Poison Apples (15 page)

The trees were sick, Stan could see it. The leaves were turning a deep brown, a contrast to the ripe red Winesap apples. “Seven trees, Stan,” said his neighbor Don Yates, counting, looking sympathetic. Rufus stood by stony-faced; his impassivity made Stan even angrier. “What is it?” he cried. “What did this to the trees?”

“Herbicide,” said Rufus, holding an apple up to his eye. “Could be paraquat. It’s a defoliate, it won’t kill the trees, no. Just—”

“Poison the apples,” said Don.

“Well, I wouldn’t advise tryin’ to sell ‘em.” Rufus gave a sideways glance at Stan, then looked away as Stan advanced on him.

“Where’d they get it? How? We have paraquat in the storage shed, but it’s locked. Or should be.” Stan felt the heat rising inside his chest, crawling up his neck like a dozen maggots. He was about to explode from the heat. Rufus’s voice sounded far away: He always kept the shed locked, he said, he and Stan had the only keys .. . he’d lent his to Bartholomew once or twice. He had to trust the pickers.

Stan said, “You can’t trust anyone anymore. No one!” He thought of that boy who’d befriended his daughter, how nice he was to Stan and Moira when he came to dinner one time, how ingratiating, drinking his wine, and then . . .

“Put a new lock on it. Now,” Stan bellowed, and Rufus just folded his arms and stared at the ground.

Don Yates said, “I’ll see to it. Rufus will probably want to get a crew to pick the bad apples, destroy them, right, Rufus? If Bartholomew hadn’t eaten two of them, well, we might have an epidemic on our hands. Apples going out, giving a bad name to the place. You wouldn’t like that, Stan. Locals coming in soon, to pick the drops.”

“Already got a bad name,” said Stan, thinking of that woman developer, leaving another message, coming twice to bother Moira. He was suddenly furious at Rufus for lending out the key at all. “It’s your job,” he told him. “I hired you to run this orchard right. We’ve had trees slashed and maggots and worms and, my God, now poisoned apples, one of my men down sick, somebody coming in here at night spraying paraquat—is that a way to run an orchard?”

“Not the way I run an orchard, no,” said Rufus, his voice a low hiss. “You’re the boss here. You don’t like the way I run it, then sell. Go back to schoolteaching.”

Stan didn’t like the deprecating way Rufus said “schoolteaching.” Stan had heard him mouthing off about unions, when Stan himself had belonged to a union. People didn’t understand about teachers; they thought they were overpaid when they had the most important job in the world: teaching the young, caring for them when their parents went off to make money.

“You get out, then. This is my orchard. You’re the one to get out,” Stan said, almost suffocating now, and felt Don’s hand like a crate on his shoulder.

“Calm down, now,” said Don, “both of you. You’ll regret these words later. I’ll call the police, shall I?”

They both turned on him. Stan didn’t want any police called in on this. He’d had enough of police. They’d impounded his car, they were accusing him of running that woman down. He didn’t need any more police.

Neither did Rufus. “Wait on the police,” he said, his round face reddening. “Talk to the Jamaicans first. Other apple pickers. Someone might have seen somethin’. There’s a fella in another orchard near here I can talk to. It had to be someone knows how to spray. A ground rig did this, doubt it was a plane or you’d have heard it—two nights or so ago, I figger. Takes time for paraquat to do its work.” He drew in a whistly breath at the end of the unaccustomed long speech.

For once they agreed. Stan grunted; he didn’t want to give Rufus the satisfaction. “We’ll line the men up,” he said. “After lunch. See what they know. It was someone who knew the orchard, all right. Knew where that paraquat was kept. Wanted to hurt us. Me.” He felt heavy, heavy and hot, like any minute he’d have a meltdown. He couldn’t deal with Rufus, was glad the man was turning away. Yet he depended on the manager. Who else could he get in the middle of the season? He felt Don’s hand again on his shoulder, squeezing; at least he had an ally.

“Anything I can do,” Don said, “you just call on me. I’ll try to be over here more often. Since the retirement, you know, I’ve got time on my hands. Okay?”

“Okay,” Stan said, feeling as though he was under water, like he was drowning in his own sweat. Though sometimes he just wanted to give in to it, let go. If it wasn’t for Moira .. .

But when he got back to the house Moira looked as though she needed help, too. She had a visitor, introduced him as Pete Willmarth, Ruth’s ex-husband. It was the last straw: Stan wasn’t in the mood for small talk. He’d heard of the ex-husband who’d run out on his wife. What was he here for, anyway? The man was taller than Stan, younger, big-jawed, big-shouldered. He was trying to shake Stan’s hand, and Stan put his out, limply.

