She’d come back. Sure, maybe tomorrow. When Alwyn wanted to be left alone. No one laughing at him, no one pushing him in the creek, no one saying, “Alwyn, wash your hands. Alwyn, go to the toilet, Alwyn, go to the store, buy me some sleeping pills. I had another bad dream last night, Alwyn. I want it to stop; I get no rest.”
He heard a squealing noise upstairs in Ma’s room. For a moment, it sounded like Ma; he started up, hanging on to the dark wood banister. Ma would tell him what to do now. Ma had always helped him decide. She’d know what to do. Then he realized: It wasn’t Ma. It was someone—something—else in that room? For a minute, he couldn’t think what. But it wasn’t Ma. Ma was dead. He had to decide on his own.
Then he couldn’t think what he had to decide.
The tiger cat came thumping down the stairs then, mewling for food, and Alwyn guffawed. All that time, it had been the cat.
Chapter Fifteen
Roy Fallon had two messages for Colm when he called in that night from the mortuary phone. Forensics had found white hairs in the brush; they’d have to do a DNA analysis, match them up with Glenna’s. They’d already sent a man over to the Flint farm. “Though that woman Fay is nuts— a match for Glenna,” Fallon allowed. “Wants to identify the hairs herself, not wait for the forensics report. I said, ‘Lady, you must be a scientist.’ She said, ‘I know hair when I see it.’ I mean ...” Fallon’s voice trailed off.
“Women,” said Colm, and laughed. Fallon laughed, too. He had a chugging laugh:
chuk-chuk-chuk,
like a freight train. “So what’s the second message? They check that bus?”
“Got the bus driver stopped in Burlington. Your Mac was on it all right, fit the description—if it was Mac.” Fallon couldn’t let go of his old assumptions.
“It is Mac,” Colm said, excited. “You said ‘was.’ He got off, then?”
“In Burlington. Driver saw him walk off, um, brown scuffed suitcase. Doesn’t know ... um .…”
“What direction? Jeez. It would have to be Burlington, Vermont’s big city. Though better than Montreal. Look, I got a photo, too. Get the Burlington cops on the hunt.”
“Get your ass down here, then.”
“On its way,” and Colm hung up. He took a deep breath, smelled the lemon polish the cleaning lady had lathered on the old mahogany woodwork, the claw-footed tables. At least it helped dispel some of the formaldehyde. The house was dark even in daytime. He thought longingly of Ruth’s farmhouse, its wide pine boards, the white walls, the smell of apples and doughnuts. The smell of Ruth .…
“You’re not leaving me.” It was a statement. Colm’s father had a “new one” coming in; they wanted “the works”: open casket, old guy, complete with glasses on his nose—he’d been a librarian. “The back’s bad today, worse’n yesterday. Rain coming, that’s why. But I’ll need help with the embalming.”
“Dad, you’ve got to get an assistant. You can’t count on me so much; we’ve discussed all that.” But his father didn’t trust anyone new, didn’t have the energy to teach a newcomer, wasn’t comfortable with strangers. Colm had seen that a month ago when he’d hired someone on his own. The fellow had been through mortuary school, worked for his father two weeks; left when his father found the hundredth “fumble,” as he called it.
“I’ll be back, Dad, soon’s I can. I’m just going up to Burlington to talk to the police. They’ll do most of the running around. Call up your crony Ed Murphy; he can help lift at least. I have to go, Dad, or my efforts in the city are down the drain.”
“I told you so,” his father said.
Colm ignored the comment. “We got a missing witness here, and Glenna Flint’s life may depend on him.”
“And where is
she?”
his father asked.
Colm sighed. “That’s another chapter. Police are working on it.” And he walked down the narrow front hall, one foot in front of the other; had to keep going, though his father sighed loudly behind, started coughing as Colm got to the door. Bad back, bad cough. It did worry Colm, to tell the truth.
“When’re you gonna think about retiring?” He flung out the question as he heaved open the massive front door—and shut it mercifully behind. He knew the answer. His father would die with the embalming fluid on his hands. Then who would embalm Dad? Not Colm! Jeez.
* * * *
It was Glenna’s hair; Fay was positive of that. The officer didn’t have the hair from the bushes in hand—but white? How many white human hairs were crawling through the bushes up there on the mountain? They’d found a few gray hairs, too, but Glenna didn’t have a gray hair left in her head. “That gray could belong to the guy who grabbed her,” she yelled at the departing officer.
He didn’t turn. He didn’t need some nutty female telling him his business. In his handkerchief were the hairy scrapings from Glenna’s pillow—along with cat hairs, no doubt. Glenna had a brush, but it had been left behind at Rockbury. And then, she hardly ever used it.
