Mad Season Read online

  “He had a science test. He didn’t study for it.”

  “Oh.” And the subject was closed.

  Vic was in his room playing with the G.I. Joes his father had given him. They’d belonged to Pete as a child, and he’d kept them, along with a Mobil Oil truck and a red wagon. When Vic saw Ruth, he put the dolls away. He knew she was uncomfortable with them—because they wore combat fatigues, not because they were dolls. No one could accuse her of being sexist. She hated women forced into roles. Maybe it was why she rather liked being a farmer now—not a farmer’s wife, but a farmer.

  She said, “After what happened next door I’d think you wouldn’t want to play war.”

  “I’m not playing war.”

  “Then what do you call it?”

  “It’s defense. I’m defending our country. Against—” He blushed.

  “Against what, Vic?”

  “Against the invaders. If I don’t, they’ll take over.”

  She sat on his bed. It felt bumpy, like something was stuffed under the blanket. She left it there, maybe she was the invader he was talking about. Though she suspected the invasions had to do with school.

  “How was it today?” she asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay? Things were all right at recess?”

  He shrugged, changed the subject. “What happened at the Larocques’? Sharon wouldn’t let me go over. She said you’d want me here. Then you went out.”

  He looked accusingly at her. His ankles were stick-thin below the khaki pants. The bones stuck out in his hands where he’d clasped them around his knees. He’d have big hands, Doc Collier promised. But it seemed forever for Vic to wait, she knew that. He was one of the smaller ones in his class.

  She told him what she knew, which wasn’t much. She knew only that the pair had been attacked, she didn’t know what time, how hard, by what instrument, though they’d found the maple stick on the floor. But it didn’t look thick enough to do them in that way.

  Vic gazed down at the floor as she spoke, clasping and unclasping his hands. His face was pale for all the freckles. She sensed he was empathizing. She wanted to go to him, hug him, say it was all right: Mom was here, no one could harm him.

  But he was ten years old. Pete was right, she had to let him grow up. Though it was hard not to interfere, hard!

  He licked his lips. Finally he said, “He kept his money in that coat. Lot of it, anyway. I know, I saw once. He sent me for a pipe and it wasn’t where he said, so I looked in his coat. It was hanging up. And there was all that money, way down. A wad of it. A big huge wad.”

  His eyes opened wide like he was seeing it for the first time. He looked worried, and she remembered the time he’d been robbed himself, some junior high kids jumping on him, taking fifty cents, a pack of gum—they were local kids that time.

  “I found his pipe in there too, but I didn’t tell him where I found it. I didn’t want him to think I saw all that money. There were safety pins, the coat was heavy, like he kept more than showed. Then, then I was afraid—”

  “Afraid of what?” She clasped her knees. She saw how thin Vic was. He’d been losing weight and she was only just aware of it. She was too busy, she was a terrible mother, she couldn’t keep up with farm and family. The fear of losing her children crept over her again and she held out a finger to touch Vic. But he shrank away.

  “Afraid he’d remember he put the pipe in there. Did they take the money?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’m afraid that’s what they were after. The police didn’t find any money in the house, or the barn. The thieves must have looked there. Unless he banked it. Colm Hanna says he’ll find out tomorrow, though I doubt it.”

  She remembered Lucien’s anxiety about the coat. “And Vic, Mr. Hanna is coming here in the morning. He wants to help us find out who hurt the Larocques. Maybe we could have a talk.”

  “Me, too?” said Vic, locking his fingers together till the knuckles turned to bone.

  “You should tell him what you just told me.”

  “Why?” The word was almost a shriek. “He’ll think I was the one took it. I was in Cub Scouts last night. Down to the town hall. I’d never take his money, you know that!”

  She put out a hand and squeezed his shoulder. The child was getting paranoid. “Of course he wouldn’t think you did. We just want you to try and remember if you might have seen anyone around his house. Anyone who didn’t belong.”

  Vic frowned. “I don’t know if I did. I’ll try and think.”

  “If you know anything, it will help, Vic. We want to find who did it. It’s important we find out. We don’t want any more victims. The Charlebois barn—”

  He glanced up at the urgency in her voice, blinked. He’d been blinking a lot lately, she’d noticed. She stroked his hair, pulled him close, and this time he let her. “Now get in your pjs. We’ll need you for extra chores in the morning. We all have to pitch in.”