“You may know that my uncle owned this orchard—Howard Willmarth? He bought it from a cousin of mine.” He paused. Stan waited. What was he getting at, anyway? He could see that Moira was hesitating about offering coffee. Was this a personal visit or a business one?

“I played here as a boy,” Willmarth went on. He was a good-looking fellow, Stan supposed: rather large nose—plump, one might call it. Losing his hair, though. Used Grecian formula on it, Stan recognized it. He’d tried the stuff himself, it looked phony; he let his own go gray. He let Willmarth talk on. Moira was finally bringing out coffee. Stan wasn’t sure what the man was saying, his mind was centered on those trees, that poison spray, the question of who was responsible. There was the feeling of claustrophobia, as though he were in a tunnel, or one of those rooms he’d read about in Poe as a schoolboy, where the walls closed slowly in on you.

“It’s hot in here,” he said suddenly, a non sequitur, he knew, to Willmarth’s ramblings, but he needed air. He went to a window and flung it open. Moira frowned at him. “It’s chilly out,” she said. “Do you really want it open?”

He did, yes. Willmarth was looking at him now, smiling a little, like he was a child. Damn the fellow anyway! “What do you want here?” Stan asked. “Why did you come?” He saw the deep flush of pink crawling up Moira’s neck. Moira and her sense of hospitality .. . she’d take in the smelly tramp, Moira would, and listen to his story. She wanted everyone content. But he couldn’t be content. Who could, in this situation?

“You’ve had a few problems,” Willmarth said, and Stan drew in a breath, ready to explode. “I can understand. My farm—or was, I own a share of it now, to help Ruth out till she can get back on her feet—nearly went bankrupt at one point, you know, we nearly sold with the first herd buyout. We should have. It was Ruth wanted to keep it. Against my better judgment.” He smiled at Moira, and Stan saw her face grow solemn. Of course she was on Ruth’s side now, she wouldn’t want to hear any bad-mouthing.

Willmarth was handing Stan a card. Stan stared at it: something about real estate, farming, developing; his vision blurred. Three Partners, it read. “We can offer a good price,” the man was saying. “These are mostly old trees. You haven’t planted too many young ones, I see.”

“Oh yes,” Moira said, “in the lower orchard, the west quad. We put in a hundred small trees just last year. They’re doing beautifully.” Her voice sounded belligerent. What was
her
problem? Stan thought. But he’d back her up.

“She’s right,” he told Willmarth. “We did. We’ve put all our savings into this place.”

“That’s why you should get out while you can,” Willmarth said, smiling, his attitude easy, relaxed. “Before you lose it all.” He held up his hands, palms out. “Now, I’m not trying to rush you. Push you. I just heard about your troubles, is all. Thought you might need a helping hand. To pull you out. A hand I could have used a few years back. Mavis and I...”

Stan was confused. Who was Mavis? But Willmarth was going on, apologizing for something: “I’m sorry if she annoyed you. She means well, but sometimes ... I mean, we don’t want to—” He laughed, coughed, and Moira stood up.

“We don’t intend to sell. Do we, Stan?”

Sell? Was that what this fellow wanted? Stan couldn’t seem to think straight. He was still hot, for one thing, even with the window open; he was boiling over. That paraquat, Bartholomew sick. Those maggots. That woman he’d run over—so they claimed. He couldn’t take much more. He needed air. He jumped up, pushed the window to the top, the wind rushed in, and he heard Moira gasp. He wheeled about. “Why not?” he cried. “Why not sell, Moira? You want to lose everything? We could take a year off. Then decide what...”

He couldn’t think what. He couldn’t think anything. He was on fire. He grabbed on to the back of a chair. Moira was running to him, and that fellow; he was dizzy, he couldn’t walk, he let himself slump into their hands ... onto the sofa. The room, going black . . .

Chapter Thirty-two

Moira tiptoed out of the hospital room. Already Stan was asleep, they’d given him Valium, amphetamine, a stimulant to knock down the blood pressure that was “off the charts,” according to Dr. Colwell. He’d had a “small stroke,” his left side was impaired, his speech affected. They’d give him physical therapy. No, he couldn’t “predict” (as though Stan were a weather report) when he’d be able to come home. But they’d do everything they could. . . . And thank God she’d taken out health insurance nine months before. They’d had none at all for a time after Stan left teaching.