Hartley and Gandalf clomped into the living room and flopped down: Hartley on the sofa, the greyhound at her feet. Hissing softly, Glenna’s cat, Puffy, leapt up on the curly-maple breakfront—you could see its claw marks. At least the dog stayed off the chairs—more or less. One pounce and the sofa would sag on the floor, as well. But the days were growing shorter, the air colder; November was just around the corner. Fay was in long pants. She had two pairs that she rotated: jeans and tan corduroys. Her daughter Patsy had undoubtedly appropriated what she’d left behind in Cabot: They wore the same size. When Patsy was a teenager, Fay would reach for a shirt or pants to wear for the day, only to discover them on their way to the local school.
“Aunty’s dead,” said Hartley, banging her head back against the horsehair. “I know it. Some guy’s got her locked in his trunk, and what about Aunty’s lungs—all those Chesterfields she used to smoke, till I got them away from her? If we get that guy, I’m going to squeeze him dry, vein by vein.”
She strangled the air with her stubby hands, kicked up her blue-jeaned legs. “And it’s my fault. I did it. If I’d left her there in that Rockbury place . . . But I couldn’t do that, could I, Fay? Leave her there with all those crazy people? Aunty’s not crazy. She’s just, just...” Hartley couldn’t think of the right word. Her hands made frantic circles in the air.
“No, you couldn’t,” Fay agreed, patting her on the head. “It wasn’t right. Aunty belongs here. In her own bed.”
Hartley sat up. “Now you’re criticizing me. You’re saying I should’ve left her here after I got her out of that place. But then they’d’ve come and taken her back there. You know that, Fay.”
“I know that.” Fay picked up her hooking. She was hooking a cow design. Actually, it was Dandelion, looking ornery— that is, looking herself: head thrown back, tail up, eyes glinting cinnamon brown, with a touch of red in the centers. A pail knocked over in the right-hand corner, the milk a yellowy white that spilled out of the frame. It made Fay feel as if she had some control over the beast, hooking her into a rug like this.
“It’s neat,” Hartley said, “that woman leaning over to pick up the pail. I like her orangy hair.”
“That’s my daughter. She has light brown hair, actually, but she tints it orangy like that. She’s a pretty girl.” She corrected herself. “Woman. She’s thirty-one.”
“No kidding? You don’t look that old.”
“Yeah, yeah. She has a kid, too, a boy, ten years old. I told you that.”
“Oh, well, my brain’s scattered these days. How come they don’t come here to see you?”
“Another story.” Fay tightened her lips. “I mean, she’s busy: the kid, the PTA, that kind of thing.”
“Then why don’t you go there? I’ll bet she’d like to see you. The kid would! So why don’t you?”
Fay thought a minute. “Well, maybe I will. Maybe.” She got up. She could almost hear new questions forming in Hartley’s head. She didn’t need those questions. She went into the kitchen, put away the supper dishes, clattering them noisily.
“If my mom was alive, I’d see her every day,” Hartley said, coming into the kitchen. “I’d live with her, take care of her, wouldn’t I, Gandalf?” She reached down to hug the greyhound. He nuzzled her hand, then rose and poked his long nose into Fay’s behind. Wanting a handout, of course. And Fay gave it—$3.59 a can.
She poured herself a scotch. She hated the stuff, didn’t know what Glenna saw in it, but she swallowed it down anyway. Afterward, it felt good in the belly. Spread to the kidneys. She had to pee, ran upstairs. She’d go to Cabot tomorrow— did she dare? After all, Patsy’s house was only a hundred yards from Dan’s. Yes. She would. Surprise Ethan, her grandson— just for an hour. He’d be glad to see her, wouldn’t he? There was nothing more she could do for the old lady. Hartley would be here if they found Aunty.
She sat on the cracked toilet and listened to the rain drizzle down through the pipes. By morning, it would turn to sleet, maybe, or snow; that was the forecast. And Glenna out there somewhere in it, was she? She could almost hear the old lady’s voice calling through the pipes. Calling for help. “Help me, Fay, hel-l-pp .…”
****
Ruth was ready to leave for East Branbury when for the umpteenth time Zelda broke through the same pasture fence. “Yep, she busted right through where me and Tim fixed it,” Joey reported. “You better go git her. Me and Tim got other work to do.”
