Mad Season Read online

  He followed her gaze, saw the men outside, progressing slowly along their line, their bodies jerking up and down like oil rigs. As he watched, one of them broke the pattern to do a somersault.

  Suddenly she laughed. It was a spontaneous, merry laugh that made him smile. “That crazy Willy,” she said. “He never could do a somersault.”

  He smiled, too. She was always laughing back in school when they went together. She was so full of it then, she even laughed at his puns—his English teacher graded him down, the old fart.

  “Great doughnuts,” he said. “Can I have the recipe?”

  She lifted an eyebrow, still smiling.

  “I do the cooking. Dad never learned. Though I admit, food doesn’t mix with formaldehyde.”

  “I’ll write it out for you. Though I don’t use a recipe.” Her smile squeezed a dimple into her cheek. It was nice to see it. He supposed she’d gotten out of the habit with Pete.

  Jeez, how could that guy walk out on this woman!

  * * * *

  They went out to the muddy fields together—he should have worn his rubber boots. She introduced him to the men, then left. She had accounts to do, she said, then she was going to the hospital to see about Belle and Lucien. There was still a little time to make up for neglect, wasn’t there? They could compare notes later?

  Ruth had a way of looking directly at a man, holding his gaze. It was disconcerting, but exciting. He wondered if she’d fight for her husband the way she fought for this boy. Or was she too proud for that?

  “I can do a somersault,” Willy told him. “You wanna see? Tim been teachin’ me how. I can do it. Mostly I can.”

  “I saw you,” Colm said, “out the window.”

  Tim laughed. “He can do bettern’ that if he wants. He don’t always remember to tuck his head under, right, Willy? Right? Now get that pail of trees over here, huh?”

  Tim didn’t stop work. He thrust his shovel in the earth, then Willy dropped a thready tree root in the hole. The shovel slid out and Tim thumped it down with his boot heel.

  “You don’t mind if I ask a few questions,” Colm said. He picked up the pail and moved it for Tim. He felt like a Realtor now, no, a detective. He read stuff at night: Dobyns, Mayer, Gill, that Irish detective. He’d learned one thing: the nicest guys can have secrets, rotten things in the core. The one you least suspected did it. Who could that be in this case?

  Tim said, “Terrible thing. Nice old couple. They don’t deserve that.” He seemed genuinely grieved, but then, what did Colm know? He could only have faith in intuition, his great-gran’s second sight. His mother had told him about that, he used to laugh. Now he wanted to believe in it.

  He went through a list of dumb questions he’d thought up. The replies yielded little that was surprising. Timothy Junkins, born in Long Island of upward-bound parents. College dropout in the early sixties, joined “the cause,” carted off to jail a dozen times for protests. The police would make something of that. The worst was in Chicago, something about a bomb exploding in some lawyer’s garage.

  “The bastard was supporting the corrupt mayor,” Tim explained. “He was establishment with a capital E. I don’t know how many he swindled. I think he was hooked up with the Mafia.”

  Colm nodded. He was a sixties man himself, even had a motorcycle—till he ran it into an oak tree. He’d got into one or two sit-ins, protesting the war. A cousin was taken prisoner by the Vietcong, still hadn’t surfaced, one of the MIA—undoubtedly dead, though his aunt never gave up hope. A reason, he guessed, for his own anger at injustice. He couldn’t sit around and let one human being exploit another.

  He’d settled down, Tim said, only in the last dozen years or so. Doing farm work, respite work, helping the mentally retarded— eight states he’d worked in. Married once, and when she wanted to leave he gave her “the works: house, furniture, dog, fifteen birds, the old Ford. Hell, I didn’t want it. I didn’t need all that. There was another woman, but then she took off. Well, you know how it is. You single?”

  Colm nodded. Had Ruth told him that? What more had she told him? But Tim was moving forward with his story.

  “So two years ago I came here. Pete hired me. I said could I bring along Willy, he’s developmentally disabled, happens to be epileptic, too. I had him on meds by then, though there’s still seizures—when he’s stressed out. I got a brother with epilepsy— it’s tough, he’s an artist. Got nothing to do with brains, epilepsy. I learned that early on.” Tim’s voice rose and fell with the rhythm of the planting.

  “How was it working with Pete?” Colm didn’t know why he asked, it had nothing to do with the assault. Pete was in New York.

