Mad Cow Nightmare (31 page)

“Mmmm.” Colm was wolfing down a ham and cheese sandwich they’d bought in a 7-Eleven in Gloversville, and he could only mumble through the fatty thick of it. Ruth had a tuna salad roll but didn’t want to eat it while it was her turn to drive.

“Anyway,” Ruth said, “she wouldn’t be on the thruway—not if she’s on that motorbike. They don’t allow motorbikes on thruways, do they?”

“Sure,” Colm mumbled through the cheese, “y’ see motorcycles alla time. Jeez, I hate gettin’ behind ‘em, they’re in an’ outa traffic like flies. Oughta be banned.”

Ruth turned onto Route 29. For three hours now she’d kept her eyes peeled for a motorbike but seen only cars and trucks. How many routes and back roads the couple could take! And the roads were so thick with summer traffic that a motorbike could easily get lost to view. Already they’d passed more than three dozen motorcycles and bicycles along the route. And who knew how far Nola would ride with that deaf-mute?
Or if they’d even ride at all while it was light. Only now, with nightfall, might they dare move out on the main roads.

They were passing a motel, and Colm was pointing with his sandwich. It was tempting, but Ruth shook her head. “The important thing now, I think, is to get home before she does.”

“Warn the uncle?”

“Well, I don’t know. He might take flight if we do. It’s entirely possible he killed Ritchie. And that somehow she knows it.”

“Why? What’s the motive?”

“I don’t know that. We’ll have to find out, won’t we? I’ve got to talk to Keeley. Nola’s dislike of the uncle must have something to do with the boy.” She didn’t want to think the worst, but it was possible. Sometimes it was hard not to prejudge, bring the ugly scenarios alive in the mind. “Tormey doesn’t have an alibi for the night Ritchie died, does he? Your police were going to check.”

“In process. They’re checking with the hired hand back in Tonawanda, all the neighbors. To find out when he left the farm. He was here the next day—Friday. He was at the farm when Darren called about Ritchie?”

“Darren called a cell phone. Tormey told Darren he was in some New York burg or other looking for his pickup.”

“Likely story,” said Colm. “Anyhow, we should have a full report on his whereabouts, the alibi—all that—when we get home. I’ll call the department.”

They let the subject go for the next hour; were quiet except for small talk: William Hanna’s prostate problems, the aggravating Bertha, the usual pleas from Colm to move in permanently.

“Will I even have a home,” she asked, “after the feds get through with me? If they quarantine the land, will they keep me out of my house?”

Colm laughed through the Mars bar he was chewing. He’d bought two of them, ostensibly one for her, knowing she didn’t eat them and he’d have to make the sacrifice. “How could they do that? You didn’t bring the cows in your kitchen, did you?” Though he wouldn’t put it past her, he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me to see a heifer sitting at the table, munching a doughnut.”

She didn’t respond to that silliness. She loved her cows, but preferred them in the barn or out-of-doors. “Well, I’m not quitting,” she said stubbornly. “I know you want me to buy a place in town, work in an ice cream shop or something. But you’re mistaken, my friend. I’ll wait it out. Till I get my land back.”

“Six years? And do what?” He put a hand on her knee and stroked it. “Aw, Ruthie, love.”

She didn’t know, she couldn’t think past today. Couldn’t think past getting home, finding out what had happened since they’d left early this morning. The agents might have come already, loaded the cows into a truck—how many trucks would it take for thirty cows? She was sick at the thought. She was angry all over again at Nola. Bertha, she had to admit, had gotten to her. Nola, who might or might not have variant CJD, had to be the cause. Yes, the fear and hate and superstition had all started with Nola’s coming. She said this out loud to Colm and he snorted.

“It was Tormey Leary at the root of it. He was the one sold you the Friesian calves.”

“And whose relative was he?” She was whining now, she hated the sound of her voice. But she couldn’t help it. It was Colm at the root of it, she started to say, but bit back the words. It wasn’t Colm’s fault. The travellers had come on to him, claimed blood ties. Colm, in his easygoing, hospitable, want-to-be-liked-by-everyone manner, had simply acquiesced. Wouldn’t she have done the same?

“I’m sorry. Hit me when I get this way,” she said, gripping his thigh. “It’s nobody’s fault. Certainly not Nola’s! It’s fate. That’s what plague is, isn’t it? Fate? The Furies, grabbing and clutching and cutting off the life threads? I mean, the world’s so small we can fly in hours from Beijing, China, to Burlington, Vermont, and spread a deadly disease to all the passengers. We’re all potential carriers. And victims, too.”

