Poison Apples (23 page)

“Pete, if this visit is about selling the farm, I won’t do it. I’ve told you that before. I’m not selling. You can’t convince me that Emily and Vic are better off living in town than on a farm. Anyhow, Emily will be in college next year—
with your
help.” She saw him grimace. “You can slash my cows, but you’re not going to make me give up farming. Any more than the Earthrowls are going to give up that orchard—I wonder how much you have to do with that, too! They came up here to heal, and that’s what the orchard is going to do for them. Now, this farm is
my
healing place. Since you left. So the subject is closed. Finished. Period.”

She shoved back her chair, stood up, still waving her arms for truce. She stumbled backward into the refrigerator, folded her arms, and glared back at Pete. He was standing now, too, his big face a black cloud, his arms at his sides, fingers curled into loose fists.

“Then you’ll have to buy me out, Ruth. You’ve got the house, the cows, but I own half the land. You agreed to that. My lawyer will let you know how much you owe me.”

He grinned a pumpkin grin and went to the door. “Thanks for the doughnuts,” he said, and let the screen door bang twice behind him.

Ruth sank into a chair, Pete’s fists squeezing her heart. She knew how her cow felt, slashed in the belly. Unable to give milk. What was there left to pay for his half of the land—except blood?

Chapter Forty-seven

Stan was home: Moira didn’t know whether that was a good move or not. On the one hand, he was in her care, in his own home, where she could oversee his diet, his exercise, his medications; where he could look out on the apple trees. On the other hand, because he
could
see the apples and all that needed to be done, he’d worry. Already he was sitting by the window, staring out morosely.

Suddenly he shouted, “He drob it! Budder drob a napple. All thumb, goddammee.” The pickers were working close to the house: She saw Rolly Butterfield laughing with his brother, who was juggling two apples. She seemed to be the only one now who could tell the twins apart. It had something to do with attitude. Hally had the better sense of humor, was the clown. She smiled. What was a bruised apple when laughter was in the air? Laughter was what the orchard needed: Laughter was healing.

He was only joking, she told Stan. “He’s back to work now. The brothers are good pickers. They’ve picked all over New England. You were smart to hire them.”

He growled, pacified a little by the compliment. Opal tripped down the stairs at that moment and he swiveled in his wheelchair. She gave him a sweet smile. She could be nice when she chose. “I’m going out to pick apples,” she announced.

Stan wasn’t sure about that. “Ooh don’ know ‘ow,” he said, shaking his head. “Shtayn’ help Moir ina how.”

Opal smiled her enigmatic smile and waltzed out the door. Minutes later Moira saw her running down to the tree Adam Golding was picking. Emily Willmarth was on a ladder in the tree beyond Adam’s; Moira saw her look over at Opal. Then Adam glanced at Emily. Rufus came along and motioned Opal over to a young tree where she wouldn’t need a ladder. He gave her a stick with a small basket on the end for hooking the apples, and gestured. The girl’s body showed her irritation; she wanted to pick like the others; wanted, Moira thought, to impress Adam. But Rufus was firm. The girl was a liability, his face said, she’d do what he ordered. And finally Opal grimaced and hooked an apple into the basket.

The apple world seemed serene then. The Butterfields were raking the apples off with lightning fingers. Adam and Emily were picking, under Rufus’s stern gaze, with solemn faces. Farther down in the orchard the Jamaicans were perched on their ladders like extensions of the trees. “Steal away, steal away ho-ome ...” Moira heard them sing. Zayon came up the path with a bin of apples, bearing it lightly in his brown arms, his face glowing as though it were an offering of myrrh and incense.

Stan’s head was dropping into his chest, he was napping in his chair—the medication made him drowsy, and Moira felt at peace. The police had stopped questioning Stan—for the time being, anyway; the interviewing was over, and there’d been no mischief for a few days now, not even a menacing phone call. She should be relieved. All seemed well with the apple world.

But then something thudded against the window. Stan’s head jerked up. He said, “Wha? Whazit?” And Moira sighed. It was the cardinal again, his feathers blood-colored, slamming again and again at the window where Stan sat in his wheelchair. She pushed her husband away from the window, into the kitchen.

“It’s all right,” she soothed. “It’s just that foolish bird. I’ll get you some juice. We’ll sit in here.”

She settled back into a kitchen chair. The room was dim with the curtains pulled, and she closed her eyes, breathed in the moment’s quiet.

