Harvest of Bones (2 page)

Homer Flint was a second cousin three or four times removed. She’d never met him, but he drove a hard bargain; he wasn’t giving anything away, not to an obscure relative. Imagine, $250 a month for a run-down farm without even a cow. She’d had to rent one for the atmosphere. Fay was a flat-lander, she had to admit. Though she’d lived thirty-two years in Vermont with a seventh-generation Vermonter, maverick as the old cow out in the falling-down barn. That cow kicked every time Fay tried to get near. But she had been born in New York State, the daughter of an Italian father who seldom practiced his Catholicism, and a mother who traced her ancestry straight to the
Mayflower—
all that Puritan guilt. Fay couldn’t escape that past. Though she was trying. Trying to become a Vermonter, trying to make a new life in Branbury, Vermont, where at least there was a small college: concerts, lectures, a chance to meet people. Though she hadn’t met a conversational soul yet, except the hardware store clerk, who frowned at her out-of-town checks.

She went over to the General Electric range to boil some water. It must have been bought in the thirties. When she had customers—no, “guests,” they called them in the B and Bs— she’d have to get a decent stove. Another five hundred bucks. Yipes! Well, maybe a secondhand one. The water boiled slowly, and finally she filled a cracked cup with hot water and two Lipton tea bags. She needed the caffeine.

She didn’t belong anywhere, that was the trouble. After leaving Dan, she’d gone back to the city: six months down in Philadelphia with an ancient college friend she’d had a crush on once. He was sweet, but it was obvious that he missed his first wife. He had ten grandchildren, who kept eating up the larder and pulling threads out of her hooking. Every night before bed, he removed his prosthetic leg, but he complained about pains down there. And then was impotent in the bargain—saltpeter or something he took for his angina. Even so, he wanted to marry her. That was the worst of it. They all wanted a live-in to do the dishes, vacuum up the dirt, be an ornament on the holiday tree.

Now Fay was a pariah. She had no future. At fifty-six, how was she going to make herself a future? A few more years and she’d be a senior citizen. Or was it even less now? They kept lowering the ante; youth ended at twenty-nine these days. But was she going to sag around and let old age happen? Was she going to sit in a rocking chair all day and hook rugs? She pulled her achy bones upright. No ma’am. She was damned if she would.

Whoa! She knew it. Just sat down with her tea and someone was at the door. The liquid trembled in the cup; her spine tingled. Well, she had the room ready. She’d spent a small fortune in the local Ben Franklin buying pale blue polka-dot sheets and curtains for the grimy windows and a rag rug (she’d charge Flint for repairs; that was part of the bargain—he had a cushy job in the city). She took a deep breath, peered out the window. Saw it was no guest, but her sign. It was just that she hadn’t expected it to arrive in a gray cart dragged behind a rusted green bicycle.

“Come in—it’s not locked,” she hollered, and heard the man put a shoulder behind the door and bang it open.

“Hi,” he said, practically falling into the room, along with a sweep of orange leaves, then catching his weight on the door. “Willard Boomer here. I brought your new sign.” He jerked his head in the direction of the outdoors, then stood there, apologetically, as if he’d intruded on a tea party, hands clasped at the crotch of his paint-spattered jeans, an ingratiating smile on his lips. Nice face, though, rather sweet—hardly wrinkled, though he had white hair. She liked him. By phone, she’d ordered the old farm sign replaced, and he’d sent a sketch.

“Well, let’s take a look,” she said.

He squinted at the teacup still in her hand. “Gosh, I’ve come at a bad time. I should’ve phoned. Mother tells me that I’m impulsive. But I thought you’d of wanted it.”

“Yes. Of course! I really didn’t even feel like tea; I just poured it because ... well, I was alone, I guess.” She put the cup down with finality, grabbed a purple wool sweater from a hook on the door, and strode out. “Ooh,” she said. And when he made a gasping sound behind her, she said, “Not the sign. The wind! I’ve been away six months. Forgot how cold and windy it gets up here—so quick. It’s blowing all the pretty leaves off. And only half through October.”

“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.