Mad Cow Nightmare (10 page)

“Then we have to step in,” said the second man, a short wiry fellow with a slightly hunched back and feet too big for his body. He was wearing a black Carhart jacket over a pair of white coveralls. His words came out like a shrill alarm.

“What does that mean, ‘step in’?” said Ruth. Something had caught in her chest, she couldn’t seem to breathe right—couldn’t even get a cough out.

“Quarantine, ma’am,” said Southern Accent, smiling, trying too hard to put her at ease. “Dis-ease” was the word that came into Ruth’s head.
Not
at ease, no.

“My cows?” Ruth said. “Quarantine them so I can’t sell the milk? So we milk twice a day and then throw away the milk?” She heard her voice getting huskier, full of phlegm. “Cows won’t simply hang out in the pasture and wait till your department decides to lift a quarantine. Cows—”

“Ma’am, please, ma’am. Nothing’s happened yet. You asked the question, we’re just giving an answer.” Southern Accent waved his hands. He bit into a second doughnut. It was like he’d taken a bite out of her. She felt the pain in her throat. One more bite and she’d bite him back!

“Just giving an answer,” echoed Big Foot. He reached for a doughnut, too.

Ruth was ready to defend herself. She picked up the coffeepot. The woman came out of the bathroom with her samples, looked at the two men, and then at Ruth. “All set,” she said defensively, and thrust out a hand at Ruth. “Look, ma’am, we’re sorry for the intrusion. But we have to do it, you know. It’s a terrible disease. If it spreads—well, it’s like AIDS. It could kill thousands. We’re just doing our job, believe me.”

The pot was suddenly too heavy to hold. Ruth put it on the table and sank down beside it.

“Just doing our job,” Big Foot repeated.

“But we understand,” the woman said, “that you’ve had reporters here. We prefer that you do not—do
not
tell them we were here. Do
not
discuss our conversation with them.” She fixed Ruth’s eyes for a long moment, and then turned on her heel. The screen door slammed behind the trio.

The phone rang but Ruth’s legs were too weak to get up and answer it. She might be getting arthritis in her shoulders where she’d forked hay for a decade. Arthritis was inbred in the Scots, that bitter highland climate. And then there was Vermont—though already the thermometer in the kitchen window read eighty-eight, and not yet noon. It was still early July and three days now of blazing heat. Ruth dabbed at her forehead with a paper napkin and it oozed sugar.

The world was out of whack.

The voice came loud and squeaky through the machine. “Ruth, are you praying? It’s the only answer, Ruth. Ruth, keep praying. Pray the scourge doesn’t reach you. Pray, Ruth, pray!”

“Oh, shut up, Bertha,” though her sister-in-law couldn’t hear her. “Just shut the hell up.” She slumped over the table, her head in her hot sticky hands.

Chapter Eight

Maggie wriggled her butt to make herself comfortable on the futon. She’d never liked a bed, just a mattress on the floor. Liz and Boadie were feeding the young calves, and Maggie was finally alone on a hot Wednesday afternoon, with Nola’s secret box in her hands. Nola had given it to her to caretake when she found Ritchie trying to get into it one day, and Maggie had brought it to Vermont. She’d been dying to open it and knew she shouldn’t, but it might give a clue to Nola’s whereabouts. Or so she reasoned.

Nola was not only Maggie’s cousin, but her dearest friend. They were always together as kids. Nola’s mother had been stuck on the importance of education, and with the help of Father Linehan, got the two girls into a parish school. They hated the head nun—if they whispered together she’d make them sit with their heads out the window, rain or shine, the window down sharp on their necks. Or she’d make them write
Jesus loves me,
or
I’m a sinner,
depending on the offense, a hundred times on the blackboard till their arms were ready to fall off. Maggie learned to read, but not stubborn Nola—not till Maggie taught her on her own, and then Nola went way past Maggie—Nola had smarts.

Maggie twisted a piece of wire and pried open the box. The lock was weak. Maggie knew about locks from her dad, who had a talent for busting them open. No one wanted to discourage his talent, because life was happier when Dad was caught and put away.

The lid snapped open. It was a tin box, hand painted, Maggie knew, by Nola’s grandmother. The poor woman had faced up one last time to Nola’s abusive father, been knocked clear across the room and into a shelf full of steel tools, and was never right in the head after that. She died one windy day hanging laundry—was found wrapped up tight in a sheet. Everyone knew it was bad luck to unwind a sheet, so all they had to do was bury her like that. It was all quite convenient, Nola’s ma said.