Chapter Forty-eight

Colm had saved Bertha till last. Not because he wanted to savor the interview—no way!—but because he couldn’t face the woman until the end. Jeez, it had been embarrassing back in high school:

She’d send him notes, sidle up, bump her tray against his in the lunchroom. One day she’d knocked the tray right out of his hands and
he’d
had to clean it up, pay for more. What was it, he’d ask himself, looking in the lavatory mirror, that attracted her to him? He was a beanpole then, those hunger lines in the face . .. he was kind of homely, let’s face it. Maybe that was it: Bertha had a hankering for homely men, the underdog—someone who might notice her. Well, he looked better now, he thought he did—Ruth said so, anyway. His face had filled out, he’d grown out the old crew cut. Not because he wanted to, but because Ruth said he was behind the times; today’s men had a full crop of hair. He’d conformed—for Ruth’s sake. And it only seemed to attract Bertha the more. Jeez.

Actually, he hadn’t seen the woman for almost two years, since she got in trouble for trying to “save” young Vic Willmarth. She was on probation now. But the probation itself and the aftermath of that affair, according to Ruth, had increased her fear of the “devil” and the “images” she conjured up of that fictional figure. Colm didn’t want to be any part of those images.

Well, he thought, here goes, and he rang the bell—ding dong—on the door of the pink-shuttered house on 9 All Saints Lane. Bertha knew he was coming; still she oozed surprise when he showed up. “Why, Co-olm Han-na, you’re ear-ly!”

He checked his watch. It was true, he was early, damn it. She’d think he was eager. Was she really still holding the old torch? Just because he’d danced with her once at a freshman dance back in school? And she was a couple of grades above him then. He was pushing fifty now, a baby boomer. Well, he liked the sound of that: baby boomer, at least he was in somebody’s swing of things. But half a century. Jesus.

She ushered him in: practically yanked him in, her fingers were steel. She was dressed in purple: a purple sweater that emphasized her saggy breasts, a purple plaid pleated skirt, a purple-and-pink-flowered scarf. Her piano legs were stuffed into shiny black pumps. He supposed purple pumps were hard to find.

“I know how you like your coffee,” she murmured, trotting after a pitcher of cream.

“I don’t take cream, Bertha. Haven’t for years.”

She expressed surprise. “Well, you don’t have to worry. You’re not the least bit fat, for heaven’s sake. This is cream from a Jersey cow. Jerseys give the creamiest milk. I tell Pete he should raise Jerseys, ’stead of those old black and white Holsteins.”

“Bertha, Pete doesn’t raise anything anymore. Except maybe a little hell down in New York City.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she protested. “But he’s up here now, in town. He’s back. He was staying with me until. . . his woman arrived and preferred the inn.”

“You think he’ll stay on up here? In Branbury?”

“Who knows?” she said coyly. “He has work up this way now.”

“Oh, really?” Colm professed ignorance. “Doing what?” He watched her pour cream into his cup, gave up on that score. The coffee was weak as it was, a pale ocher color. He preferred Ruth’s strong coffee—it had muscle.

“Oh yes. He develops things. Farms, you know. He bought Lucien Larocque’s. About time, too. That old fool never did know how to run a farm.”

Colm wasn’t going to argue. He had other things to find out. “I guess I did hear something about that. He has a partner, I hear. Female. Maybe a third partner, too?”

Bertha looked coy again. She sank into a plum-colored sofa, patted the seat beside her. He took a seat across the room, stared ahead at a framed print of a woman in a red gown, bearing a tray of apples. Bertha’s frizzled orangy head below on the sofa made an odd contrast. “We-ell, I can’t say. There might be a third. He doesn’t tell me ev-ery-thing. When we were young we were close as this,” and she crossed two fingers. “But then he grew up—up and away.” She lifted her arms as though she’d fly.

“It wouldn’t be that minister friend of yours, Turnbull, now, would it, Bertha? I hear he has an
interest
in the Earthrowl orchard. Keeps calling up, I understand.”

She missed his irony. “Oh, well, the church is his whole life, you see. He gives twenty-four hours a day to it, oh my, yes.”

“He doesn’t have to sleep like the rest of us?”