So much was happening, so quickly. She couldn’t make sense of it. She drove home in a daze, the police still had the Blazer—what was taking them so long, anyway? Ruth had called to say they had that school board woman’s body. No wonder Stan had a stroke! Although the damage had started before the move to Vermont: with Carol’s death. That was the source. And she’d had to be the strong one. They couldn’t both have gone under!

She drove past the Willmarth farm, impulsively turned in. She needed someone to talk to. There was something calming about Ruth, as though the woman were somehow rooted, like beets or carrots or turnips. She wanted to tell about the ex-husband’s visit, how, before the collapse, Stan had said he wanted to sell. “Should I?” she asked Ruth. And repeated again all that had happened.

They were in the barn, Ruth was stroking a newborn calf. It was beautiful, all white except for a black tail and a black spot on the nose. Those eyes, like melted chocolate! Ruth had a calf coming each month now, she’d said. She couldn’t cope with calves coming all at once every spring or fall—she spread them out. The mother cow, whose name was Charlotte, was a real love, Ruth said, a good mother. Charlotte lay panting on her haunches, exhausted from the ordeal of birth. The calf was rummaging about to find the teats. The two of them practically purring with happiness. Moira’s eyes watered. Here was beauty in its natural animal state.

“It’s your decision, of course.” Ruth leaned back against a stanchion. She looked exhausted from playing midwife—though it had been a routine birth, she said. “Look, Moira, I can sympathize. I’ve been through these hard decisions. To sell the farm or try to run it on my own. I opted, as you know, to keep it. And that orchard of yours, it’s really beautiful. In the spring, when it’s in blossom, it’s like . .. like—”

“Fairyland,” Moira finished for her. “I could see my grandma’s fairies weaving those pink and white blossoms into a shawl that would stretch for miles. It’s still beautiful—most of it, except for the poisoned trees. I think I’ve Fallon in love with apples myself. I’m learning about them, a new one every day—there are over seven thousand varieties, did you know that? Not in our orchard, of course, but Stan keeps grafting on new ones. I mean, myself, I’m learning how to graft Granny Smith onto Red Delicious .. . it’s like weaving one color, one texture into the next. Stan was fascinated with the possibilities. But now ...”

She thought about Stan, the magnitude of the stroke, and Stan not yet fifty. “They can’t tell me how long before he recovers,” she admitted to Ruth.

“You said it was a slight stroke, not a massive one?” The calf lost the nipple and Ruth stuck him back on it. It reminded Moira of the kittens her cat had in her closet when she was a child—only cows were bigger—huge! Charlotte gave a grateful moo, and Moira wanted to hug her, but didn’t quite dare. “You have to count the good things,” Ruth went on, putting an arm around the cow. “I learned that. I’ve grown since Pete left. I never realized it so much until he came back and I saw what he was. Who he was. Not quite the strong, loving person I made him into in my head when we married. In many ways he’s still the carefree fraternity boy he was in college. I want us to be friends for the children’s sake. But it’s hard. We have different values.”

Would Stan’s values change, too, Moira wondered, with all the mischief that was going on? Would it ever be the same for her and Stan? “There’s still that woman’s death hanging over Stan. I can’t imagine him, for all his anger, deliberately running her down.

“Or if he did inadvertently hit her, well, it would have been an accident, her fault. She was running toward him, Stan thinks he remembers that. But he can’t recall if he was in the car or if it was in front of the store when he saw her. He was a sick man, even then. I realize that now.”

“The police are tending toward the accident theory, Moira. Colm says so. If anything, he has their sympathy. But they have to look at all angles, you know, all possibilities. They have to look at the possibility of, well, homicide. Because of his pushing that woman, I mean. That was what hurt his case.”

“I know. Oh, God, I know.”

They were silent a moment. The calf’s sucking was soothing, like water running over stones. Being here in this cow barn was a kind of renewal. Moira liked the smell of hay, didn’t mind the manure. It was earthy, it was real, you could name it and smell it. The orchard happenings were like so many dirty tricks, unnamable.

Moira rose from the pail she’d been seated on. She felt better already. She’d go back to the orchard, see Rufus, find out what was going on. See about Bartholomew. He was the one she was most worried about.

But she wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t sell. Ruth was her role model here. “If you see your ex-husband,” she told Ruth, “tell him we’re not selling. We’ll get to the bottom of this bad business and then we’ll get on with our lives. I can do more than I’ve been doing. I’ll go to work in the orchard. I want to! Have to,”