  “I remember thinking,” he said, yanking his pajamas from under his pillow, “I wouldn’t want money like that in my pocket. All smelling of cows. They’d never let me in the games, ever, Billy Marsh, Garth Unsworth, that gang. They don’t have cows where they come from.”

  “Garth Unsworth’s mother has sheep, Emily told me so.”

  “They don’t smell like cows. Not as bad.”

  “They do, you get a barn full of them. You tell that to Garth Unsworth.”

  She sighed, patted the boy’s shaggy head, went to the door. Vic liked to undress in privacy.

  “All reeking of cows?” she said aloud as she shut the door.

  “That money? Reeking of cows?” she repeated as she went down the hall to her room.

  Chapter Three

  It was an average farm, for these parts anyway, the farmhouse in need of paint, the two cement-block stave silos with WILLMARTH SONS in peeling letters, the barn sturdy, painted red. Farmers kept up their barns before their houses, Colm knew that from his work in real estate. The land had a bluish cast, like it was about to grass. Decent soil, he supposed. Not the rich loamy black soil the settlers found when they walked up into the Republic of Vermont in the 1700s, but good earth nonetheless.

  He put his father’s black wagon in park—the Body Wagon, his father called it, making a joke of everything, you had to do that in the mortuary profession. The old Horizon refused to start, clutch or something—Colm wasn’t a machine man, more of a random-abstract, he called himself, frankly. And here was Ruth now, coming out of the barn: handsome woman, wide hipped, in mud-spattered jeans, baggy sweater that couldn’t hide her heavy breasts, chestnut hair in a flyaway bun. He was early, she’d want to change probably before breakfast. He knew barns: a cow slaps its tail and you’re hit with a sloppy joe sandwich, urine and dung.

  He hunched down in the seat to wait.

  When he knocked on the door fifteen minutes later she was ready for him, made a face at the car. “Are you lugging a body? Why were you just sitting out there? Think I didn’t recognize the town hearse?”

  He looked at her, sheepish: a clean pink shirt open at the neck, hair around her face, skin lightly freckled and perspiring, though he could still catch the scent of barn. There was an air of excitement about her, of hurry, nervousness maybe. The doughnuts were offered on a cracked blue willow plate, warm and shiny with sugar.

  She sat there, stirring her coffee, waiting for him to speak. She was never one for small talk, even when they went together in high school. They’d dance, just holding on to each other, not saying a word. What happened, anyway? Well, sure. Pete. Pete cutting in on them one day; Pete on the football team; a frat man at the university. How could a scrawny guy in glasses, on the short side, with an out-of-style crewcut, compete? Corn-Pete, the irony of the pun.

  “You’re done in the barn?” he asked, hearing his words hollow against the noise in his chest. “You’re doing the milking yourself with, uh, Pete gone? Jeez, I’m sorry about that, Ruth.” He was embarrassed now that he hadn’t at least cal
led her before this. Not that he hadn’t thought about it a hundred times, just never got up the nerve. The Larocque assault gave the excuse.

  Her face went through a dozen changes, came out bright as sun on a tin roof. “Well, how gone is gone? We don’t know yet. We’re in limbo here. Working our arses off. Tim helps with the milking, though. But Pete wants me to sell. Got any clients want a farm? I heard about some developer ...”

  Her face was flushed after the long speech, the mug trembled in her fingers. They were long fingers. He supposed they’d play a sensitive tune on the cows, he’d read that women got more milk out of a cow than men, there was that affinity.

  Jeez, the feel of a woman’s fingers came on him nights. Horny nights: jerking off and then remembering the bodies down in the basement. He’d never really get used to those bodies—dead, he sometimes felt, like his middle-aged libido. But he couldn’t leave his father alone, a man in his seventies.

  “Farm’s a lot of work,” he said, “with a family, too.” He felt the old outrage. He’d never been crazy about Pete, too full of himself. The kind that never grew up.

  “I didn’t mean to sound off,” she said. “It’s all right, really, things are working out—were till yesterday. Colm, I want to find who did it to them, Lucien and Belle. I can’t wait around for the police. I feel violated myself. Will you help?”

