Mad Cow Nightmare (12 page)

“The missing traveller? The horse? Nothing at all?” she asked when he shook his head.

“Not a syllable. No woman, no horse.”

“What have they done to try to find them? I mean, they can’t just sit on their heels and hope woman or horse will show up at The Inferno for brunch and someone will call in a sighting.”

Colm was half listening, CNN had his attention. He squeezed her shoulder to acknowledge her presence and took a bite of the Moo Shu. The blond newsperson was gushing on with her ill tidings. Everything had gone to pieces in the world: record low milk prices, a shaky stock market, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, floods in Europe, an earthquake in China. “What can they do?” Colm said, getting around to Ruth’s question. “Cops in five states and Canada are on the lookout for Nola Donahue. They’ve checked the Morgan Horse Farm—no Ophelia. They’ve called horse owners everywhere, put up posters—nothing. No horses galloping down the

interstate.”

She had to smile at the thought of a horse galloping down the interstate. “Franny’s been calling here twice a day to see if I’ve heard any news. She says the police are just sitting on their butts.”

“Jeez. She’s been down at the station, too. The chief hides in the men’s room when they come, but yesterday that fool Franny marched right in after him. He had his pants down, damned embarrassing.”

“That’ll teach him to hide.”

There was another commercial about arthritis, a dog doing yoga—she liked that one. She’d quit yoga after the instructor got her twisted up one day like a pretzel. She hated to give up, but really! Who wanted to squat like a dog, on all fours? The only posture she could do to perfection was one called “the corpse.”

Colm’s plate was on the floor. He was moving in on her, both arms around her neck, taking those little sips from her lips again,
pup pup pup,
then a long one that ended with a small explosion of saliva. She had to laugh.

When he’d finished his dessert—
her,
he allowed—he hit the button again and the screen showed a farm in upstate New York. They’d found two sick calves on it—Friesian calves from the Netherlands. The beasts had begun shedding weight, acting skittish as kittens, according to the farmer, who’d shot them. At first he tried to hide the fact, but a neighbor informed the authorities. “It might be Mad Cow,” the blond newsperson warned, her eyebrows locked tragically together, “a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy—TSE. TSEs are fatal and untreatable. They ravage the brain, causing symptoms that range from dementia to psychosis and paralysis. And are not caused by germs,” she went on gravely, as though she were reporting the sinking of the
Titanic,
“but ‘prions,’ normal protein molecules that become infectious when folded into abnormal shapes. You can freeze them, boil them, soak them in formaldehyde—and they’ll emerge no less deadly than before.”

Suddenly a cow leaped onto the screen, as big as life: she was lurching crazily across a field, skin hanging loose on the bones; drooling, arching her back, waving her head, then charging headlong, mad-eyed, at the camera as though she would charge right into the viewer’s home. Ruth cried out, drew back in horror—her tea spilled into her lap.

“It’s an old film,” Colm said, flinging an arm about her neck. “Some farm back in ‘98, in South Downs, England. Not New York. Far from here, Ruthie.”

But it had been right in her living room! She let Colm rub and rub her neck and shoulders, but the image stayed behind her eyes.

The screen switched to a commercial on irritable bowel syndrome; Ruth felt her own bowels contract. She’d feel symptoms of every ailment they prescribed for—headaches, incontinence, heartburn, arthritis. Now fear. Colm was gripping her hand but she was too numb to feel it.

“Where in New York?” she whispered. “They didn’t say.”

“Government’s probably trying to cool it,” he said. “The media’s jumping in ahead of them.”

She nodded. “Maybe we should thank the media. Or should we? I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry. Your calves are healthy, right? I saw the old lady bottle-feeding them.” Her skin was turning blue where he was squeezing her hand.

“The White House has ordered ...” the reporter went on, quickly changing the subject as if to say, “So what? We’ve got more important news. We’re planning to invade East Mongolia, we think it has nuclear power.”

“Upstate New York,” Ruth said, realizing. “She did say upstate New York. That limits it. That’s where that farm is—in upstate New York. Your relative’s farm, Colm. Where I bought my two calves.” At the time it had seemed a good deal. She grabbed the remote and hit the
MUTE
button. “So let’s talk.”

“Haven’t we been?”

“About this latest. You know what it might mean, don’t you?”