  Tim jammed his spade into the ground, leaned on it. “He left her, that tells you somethin’. But he’s not a bad guy, he left me alone with my work. But I could tell his heart wasn’t in farmin’.” He thought a minute and gazed off at the mountains. “Maybe that was part of it. He has an unfocused side to him, prob’ly never will know what he wants. Even if he comes back.”

  “You think he’ll come back?” Colm felt a pull in the groin.

  “He’s got kids, all this—he’s got to settle somethin’. But who knows? Maybe he’ll dump the whole thing on her.”

  “She seems to be dealing with it.”

  “Yeah. I’ll stick around awhile. The two of us, right, Willy?”

  “Right,” said Willy. “You and me. You wanna pass me them trees, Mister?”

  Tim said, “Those trees, Willy, those trees!” And Colm hefted the pail over.

  “Gotta get ‘em in right,” said Willy. “Gotta get ‘em deep in so they live. We wan’m to live, right, Tim?”

  “Right,” said Tim. “We want ‘em to live.”

  * * * *

  Lucien looked up when Belle entered the room. She was wearing something pink. That was new, Belle never wore pink. Green was her color, like the grass, like the trees. It was because she was Indian he told her, and she laughed. Her mother, though, was ashamed. Indians are dirt, her mother said, people walk on them. Indian color is brown. Marie’s worse even, wants nothing to do with Indians. She hit Lucien once—her own dad!—when he called her a squaw. Nine years old at the time. Mother of God!

  “I married you, didn’t I?” he said aloud. “I married you,” he repeated. He didn’t have to give reasons.

  “Lucien?” she said, coming closer to the bed.

  What was he doing in bed at this hour? What time was it?

  “What time is it?” he shouted. He tried to get up, but Belle pushed him back. “What in hell you doing?” he growled. “The milking don’t wait.”

  “Lucien, it’s not Belle.”

  He rubbed his eyes. What was he doing in bed? “Help me out of this bed, Belle, this damn arthritis. Put some wood in the stove, Belle. I need heat.”

  “Lucien, it’s Ruth. Ruth from next door. You’re in the hospital, Lucien. You were hurt, someone hurt you. But you’re going to be all right.”

  Lucien squinted at the pink shirt, at the white face. He recognized her now. She’d been coming in all night, waking him up like he don’t have to be up anyway at four-thirty for milking. To stick something in his mouth, his arm, his bum. He turned his head away, closed his eyes. He felt her fussing over him.

  “Tell me what you remember, Lucien. Who was it hit you? Were there two of them? What hit you? Where did those marks come from, on your face?”

  Too much talk, too many questions. He opened his eyes. He couldn’t see her for the fear. It rose between them, thick and white, like lightning hitting all over the farm at once and nowhere to hide. He shielded his face with his arms.

  “Where’s Belle?” His eyes squeezed shut. “What’d they do with her? Belle!”

  * * * *

  Belle was swimming, long lusty strokes that took her out in the stormy lake and then, whiplashed by a wave, back toward shore again. It was out and back, out and back, her hair floating on the weedy water, then sucked under suddenly and down down, into the
green, into the glade, shapes spinning around her: cows, fry pans, loose rock, chickens—that man, who was he? Waving his arms. She saw his face on the watery surface, calling Belle, Belle, come back. Come back. Then mother, her face filled with sun, her hair a dark ring, like the Virgin, calling, Belle, Belle, come back, Belle.

  “Trying,” she cried, algae clogging her throat. Something she had to do up there on the stony shore. “But can’t. Can’t can’t can’t...”

  Each “can’t” swallowing her down and down ...

  Chapter Four

  Colm sat in his Horizon in the Willmarth driveway, pushed his glasses back up on his nose. New clutch. Old klutz, he thought. He should take a course in mechanics, save himself money, but he probably never would. The shadow of a silo fell across the blue hood. The air was sweet and fresh, he’d brought in new grass on his feet, and mud. He’d never seen such mud, worse than any April he remembered. Mud season. “Poor sledding” they called it. Or should he say “blood season”? He smiled grimly, thinking of the Larocques.

  He was taking notes. It was his habit from real estate: if he didn’t write his impressions at once, he’d forget. He switched to his reading glasses. It was a pain, this putting on and taking off of glasses .and then misplacing them. His father said why didn’t he get bifocals, but he wouldn’t give in, not yet.