There were trinkets in the box, a necklace with a silver spider-web hanging from a red ribbon, a present from Maggie herself. Maggie and Nola were always exchanging presents, sometimes mingling their blood—it was very spiritual, very emotional. Maggie held the necklace up to the light. Nola loved spiders, she felt their webs were magical. Untangle them and you knew your future, Nola said. Nola never wanted to know her own future, though— she was afraid of the future because of her name, Enola, and what it meant spelled backwards.

So what was happening now to Nola? Maggie squinted into the silver web but it gave out no secrets. She could only hope Nola was all right, that she’d found a family to take her in and care for her till she was able to fend for herself. She’d never fend for herself, Maggie knew, while Ritchie was alive. It was like he wanted to own Nola, was jealous of everyone who ever spoke to her. And yet Ritchie never really loved Nola—he only wanted to own her. It was Maggie he still carried a torch for, since the day he first heard her sing, he said—didn’t he tell her that over and over again? Maggie would tell him to cool it, she had her Darren—but it didn’t stop Ritchie from sidling up to her, touching her, breathing in her ear. God, she hated that!

It was funny how two brothers from the same mother could be so different. But then, the brothers had different fathers, so maybe that accounted for it. She didn’t know either of the fathers, so who could tell?

She laid the necklace carefully on the India print coverlet and pulled out two more bits of jewelry: a narrow gold ring with the initials PP—her mother’s initials; a copper earring she’d worn as a pair in that nun’s school and never since, because Sister Eileen had pulled one of them off after Nola sneezed six times in the middle of Sister’s lunch prayer and Sister was pissed off and kept the one earring. Oh, but they’d had a good giggle!

There were yellowy clippings and letters—one from an old auntie-midwife who’d helped with Keeley’s birth and knew who the father was—someone Maggie already suspected, yet it was still a shock for her to read the name. Another letter from Penny, a Tonawanda neighbor and school counselor, a kind soul who took Maggie, Nola, and Keeley under her wing and fed them home-baked strudel when they came to visit. The letter was dated June 22—after Maggie and Barren left, and a few days before Nola went to the hospital. Nola would have read it over and over, the way it was folded and refolded a dozen or more times.

Maggie started to put it away but then saw her own name mentioned and couldn’t resist reading it through. She wasn’t a good reader—she’d sung her way through those two years in the nun’s school—but when she had to, she could sound out the words. She held the lined paper up to the light and, pushing her finger along the lines, read aloud through to the word “Maggie.” Nothing important: just a recipe for Penny’s strudel Maggie and Nola had asked for, and a plea for Keeley to attend school more often. He shouldn’t be on that farm all the time, she’d said.

But then Penny wrote there was something she suspected, something Nola should know, and that was why this letter. It was easier to write, she said, than tell it face-to-face. Holding the page close to her eyes, for something had spilled on the paper—soda or something—Maggie read on. Her mouth dropped open with the double shock of the two letters. Her heart so heavy now she could hardly hold the paper, she needed two hands to support that terrible weight.

And the pain of knowing that now Nola knew.

* * * *

Colm was back with lobster for lunch. Ruth couldn’t even look at the poor creatures struggling in the steaming pot, and Colm making jokes like “Quit frolicking in there, you guys, and settle down.” If Ruth ate lobster at all these days it was in a stew, not on the claw like this, presented with ceremony, melted butter, small pincers her lover set down by her plate to crack the shells with. And then, while they cracked and sipped the wine he’d brought (not a word yet about moving in, but it would come as it always did, the schemer), she could think only of what was going on in her life: the travellers in her pasture, the missing woman, the possible quarantine of her cows.

And here she was eating lobster of all things, as if the world wasn’t about to come crashing down on her!

The absurdity of it all broke on her and she had to giggle. “Silly man,” she said. “Dear sweet silly man,” and she gave him a hug. Which he returned, of course, turning her shirt into a hot buttery rumple.

Ten minutes and Colm was done with his lobster—once a slow eater he had lately turned into a gulper; he was always done way before her. He was holding up a newspaper, reading aloud the AP news: “ ‘We don’t know what the likelihood is that the cows have eaten contaminated feed—’“

“What?”