“Look, upstate New York’s a big area. We don’t know where this happened—the feds are keeping it on ice till they prove it’s Mad Cow. Could be anywhere within a radius of three hundred miles. Let’s not panic—yet.”

“Yet,” she repeated. Anywhere in New York was too close to home for comfort. When she’d first read about the disease it was clear across the ocean, in the UK and Europe, a safe distance. She’d never have thought of buying a calf from the UK or Europe. Upstate New York had seemed safe. A chill travelled her spine, like a spill of ice cubes. It seemed to be moving from farm to farm, that invisible plague, like a giant mowing machine, eliminating everything in its path.

She couldn’t think what to do. She didn’t want to think. She and Colm looked at one another in silence. “Oh God,” she said, and buried her face in her hands. “If I’d never listened to you, bought those calves. You and your crazy relatives! How’d they ever find you anyway?”

It was fate, she thought, fate. His fate and now her fate.

“I told you,” he said stubbornly, “but you’d only half listen. Darren’s mother—she’s a non-traveller—had some kind of genealogy done and Darren found it. Dad’s name was on it—on the non-traveller side, I mean.”

“Please, Colm—don’t keep saying ‘on the non-traveller side.’ You sound so biased.”

“Well, they do have a reputation. You heard about that woman who slapped her kid in the parking lot and they put her on the news and found she was an Irish traveller? Lies, thievery, beatings. NBC hit all the low notes.”

“The old stereotypes,” said Ruth, who had grown quite fond of Maggie and, in particular, the tough old grandmother with her potbellied pig. Boadie had fallen in love with the New York calves, was practically nursing them with her own saggy dugs.

They were quiet a moment while the TV flashed on in silence and the words “upstate New York” took on new meaning for Ruth. “Why,” she cried, “if that’s the Leary farm, it’s where that Nola woman could have contracted it, that CJD. Good Lord, can you really catch it from a cow?”

“Mostly from eating infected beef, I guess. We’ll have to find the woman to see if she did.” He went on about women in Papua, New Guinea, who ate their female dead in a ritual of respect—and for the protein. “They were dying from something the tribe called
‘kuru,
’ which means shaking or shivering—then stupor and death. They thought it a curse. Anyway, someone did autopsies. The brains looked like the brains of people with CJD. That
kuru
started spreading like the plague. I mean, it
was
the plague. And your cows are ‘cannibals.’ The meal they eat—from rendered pigs, chickens, cows.”

“Stop!” she said. “Mine’s an organic farm. My cows only eat grass and grains.”

“But was the farm Darren bought those two calves from— organic?”

“Oh!” she said. She jumped up, she couldn’t sit another minute. “But we don’t know. We don’t know it’s our travellers’ farm. We don’t know! You’re right, there must be hundreds of farms in that area. Thousands. Right, Colm, right?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Thousands of farms. We’ll just have to hope, won’t we?—that it won’t affect—our farm.”

“
Our farm?”

“Yours, mine. Our children’s.”

“Yes.” She gave in to his appropriation, patted his hand. Colm had no children of his own; she’d have to share with him.

She sat back down, leaned into him, and he put an arm around her shoulder; pulled her so close she thought for a minute he’d halt breath. But she didn’t want him to stop holding her. They were partners now; he and she would be the wall that would keep out the curse—that
kuru
thing. Maybe she
should
have him move in for good, the way he wanted.

But what could a wall of flesh do against a bacteria—a “prion”— that you couldn’t see, that could float in a dark cloud over the pasture fence, then ooze in through the barn door?

* * * *

Maggie was taking an afternoon walk with her dog through the lower pasture, swinging her arms vigorously, singing to the birds, the cows—whoever would listen. A chickadee came down to perch on her hand when she held out a handful of sunflower seed. She warbled and it warbled back. Maggie was at heart an optimist, life wasn’t going to get her down. For one thing, Nola was safe, at a place called the Healing House—she’d had a note. They were all women in there, safe from their abusive men. Safe from Ritchie— though Ritchie never hurt Nola bad, or so Nola claimed. But Maggie had seen the occasional bruise on her friend’s cheeks and arms. She wouldn’t put anything past treacherous old Ritchie. And wasn’t there such a thing as verbal abuse? Wasn’t it abuse to drag her forcibly from that hospital?