  “Tim Junkins,” he wrote, partly for himself, partly to share with Ruth: “Seems honest, industrious. Jail record (political idealism). Worked for Larocques a week before the assault, mending fence, etc. (he’d know the barn, its hiding places). Calls Belle a ‘workhorse,’ Lucien slowing with arthritis. Saw only the milk tanker, fellow never got out, Lucien and Tim loaded. One other: young fellow selling raffle tickets—some furniture business, win a chair or something. Couldn’t see who it was, just the shape, bouncing along like an adolescent. Belle let him in. How to contact Belle?”

  An afterthought: Did he approach the Willmarths too? Ask Ruth.

  He gazed out the window, imagined her coming across the field, out of the barn, in that pink shirt. . .

  Nope, he admonished himself. Keep it on a factual level, Pete might come back. Ruth wouldn’t hint at her feelings, how the marriage worked, what she hoped for. And he was in no position to ask.

  Okay, now. Tim had no alibi. He’d been home, watching TV, no one to vouch for him. House-sitting in somebody else’s house, that’s how he lived. Not enough money—desire?—to buy a place of his own, have to pay taxes. Too bad about no alibi. That jail record, police would be suspicious.

  Willy. He chewed on his pen, looked out the window. The boy was turning another abortive somersault. Seemed gentle enough, but cross him and the temper could erupt—case of dignity, he supposed. You never knew what was inside the human. There was a case in Burlington: kid came up and stabbed a woman in the chest, she was sitting in the park, eating a sandwich. Just like that: stab. Then ran and told about it. Said she wouldn’t give him a bite. That was all. Stabbed her for a hunk of peanut butter and jelly. Got off on a plea of idiocy. Justice? Jeez!

  He drummed his fists on the notebook. Was he prejudiced himself? Where did it come from, this fear of strangers, somebody different from oneself? Was it archetypal? He remembered reading Jung in college. How did you unlearn it? Did you ever?

  “Pre-ju-dice” he said aloud. Pre-jew-dice. Interesting when you pulled the word apart. Scary as hell. He was born after the Second World War but felt he’d lived it, the way his father talked about it. His father was one of the ones liberating the camps. They were walking corpses, he said, the Jews, the Gypsies, the homosexuals who survived. He could hardly imagine the suffering.

  So where was he, this Willy? In a bar, the Alibi—there was his alibi! (Not much of a pun, that.) With his friend Joey, he said. They got silly, were thrown out. Then where? Willy couldn’t remember. Home he guessed, Tim’s. He could have done anything on the way. Or Joey. He’d better talk to Joey.

  He guessed he’d have to hit the bars tonight, the Alibi—with Ruth, if she’d come. He stayed away from there usually, stayed away from the hard stuff too, drank mostly beer and wine now. Middle of their sophomore year at the university, when Ruth got engaged, he got drunk that night, went swimming in the lake with friends, kept on swimming, on into the mile-wide lake. But they fished him out. Jeez, would he ever forget that night? Or maybe it was worse the next day, when dawn hit. Reality: she was gone. Slam! No Ruth. He’d wanted back in that lake.

  He put the Horizon into gear and reeled around out of the driveway. He’d drive past the Larocque place again. And then see Belle. He just needed to see her. Stand in the doorway and look. Did she remind him of his own mother? Dark hair his mum had, hard worker.

  A red car, new Honda Civic, came swinging around the bend as he pulled out, splashing mud on his father’s car.

  “Mudfucker,” he said.

  * * * *

  “Stop!” Vic cried after the yellow school bus as it chugged off out of the school grounds. He and Gerry Dufours, who was faster than he, dashed after, yelling, but the driver kept on going. Vic stopped running, leaned against a tree to catch his breath. He’d stayed after school to finish a science project. He’d brought his telescope, to show Mrs. Ronsard how it worked. He thought she might show the others, he’d let them try it out if they wanted. Even Unsworth, especially Unsworth—he wanted him to see it. See what a farmer’s son could do.

  But there wasn’t time, she said. Show her after school she said, and he did. And she seemed interested. But then she said she had to go, she had a dentist appointment. Take the telescope with him, she said, it wasn’t safe in the classroom, and he did. She didn’t ask him to bring it back.

