Stolen Honey (14 page)

They all came running out: Gwen, Brownie, Mert. Russell liked a welcoming committee. Gwen was her own person, of course, but when she came home from a beekeepers’ conference or from the hospital with flu, Russell was always there with balloons and beer to welcome
her.
He liked ceremony, that was all. He caught her up in his arms, danced her about while the others looked on, smiling.

“Brownie’s here,” she whispered in his ear, “give the boy a hug, he’s missed you.” He did, and Brownie smiled for the first time, it seemed, since that college boy had died. “Only twenty-four hours?” she pleaded. “Stay longer, Russ, never mind the money. We need you.”

“Yeah, but I got to go to Swanton, I got a meeting there with the chief. A short one,” he conceded. “What happened to the pickup? The Ball kid’s out there painting it. The Mongoloid kid with him. Can we afford that, huh? Jeezum, though, I could use some shut-eye. I been driving all night. Then bacon and eggs— I’ll fry ’em up. I brought a hunk of ham.”

“Give it here,” Mert said, “I’ll cook it. You go and sleep. Okay, Gwen?”

“Okay.” She told Russell about the burned back of the pickup—an accident, she assured him. “I might’ve been careless with the smoker. I know you can paint it,” she said before he could expostulate. “But Tilden Ball’s pretty good with cars, and besides, I only pay him minimum wage.”

She could see the boy beyond the window, on his blue-jeaned knees, painting the rear a blue slightly lighter than the original. Oh, well, she’d have a two-toned truck. She smiled to see Ralphie, the Down’s syndrome boy, grab the paintbrush and dab a blotch of blue on Tilden’s rump. Then—uh-oh—Tilden gave him a shove.

“There’s high school kids would do it,” Russell said. “I wouldn’t hire those Balls to dig shit.”

“He’s a nice enough kid, Russ. He can’t help it if his father’s a martinet. He gets the wrong end of the stick as it is. But look, sweetheart, I have to work today. Weather’s right for bees—sun out, not much wind. I have to go clear to the Canadian border. I’ll drop Brownie off at school on the way—he doesn’t like that bus. If you’d told me you were coming.. .”

“I didn’t know,” Russell boomed. “Buffalo had a late snow, shut down our last day. Kee-rist, I drove ninety miles an hour to get here. And you complain,” he teased.

He hugged her again and she had to smile. She was glad to see him anytime, any day, any hour. “I’ll make it short,” she told him. “I’ll be back early afternoon. But I want you to call Swanton and tell the chief you have to miss this meeting. We’ll take a long walk. Then when Donna comes home—we’ll do something together. The four of us. Five,” she said, including Mert, who was already fussing about the kitchen. He dropped a knife and retrieved it with a groan—which reminded her: She’d have to plant more marijuana. “I’ll put the marijuana in an outdoor pot,” she told Mert, and he grinned.

Russell was in the bathroom when Tilden gave a soft knock at the door. Had he heard her remark about the pot? She hoped not. “It’s done,” the boy said. “It looks rough, but it’s the best I could do. It needs body work first.” He pushed Ralphie away where the boy was trying to rub the blue paint off his pants.

“It’ll have to do, I’m afraid. What do I owe you, now?”

Tilden consulted a notebook, peered at his watch, then made some figures with a stubby pencil. He came up with $15.86. “I had to sand it first—that took an hour. You gotta let it dry a half hour before you go anywhere.”

A half hour? She couldn’t wait that long. “Just load the smoker in, will you, Tilden? A couple of extra supers. Leroy can help.” She added on a dollar for his extra time.

He pocketed the money, loaded in the smoker, and left the way he’d come, head down, eyes on the ground as though he’d suck up nourishment from it. Ralphie started to follow, then stuck his head back in the door. “Ralphie see a shiny in the woods.”

“Yes, how nice,” she said, and shooed him out the door.

The Balls had been gone a mere ten minutes when Olen Ashley arrived in the police cruiser, muttering about “that license plate.” She supposed he’d seen Russell driving into town with the Abenaki Nation plate. Sometimes, she felt, Russell screwed it on just before he arrived in Branbury, to bait Olen. “Please, not today,” she pleaded. “Russell’s only home a few hours. Let him go now, Olen. Ignore that plate.”

“Well, if it’s not Uncle Olen,” Russell said, emerging from the downstairs bathroom, grinning ear to ear, his black ponytail still stuck with feathers, a spot of vermilion on each cheek. From Olen’s viewpoint, though, it would be a personal insult: an illegal plate; an Indian in war paint. She saw his cop face darken.