  She took a breath. He smiled at her passion.

  “The police haven’t a clue yet. No witnesses except Lucien and Belle, and Belle unconscious. What can we do, Colm? Who can we talk to?”

  She saw him looking at the window. “Finish your coffee and we’ll go out and find them. Tim’s a madman. Has to get in three hundred trees before it rains, he says. And we’re not done with the sugaring.”

  “Tell about the Larocques,” he said. “Tell me what you know about who worked there, came there, knew them well.”

  She didn’t speak for a minute, bit into a doughnut, stared out the window. The men were stretching a line across the field, attaching it to markers. They were good workers, he saw that. Good workers weren’t usually criminals. Though you never knew.

  “One thing I’ve got to tell you,” she said finally. “It’s Vic’s discovery, I should let him tell you, he’d like that. But you won’t see him till later.”

  He waited, took a swallow of coffee. It was good coffee, strong and flavorful. He was feeling comfortable now.

  “The money,” she explained. “The money they stole, it smelled of barn. Strongly I mean, hand to pocket, fragrant with cow. Kept it down in the seams. I gather it was his bank. I suppose he liked to feel it there, safe.”

  “Hand-y bank,” he said, and she grimaced. “You haven’t changed, Colm. That’s supposed to be a pun? Anyway, Lucien sent Vic after a pipe once, and he saw. And smelled. Oh, and just this morning Tim said the police found a small stash—five hundred dollars—in the barn, up on a beam! So the assailants didn’t look there. Though they might have found something elsewhere, Lucien hinted at that. No wonder Belle complained.”

  “Or they were in a hurry, afraid to look further.”

  “Yes, well, anyway, Marie—his daughter—banked it for them, for when Lucien gets home.”

  “In her account?”

  “I don’t know. Certainly not Lucien’s! But she’ll surely give it back. Well, I don’t suppose that’s the only money in town smelling of cows, but most men bank their money, they don’t take it to the barn or stuff it in pocket linings.”

  “How long does a smell like that hang on?”

  “Pretty long. Smell these?” She brought out a pair of boots from the pantry.

  He pretended to be knocked out.

  “I haven’t worn them in two months, they need new soles.”

  “That helps. Well, good for Vic. Tell him that.”

  “You tell him. He was afraid the police would think he took the money because he knew where it was. They’re due here late morning, you know, to ask questions. I’m not looking forward. That Mert who was there yesterday, I don’t want him questioning Vic.”

  “Wasn’t Vic in bed?”

  “Sound asleep. And snoring—he has a touch of asthma, on top of his other troubles.”

  “What else?” he asked. “About the Larocques?”

  It wasn’t an unusual story: French Canadian couple, married late with one child, practicing Catholics like his own parents, which meant Sunday Mass and forget the rest of the week except for a holy oath or two. Marginal farm with maybe twenty head, no milking parlor, no pipe line, outmoded stump fence, a single tractor to do the jobs—practically nineteenth century, Colm thought. Hand to mouth. Or hand to pocket, for the milk money anyway. There were friends, but not many. Ruth supposed she was Belle’s closest friend; a neighbor, she should get over there more often, she felt guilty for not going. Belle lived for the farm and Lucien. For the granddaughter, Michelle.

  “Though Marie doesn’t visit all that often. She’s more sensitive than Belle about the Indian blood.”

  “The husband?” Colm asked. “I see him at fires.”

  “Harold? He’s a piece of cake. Plump, shy, worships Marie. But out of work and hates it, walks around like an ostrich, head in the dirt. He’s a tinkerer, has a toy train in his basement. Marie gripes. She says he’s a kid about fires. Loves to hang around them. Like you, Colm?”

  “I only go when I’m fired up,” he said (he tried too hard for that one). “And it’s not because of Bertha.”

  He saw her smile. They both knew how Pete’s sister Bertha came on to Colm in high school, though she was two years ahead. He’d felt like the dog his mother had once that was adopted by a goose. Everywhere the dog went, the goose went. Until one day, in a fury, the dog bit off its head.

