Table Of ContentPOISON APPLES
Ruth Willmarth 3
by Nancy Means Wright
ONE
was Irish enough to know that a bird that tried to enter your
MOIRA EARTHROWL
house meant death. And here the cardinal was, flinging itself at the living room
window again, thud, thud, thud at the glass: a stout red bill, a rush of scarlet
feathers.
"Get away, get, you crazy bird!" She waved her arms at the intruder. How could
she concentrate on her weaving, with a foolish bird assaulting her window? It
was the third day in a row it had come, and she was mystified. More than that,
she was downright worried.
Now, she didn't really believe that a bird could bring death, but twice already the
superstition had come true. A blackbird had flown into her grandfather's
workshop in Ballyvaughan, Ireland, and the next day the old man was dead of a
massive heart attack. And at Aunt Bridget's funeral a sparrow darted through an
open window, circled the casket three times, and flew out. Of course, Bridget
was already dead, so it wasn't quite such a concern. But it proved the
superstition; her mother had reminded her of that.
Here it was again: wham! bam! dashing its crimson side against the glass, then
its fiery red beak. She half expected to see a spot of blood on the glass. But there
wasn't any. At the very least the bird must be brainless by now, she thought, all
that bashing and smashing!
What she really worried about, though, was her husband Stan. Not that he was
superstitious, oh, not at all. He was a pragmatic man. But he was so sensitive, so
vulnerable these days. Always, it seemed, in a bad patch. There he was, out in
the orchard now, arguing—or so it seemed—with the orchard manager, Rufus
Barrow. Stan was practically a foot taller than short, stocky, soft-spoken Rufus.
And yet Rufus seemed the more powerful one, feet planted on the grassy triangle
between cider barn and house, arms folded, head tilted slightly back to make eye
contact with Stan.
And not stepping back, she saw, when Stan shook his fist. What
was the matter now? The cider press not working right? The local pickers
dropping too many apples? They were slower than the others: After all, the
Jamaicans were professionals. And the locals were young: the Butterfield twins,
Roily and Hally; a tall athletic young woman named Millie Laframboise from
East Branbury, who had an ailing mother and three other part-time jobs; Adam
Golding, tall as a Knicks player, his ponytail gleaming in the sun like a mass of
spilled coins—he was aptly named. Then Emily Willmarth, from the farm on
Cow Hill Road. It was Moira who'd argued with Stan to hire the girl, but she
might have made a mistake. Just this morning she'd seen Emily and Adam
whispering together, looking quite chummy. Yes, she'd better keep an eye on
that one. The boy was in bis twenties, the girl still hi high school.
Now Rufus was wheeling about, moving doggedly off. He was upset, it was
obvious. He wanted things to go right. There was something almost maniacal
about the way he ran the orchard: not a minute to be wasted. He knew exactly
what he was about, and he resented Stan butting in. She watched Stan stride
down into the orchard, stop short at the first tree, where Bartholomew, the
Jamaican Number One man, was standing on the third rung of a ladder, picking;
Stan shouted up at him, his cheeks red as the apples.
Now, she couldn't have that. She couldn't have Stan taking out bis anger on
Bartholomew. The cardinal flung himself at the window again and fueled her
with purpose. She dropped the loom stick, dashed out of the house to intercede.
"Stan," she cried. "Stan, can we talk? We have a problem, sweetheart, I'm going
mad with it. Stan?"
The old Jamaican's face was inscrutable. He was a tall, proud-looking fellow,
sixty-one years old, but still picking, a fisherman by trade who boasted twenty-
one children. He was on his third wife now, she knew, a younger woman, who
was always pregnant, it seemed—but by her husband? The younger men joked
about it. And Bartholomew had to support them all. He'd been working this or‐
chard for ten years, seven years before she and Stan had bought it. She was fond
of these Jamaicans: They brought, well, vibrancy into her world. Jamaicans
singing in the trees, like a chorus of sleek dark birds: "Papa save my body, Papa
save my soul...." The ripe red apples, hanging like shiny Christmas balls in the
green-leafed
trees—oh, she loved the autumn. She loved the orchard. It was Leonardo da
Vinci, it was Michelangelo. If she could only paint!
