Spit Delaney's Island (5 page)

Mrs. Wright drove the pickup along the highway to the end of her property and then turned onto the road that led back to Mrs. Starbuck's. She
tooted the horn as she passed the little cabin where the Larkin triplets lived,
Percy, Bysshe, and Shelley. Shelley was at the door shaking mats when Mrs.
Wright drove by, but the two brothers were nowhere in sight. Probably off
on their motorcycles, she thought, seeing how many cars they could pass
in an hour, burning up gas paid for right out of the taxpayer's pocket. If
Mr. Wright's ideas were ever put into practice those two wouldn't know
what hit them, the welfare cheques would stop so fast. They were twenty-four years old and perfectly capable of working at something, even if the
three of them together didn't have as much intelligence as a Jersey cow.
Mrs. Wright believed that people should be forced to contribute if they
want to hang around breathing air and taking up space.

“At least,” Mrs. Wright said, “you didn't ask
them
to help. They'd manage to get your whole herd down the well before they were through.”

The road was shaded from the sun by the heavy alder trees that grew in
close to the sides and made it almost like a tunnel. An old Model T Ford,
abandoned years ago by someone who just drove it in and walked away,
sat off to one side with bracken and alder shoots growing right up through
it, as if it belonged there. Farther on, the road crossed the bridge over a little stream, so shallow in summer it barely moved, and then divided: left to
Mrs. Starbuck's and right to Mr. Porter's. In the wedge of land between
the two branches of road a half-dozen cars—stripped of everything but
body and frame—sat as if dropped there at the same time by a giant hand
to shoot off sparks of sunlight from pieces of broken glass. Mrs. Wright's
first husband dragged them there years ago when she got fed up with seeing them around the yard.

Mrs. Wright cringed every time she got a close-up look at Mrs. Starbuck's house. When she and Mr. Left lived there they cared for the place,
were proud of it. They bought it off an old Swede when they were first
married, and for years had kept it up. She always said that if the house
were closer to the highway it would be a showpiece. But Mrs. Starbuck
and that husband of hers had never given two hoots about the place. That
white handsome two-storey house had been covered over with cheap grey
artificial bricks bought in rolls and hammered on in a single afternoon.
Her beautiful gardens had been walked all over by cattle and never weeded; the only flowers still alive were those strong enough and determined
enough to push up through weeds and not mind being trampled on by
cows. Mrs. Wright could hardly bear to go inside. Whenever Mrs. Starbuck cornered her into an invitation she always encouraged her to serve
tea in the sun porch so she wouldn't have to look at the way the inside of
the house had gone downhill. Everything old was rotten; everything new
was in bad taste.

“Turn here,” Mrs. Starbuck said.

“I guess I know where we're going,” Mrs. Wright said. And swung the
pickup truck down the lane towards the barn. She let Mrs. Starbuck get
out to open the gate, then drove through and waited for her to close it and
get back inside the truck. Then they drove, bouncing and squeaking, over
the grazing land—around stumps and blackberry bushes and over cedar
rails piled up in shallow drainage ditches—down hill nearly to the still
solid edge of the timber and pulled up alongside Mr. Porter who was trying to get the calf out of the well. His daughter Charlene was under a tree
drinking from a quart jar of water.

Mr. Porter looked up when they got out of the pickup and pushed his
hat back on his forehead. “Here's something for your column, Millicent,”
he said. He had been chopping away at the broken boards but laid his axe
aside when she arrived.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “Nobody wants to read about calves.”

“Well this one's stuck good. I hope you brought rope stronger than this
piece I got here. It won't pull a thing without snapping.”

The rope he had tied around the calf's neck was hardly thicker than
binder twine. Mrs. Wright wondered if there was a man alive in this world,
aside from her two husbands, who could do things right. It seemed every
time she turned around there was somebody else doing something the
wrong way and needing her to set it straight.

“I don't know how you keep that place of yours from falling apart, John
Porter,” she said, “if that's the kind of equipment you use.”