“Another time, for both of you,” she said, playing mediator. “Let’s not spoil the day. Go rest now, Russ, you’ve had a long, all-night drive.” She pointed her husband upstairs, motioned Olen to the door.

Neither man moved.

“All right. Just remove it before you leave the grounds,” Olen said, looking stiff, intractable, in his blue cop uniform. “But I have to ask you some questions. That’s why I came. About the night of April nineteenth. The night that college boy died here.”

Gwen sucked in her breath. Who told Olen that Russell was here? Did Russell think that she had? She stepped between the two men, ready to speak up, but Russell moved her carefully aside. “We’ll discuss this outside,” he told Olen, and strode out the door.

Olen glanced at Gwen, then followed. She had the feeling that he relished this confrontation. And so, she had to admit, did Russell.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Brownie called. “Is Dad still there?”

“He’s outside,” she called back. “I’m packing your lunch box.” Life went on in the midst of war. She squeezed in his tuna fish sandwich, the pears, chips, and cookies. Then she stood in the doorway. She couldn’t leave until she saw this through.

For a few long moments the two men stood facing one another, like opposing armies—waiting for the leader to call the charge. Russell kept smiling. Olen was frowning. Each moved back a step and then forward again, in a kind of dance. Gwen caught snatches of words: “nightshade” . . . “blow” ... “I wasn’t” . . . Olen’s face grew redder and redder until there were two scarlet patches, identical to Russell’s. Now, she thought, they truly are at war.

Olen suddenly whirled about, ripped the license plate off Russell’s red car; the screws went flying. No longer smiling, Russell dashed after him. “Stop that!” Gwen ran out between the men, snatched up the offending plate. “That’s enough! You’re two grown men. Give me that plate.”

Olen handed it to her, breathing hard, his eyes still on Russell. “See that he doesn’t use it again. And I won’t press charges.” His hand was on his gun—a reflex, she supposed, but she instinctively flinched. “You’re lying,” Olen told Russell, “You were here that night. He’d bothered your daughter, I can understand that. But then he woke up and you hit him on the head, did you?”

“No! He was asleep!” Gwen cried. “Go away, Olen. Just go away!”

“I can speak for myself,” said Russell, his face a red flag. “Sure, I could of done all those things. But you see, I really was asleep. I didn’t know the kid was here. I didn’t know Donna was with him.” He paused, took a step closer to Olen, his eyes yellow with sun. “Or I would have killed him—like you said. You gotta believe it. I would of.”

He stalked away, back into the house. Olen’s hand left his holster. Gwen held the license plate tight to her chest. “Just go away,” she told Olen. “Leave us alone. You’ve gone too far now.”

He took a step toward her, but she backed away. “I’m sorry, Gwen, I’m just doing my job. Russell was here that night. You didn’t tell me. I have to question everyone.”

“I didn’t think it mattered. He was asleep, I told you.”

“You were awake all night?”

“No, but—”

“Then you can’t swear he didn’t go outside, see a motorcycle? Go looking for its owner? Find that boy?”

“He wouldn’t.” A defenseless boy, lying drunk and drugged on the ground? But then she thought: What if the boy woke up? Defended himself against Russell? Jumped him?

She shook her head to get rid of the suspicion, sank onto the step. The license plate clattered down beside her.

Olen explained again that he was “only doing my job—if Russell would comply. Look, I’d like us all to be friends, Gwen, I would. But he
will
push me to the limit!”

After he drove off, giving one more pleading glance through the car window, she realized she hadn’t asked who “told” on Russell. It’s not the children, she thought, not Mert. It could only be Leroy. Leroy would have heard Russell arrive—that broken muffler, who could miss it?

“I won’t need you today,” she said when Leroy came down from the trailer, coughing into his hand. “You stay home and nurse that cold.” She turned away to show that there would be no more discussion,

* * * *

Despite the setbacks—the reformatory director still refusing to let her see his archives, an abusive phone message from Pauline (“Do you remember what I said? Have you quit nosing into our lives?”)—Annette’s family tree was growing on Camille’s computer. She’d bought a more powerful PC; she wanted to work longer hours; the destruction of data in her office had made her doubly paranoid. College security had said they’d keep an eye on her office, but they were a small force and busy elsewhere; she was better off at home. She’d visited the town police as well, although Chief Fallon looked either annoyed or bored with her concerns. She’d felt like a small girl complaining that someone had stolen her teddy bear. Seeing the man leaning back in his swivel chair guzzling a Pepsi, she wanted to remind him about the sugar, about ruining his teeth. But she’d kept her mouth shut. It wouldn’t do to antagonize the police.

