready, sure. His rifle loaded. He was angry now. He scrambled up the cellar steps, then locked the door leading down there. Had he bolted the secret door? He couldn’t think. They were banging at the front door—hollering, top of their lungs. Two, three of ‘em, he counted, peering out the corner of the shade. Sneaky sons a bitches. Wanting his space.

  Alwyn sat. Sat in his mother’s rocking chair; he’d pulled it out of the kitchen into the parlor. He sat and rocked, the old .22 across his knees, cocked. Let ’em come in and get him.

  More bangs on the door, the old wood cracking. “Bagshaw? We know you’re in there. Bagshaw! Open up now. We got a couple questions to ask.”

  He clasped his fingers around the metal gun. Middle finger on the left hand wouldn’t hold; it stuck up—arthritis. But hell, he had four more on that hand. He was right-handed anyway; his ma’d made him be. Used to eat with the left, write with it, till she’d made him switch. The devil was left-handed, she said.

  “Bagshaw! Open up or we’re coming in.”

  Let ’em come. He’d show ’em a welcome all right. He picked up the gun, aimed at the front door. But it was quiet out there now. Had they moved? Gone around back? He rocked the chair back into a corner, where he could see the windows. If they’d passed by, they were crouching. Wouldn’t see nothing in that cellar window, no. All dead weeds climbing up, and no window in that slave room.

  Why, they had no right, no right to break into a man’s home! What’d he done anyway, except kill a few worthless birds? Something else, too.... He pushed it out of his mind. His brother, Denby, now, he was the one they should’ve been after.

  Denby only a half-brother anyhow, sure. He knew. Ma couldn’t hide it—never mind they both had yellow hair. That man, hanging around while Alwyn was growing up. Ma getting pregnant with Denby, the fellow taking off. He wouldn’ta done that, not with Annie. Not if she’d stuck with him. But she hadn’t. Now she was paying. Christ, the door breaking, the pine splintering; he rose up out of his chair, the gun clumsy in his stiff fingers. He straightened it, aimed. They halted. He felt the power back inside; he moved ahead, the gun steady in his hands. “Git out,” he said. “Git the hell outta my house. Git, I said!” He had the bead on them, two husky fellows, show-off badges on their shirts.

  “Now Alwyn, we only want to ask some questions, that’s all. Put down that rifle, Alwyn. You know you don’t want to assault an officer, Alwyn—you know what that means.”

  The fellow took a step forward and that was it. Alwyn fired at his feet. “Next time,” he shouted, “it’s the belly. Outta my house.” He was shaking now; he could feel it, like a fit coming on. The gun vibrating in his hands—and then it wasn’t there at all; it was lifting out of his fingers, seemed to be levitating. Like it was the devil stealing it away—and when he turned, there he was. Big devil in a blue shirt, with a shiny badge. Taking away his gun, snapping handcuffs on his hands—couldn’t get the cuffs over the stuck-up finger, bent it down. He screamed with the pain.

  “Sorry,” the devil said, “better see a doctor for that,” and pushed him out of the house, out on the porch, down the steps, across the frozen lawn, into the backseat of a police car.

  He thought he could hear Annie laughing as they drove off. Laughing and cackling like the devil was inside her. He’d warned them. “In the cellar,” he’d said, “an Antichrist in the cellar.”

  One of the men had grimaced, but he’d gone down there anyway. And seconds later, he’d come up, holding out empty palms. “The Antichrist!” Alwyn had shouted again, but no one had listened. The devil had him, cock and balls, was bearing him off.

  * * * *

  Down in the cellar, Glenna was riding her mare. Out of the damp barn, into the open pasture, across the narrow footbridge that spanned the creek behind her farm, into the fields beyond. She liked to ride in the open, in the wind, and Jenny did, too. They were a pair, sun in their faces, grass and clover in the nose. It was fall, Glenna’s favorite season. Life smelled sweeter then: as if, with winter coming, it was a last hurrah for the senses. On they rode. The field stretched ahead; it had no boundaries, no fences. The grass unrolled like a green carpet under their pounding feet. She was free; she owed no one: not Mother, not Mac, not those others who were always pestering, wanting this, that from her: land, milk, honey, flesh. She was free!

  Till she fell. It was sudden, the way a log dropped into your path, or a root reached up to grab you, unexpected, or a shot knocked you off your feet, catapulted you into a trap. Bellowing, like the bull her father had once when it met an electric fence, he dropped down on her—the Booby. She saw him clearly now; it was like bolts of lightning—breaching her everywhere: in the groin, thighs, breasts: She screamed, and he slapped a hand over her mouth: His sex inside her—the thing that had lain coiled like a snake in the bottom of her mind all these years. The thing she had to get out, out into the clean air.... For there was no grass now, only cold cement, the place dank and reeking of mold, rot, dead mice, her nose in something wet—had she soiled herself? No—smelled like chocolate. She remembered now: He’d brought it; she’d tried to drink it. She loved chocolate, and now she’d spilled it. No—not all—half an inch maybe in the bottom. She was in a cellar, trapped by a Bagshaw. Trapped, like some skunk or fox.

  Upstairs: voices, a shot! Someone coming to release her—footsteps nearby. She tried to scream, but only a hiss came out. “Here,” she mouthed, “down here. Here. Here-re ...”

  And then the footsteps retreating, everything still. Somewhere outside a car speeding off, a cat mewling.

  She crawled toward the door. It was shut—had he locked it? She’d get out someho
w. He wouldn’t keep her here, no.

  And she stopped, almost there, but exhausted, sprawled on her belly, on the hard floor.

  In a far corner, a startled mouse dashed back into its hole. And finally all was quiet.

  * * * *

  Eustacia was starting to freshen for the first time, and Ruth was at her side. Tim argued that the healthy cow would drop the calf unassisted—hadn’t Zelda done it? If there was any problem, though, he’d be on call.

  “Come on, you think I’m a Park Avenue lady? I can’t take it? I’ve had three of my own. How many’ve you birthed?”

  “You got me there. It’s just I know you got other stuff on your mind. But you know where you can find me.”

  “Alibi?”

  The Alibi was the local bar, and Tim was fond of it. Though who was she to keep him from his small pleasures? He gave her a hard week’s work. He threw up his arms in surrender and strode out, Joey trotting on his heels. “You call now, you want help,” said Joey, echoing his mentor.

  She turned over a pail and sat down to wait. Some births were quick, but some took hours. Ruth didn’t hold with Pete’s method, tying a rope around a calf’s feet and hauling it out. It was like using forceps on a baby: hurry the birth, maybe damage the child. So she’d wait.

  It was true, she had her mind on more than a new calf being born. Mac was back, although Colm would deal with that. Glenna was still missing. The police were investigating the back garden where the bird entrails were buried. They were checking the tires of Bagshaw’s pickup against the prints on the mountain road; they’d searched his house after they took him, were interrogating Bagshaw himself. Of course he’d say he knew nothing, and maybe he didn’t. He was a little crazy, but he’d never done anything criminal, as far as she knew. But human beings were unpredictable, even within families—she’d learned that, all right, in the past two years. She’d go back there when she had time, see for herself. At least check on that cat.