She took the coil of rope from the back of her pickup and walked over
to the well. The calf, which was not really a calf at all but one of Mrs. Starbuck's Hereford yearlings (only half the size it could have been if it had
been cared for properly and given good feed) was not even down the well.
Only its back end had fallen in and got wedged; the head and front feet
were above the ground.

“Judging by the racket I would've guessed this thing was down at the
bottom at least, twenty feet down and wedged crosswise.”

Mrs. Starbuck had run over and crouched down by the calf. She started
running her hand down its forehead, between its white bulging eyes, and
crooning soft words at it. “I just hope it's not hurt,” she said. Her big florid
face was down level with the calf's as if she were trying to hypnotize it. “I
could kill the so-and-so who broke that well cover.”

“You're looking at him,” Mrs. Wright said. “That white-face beef there
stepped right through the top.”

“Don't be silly,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “No cow is stupid enough to walk
on a wooden well cover.”

Shallow. That's all Mrs. Wright could say about her, just shallow. And
she could have added “Is your cow so stupid it'll walk on a well cover that's
already
been broken through?” but she held her tongue. There were some
people you just couldn't talk to, they knew it all. To set them straight only
brought out the meanness in them.

And Mrs. Starbuck could be mean. Mrs. Wright had seen her catch a
dog in the chicken run and beat it with a stick of wood until her arm
ached. That Mr. Starbuck when he was alive had taught her meanness. It
was because he was such a little man and so weak—he tried to make up
for it by nastiness and he taught her to be the same way. To tell the truth,
Mrs. Wright thought that, big as she was, she had been scared of that miserable little man and eventually took on some of his characteristics for her
own protection.

Right now, though, she was looking at that calf as if she had never struck
a living thing in her life, as if she were the kindest person in the world.
Talk about two-faced. Well, no, Mrs. Wright wouldn't call it exactly two-faced because Mrs. Starbuck never tried to hide it. She could love and hug
that calf right now and then as soon as it was out of the hole, kick its ass
for being so stupid as to fall in. Mrs. Wright had seen people treat their
children like that but when she was bringing up her own two she tried to
be consistent so they could always know what to expect.

“All right,” Mrs. Wright said. “Get away.”

She meant Mrs. Starbuck but they both moved. Mr. Porter and Mrs.
Starbuck backed right up to where the girl was sitting at the base of the
tree. They crouched down and watched her.

She made a lasso of the rope and dropped it over the calf's neck. Then
she worked it under the legs until it cinched up around the chest.

“Okay John Porter, come here.”

Porter lifted his hat and scratched, then walked up and took the coil of
rope from Mrs. Wright's hand. “Tie it to the truck,” she said. Make yourself useful is what she meant. She couldn't stand to see a man doing nothing while a woman worked. Even if a woman like her nine times out of
ten could do a thing better, it still wasn't right.

She watched him uncoil the rope and walk with it over to the pickup.
Moving fast just wasn't in him so she watched while he walked over and
crawled under the truck and ran the rope around the axle. But before he
could pull the rope taut, his hand slipped and banged against something.
He came out from under that truck holding onto his hand and biting his
lip shut as if he were afraid of what he might say if he once opened up.

“You're all right,” his daughter said. She ran over to him and held the
hand and muttered something to him that Mrs. Wright couldn't hear.

It's a good thing it's only skinned knuckles, she thought. What would
you do if it was broken and you had to go to a doctor? Mr. Porter belonged
to some religion (she could never remember the name) that didn't believe
in going to doctors or getting inoculation shots or anything like that.

Mrs. Wright couldn't imagine herself not wanting to go to a doctor,
they'd always done so much for her. And she figured there was only one
reason for people like the Porters to refuse the benefit of modern medicine. No, there were two reasons. First, they were probably scared of what
doctors could do, needles and knives and things. But more likely, it was
just that they wanted to be different from other people, set apart. They
were using religion as an excuse. Just wait until the crunch came, just wait
until they were in real trouble; they'd be high-tailing it down to that doctor's office like anyone else, and be grateful for all the advances of medical
science.