Her ruse worked. Stan was turning around, Bartholomew going on with his work
—though he'd stopped humming. She took Stan's hand. "Hot coffee for you,
love. The coffee cake you like, fresh from the oven."
"He's gone and done it over my head again," Stan said, jerking his head toward
the apple barn where Rufus—bossman, the Jamaicans called him—had
disappeared. "You'd think he owns this place. You'd think I was one of the local
pickers."
"Oh, he does not think so," she said. "You're getting paranoid. He respects you.
He knows you're a naturalist. He's a reasonable man. Only yesterday—"
"So what's this big concern?" She could hear him taking deep breaths, trying to
cool down. At least he was aware he had a problem. Actually, he'd had a
problem for three years now, since Carol's death. Devastating though it was,
Moira had come to terms with that death; Stan never had. And then the
poisoning last spring, a fifth of the trees destroyed, those budding apples. A
mistake, they said, someone using the wrong spray, an herbicide called
Roundup, in spray tanks used to apply a fungicide. No one could say how, why it
happened. The sprayer himself was horrified, had no idea how it got in there.
He'd put in Diazinon himself, the night before. It was evidently the wrong
herbicide in the wrong canister. No one to take the full blame.
She told Stan about the cardinal, led him to me window. Of course it wouldn't
appear when Stan was there; he waved away the worry. "I'll cut an owl out of
cardboard, if it really worries you. They're scared of owls, those birds. It's just
being territorial, that's all."
"Would you do that?" She threw her arms around him. They needed more
touching, more feeling; she pulled him close. Stan Earthrowl: She'd laughed at
the name when she first met him. He rather resembled an owl himself, in fact:
those round, black-rimmed glasses, the solemn look. They'd been so much in
love!
He was tense in her arms. She could feel the nerves, like wires, tightening in his
body. She pulled back. "I'll pour your coffee, Stan. I'll warm the cake in the
toaster oven."
"Cake, yes. Coffee, no." He was heading for the liquor cabi-
net—at three in the afternoon. The gray-bronze hair bristled on his head, his
back was a brick wall. The cat, Ben Blue, followed him, meowing;
mechanically, he threw a handful of dried food in its dish, then fixed himself a
Manhattan, glugged it down, kissed her quickly on the cheek, and ran outdoors
again. She went back to her loom. Soon the apple barn would open up, children
coming from the local schools to watch the cidermaking process—a neighbor
had volunteered to operate it. Finally, customers coming to pick drops, buy cider
and bags of apples. There'd be no time for her own work. She leaned into her
weaving, into the bright pink and mauve threads. She craved sunshine in her life.
Dream time.
She was just getting up to stretch her back—at forty-three she couldn't sit and
concentrate for hours anymore the way she used to—when the phone rang. It
was Annie May, Stan's sister-in-law, down in Houston, Texas. Her voice was
breathless. She called only when there was a trauma—what now? "In the
hospital! As a patient!" Annie May shouted. "Lindley's in the hospital and I got
to be with him. The heart thing, you know—I tol' you about it. They got to do an
angioplasty! How bad is that?"
She didn't wait for an answer—not that Moira could tell her much. "They're
going in," she screamed, "sticking in a tube, a balloon. Imagine. A balloon in his
heart!"
"I've heard it works, though," Moira said. "He'll come out all right, I'm sure of it.
He's a doctor, he'll know how to take care of himself afterward." She felt a
balloon inflate in her own heart, squeeze her ribs. Lindley had met Annie May
when he was interning in a Houston hospital and Annie was an aide. She was
lovely: eighteen and ready to nest; Lindley thirty-six and newly divorced. Annie
got pregnant; they married after a six-month whirlwind courtship.
"Lindley's a gynecologist," Annie May was shouting. "What does he know about
hearts?"
"He'll be all right, I'm sure. Do you want to talk to Stan? He's out in the orchard.
I can run out with the phone."