The black-capped chickadee flew away, its beige breast gleaming in the sun. The dog trotted off, investigating some interest of its own, and Maggie continued on her walk, deep down into the pasture. She squeezed through the wires on the fence and moved on down to the beaver pond. She could see the log and straw house where the beavers lived—it was thrilling. One night she’d left a carrot and the beaver took it, scrambled right up to her and took it! Maggie loved wild animals, all animals, though not cows so much. It was hard to love cows when you had to be mopping up their feces all the time. She picked her way through the wild raspberry bushes, a rhododendron that had grown leggy—years ago someone had lived here, there was still a stone foundation. She imagined a woman, youngish like herself, strolling through the brush where the leaves sang in the wind like silver dollars falling onto a table and clinking together.

Almost to the beaver pond she halted, stopped by voices. She knew those voices, they were as familiar as her own. The voices came toward her and she crouched down, ducked her head into her arms, her heart drumming. Neither voice would like being overheard. Even Darren had a temper sometimes—never abusive, but it could flare up, and she’d have to disappear, let it simmer down.

She heard the word “Uncle,” and then Darren breaking in with the old tune: “I’m not coming back, Ritch, I tole you that a million times, now quit harping on it. Uncle’s in trouble anyway, you know that. Can’t pay his bills. Now this disease. I tole him his calves were acting funny. Soon there won’t be any farm.”

Ritchie said, “Come on, what disease? They was just off their feed, that’s all.”

“The Willmarth tole me,” Darren said. “It was on the news. Some farm in upstate New York. You know Uncle got those Friesian calves—made me bring two of ‘em here.”

“Then he needs you,” Ritchie said. “Needs the both of us.”

“For god’s sake, Ritch, what’s with all this loyalty crap? I never seen much love lost between you two.”

“He’s blood, yours and mine. We gotta stick together. You’re my younger brother.”

“Yeah, and you love me, right? You love my woman, too, huh? What you did to her sister, thinking it was Maggie—”

“What? What did I do to her?”

The voices were rising now. “You know. You gotta live with it. So do I. You’re a bastard, Ritch, a born bastard. I don’t care you’re my brother. And what you did to Nola—where’s she at anyway?”

“I got her. She’s not going anywhere.”

“Hang on now! She’s in that safe house, Maggie says. No men allowed. You stay away from her, hear?”

“No, I don’t hear, g’dammit.”

They were fighting. She heard the grunts and slaps, the cries of anger. Then one of them broke and ran back along the edge of the pond. She could hear the brush breaking, dead logs rolling into the water from the running feet. She heard Darren shouting. She heard the words “Nola” again, and “Uncle,” and her own name, and then her dog came leaping through the underbrush, barking. She crouched lower but the dog found her. She held her breath, tried to shoo him away with her hands. The footsteps came closer. The dog jumped away from her and she heard Darren’s voice:

“Hey, pooch, what’re you doing way down here? Come on, boy, too wet for you. We gotta get the prickers outa your tail.” And luckily the dog followed.

She couldn’t move for a time; she was trying to think through what she’d heard. Darren knew about Ritchie and her sister, and here she’d thought that long-ago pregnancy a secret from both men. But Ritchie still didn’t know the outcome, she was pretty sure of that. And worse, Ritchie had Nola again, he’d somehow got her out of that healing place. How had he known where she was? Now he was back here, nosing about. How many times had he been here? Did he see Nola’s letter? He was obviously waiting for Darren to give in, go back with him to Uncle’s. Uncle had Ritchie in some kind of bind. Blackmail? Money needs? Something about Ritchie’s past? She didn’t know. Uncle had no use for Ritchie, he just wanted Darren back. Maybe Ritchie’s inheritance depended on his working there, that was probably it.

Oh, what did she know? Not a damn thing for certain.

When she pulled herself away from the prickers that held her skirt and sleeves she could hardly stand. It was like she’d grown old in half an hour. Like she was an old woman, older even than Mammy Boadie. Bent forward, trudging back up the hillside, back to a changed world.

And there was Ritchie, coming out of the trailer with a paper bag in his hand. How dared he! But he was the last person in the world she wanted to confront. She ducked behind the trailer, and just in time, for he glanced about like the sneak he was, and went running across the upper pasture toward the woods.