Harvest of Bones (27 page)

“Here, uh, Annie, nice hot cup of cocoa here.”

She grunted. “Wha?”

He yanked her up to a sitting position. “Cocoa,” he said. “Now drink it. You won’t get nothing else till suppertime. You’ll have a long wait.”

She didn’t respond, just glared at him, like a hurt wild bird, reached out as if to strike him. He didn’t need that. So he set it down on the floor beside her.

He heard a knocking upstairs. They were here. But he was ready, sure. His rifle loaded. He was angry now. He scrambled up the cellar steps, then locked the door leading down there. Had he bolted the secret door? He couldn’t think. They were banging at the front door—hollering, top of their lungs. Two, three of ‘em, he counted, peering out the corner of the shade. Sneaky sons a bitches. Wanting his space.

Alwyn sat. Sat in his mother’s rocking chair; he’d pulled it out of the kitchen into the parlor. He sat and rocked, the old .22 across his knees, cocked. Let ’em come in and get him.

More bangs on the door, the old wood cracking. “Bagshaw? We know you’re in there. Bagshaw! Open up now. We got a couple questions to ask.”

He clasped his fingers around the metal gun. Middle finger on the left hand wouldn’t hold; it stuck up—arthritis. But hell, he had four more on that hand. He was right-handed anyway; his ma’d made him be. Used to eat with the left, write with it, till she’d made him switch. The devil was left-handed, she said.

“Bagshaw! Open up or we’re coming in.”

Let ’em come. He’d show ’em a welcome all right. He picked up the gun, aimed at the front door. But it was quiet out there now. Had they moved? Gone around back? He rocked the chair back into a corner, where he could see the windows. If they’d passed by, they were crouching. Wouldn’t see nothing in that cellar window, no. All dead weeds climbing up, and no window in that slave room.

Why, they had no right, no right to break into a man’s home! What’d he done anyway, except kill a few worthless birds? Something else, too.... He pushed it out of his mind. His brother, Denby, now, he was the one they should’ve been after.

Denby only a half-brother anyhow, sure. He knew. Ma couldn’t hide it—never mind they both had yellow hair. That man, hanging around while Alwyn was growing up. Ma getting pregnant with Denby, the fellow taking off. He wouldn’ta done that, not with Annie. Not if she’d stuck with him. But she hadn’t. Now she was paying. Christ, the door breaking, the pine splintering; he rose up out of his chair, the gun clumsy in his stiff fingers. He straightened it, aimed. They halted. He felt the power back inside; he moved ahead, the gun steady in his hands. “Git out,” he said. “Git the hell outta my house. Git, I said!” He had the bead on them, two husky fellows, show-off badges on their shirts.

“Now Alwyn, we only want to ask some questions, that’s all. Put down that rifle, Alwyn. You know you don’t want to assault an officer, Alwyn—you know what that means.”

The fellow took a step forward and that was it. Alwyn fired at his feet. “Next time,” he shouted, “it’s the belly. Outta my house.” He was shaking now; he could feel it, like a fit coming on. The gun vibrating in his hands—and then it wasn’t there at all; it was lifting out of his fingers, seemed to be levitating. Like it was the devil stealing it away—and when he turned, there he was. Big devil in a blue shirt, with a shiny badge. Taking away his gun, snapping handcuffs on his hands—couldn’t get the cuffs over the stuck-up finger, bent it down. He screamed with the pain.

“Sorry,” the devil said, “better see a doctor for that,” and pushed him out of the house, out on the porch, down the steps, across the frozen lawn, into the backseat of a police car.

He thought he could hear Annie laughing as they drove off. Laughing and cackling like the devil was inside her. He’d warned them. “In the cellar,” he’d said, “an Antichrist in the cellar.”

One of the men had grimaced, but he’d gone down there anyway. And seconds later, he’d come up, holding out empty palms. “The Antichrist!” Alwyn had shouted again, but no one had listened. The devil had him, cock and balls, was bearing him off.

* * * *

Down in the cellar, Glenna was riding her mare. Out of the damp barn, into the open pasture, across the narrow footbridge that spanned the creek behind her farm, into the fields beyond. She liked to ride in the open, in the wind, and Jenny did, too. They were a pair, sun in their faces, grass and clover in the nose. It was fall, Glenna’s favorite season. Life smelled sweeter then: as if, with winter coming, it was a last hurrah for the senses. On they rode. The field stretched ahead; it had no boundaries, no fences. The grass unrolled like a green carpet under their pounding feet. She was free; she owed no one: not Mother, not Mac, not those others who were always pestering, wanting this, that from her: land, milk, honey, flesh. She was free!