“Easy, lady,” he said, loosening her fingers, which were crawling near his groin, pressing hard. “You’re getting close to the roots here. The family jewels. Careful now.”

She had to laugh at the way he looked at her. That largish nose, the unruly gray-black hair, the fullish lips, the watery blue eyes—Irish eyes, she thought, shaking her head. She tried to move her hand, but he had it, wouldn’t let go.

“If we run into a tree it’s your fault,” she told him.

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Okay. You’re in the passenger seat.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. There was some weird sense of foreboding. It was already nine o’clock, and at least an hour and a half to the Champlain bridge. She pressed down on the accelerator. She
had
to get to Branbury before Nola.

* * * *

After milking the next morning, Ruth ran down into the pasture and discovered the red circles. And it wasn’t Bertha’s group this time. It was as if her cows were in a Walt Disney film, were slowly turning into bovine devils. A red horn would grow out of each circle. Here was Zelda, casting a mad eye on her. Was she still Zelda? Or had she already metamorphosed into a she-devil?

But here was sweet Jane Eyre, bounding over to greet her. No red circle could alter maternal Jane. Jane’s calf was loping along beside her, the circle smaller on her forehead. It was like her ancestor’s concept of original sin—the innocent offspring tainted at birth. She clenched her fists. What fiend had declared this sweet calf a monster? A calf fed on fresh grass and clover and mother’s milk. Ruth dropped to her knees to embrace the creature.

And found herself sobbing into its white flank. The heifer bawled with her. Jane came along to butt Ruth on the rear end, knocking her down, and the trio were locked in a warm, mewling embrace. “I can’t let you go, I won’t,” Ruth sobbed.

She got up to see Keeley over by the fence, watching her. She smiled, and beckoned to him. There was still no sign of Nola, but she should warn the boy that his mother was on her way.

“Darren sent me,” he said. “He left his clippers here. He’s back there. Gonna let me take a turn on the tractor.” Through the haze of sun Ruth could see the Allis tractor pulling its tank spreader of thick oozy manure, painting the meadow a dark liquid brown. Beyond him in the John Deere, Sharon was sitting, ready to reload the tank. Spreading and loading, the process would go on all morning— a normal summer day on the farm. And her cows, the reason for all this hot hard labor, were wearing red circles on their brows, like openings into a house of death.

Keeley saw what she was looking at and watched with her. “They did that to Uncle’s cows, too,” he said.

Neither spoke for a few minutes. The sun was growing hotter although it was only seven in the morning. Bertha would tell Ruth she was already entering the gates of hell, and Ruth would begin to believe it.

Keeley turned to leave, and Ruth came back to life. “Wait,” she said. She would seize the moment. “Can we talk a minute? I want to tell you about your mother.”

The boy reeled back, as though she’d lassoed him. His face looked white as milk in the morning haze. “You saw her?”

“No, but I just missed her. I’m pretty sure she’s on her way back here.” She told the boy about the priest and the deaf-mute who, it seemed, had taken her up on his motorbike—”if not all the way here, at least partway. She should be back before long.”

The boy’s eyes opened wide as if already he were seeing his mother. His lips twitched into a half smile.

“I think,” said Ruth, “that Nola is unhappy with your uncle. He’s—”

“Not
my
uncle,” the boy interrupted. “We just call him that. He makes us.”

“No, no, I realize that. With Tormey, then, um, Mr. Leary.”

The boy looked wary. He backed off a little, shuffled his feet on the grass. The feet appeared too large for the rest of him. He’d surely grow up to them one day.

“
Do you know any reason why she might be, well, upset with him?”

Keeley leaned down to pull a piece of longish grass and sucked on it. He wouldn’t look at her.

“Keeley? I know I shouldn’t pressure you, but it might be important for me to know. I mean, for when your mother returns. Which could be—very soon, like I said.”

“I think,” the boy began, “I think—she thinks he wants to hurt us. Her and me.”

“Hurt you? In what way?”

The boy’s face was pinkening with the heat and his confusion. He was shaking his head rapidly, as though he’d shake away bad thoughts. His mouth was opening and shutting, the hands pulling at his shirt buttons. “Did he ever—hurt you?” Ruth suggested. “Touch you maybe—and Nola saw?”