"No, no, you can tell him. I got to talk to you." Annie May^s voice was jarring in
Moira's ears. The bird was crashing into the window again; the sounds joined in
a cacophony that made her head drum. It was Opal, Annie was talking about
now, the daughter she'd
had with Lindley. Moira hadn't seen the girl in years; they'd sent her away to
boarding school when she was twelve. Moira had never understood how they
could do that. She and Stan had kept their own daughter Carol at home through
high school; even then, she wished she'd spent more time with the girl. She'd
been so self-satisfied, so laid back in those days....
"...to your place, up there in Vermont." Annie May always divided up her words,
giving the same emphasis to each syllable. "You got room, don't you? Stan says
it's a big house, just the two of you. I mean, just for a few weeks, a month
maybe, till Lindley recovers. Opal's home now from that school, she doesn't
want to go to college. After all we done for her education. She's too much for
Lindley. She wears him out, you know? Will you, Moira?"
What could Moira say? For a moment the house was quiet, the windows mute,
the voices of the pickers far away, remote; she heard the distant honking of
geese—Stan's acquisition. It was lovely, that quiet. She could work on her
weaving, that's what she'd come up here for. With Stan it was apples, though she
was determined to learn about those, too, so many varieties! She'd take one each
day, read about its qualities. Stan was learning how to graft: maybe four kinds of
apples on a single tree—a true act of creation. Her first love, though, was the
weaving: shawls, scarves, they were selling them now down at the State Craft
Center. It was a way of meditation, a way of healing.
"She'll fly to New York, take a bus from there. She hates flying! I wish I could
come, but you know I can't. She can help around the house if she'll do it, she can
pick apples."
Picking apples was a skill, not everyone could do it, but there was no point
explaining that now. Annie May was in a "dash" to get back to the hospital, she
said; Lindley needed her. Moira agreed to meet the bus. Day after tomorrow.
The five-ten.
Annie May said, "Thanks, I'll pay you all back, maybe we can come get her
when Lin's better. I'll send plenty of clean underwear. She'll throw it in your
washer, you know? And make her work, she's not crazy to work, but make her."
When Moira hung up, the cardinal began dashing its body at the window again.
It was more than territorial, she was sure of that. It wanted to come in. It wanted
something from her. It wanted to take
something from her. With Carol gone, she had hardly anything left to take—
except Stan, the orchard. What—what did it want from her?
She banged her forehead with her fist to dismiss the superstition.
TWO
the last Jamaican—the men were going into Branbury to shop.
STAN PAID OFF
They were all slicked up: hair brushed and greased, clean bandannas, fresh
cotton shirts—Ephraim, the one they called the "scholar," wore a bright red tie,
although the others teased him. Stan paid them by the bushel, it kept them
hustling. He sank down on a stool in the apple barn. He needed to be alone.
Things were getting beyond him this year. The Jamaicans demanding a goat for
the harvest supper, for one—where hi hell was he supposed to get a goat? They
didn't sell them in the Grand Union. The men had gotten their own last year and
now they wanted him to supply it. Rufus complaining about Bartholomew, who
was too old, he said— couldn't pick his limit. The younger men had to pitch in
for their elder and then the whole output was less. Two hundred forty bushels a
day, that was what Rufus asked for, and yesterday they'd picked only two
hundred thirty. And Rufus expected Stan to do what—fire Bartholomew? Where
was he to get another Jamaican, with the season already started? He'd had to cut
back by four men this year as it was, with a fifth of the orchard destroyed last
spring. He dropped his head in his arms, was suddenly overcome by the tart
smell of pressed apples. The orchard was supposed to have been a cure for his
troubles. To have filled up his life with Carol gone. He'd needed to get out of
Connecticut, out of teaching high school biology—after Carol's death he couldn't
look at those rosy-faced girls, and Carol not among them. He needed to take on
something completely new. And it had worked—for a time, anyway. Until that
spraying fiasco. A deliberate poisoning, he was sure—never mind
what the police said about some bungler. Roundup! It was a weedkiller, for
God's sake! It was no mistake, no sir.
Worse, they knew he was a flatlander, they wanted him to fail. Someone did,
anyway! Someone! Who?
He labored to his feet, banged both fists against the barn wall. Leaned there,
groaning, feeling the blood boil in his brain. Knowing it was bad for his heart,
this anger, but what could he do about it?
