Stolen Honey (13 page)

Out in the hall a dark figure scurried around the corner. A colleague? A student? “Hello,” she called, but the person didn’t answer. She locked the door and ran out to her car.

She found the hired man and his teenaged ward, Joey, in the barn milking the cows. The Holsteins stood impatiently by, waiting their turn—it was obviously the highlight of their day. It was an average-sized farm as farms went these days: a red barn and two cement-block silos with
WILLMARTH SONS
in peeling paint. Where were the sons? Yet how good, Camille thought, that the farm had survived, when only the megafarms seemed to hold on these days. In this case, without a man, too— only the woman farmer, this cheerful-looking fellow, and the foster boy, Joey, who was thrusting a mud-caked hand at her.

“This is my Joey, I’m Tim,” the man said. She took Joey’s hand. She wanted to put the boy at ease. Tim brought out a chair from some inner sanctum; he and Joey went on with the work. The boy appeared to be cleaning teats or something, the process was a mystery to Camille. Everything was shiny and steely: the milking gadgets, the pipes, the pails, the pans of food and water. The barn was ripe with smells: cow dung, the sweetish odor of new milk, hay that got her sneezing and then blowing her nose.

She laughed at herself, said she was “fascinated by all this— look, I just spend my day in a dusty classroom. Anyway, Joey, I wanted to ask you about your parents, if you knew them. I’m trying to trace some relatives of a woman named Annette Godineaux. She had a daughter named Nicole, a granddaughter named Pauline. Ever hear those names mentioned?”

“Nicole, Pauline. Thoth are good names,” said Joey, grinning through bad teeth. He had a slight lisp, she noticed. “But who they?”

“He lived with foster parents early on,” Tim put in. “He doesn’t know much about his real parents, do you, Joey?”

“Nope. Tim, here, he my parent now, right, Tim? My. . . surra—surra—”

“Surrogate father,” said Tim, shooing out the four cows they’d been milking and ushering in a new batch. The cows were huge, Camille noted; she’d never seen them up close like this. They were terrifying, actually. One bellowed, practically in her ear, and she jumped. Tim laughed. “That’s Bathsheba. She’s a wild girl. She likes to spook you.” He slapped the cow on its rear end and it mewled again, turned a wild dark eye on Camille.

She moved her chair back. She didn’t think she’d get very far with this interview. She would have to talk to the foster parents. “Do you have their address, Tim?”

Tim stuck his tongue in his cheek, screwed some metal milkers onto Bathsheba’s teats; they hung down like pendulums in a grandmother’s clock. “Let’s see, now. The Petits moved—to Winooski, I think. But I did hear that Joey’s mother was once in Otter Training School. I don’t know about the father. About thirteen years ago they closed the school, let the residents out on their own. The mother couldn’t cope, she walked out on the kids—there were two of them, and Joey here was taken in by the Petits. They were kind enough as far as I can see, right, Joey? They treat you okay?”

“Okay,” said Joey, rubbing on a cow’s teat, “but not so good as you, Tim. You the best.” Tim squirted a bit of milk at the boy, and Joey giggled.

Camille knew about the training school. It had done its share of sterilizing, too. Joey’s mother—was it Pauline?—would have brought the two Tim mentioned with her. She’d bet the mother didn’t have any other kids after that, though. She thanked the pair, gulped in breaths of fresh air outside the barn. It was raining now. She had on heels that sank into the muddy earth. She’d parked her car out by the main road. There was a light on in the kitchen—perhaps Emily was in there, her student, she’d have a newspaper Camille could hold over her head; she didn’t want to get her leather jacket wet. She ran up on the porch and knocked.

It wasn’t Emily, but the girl’s mother who greeted her, she’d just come in from the fields. She offered coffee and popovers with fresh butter, sat Camille down. She was curious about Camille’s work—”Something about the thirties?”

Warmed by the coffee and Ruth’s enthusiasm, Camille told a little about Annette Godineaux. “I’m trying to trace her progeny, to find what happened to her and her offspring—Nicole, Pauline. Joey here is the first evidence I’ve seen myself of any so-called “degeneracy.”

“Degeneracy!” Ruth cried. “Why, I’d trust him with my life! He’s a wonderful boy, a big help around the place. We all adore him.”

“Look, I didn’t mean ‘degeneracy’ in that way. I was speaking, well, of brain power.” Camille didn’t quite know how to put it. “I should say ‘developmentally disabled.’ “ She spread her fingers, helpless to find the right words. Ruth could be touchy, she saw.