Mrs. Wright was a tolerant woman when it came to religion. She admired the Mennonites, sticking together in their little community up the
highway a mile or so. She was careful, of course, not to wear a kerchief over
her head or leave her apron on when she was outside working in the garden. Not everyone was as understanding as she was, and she didn't want
them to think as they drove by that they were already in the Mennonite
settlement. She knew a lot of Catholics, too, and they could cross themselves all they wanted as far as she was concerned, if they thought it would
do them any good. And most of the Finns who lived in Cut Off were
Lutherans but they never went to church so it didn't make any difference.
No, you could have any religion you wanted and Mrs. Wright would tolerate it. The only thing she couldn't tolerate was stupidity and as far as she
was concerned the Porters were stupid. There should be laws forcing them
to go to doctors.

Mr. Porter hadn't straightened up yet when Mrs. Wright heard what
sounded like two buzz saws running wild and turned to see what was happening. Percy and Bysshe Larkin rode down the hill on their motorbikes.
They bounced over the bumps, yahoo-ing and grinning like a couple of
drunks, their rear ends leaping off the seats a foot with every bump. At the
truck they parted and roared two opposite circles around the whole lot of
them, then skidded to a stop and put their legs out to keep from falling
over.

“Just in case this poor calf wasn't scared enough already from being
down a well,” Mrs. Wright said.

They grinned at her from their two identical empty faces. She couldn't
even be sure they knew what she meant.

Mrs. Starbuck moved up beside her and put her fists on her hips. “What
you two doing on my place anyway? I bet you left every damn gate open
for my cows to get out and run all over the country.”

Bysshe Larkin examined the sky. Searching for birds or wind. “Heard
a lot of racket down here, thought maybe somebody was killed.”

“Nobody yet,” Mrs. Wright said. “Sorry to disappoint you.” Percy Larkin looked at the two women and then at his brother. “You know what
she reminds me of, Bysshe?”

“Which one?”

“The little one. Mrs. Left-Wright.”

“What?”

“A fox terrier. A little white-haired fox terrier always yapping.”

Mrs. Wright opened her mouth to screech at them but Mrs. Starbuck
beat her to it. “You two get on out of here right now!” she yelled. “Go on!
Shoo! Get out!” She flapped her arms as if they were two chickens that had
wandered into her house. “You don't come onto my property and insult
my friend, not while I'm around. Git!”

But they didn't move. Mrs. Wright would have reached down to pick
up two rocks and thrown them straight at those empty faces if she hadn't
known how simple-minded they were. There was no sense getting mad
when simple-minded people said insulting things they couldn't even understand themselves.

“A fox terrier,” Bysshe Larkin said. “A fox terrier beside a Great Dane.”

“Get the hell off this place, we got a job to do!” Mrs. Starbuck said. “Go
home and learn some manners from your sister, you empty-headed so-and-sos.”

Mr. Porter left the back of the truck, from which he had watched everything that had gone on, and stood right between those two. He put a hand
on the elbow of each brother and spoke so softly Mrs. Wright had to strain
to hear. “These ladies are all upset about the job ahead of them,” he said.
“If you want to help, how about going back to close those gates so the calf
won't run out onto the road when it's free? If you come back tomorrow
Mrs. Starbuck will let you see if it's hurt or not.”

The Larkin boys looked at the women, and then at each other. They
started their motors and rode three circles around the four of them before
they took off up the hill.

“Empty as wind,” Mrs. Wright said after them, “flighty as birds.”

“I hope them two are sterilized,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “I wouldn't want
to see any more Larkins around.”

“You can't sterilize people if they don't want it,” Mrs. Wright said. “And
they're just the kind, them and all the people with no intellect, who would
refuse to have it done. You and me are paying to keep them on the road,
spreading their low-IQ seeds.”

“They didn't come in here to spread seeds,” Mr. Porter said. “They were
just curious.”