She giggled. “Oh, Colm, you haven’t changed one bit. Of course he sleeps. You always had such a sense of hu-mor! But”— she leaned forward, the teacup wobbling in her hand—”he dreams the church then. Uh-huh, he tells us his dreams. Why, only yesterday he said he dreamed of a falcon swooping down and snatching up a robin that was doing nothing but perching prettily on a branch, and zing! in one snap of the falcon’s beak the robin’s neck was broken. Now, what do you think that meant?” She grinned at Colm, her head bent demurely to one side. She looked rather like a lady falcon herself. She’d love nothing more, he thought, than to snap him up in her big white dentures.

“Well,” she said when he didn’t answer, “the falcon is the devil and the poor innocent robin is us, Colm, you and me. If we let down our guard for one single minute, the devil will swoop down on us and carry us straight to hell. To hell, Colm! Think of it! And that devil, Michael said, is here. Right here in Branbury, Vermont. He saw it all in a vision.”

“Michael?”

“Well, the reverend, of course. Who did you think I was talking about?” She giggled. “Want to know something?”

He wasn’t sure. But lifted an eyebrow anyway.

“Well. Turnbull isn’t his
real
name.”

“No?” he said, pretending to a lack of interest, although his heart was pumping away. “What is his real name, then, Bertha?”

“Well, I shouldn’t tell, really. But—can you keep a secret?”

He could, he definitely could. He smiled, nodded. “Good coffee,” he said, gulping the last creamy tepid drop.

“Oh, I forgot the brownies! I made them ’specially when you said you were coming.” She jumped up, sashayed into the kitchen, came back moments later with a plateful of chocolate nut brownies.

Colm did have a sweet tooth for chocolate, he had to admit. He bit into one, encountered something hard. She giggled. “Oh, a bit of walnut shell. I buy the whole walnuts, not the ones already opened. You can see better what you’re getting.”

She’d forgotten the question, it seemed—or was she avoiding it? He repeated it, not wanting to sound too eager, put her on the alert.

“Michael Turnbull,” he said. “Nice name. But not his real one, you say?”

“Oh no. His name is”—her voice was hushed—”Chris Christ.”

“Chris Christ?”

“Yes. That’s why he changed, you see. People would think he made it up. It sounds almost. . . well, sacrilegious. But he doesn’t think of himself as Christ, oh no. He’s a modest man, he’s only a disciple of Christ, he says—until—the real Christ returns. But we think of him as Christ. Oh yes, it’s so fitting.”

“He’s a good man, you think, Bertha?”

Her sigh told him she did. “Better than the other one.”

“Other one?”

“The minister before him. That one is still in prison.”

She pursed her pink lips. She had thin lips, the artificial color went over the line of her natural lips to make them appear more generous, he supposed. Instead, she looked clownish.

“For embezzling funds in his former church,” he reminded her. “You picked a good one there, Bertha.”

She looked downcast. “Sometimes we’re fooled. He seemed such a nice man. He did help me out.”

“Sure. He helped you right into Rockbury.” She was looking away, embarrassed. He couldn’t help that one. Rockbury was the state mental institution. Bertha’s lawyer had pleaded temporary “insanity” for her part in an illegal scheme, and the judge bought it, ordered her into psychiatric care. Obviously it hadn’t helped. She was back to the devil again. He couldn’t help adding, “You think this Chris Christ is more honest?”

“With a name like that!” she cried. It was the final proof, of course. How could he doubt her word?

“If you say so,” he said. “Well, look, Bertha, I’m on my way. Thanks for the coffee and brownies.” He stood up, the crumbs fell to the floor. He was sorry about that, she kept a pristine house. He tried to pick them up, but she protested.

“I have to vacuum anyway, Colm, don’t worry about a few silly crumbs. But you’re not going? I thought we’d have a nice talk. Not about this orchard business. I mean, I suppose that’s why you’ve come, the other women told me. You’ve talked to them all, oh, I know you have. And we don’t know anything, any-thing about what’s going on in the orchard. Except...”

“Except?”

“That falcon,” she said solemnly. “The devil. He’s in that orchard, oh yes. That apple orchard! Apples, sacred to Saint Dorothea! And for good reason. He was called there. By that man. That Stanley Earthrowl.”

“Come on, Bertha.”

“It’s true, Colm. He’s sold his soul. He’s in league with the devil. Look what he did to Cassandra Wickham!”

Bertha should be back in Rockbury, Colm understood that. He was sorry now he’d eaten her brownies. God knows what was in them. But he had one more question. He’d almost forgotten. “I understand Cassandra and your, um, Chris Christ—”