  But now he’d missed the bus. And so had Gerry, but for a different reason. Gerry set off an alarm clock in the middle of reading. “That was a riot,” he told Gerry, “that was great. How’d you dare?”

  Gerry shrugged. He wasn’t even aware how great a trick it was on Ronsard. “I just did it, was all. I just set the alarm. I been late gittin’ up for chores and my mother got me it.”

  Gerry wasn’t the smartest kid Vic had ever known. It was too bad, he was another farm kid. He didn’t take many baths. Or if he did, he got back in the barn afterward. Gerry got the same guff as Vic, and he smelled twice as bad. It wasn’t fair. It hurt all of them. It wasn’t fair.

  “We got to walk,” Gerry said. “Three miles. Ma’ll be mad as hops. I’m suppose to clean the chicken pen.”

  “I’m supposed to meet a detective.” Vic felt a little spring in his step as he said it. It wasn’t really a detective, but his mother’s old friend Mr. Hanna. But he was a detective now, his mother said, they all were, all three of them: Hanna, his mother, and him.

  Gerry was impressed. “Hey, a detective?” At least he knew what that was. The Dufourses had a TV.

  Vic told about the Larocques, and Gerry said he’d heard about it. “That the old guy kept his cash in his socks?” And guffawed.

  “No,” Vic said. He liked Lucien Larocque. The old man talked to him when they worked, showed how to do things, make a rake, for instance, even a dulcimer once, and Vic showed him his telescope. Mr. Larocque was patient when Vic got things wrong— better than his dad, who was always in a hurry for Vic to learn.

  “Not in his socks,” Vic said, “in his pocket.”

  And then was sorry he said it, he didn’t know why.

  “That’s stupid,” Gerry said. “That’s dumb. My pa puts his in the bank. The Chittenden Bank, he takes it every Friday when he gets the milk money. He don’t wanna get hit on the head. That Larocque, he’s askin’ for it my pa say.”

  Vic walked on ahead. He didn’t want to hear what Dufours’s pa had to say, he wanted to get home. It was over three miles to his house, past Dufours’s turnoff, and he wanted to be there to meet Mr. Hanna. He wanted to tell the man about the money that smelled of cows. He hoped his mother hadn’t already told. She had a way of taking the words out of his mouth before he could say them. He didn�
��t always like that.

  It was on the shortcut just before Gerry’s turnoff that Vic heard the noise. They were walking through a section of woods that bordered the Dufours land, and the boys were quiet. It was always a spooky spot. Vic never walked through there alone; when he missed the bus, he’d take the long way around.

  It was a funny noise, a kind of crackling and crunching like feet walking along in the same direction and stopping when the boys stopped. He walked faster, and Gerry said, “Hey, wait up, huh? I gotta stone in my sneaker.”

  So he had to wait in the middle of the spooky spot while Gerry untied his sneaker, shook out the pebble—a tiny one, hardly more than sand—put the sneaker back on, and laced it up. An hour later, it seemed, they started walking again.

  It was then they came out.

  There were four of them, three his size and one a big kid, probably in junior high, maybe high school. They were dressed like Indians, with bags over their heads with feathers sticking up, purple feathers like Indians probably never wore, and leather jackets, one with fringe. They had sacks on their backs, and two had boxing gloves on. “Who-woo,” they moaned, dancing around the boys, holding hands. “Who-woo, we got you-hoo farmer boys.”

  Vic tried to break through, but they pushed him back. He heard Gerry yelling beside him, “Get away, I’ll get my pa on ya!” The Indians laughed, and one of them broke the circle and opened a sack and pulled a bunch of hay out of it.

  It was like his heart would leap out of his chest with the banging. Usually he could see the faces, it was Unsworth or Marsh or Southwick yelling names at him, bawling him out for missing a pop fly. Or that last time, pushing him down in the mud and filling his pockets with dung. But at least he knew who they were. His heart thumped like a dozen drums.

  Now he wasn’t sure. One was the size of Unsworth, but he didn’t have the same sounding voice. One could be Marsh, but the bag had ripped on the back of his head, and Marsh had blond hair and this one was dark. So he didn’t know. His heart beat everywhere: in his feet, his knees, elbows, throat. In a minute it would burst out of his chest, and he’d be dead.