Mad Cow Nightmare (24 page)

What would upset Ruth as much as anything, Colm knew, was that her picture headed up the piece as if it were herself, and not the calves, who were ill. The photo showed Ruth pointing an irate finger at the camera—not a flattering photo, most likely taken by the reporters who had first invaded the farm when Nola Donahue defected. The caption under the photo read,
“Woman farmer protests USDA taking her calves.”
Ruth, he knew, hated the term “woman farmer.”

The newspaper stung his hand, like a hot pan you pick up off the stove. He dropped it on the kitchen table, wished he could burn it so Ruth wouldn’t see. But if she didn’t see it someone would tell her. And undoubtedly she’d receive some kind of missive from the USDA informing her of their findings—whatever their findings were—the article didn’t specifically say.

Should he take the paper to her? Try to pave the way for the bad news? How could one pave the way anyway? He had no lilies or roses to spread in his path. Just ill news that would devastate her. She’d made it through a husband’s defection, a son’s kidnapping, a daughter’s dangerous love affair, and kept her sanity. But this time he couldn’t predict her reaction.

In the past at least the farm had remained stable; the cows were milked twice daily; milk prices went up and down, but she kept her equilibrium. Now the farm was in serious danger of going under. An extraordinary emergency, the feds had called it. Jeez.

He had a nine o’clock appointment at the Realtors’ office, he had to leave. He could take the easy way out and roll up the paper, stuff it back into the blue plastic container hooked to the mailbox, pretend he’d never read it. Then let her call him and howl.

But they’d promised one another to be honest, straightforward, “in sickness and health”—all that sort of marriage thing, even though she was still putting off any wedding. Colm felt their relationship to be a marriage, for they’d been together almost continuously since the travellers moved in and she hadn’t objected. She needed him, he knew that. God knows he needed her! They loved each other—in or out of wedlock, it didn’t matter, he just wanted to be with her.

He called the office, cancelled the appointment. He’d wait here until milking was done, greet her with coffee and the bad news. He wouldn’t let her face it alone.

Chapter Eighteen

The driver Nola had hitched a ride with went suddenly quiet. She’d been talkative at first, a thin gray wiry woman with small nervous hands and broken nails, driving fifty in a thirty-mile zone. She’d bombarded Nola with questions. Now there was only the drone of the engine, the car slowing down like she might dump Nola right here in the road.

“You can let me out at the light,” Nola said. They were coming to a crossroads. They were in a large town called Minesville, about a third of the way to Buffalo, according to the map she’d bought with her last dollar bill. The thruway junction sign was up ahead; she might catch a ride with someone headed to Buffalo. She’d had no news of the outside world for days now—though most of all she worried about Keeley, about leaving him with Tormey. Her neighbor, Penny Thornton, had promised to keep an eye on him, but you couldn’t always count on a busy neighbor—Penny had grown children who were always coming home with problems. Nola wondered, too, what the police were up to, what they thought they knew about Ritchie’s death.

Ritchie’s face came into her head as it so often did—and mostly with those reins wound about his neck, his skin gone shades of green and purple. It was hard to conjure up earlier, more pleasant images. They’d lived off and on together for years now. Not good years, but there were some lighter moments—especially in the beginning, she had to remember that. Like the time he’d brought her a fistful of wildflowers on her birthday and said, “Let’s go to the diner and celebrate,” and they did, and made love that night on the sofa, laughing, because they could hear her brother snoring in the back of the trailer. And the time on the farm when she’d sprained her right arm, was trying to wash up after a meal, and he took the rag from her and did all the pans, scrubbed them clean while she just sat in a chair and watched a show on TV. Then he’d sat down to read a car magazine while she read the paper. They were like a longtime married couple.

But mostly there were the bad times, like when he’d come home drunk—before they’d left Carolina for the New York farm—his face like a dead man’s face, and she was in the rocking chair, peeling carrots for a stew. He dropped to her feet and, clutching her legs, said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” a dozen times over. And wouldn’t say what he was sorry for, but she smelled the lilac scent on him. She knew that scent—on a sleep-around woman in their clan. She’d pushed him off and run out into the woods behind the trailer and sobbed out her hurt and anger. And what did he do but lose his temper and shout that it was no use apologizing because she never understood him. And then he knocked her to the ground and gave her a mean kick.