“I’m quick to argue these days,” Ruth allowed. “All these double whammies from the Department of Agriculture. They’re telling me I should milk three times a day when I can barely do it twice. I won’t do it, I tell you! I won’t doctor my corn, either, to make it ‘bigger and better.’ I won’t use BST on my cows.” She let out a breath, grabbed her coffee mug in two hands—the knucklebones stood out, bluish white. Then she laughed. “Never mind me. I have to sound off now and then. Everyone’s after me with advice.”

Camille could only nod. She felt a sneeze coming on, there was an odor of barn in here, too—Ruth’s rubber boots, maybe. The boots were standing by the door as though they had a life of their own. She sneezed twice; reached in her pocket for a Kleenex. A disk came out with it. She looked at it, surprised, then laid it on the table.

“You know, I feel—oh it’s crazy, but as though someone’s after me, too. Not with advice or warning—I don’t know what they want, actually. You see, I found some papers had been gone through on my desk. Then I saw someone disappear around a corner when I came out. When I called, he—she—didn’t answer.” She held out the disk. “Look. You’ll think I’m crazy, but would you keep this for me? Of course, there’s more work to do, I’ll keep updating. I’ve a copy at home.”

She stopped, embarrassed at her words, her cheeks hot. She groped for the disk. But Ruth already had her hand on it.

“Of course I’ll keep it,” Ruth said. “And, hey, I keep the deed to my land in the basement freezer. That’s
my
safekeeping.”

“Thanks, but a desk drawer will do.”

Camille refused the loan of an umbrella after all and ran out into the rain; it felt good on her face, fresh, clean. Her research on the eugenics project had been getting to her. The project was only one step below the Holocaust, wasn’t it? Why, it was 1943 when Annette was sterilized, along with her daughter and grandchild! Camille wondered if Binet tests had been given to the Godineaux children. Probably not. Probably in his infinite wisdom the administrator had decided that the children were miniature Annettes with her “subnormal” IQ score.

She would find out. She was on a roll now; she didn’t want to eat, sleep, or go out to a bar. She just wanted to do her research, write her paper, get tenure. Then she’d let the world know who she really
was.
What a relief it would be.

She opened her office door—and gasped. “Oh, no!” Papers and notebooks were scattered on the floor, books pulled off the shelves, scraps from the wastebasket swirling about in the breeze from a half-open window. Who? Why? Someone wanting to steal her notes, maybe, get ahead other on this eugenics project? Another faculty member? She’d mentioned the project to a few colleagues, wished now she’d kept mum. Was it Frazer Manning, aware of rumors, wanting her out of the department? Breathing shallowly, she booted up her computer, put the mouse on
ANNETTE.
Clicked.

It was gone. “No!” The screen was blank. Her months of research, erased. “No-oo-ooo . ..”

Oh, God, why? Had someone copied the work? Someone wanting to discourage her from going on
with
the project? And, oh—where was her briefcase with the copies she’d made from the university archives?

“Hail Mary full of Grace,” she moaned, the way she used to as a child when something bad happened. She spun down into her desk chair; her head reeled. But she had to calm herself. She had to think.

Yes, the briefcase was in the car, yes. But had she locked the car? She couldn’t recall. She must phone the police—campus security, town police. She dialed, gasped out her message. Then she ran to the car.

Ah. It was there, the briefcase. She drove back to Willmarths’—thank God she’d left her disk there. She would take it back, enter it into her home machine. She would stay up all night if she had to—at least to finish copying Annette’s diary.

Ruth would think her crazy. Maybe she was. Oh, yes, she was.

Chapter Nine

Donna was at the family computer working on her sociology paper when her grandfather shuffled into the kitchen. She wasn’t happy about the interruption: He liked to talk, she needed quiet. She wanted to get a good grade on the paper, finish the year with a B average at least, then transfer to the university. Or quit college altogether, she hadn’t made up her mind. She only knew she didn’t want to stay at Branbury College.

When Grandpop pushed a dish of chocolate ice cream under her nose, she gave up. She’d visit for a few minutes, then explain to him that she had to have quiet. Perversely, she told him about the Indian raid on Deerfield back in 1704, the enforced march.

“They killed our ancestor’s husband because he tried to escape. They killed her father because he was too old to walk. They knocked women and young children on the head because they couldn’t keep up. Those were
your
ancestors, Grandpop!”