“From someone in Minneapolis,” he acknowledged, and went on reading:    “‘Federal officials are monitoring cows in Vermont, Minnesota, and Texas for signs of Mad Cow disease, according to a USDA expert on the illness.’“

Ruth put down her fork, settled back into gloom. “Don’t read it all, just paraphrase,” she said. “Tell me the worst and get it over with before they come knocking on the door again.”

“Two cows in Minnesota have shown symptoms,” he summarized, waving his pincers for emphasis. “A USDA official named Leafmiller is monitoring them because she doesn’t know if they were given contaminated feed before they were imported five years ago from the Netherlands. But she doubts there’s any BSE.” Colm began quoting again: “ ‘BSE has never before appeared in the United States and the Department of Agriculture is determined to keep it that way.’“

“Even at the risk of hiding it if it happens?” Ruth said, recalling the federal agent who had all but said, “If anyone asks, we weren’t here.” She hadn’t been able to fathom that remark.

“I wonder,” said Colm, chewing on his lower lip.

“So she says she doesn’t know if they ate contaminated feed?” A spot of anger pricked her cheek.

“She doesn’t know, right, but hey, she doesn’t want to take any chance of Mad Cow moving into our food supply. We’ll have to trust her, Ruthie. To catch the disease, your cows would’ve had to eat feed made from infected animals—or, it says here, eaten infected animals’ brains, spinal cords, or nerves. Or a single infected cow could contaminate the others. They don’t really know. Not that they test every slaughtered cow like they do in Europe and Japan—they’ve been pretty lax.”

Ruth pushed away her plate. She couldn’t eat another bite. The pink claws reminded her of broken bones.

“You won’t catch Mad Cow from lobster.”

“That’s not the point.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her what
was
the point, because she didn’t know. She only knew that something poisonous, like a dark red cloud, was hovering over her farm and wouldn’t go away.

“Twenty-two cows were imported to Texas, three to New York, and four sheep to Vermont—they’re all being watched. Scary, huh?”

“Those sheep are the ones they’ve already taken. And not just the four. They took the whole flock. It wasn’t fair!”

“Nope, wasn’t,” he said, slurping a bit of leftover butter, rather enjoying her panic, she felt—having created it, for God’s sake! “Those sheep were killed. At a government lab in Iowa. Three hundred-sixty killed from Vermont—their brain tissues tested. Four, they claimed, came out positive.”

Ruth had read about it in the
Free Press.
“But the first time the tissues turned out negative! And the owners weren’t allowed a second opinion, an independent tester.”

There were too many inconsistencies. It was all too much. She shoved back her chair and sprang up. The claws went flying; one of them struck her wineglass and gave a sharp ring. She took it for a sign, a severe warning. For her, and her cows.

“Hey, where you going? I brought dessert from the Otter Bakery. Chocolate éclairs, Ruthie. You love ‘em.”

She was already at the door. She had to go down to the pasture. A letter had come in the mail for Maggie; she had to deliver it. She had to count cows.

“Nobody’s taken your cows yet, Ruthie. You’re getting paranoid. Come back and eat your éclair.”

“You eat it, Colm. I don’t want it. Nobody’s going to take my animals. Over my dead body they will!” She was in the cupboard now, rummaging about.

“What are you looking for?”

“Pete’s gun. He left it here for me. In case of predators. When I was single, you know, before you started to ooze in, you sneaky fellow—take over my bed.”

He was up behind her, his arms around her waist, his face pressed into her neck. It felt good for a moment. But she had to find the gun, and she pulled away.

“You’re not single anymore, Ruthie, love, we’re in this together. You know you hate guns. You don’t need one, for pete’s sake.”

“Don’t say that,” she said, opening drawers, flinging out pans, napkins, paper plates.

“Don’t say what?”

“Don’t say ‘for pete’s sake.’ Pete’s gone now. He married that actress. It’s all legal. I’m a single woman.”

“Not for long, though,” he said, picking up what she’d thrown down. “Tell me not for long. It’s a cold, scary world out there, Ruth. Crime moving out of the cities, into the country. You need a man in the house. Full-time, you know?”

She held up the gun. It was an old hunting rifle, a Winchester 30-30—empty now, but she knew where the bullets were. On the very top shelf, aha, she’d kept them up high in case Vic, who was only ten when Pete walked out on her one day, picked up the gun and played army with it. True, she hated guns. She didn’t know why she’d kept it. Though she was glad of it now. She might need it. And she knew how to use it—Pete had taught her. It wasn’t crime she worried about, so much as the unknown, the insidious, the unseeable. Plague!