Till she fell. It was sudden, the way a log dropped into your path, or a root reached up to grab you, unexpected, or a shot knocked you off your feet, catapulted you into a trap.
Bellowing, like the bull her father had once when it met an electric fence, he dropped down on her—the Booby. She saw him clearly now; it was like bolts of lightning—breaching her everywhere: in the groin, thighs, breasts: She screamed, and he slapped a hand over her mouth: His sex inside her—the thing that had lain coiled like a snake in the bottom of her mind all these years. The thing she had to get out, out into the clean air....
For there was no grass now, only cold cement, the place dank and reeking of mold, rot, dead mice, her nose in something wet—had she soiled herself? No—smelled like chocolate. She remembered now: He’d brought it; she’d tried to drink it. She loved chocolate, and now she’d spilled it. No—not all—half an inch maybe in the bottom. She was in a cellar, trapped by a Bagshaw. Trapped, like some skunk or fox.

Upstairs: voices, a shot! Someone coming to release her—footsteps nearby. She tried to scream, but only a hiss came out. “Here,” she mouthed, “down here. Here. Here-re ...”

And then the footsteps retreating, everything still. Somewhere outside a car speeding off, a cat mewling.

She crawled toward the door. It was shut—had he locked it? She’d get out somehow. He wouldn’t keep her here, no.

And she stopped, almost there, but exhausted, sprawled on her belly, on the hard floor.

In a far corner, a startled mouse dashed back into its hole. And finally all was quiet.

* * * *

Eustacia was starting to freshen for the first time, and Ruth was at her side. Tim argued that the healthy cow would drop the calf unassisted—hadn’t Zelda done it? If there was any problem, though, he’d be on call.

“Come on, you think I’m a Park Avenue lady? I can’t take it? I’ve had three of my own. How many’ve you birthed?”

“You got me there. It’s just I know you got other stuff on your mind. But you know where you can find me.”

“Alibi?”

The Alibi was the local bar, and Tim was fond of it. Though who was she to keep him from his small pleasures? He gave her a hard week’s work. He threw up his arms in surrender and strode out, Joey trotting on his heels. “You call now, you want help,” said Joey, echoing his mentor.

She turned over a pail and sat down to wait. Some births were quick, but some took hours. Ruth didn’t hold with Pete’s method, tying a rope around a calf’s feet and hauling it out. It was like using forceps on a baby: hurry the birth, maybe damage the child. So she’d wait.

It was true, she had her mind on more than a new calf being born. Mac was back, although Colm would deal with that. Glenna was still missing. The police were investigating the back garden where the bird entrails were buried. They were checking the tires of Bagshaw’s pickup against the prints on the mountain road; they’d searched his house after they took him, were interrogating Bagshaw himself. Of course he’d say he knew nothing, and maybe he didn’t. He was a little crazy, but he’d never done anything criminal, as far as she knew. But human beings were unpredictable, even within families—she’d learned that, all right, in the past two years. She’d go back there when she had time, see for herself. At least check on that cat.

Eustacia was lying down now, breathing hard in her contractions, the amniotic sac bulging out from the birth canal. Ruth hoped it would break soon, hoped the birth would be normal, feet-first. She didn’t want to have to call Dr. Greiner. She had a pile of unopened bills on her kitchen desk.

Hearing footsteps coming through the barn door, she yelled, “Tim, please, I’m fine, I told you. Go do your thing.”

“Can I?” It was Colm’s voice, making out to be sexy; she didn’t know whether to laugh or growl. Then suddenly, she laughed. Oh, but she was too prissy, getting worse with Pete’s absence. She had to change her ways.

“You may not want to watch this,” she warned as he stalked in. He was dressed in white cotton pants and a pale blue shirt, a blue feed cap. “What is this—Midsummer’s Eve?”

“Only clean ones I own,” he said. “I need a woman.”

Another remark to ignore. The Irish in Colm, she supposed—generations of patriarchy. Eustacia was bellowing softly now with the quickening contractions, the calf’s feet— for it was coming feet-first, thank heavens—emerging and then contracting, the birth fluids leaking out into the hay. “Draw up a pail if you’re planning to stay,” she told Colm, and then had to laugh when Eustacia suddenly urinated—she had to jump back herself.