“Sure,” he said, spooning up his ice cream, “but to them it was humane, see? If they just left ’em there to die or be eat up by wolves, it’d be worse than a quick knock on the head. And your mama said the natives carried some of the youngsters on their backs.
Your
ancestors, too,” he said, referring to Elizabeth’s daughter.

“Well, maybe. But they shouldn’t have captured them in the first place. Why, those poor captives had to walk sixteen miles a day. Through a thick forest! It was awful. Listen to what Elizabeth wrote: ‘I must lie between two Indians, with a cord thrown over me and passing under each of them.’ Imagine! She was still a young woman, Grandpop.”

“Uh-huh.”

“ ‘Occasionally, though,’ “ she read aloud to her grandfather, “ ‘the savages kindled a fire to warm me into life.’”

Her grandfather chuckled. “You mean, the savages wasn’t so savage after all? You see, it was war, my dear girl. Someday I’ll tell you the story from how the Abenaki viewed it. The way my Abenaki grandfather told me and his dad told him.”

“I know. I know all that.” She was feeling impatient now. “Grandpop, this paper is due soon. Ms. Wimmett expects it. And this isn’t my only course.”

“I can take a hint.” The old man padded back into his workroom. And padded out again. “You like this pretty sweetgrass basket? It’s for you, Donna, keep your earrings in it.”

He thrust it at her. “Thank you,” she said wearily, and went back to her paper.

Donna was glad that Elizabeth’s daughter Isobel had remained faithful to her Abenaki lover. Herself, she longed for a lover. Last fall she’d been briefly smitten by a boy who’d sat beside her in Art 101. But then she’d seen him one weekend embracing a girl who’d come up from some other college, and she realized he wasn’t interested in her at all, not local Donna.

The kitchen door creaked open and Leroy stood there. He coughed, to get her attention and, frustrated, she said, “I’m busy. Can’t you see?” He was such a sad sack—nothing like Isobel’s lover. His shoulders were slumped, his hair like shredded carrots. “Leroy, you can’t barge in here like that. If you want to talk to me, you can do it in the daytime. I have work to do.”

He sat down anyway, he was that obtuse. “I need to talk to you. Now,” he said.

She leaned into her work to discourage him.

He didn’t take the hint. “It’s that Olen again,” he said. “He gave me a parking ticket. I was in Alibi only a half hour, the lot was full. He’s on my tail. He thinks I killed that guy. I want you tell him to get off my back. Tell him you saw me come back to the house that night.”

She looked up, indignant. “You want me to take back my story? That I went to bed and you were still there?”

“I want you to say you were looking out your window when you got to your room, you saw me coming back to the trailer. I wouldn’t of had time to drag the guy into the swamp.”

She stared at him. “Leroy, that’s ridiculous. I could say that, sure, but I wasn’t looking out my window, was I? I could have seen you going back, then you could have sneaked out again to drag him off and hit him on the head. I mean, really, Leroy! If you didn’t do it, then don’t worry. No one else was around that night to accuse you.”

Leroy seemed to sink lower in the chair. “Someone else
was
here. Your father. He was already here when you came home. He left before you got up.”

“What!” This was the first she’d heard of her dad’s being home. Why hadn’t someone told her? She jumped up, furious. “You know my dad had nothing to do with that death, Leroy Boulanger! He wouldn’t kill anybody. And don’t you tell Uncle Olen Dad was here. I know Mother wouldn’t, that’s probably why she didn’t tell me. Now go to bed. I don’t want to hear one more word out of you.” She sank back down in her chair. She was feeling a little sick, a little teary; she just wanted to go to bed and not talk to anyone.

Leroy got up, but hung in the doorway, looking at her. He was sniffing, he had a cold. Donna wrote gibberish on the computer, waiting for him to leave. Finally he said in a small cracked voice, “I already told Olen your father was here. Tonight I told him—when he gave me that ticket. I said it to get him off my back.”

When she looked up and gasped, he said, “It’s a murder case, maybe, right? You got to tell everything. You can’t keep back evidence.”

He backed through the door; it banged shut behind him.

* * * *

It was eight o’clock Tuesday morning and Russell was home. He pulled up with a grind of brakes and a broken muffler, a cloud of exhaust, and a “Gwennie? Where’re you, babe? I’m home. Donna? Brownie? Pop? Got a whole twenty-four hours this time. Answer me, huh?”