Was she glad he was dead? Maybe, yeah. Well, not glad so much as relieved, like a hundred pounds had fallen off her back and now she could stand up straight. Guilt and all.

The light was green—she’d been in outer space—and they’d driven past the corner. The car was speeding up. “I forgot to remind you,” she told the woman. “Would you mind stopping at the next light?” There was a light two blocks ahead, it would probably turn red by the time they got there.

But the woman just clutched the wheel like she was some race driver and zoomed around a corner just before the light. Before Nola could catch her breath—for she was feeling spooked now—a red brick building came into view, a sign read MINESVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT. “Not here!” Nola cried, but the woman pulled up in front and jammed on the brakes. “You’re going in here,” the woman said.

“What? Why?” Nola asked, her nerves shooting off like fireworks. The woman didn’t answer. She was keeping her distance like she had a killer female in the car and didn’t want to be stabbed or shot. Nola reached for the door handle, ready to run, but the woman was quicker. She slipped out and locked the doors from the outside and Nola was trapped. The woman ran into the police station, her heels kicking up like brown hooves, her hair ashes in the wind. The metal door clanged behind her.

Nola looked about for a heavy object, her heart thumping. If she could break a window ... If she could get her body through the rear right window, which was open a third of the way . . . She’d lost weight from the running and the lack of food, she couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds—she might make it. She climbed into the backseat, yanked on the window, but it wouldn’t open any farther. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she whispered, wishing she had her rosary beads, but even rosary beads wouldn’t open the window for her. She recalled a rat that had come into her trailer once, how she’d gone after it with a boot. How it slithered through a hole so tiny you’d think it could never make it, but the sleek body shrank to a gray streak and it vanished.

Nola knelt on the seat and examined the window. When the head got through, she recalled from helping a neighbor midwife, the body followed. It was the height of the window that was the problem—heaving her body up to push through.

She heard voices: the woman’s nasal tone, and then a man’s deep bass—the cops, sure. She grabbed the edge of the window and stuck her head out, sucked in belly and breast—her breasts were pancakes anyway—gave a giant push with her legs, and thrust through. Her dress ripped. It was like diving into an empty pool, landing on her palms. The pain racked her bones; it was hard gravel, a mean landing. But she was out. The cop was shouting, the woman too: she jumped to her feet and ran. The police station was on a corner, she rounded it; there was a mall up the street, people milling about. She ran into the mall, heard the whistles, voices shouting, “Stop! We need to talk. Stop!”

She didn’t need to talk to any cop. She had to get to Tonawanda. She didn’t want to land in any police station. The thruway was close by, she’d get a ride—they couldn’t stop her now.

She ducked into an elevator, going down. Huddled there in the corner. Ignored a child’s stare at her ripped clothing, got off with two other people, entered the crowd again. Had she lost the cop? She didn’t know. Something on the loudspeaker, calling her name. “Nola Donahue,” it called, “Nola. We want to talk to you, Nola. . . .”

* * * *

Ruth’s cows were grazing, heads down in the field, like an artist’s still-life drawings: The maternal Jane Eyre with her half-grown heifer, the spirited Esmeralda, and Charlotte 2 with her calf, born in the spring. There was loudmouth Dolly; Oprah, always first in line for food and hollering for it; Elizabeth, who’d been speared in the side by Ruth’s ex-husband’s mistress but pulled through and was pregnant again. And feisty Zelda, out of her sick bed, off to herself like the balky independent she was. Ruth knew them all so well, their quirks and personalities. They were her surrogate children, she’d birthed and milked and fed and nurtured them in sickness and health; she loved those cows.

How hard it was, though, to look at them and imagine them dead. Colm had shown her the
Free Press
article at eight that morning, sat her down on the sofa, his arms circling her, as if he thought she might suddenly collapse, to read the bad news. At first she just stared, she couldn’t believe what she’d read. Her calves sick? Her new calves that gazed up with eyes like rich brown butter; then, released, galloped off after their mothers like young mares? Healthy, she’d have bet her life on it. Healthy!