“Jeez,” said Colm, then added, “Why I’m here—if I can distract you a minute—Mac’s at Fay’s—safe.” She nodded, she knew. “Oh, and the tire prints match. I just called headquarters. But Bagshaw insists he only gave Glenna a lift. He was driving by, he said, and she was coming down the path from the woods, waving her arms. Said he let her out at the convenience store in East Branbury, because he had to get home; he didn’t know she’d disappeared from Rockbury. Didn’t know she was there in the first place, he said. And then, according to Fallon, he went into a bunch of gibberish. Something about some woman named Annie. In and out of reality—poor old guy. Anyway, Fallon has sent a man to interview the clerk at the convenience store.”

“Do you believe him—Bagshaw?” She’d wasn’t sure that she did. After all, the man had taken a shot at her. There’d been something else going on in his head; she’d have to sit down and think about it.

“Well, I’m inclined to, I guess. But you can’t rule him out. He did bury those birds—or at least the feet and beaks. I went with Fallon to have a look. We don’t know whose property that garden’s on—it’s right between the two places. Of course Bagshaw says it’s his land. We’ll need a deed. But your friend Kevin Crowningshield holds the key to that. He says he owns the land the Healing House is on.”

“He inherited it. Is that supposed to be suspicious?” She glanced at him, sitting there, leaning back against the stanchion, looking smug. Already, the metal pail was tipping back. She hoped he’d go plop in the dung; it’d serve him right. “And I know he didn’t poison his wife. Alwyn Bagshaw did, I’ll bet—those birds. How did he kill them anyway?”

“We don’t know they were poisoned. He could have shot them.”

“All those shots? The neighbors would’ve been up in arms.” She got up, hands on her hips. “And, Colm, Emily saw the birds in his wheelbarrow. Through Vic’s telescope. She told me last night. She didn’t realize at the time what they were, but now it adds up. She’s ready to testify.”

Eustacia was bellowing, Ruth had to shout to make Colm hear. It wasn’t the time for polite conversation—if that’s what they were having. It was time to break the amniotic sac. If he couldn’t take it, he’d have to leave. “Watch out,” she warned Colm, who jumped up at the spurting liquid; and then, “Okay, girl,” she told Eustacia, “let’s get going.”

But the calf was in no hurry, and Ruth sat back down again to wait.

“He lived here a couple of years, in Branbury, right?” Colm asked, sitting back on his pail.

“Who?”

“Your friend. Crowningshield.”

“Colm, he’s not ‘my friend.’ I don’t like the inference. He’s simply a man who’s lost a wife he loved. He needed someone to talk to. So I gave him an ear.”

“That’s all you gave him.”

“Back off, Colm! What assumptions are you making here?”

But he was getting serious now; she knew the look—the black brows beetling. “He lived here in town for a time, right?”

“Before he married, that’s all. He worked for Killian’s Precision up in Vergennes; that’s how he met Angie. I mean, when they met. She lived here.”

“Next
to Bagshaw’s?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not then. She lived in town somewhere. Why do you want to know this?”

He leaned farther back on the metal pail; any minute, it would tip—irreversibly. She couldn’t wait. “I’m just curious, that’s all. Killian Precision, huh? They made airplane parts. For the air force.”

“So?” She patted Eustacia’s rump. The contractions were slowing. “This will be awhile longer.”

Colm got up, wiped hay off his rear end, and the pail clanged down on the floor. He put out a tentative hand to pat Eustacia’s sweaty flank. “Good luck, old girl,” he said.

“That was sweet, Colm. She’s eyeballing you, see?”

“Or maybe she wants to butt me. You think?”

“If she doesn’t, I might.” She grabbed his arm when he almost walked into a pile of dung.

“Jeez,” he said. “This is a dangerous place. I hope you’ve got lots of health insurance.”

She laughed. “Health insurance? For farmers, barns and cows come first. Forget the health insurance.”

“Kill-i-an Pre-ci-sion,” he said again, making six syllables out of it.

This time she let him walk,
plop,
into the manure.

She gave him one more volley before he moved out of hearing. “Colm, Pete’s coming. Halloween, nice timing? Maybe he can tell you more about Killian Precision. He had a cousin worked there.”

He didn’t even turn around this time, but she was sure she saw his shoulders slump. She was sorry then. Suddenly, she wanted to run and hug him, but now he was out of sight.

* * * *

Colm walked along the road, over to the Flint farm. He needed the walk; he was getting flabby: He slapped his belly and it wiggled. From now on... well, after today, anyway, he’d start watching his calories. His father did most of the cooking in their household—red meat and baked potatoes, night after night. Maybe a spoonful of peas—never a salad. The Irish diet. Ruth was trying to get him off red meat, of course— beef, anyway.
She
wouldn’t even down a beef bouillon cube. Said she might be eating one of her own bull calves. Though she paid her hired man, in part, with a side of beef.