“No, she didn’t see! Uncle made sure she wasn’t around when he—” His mouth opened into a wide 0, his whole face seemed to shrink into that circle of anguish. He was backing away now, still staring at her, unable to articulate his thoughts.

“It’s all right,” she said, “you don’t have to tell. I think I understand. But you’ll have your mother back soon, and she’ll watch over you. You won’t have to go back to Uncle’s. Soon there may not be any cows to milk there, anyway.”

She had a choking feeling in her chest to say that—a moment’s awareness that if there were no cows at the uncle’s, there might soon be none here. And how was Nola to watch over Keeley when she would be taken into custody, returned to the hospital for testing, then indicted for Ritchie’s murder?

Keeley was still standing there, a little off balance, like a newborn calf. He was staring beyond Ruth at Jane Eyre and her calf—as though any minute Jane would turn into Nola and roll Keeley gently against her. Esmeralda had moved down to stand behind Jane, then Charlotte Bronte behind Esmeralda, and then pregnant Elizabeth. The cows made a semicircle around Ruth and the boy; they were like circling wagons, a congregation of mothers. Ruth’s beloved bovines with their liquidy brown eyes, watching, waiting— with red dye on their foreheads.

Only Zelda kept her distance, like a watchful sentry. Would she bellow out a warning when the feds came for her? When Nola arrived? If Nola knew that Tormey Leary had been abusing Keeley—for that’s what he’d been doing, it seemed clear to Ruth—what would she do? Perhaps this was what the priest had been warning. Ruth must stop any violence before it happened.

When she turned back to speak to Keeley, the boy was already gone, loping across the fields, scurrying toward the Allis tractor and the tank spreader that Sharon was loading up with thick brown manure. The corn would grow tall and green on the fertilized land. But would the cows be here to feed on the corn? It might be a last supper before the hanging.

* * * *

Colm was standing by the wall phone in the kitchen, his back to the door, the receiver clapped to his ear. Ruth knew at once whom he was talking to. He was in his cop mode. Playing his conscience, as he called it. He turned and winked when he saw her, held out an arm to encircle her waist, and she let him. He knew the phone was bugged, she’d warned him, but he just shrugged. “Cops and robbers,” the optimistic fellow said, as if the feds were just playing a game. She could hear Chief Fallon’s voice on the other end: he had a husky, booming voice. He didn’t need a loudspeaker, Colm would joke, to converse anywhere in town.

“Leary’s got the alibi,” Colm mouthed, though she could hear Roy Fallon anyway, booming on about a hired hand and a man in a local Tonawanda bar who had occupied the adjacent stool on Thursday night. Tormey Leary could not have killed his nephew Ritchie.

“Who then?” she asked for the umpteenth time when Colm got off the line.

“A vandal, a random kind of killing,” Colm said. “Some guy wanting the horse. Maybe Ritchie tried to trade it or something and the deal went bad. Could be drugs involved—he seemed the type, even if he is my relative. Though very distant,” he reminded her.

“Yes, dear. We all have strange relations,” she said, thinking of Bertha. “Mine are worse than yours, I think. Of course, Bertha’s my ex-husband’s sister, not mine.”

“Uh-huh.” He gave a slight smile.

“It could still be Nola,” she said, “though it doesn’t seem plausible. Nola did end up with the horse, after all—so that would shoot your horse-trading theory.”

“So Fallon says he’ll put out a warning to New York cops. Woman headed east, not west. And on a motorbike.”

She reeled out of his arms. “Damn it, we agreed you wouldn’t say that! We agreed you’d let her come here first. To see Keeley.” She grabbed his hands. “The boy needs her, Colm. He needs to see her before any police ship her off under police protection to the hospital. Then lock her behind bars.” She heard her voice pleading. But what good did her pleading do? It was too late. He’d given the orders.

“Remember what the priest said, Ruthie. About her reaction to the news clipping, his warning about Tormey Leary—Nola’s     attitude toward him.”

“Oh. Well, sit down and I’ll tell you about it. I just talked with Keeley.” She related the conversation in the meadow. “I mean, it’s all pretty clear now. Nola probably suspects something. And then when she read the account in the newspaper—about Tormey and Keeley coming here ...”

“She doesn’t have a gun, does she?”

“I would doubt it. But a knife can do a lot of damage. Look what those terrorists did with a box cutter.”

“You’re calling Nola a terrorist?”

“Of course not, Colm! Look, we have to be sure Tormey’s not here when she arrives.”