She’d got on the phone then and called those agents, was put on hold for twenty minutes while Colm mumbled soothing words into her ears—his arms made the scenario absurd and impossible. When a human being came on the line, she expected a retraction. It wasn’t her calves sick, no, couldn’t be. They’d made a mistake. It was the newspaper getting it wrong.

And then the harsh truth. The apologies, for not getting right back to her. They’d intended to call today; some “arrogant” reporter had gotten there first—like it was the media’s fault that the calves were taken, would probably be slaughtered; that her whole herd was now in quarantine.

Quarantine! She’d shrieked to hear the voice say it; it was like a death sentence. Her whole herd in danger of being taken away. “Zelda won’t accept that,” she’d hollered into the phone, and when the agent on the other end was suddenly quiet, she realized how irrational she sounded. The agent talked on and on about shared responsibility, the spread of disease, her deep apologies—”but for the good of the whole. . . .”

She thought of the ancient ritual of stoning. An innocent woman sacrificed “for the good of the whole.” Something wrong somewhere.

Afterward, Colm had mixed her a strong drink. She had one in her hand now, watching the cows—already dead in her vision. Seeing the field empty, the grass wild and overgrown, her friend Carol’s sheep—gone—for they, too, would be taken. Her whole universe, empty—because of two calves brought over by Colm’s Irish traveller relatives and sold to her. It was like a blaze of lightning, unexpected, striking her barn.

She balled her fists. She was angry at Colm, angry at the intruders. For the travellers
were
intruders. The letters to the editor were right. If they’d stayed where they came from, left her alone, none of this would have happened. She’d be milking daily and selling her milk—for a pittance maybe, but selling it. Paying her bills: to the vet, to Agri-Mark, to Allstate Insurance; paying off her ex-husband so the farm would be wholly hers.

She heard Maggie behind her somewhere, singing. Singing! When the world was dying in front of her eyes . . . She wheeled about, stumbled up the slope to the trailer where the woman was waltzing through the young trees and warbling, as though she had a whole audience at her feet.

“Stop that singing,” Ruth cried, “stop it! Get out of here. I don’t want you here. You’re bad luck. You’ve brought us only grief. You’re killing my cows! Now go in and pack. I want you off my land by tomorrow morning, the whole lot of you. You hear me, do you?” She knew herself irrational—couldn’t help it. She was possessed, she was one huge ball of rage.

Maggie stopped singing. She stared, openmouthed, dropped her arms at her sides. She ran, wailing, into the trailer. Ruth ran blindly past, up to the barn, where strong arms grabbed her, turned her about, held her close.

“Mother, I heard,” Sharon said, “Colm called me. Mother, it’s all right, we’ll get by. I’ll help, a friend of mine will help in the barn. You’ve been getting calls from neighbors. They’ll help, too, they promise.”

Ruth broke away from her daughter, ran into the house, staggered upstairs, off balance—flung herself on her bed, buried her face in the pillow. It was all she could do, she couldn’t work in the barn. “You’ll have to help, yes, Sharon,” she shouted at her daughter, who’d followed her up into the room. “You’ll have to milk till they come for the herd. I want my cows content till the last minute. I can’t do it myself, Sharon, I can’t. I’m like—like I’ve had a stroke or something.”

She pushed her face into the pillow. She was dry-eyed, she couldn’t even cry. “You’re in shock,” she heard Sharon say, “I’ll call the doctor.”

Ruth couldn’t protest. Her arms and toes were tingling, her brain and body separated, her mind hovering somewhere up on the white ceiling. No, she had no mind. She was empty, she was a black-and-white silhouette out in the pasture. If you touched it, it would crumble to dust.

She lay there, even when she heard voices a million years later, creaking up the stairs; someone talking softly, squeezing her arm, puncturing it with a needle, and she bore it, she couldn’t resist, there was nothing left in her to act.

* * * *

Sharon found Maggie in hysterics—it was all too much. First her mother going to pieces—her pragmatic mother who usually took everything in stride. Then there was this Irish traveller who’d become Sharon’s cheerful friend—but weeping uncontrollably, flinging clothing, pots, pillows, potatoes into a sack while the young sister washed dishes with a mad look on her face and the grandmother scolded the pig who had wee-weed on the linoleum floor.