  Well, he wouldn’t do that to Bertha. She was harmless enough. Just annoying, “frustrated” was the word. He’d run into her in the pharmacy once, she’d hid from him. Then he found her in the front seat of his car. Had to talk her out of there.

  “Anyhow, Harold’s a trained accountant. But who in this town’s got enough money to have him add up the wealth?”

  “No Grange for Belle and Lucien, no community functions?”

  “Grange no, there’s a pecking hierarchy there like everyplace else. I got Lucien to run for selectman, and he lost. As for travel— they went to Alberg once, to see her cousin. Belle identified with the Abenaki, it surprised even her. They were trying to get their fishing rights back, had a problem with gambling. Of course Belle has no sympathy with that. She’s a no-nonsense, get-your-work-done-and-go-to-bed woman. Well, there’s a tiny TV—Marie gave it to them. As far as I know they seldom watch it. They’re in bed by eight, up before dawn. They’re farmers, for godsake!”

  “No enemies.”

  “You asked that before, I don’t know of any. Tim and Willy have helped over there on occasion. Pete and I took over when Lucien went in for a hernia operation last fall. The milk truck comes every third day. There’s the mailman, the gas man, salesmen—I can’t think of anyone else. He might have had a high school boy help out during harvest, I think I saw one this fall. I couldn’t help, I needed Tim here.”

  “You don’t know who this boy was?”

  “No, but maybe Emily does. Or—”

  “Or?”

  “Her boyfriend, Wilder, Wilder Unsworth. Family came up from Long Island last year. Something about the oldest getting into drugs, Emily says. Like it hasn’t hit Vermont too! It’s the youngest, Garth, who’s been tormenting Vic. He’s not the only one. There’s another—Marsh—father’s a prof at the college. Well, Wilder’s all right, I guess, at least Emily thinks so, and she’s a sensible girl, as adolescent girls go! He’s smart in school, pleasant enough when Emily brings him in here. But distant. He’s attracted to Emily—but not to the farm. I worry about it, that he’s using her.”

  “How do you know?”

  She gave him a fierce look. “How does one know anything? He—he has a kind of wrinkle in his nose. Doesn’t look me in t
he eye, like I’m one of the cows, dressed up in boots.”

  She bit hard into a doughnut. “I’m sorry, Colm, I’m all caught up in Vic’s trouble. You can imagine what it’s like to be a sensitive fifth grader living on land you lived on all your life, grandfather before that, and some kid comes up and says you’re dirt. You should know that. You’re Irish.”

  “My grandfather knew.”

  She looked sympathetic. She knew the story. How he was a town cop, killed by a booze runner up in Burlington—they had his picture on the wall down at the station. Colm was ten years old then, Vic’s age. It was good to talk to someone who knew one’s story. Comforting. “Do they say that to you, Ruthie?”

  “I’m an adult. They don’t dare. But I see how it is in town meeting. They sit together, the flatlanders—well, not all, I shouldn’t stereotype, there’s a lot of well-meaning ones—but asking questions, criticizing. Like how could we run things the way we do? How could we vote down the school budget, this agency, that agency, like we don’t care about the poor, the disabled? It’s just that we don’t have the money, we’re trying to survive ourselves. My God, they’re driving us off our land! And you’re helping, Colm Hanna, you’re in real estate.”

  He threw up his hands to ward her off. She didn’t smile, she was too wound up. “That farm, other side of Larocque’s, goes for five hundred thousand dollars. Five hundred thousand! Midwesterner put a couple thousand into it, now he’s reselling it for a windfall. No local can afford to buy it.”

  He sighed. He knew. The farm broker up here now, panting after the realtors, they’d all had her out looking—all but him, he made sure Ruth knew that. Someone, some developer behind her, he didn’t know. He wouldn’t be tainted with that brush. One day he’d explain it to Ruth, why he was in real estate.

  Maybe he just liked to walk the land, that was all. How else could he walk on other people’s property? And how was it their property anyhow, he asked himself: they took it from the Indians. From Belle’s forebears.

  Or was it anybody’s property—ever?

  Her nose was shiny with indignation. She laid her hands on the table, the long hard fingers gripped together; she looked toward the window like she hoped someone might come to interrupt their conversation. Was he boring her? He worried about that. He wasn’t some gregarious Pete.