Now, in her two-room apartment on Seminary Street, she brewed herself a cup of green tea and sat down to work, the cat purring at her feet. The Perkey files informed her that Annette had left the Brookview Reformatory for the last time on July 23, 1943, along with her daughter Nicole, born 1917, and with Nicole’s small son, who’d been allowed to stay with her. At this point Annette was “dying” to get out, she wrote in her diary. They had offered freedom in exchange for sterilization.

They said they’d take out my cherry, squeeze it dry, get rid of my bad blood was how they put it, they want to breed a new swarm of Wasps. The idea of it I don’t like. But I look out the barred window and there’s a tree. A mountain. I could get a place of my own on that mountain, nobody to tell me, Annette eat your soup, Annette sit on the pot. Keep that light out, No reading or writing, you hear? So I let them do it. And then I find they do it to Nicole too. But Nicole’s got two kids. She don’t mind they dry up her cherry. But the boy?

And then a poem, written after she got out:

Up here at dawn I’m a bird

on a merry go round of clouds,

I make my own music.

Town’s at my feet, I

swoop down

then bird and clouds

fly up into fire.

Now it was Nicole that Camille wanted to find or, if she was dead, her son. Surely Pauline, with all her threats, was a dead end. Camille might find the son more reasonable—or even a grandson. The implication was that the son, too, had been sterilized. Was he “feebleminded”? Were he and his mother still alive? If so, was it possible to pull oneself up out of poverty or institutionalization? Mert LeBlanc seemed to have done it. And what about Nicole’s husband? Camille had only just found out his name. Was there inbreeding? Who was that judge who was arrogant enough to declare someone “unfit” for Vermont society?

There was a knock on the door; she opened it to find Emily Willmarth—she recalled now she’d asked the girl to bring her paper here to the apartment since it was a day late. Emily was full of apologies, mumbling something about “two calves yesterday and one of them breech, so Mom needed my help.”

Camille smiled; she’d heard all the excuses. In this case it was undoubtedly a genuine one, although the problem was that students started the paper late to begin with, allowed no time for last-minute traumas. “Thanks,” she told Emily, “I’ll look forward to it. My grandmother had a farm, but I’m afraid it was gone by the time I came of age.”

“I wish mine was, too,” Emily said in a small voice, and then grinned to show she didn’t really mean that, but yet she did.

“It’s a nice farm.”

“I suppose. It’s just. ..” Emily looked up at the ceiling lamp. “It would be good to live in town, that’s all—like people who get off work at three or four in the afternoon.”

“Like teachers, you mean? But teachers bring work home with them.”

“Sure, sure, I know that,” the girl said quickly. “But teaching is different. It’s more, well, nice to do.” She looked pointedly at Camille’s high-heeled boots, her slim teacherly pants; then down at her own mud boots, and grimaced. “Well, I’m off. Back to the library—I’ve two more papers. All due within three days of each other.”

She looked a little put out, as though Camille were in deliberate collusion with the other professors. But then she laughed, and Camille smiled, too, and, shrugging, held up her palms for truce.

“Get some rest,” Camille said. “You look tired. Exams coming up in two weeks.”

Emily was on her way to the door when the screen on Camille’s computer went suddenly dark. Camille cried out, then realized it was because she hadn’t written anything on it for a quarter of an hour or so. But the blank screen had given her a start.

“Wait—Emily,” she said, and reached in her drawer. “Here. Take this to your mother.” She thrust a disk at the girl. “It’s Just something I’d wanted her to keep for me. She’ll know. It’s not classwork,” she added. “It has nothing to do with exams.” And then, when Emily frowned, “I wasn’t suggesting. ..”

“It’s okay.” Emily pocketed the disk, and with a swivel of sleek brown hair and the clack of a loose leather belt against the metal knob, she was out the door.

Emily’s visit, the imagined footsteps, the screen going dark had made Camille feel vulnerable again. For some reason the dead boy, Shep Noble, came back into her mind. She still hadn’t told Gwen Woodleaf that he was a Perkey. There was probably no connection at all with his death, none. But the thought nagged at her. She took a breath, picked up the phone, dialed the Woodleaf Apiaries. The phone rang four times and finally the answering machine clicked on. So she left a short message, mentioning Shep Noble, and asked that Gwen call her back. It might be important, she said. She didn’t want to say exactly why it might be important, on a machine.