Tim was right: She’d assigned the jobs. Cut the corn in the east pasture, for one. They were already late; it had snowed an inch last night, the temperature plunging down into the twenties. They might not save what they had. Jobs heaped up on jobs—she couldn’t think straight. And on top of it all, Mac and Glenna both missing, and increased hysteria at the Healing House. How far did neighborliness stretch? She had her own life to think about, her family. Why was she running around to healing houses? What was Colm doing up in Burlington, chasing down an old man who didn’t want to be here in Vermont anyway? She shooed Vic’s chickens out of the barn—one of them, a large Rhode Island Red, flapped its reddish brown wings at her in protest, and she took the broom to him. Then, too lazy to walk, she drove the John Deere out into the north pasture. The day was brilliant with sun and snow and blue sky and red berries. She just wanted to sit down somewhere, drink it in.
But Zelda had broken through into land she rented out for sheep—to her city friend, Carol Unsworth. Carol had planted alfalfa, a patch of corn. Zelda would make short work of that. There was no time to enjoy nature.
Zelda swung her black head sideways at Ruth, as if to say, Ha. I got out, didn’t I? You can’t keep this old gal cooped up. A corn husk hung from her jaw; her mouth was moving sideways, her tail switching like a chorus girl onstage. “Chorus girl,” Ruth murmured. Pete had taken Ruth to a nightclub once in Montreal, their yearly outing. “See?” he’d said. “That plump one on the far right. She’s more desirable. Know why?” “Why?” she’d said, trying to please him, not really interested in why. Knowing why, actually. That plump flesh, for the grabbing. Pete had just laughed, poked her in the ribs, a good ole boy. She’d determined to stay in shape after that, not accumulate extra flesh. Well, the farm did that job for her, it wasn’t hard. She ran her hands down the sides of her breasts, her hips. Soft, but hard flesh, both at once. She was still in the running.
Zelda had no spare flesh, either, her hips sticking up, all bone; you could count the ribs. She let Ruth pat her on the flank, then turned her head slightly, as if bowing. After the applause? Or was it a kind of “I-told-you-so-you-can’t-keep-me-in” look? The tough-lady stance. The free soul. “Zelda, you old reprobate.”
Ruth lifted her chin, smelled the alfalfa Carol had planted, the purple aster. Overhead a small vee of Canada geese honked south, and she followed it with her eyes until it disappeared into a clump of low clouds. She laid her head against Zelda’s bony skull. “I wish I could. I wish I could break through that fence,” she whispered. And Zelda gave a long, soft bellow.
Tim was suddenly behind her. “You’re spoilin’ that cow rotten, madam. Anyway, thought you’d need help. Honest t’Jesus, I don’t know what I can do to keep her in. Electrify a larger area, you think? The barbed wire don’t stop her.”
“No way,” she said. She’d rather mend fence than have her children hurt. Besides, cows walked through electric, just as they did barbed wire. Now there was the grandson, running on his stubby little legs. “Just keep mending. She broke through a vulnerable spot, that’s all.”
“If there is one, she’ll find it.”
He walked her back with the cow. He was done with the last cut of corn. “What you think about growing hemp?” he asked.
“Hemp?” She’d read about it in the
Free Press.
There was a bill in the legislature. A way for farmers to diversify by growing industrial hemp. Use it for food, a kind of pepper, cloth, rope.
“Marijuana?” she said, winking at Tim. That, of course, was the concern. Marijuana was a by-product of hemp. Did she want marijuana on her property? Vic growing up, experimenting? As she had herself, back in college, before she’d dropped out to marry Pete? Well, once or twice, that was all, really.
“Hell, some kinds are low in THC,” Tim said. “Marijuana’s not a problem. It’d give you a cash crop here; I’d like to try it.”
“We’ll see,” she said, knowing she was conservative, feeling she had to be. Funny, she used to be the liberal to Pete’s conservative. The Democrat to his Republican. Not that she didn’t consider herself liberal; it was just that she was responsible for the whole outfit now. She had to think things through, couldn’t jump on every bandwagon. “I mean, we’ve got all these Christmas trees, haven’t got a nickel out of them yet.”
“They’re only three feet high, for pete’s sake.” He laughed.
For Pete’s sake, she thought. It was Pete’s idea; he’d ordered ten thousand seedlings before he abandoned the farm for the city. Now he had no interest in them, just an ‘uh-huh’ when she mentioned them on the phone.
Back in the pasture Zelda loped over to the other cows. At first, they ignored her; finally, reluctantly, it seemed, they assumed the old hierarchy, fell in behind her. Okay, girl, Ruth thought, you can leave your calf, leave your pasture. But if you want to be a matriarch, you’ll have to stick around. One day, they’ll butt you out altogether.