"Stan? What are you doing in there, Stan? Dinner's ready. You said you'd make
the salad. And I need your help because—"
"Everyone wants my help! I've got that school board meeting tonight and where
in Christ's name do I get a goddamn goat?"
"A goat?" Moira put a hand on his shoulder, rubbed it. "Oh, for the Jamaicans,
you mean. Well, there's a goat farm up in Panton. That's where they found it last
year.... Oh, come on, Stanny. Cheer up. I'll get the goat. If you don't get mine
first."
He was too upset to acknowledge the pun. He needed a drink. Never mind the
school board meeting. That woman would be there, the one he was fighting. That
damned right-winger. Trying to oust that English teacher. She'd be a ball of fury,
lashing back at him, every point he made. Who was the angry one now? He was
a newcomer, she said, his first year on the board, what did he know? Well he'd
had a hell of a lot more experience in schools than she; they'd voted him in last
year, hadn't they? They'd liked the way he campaigned, door to door, shaking
hands. Never mind mat no one else had wanted to run for the post. Of course his
school board experience had been years earlier. Before Carol's death. BC and
AC: Before Carol and After Carol. He coughed. Something in this barn he was
allergic to. He hoped it wasn't the apples.
"Come on, Stan. I've got a salmon loaf, you like salmon. Besides, your sister-in-
law called, she—"
"Don't tell me." He let her lead him up the path to the house. "Lock up, will
you?" he yelled at Rufus, who was with Derek, one of the younger men,
dragging along a last crate of ripe apples, and the manager nodded. He had a
look of long suffering on his square stolid face, as if he could barely tolerate this
upstart owner. Rufus was a Vermonter. He'd let it drop once—eyes cast down
shyly, of course—that one of his ancestors had fought at Ticonderoga. Well,
Stan couldn't fight that; his ancestors had come over from Russia
in steerage—he was Jewish on his mother's side. It would be easier just to leave
the management of the orchard to Rufus. But he, Stan Earthrowl, was the owner,
damn it! He had an M.A., almost a Ph.D. He knew more about biology in his
little finger than Rufus in his whole brain. About apples? Well, he was learning,
anyway. He had , a chart up on the refrigerator of one hundred kinds of apples.
He \ was learning. He had to admit, Rufus had him on that score. Rufus knew
apples. He had to respect the man for that.
Back in the house he mixed a stiff Manhattan, swilled it down. It burned hot and
startling in his chest. He fixed another. "So what'd she call about?" They might
as well get it over with.
"Lindley's back in the hospital. Another heart attack. But minor. They're doing
an angioplasty. Stan, your face is flushed. I wish you'd see a doctor, have your
blood pressure checked.... That last episode—where you blacked out..."
He ignored that. There was no time to go seeing doctors. He was only forty-
eight. Lindley had just turned fifty-five, after all, the older brother. Things would
go better—they had to! He'd leave more to Rufus, he knew he had to calm down.
After this term he'd resign from the school board. He didn't need the extra
hassles there—that crazy woman, Cassandra Wickham. But he wanted to help
that English teacher. For one thing, the man was Jewish. Stan worried that
Vermont was so WASP.
"He's supposed to have complete quiet afterward and so she wants to send Opal
up to us." Moira helped herself to salmon, passed the platter. He took some, a
little spilled on the place mat. He scraped it back onto the plate. He was beyond
worrying now. Pile on the complications! Throw another goat at him! He could
handle them, as long as he had the Manhattans.
"I suppose you said yes." She nodded, and he sighed. "Well, we can put her to
work around here. Send the girl to the local school. How long she staying?"
"Annie May mentioned a few weeks, maybe a month. And Opal's hardly a girl
anymore, she must be twenty at least. She quit college, Annie says. She's not
easy, I gather."
Something was banging at the window. "What in hell?"
She had to laugh. "It's that cardinal I told you about. I suppose
I should put up curtains. But I want the light for my work. You said you'd make
an owl."
The thing came back and back, like a flashing red light, like the throbbing he'd
been feeling in his head. Thud thud thud. He could hardly stand it. He shoved his
chair back. "I'll make it now, the damned owl."
