Harvest of Bones (8 page)

She found the situation even worse than Emily had said.

“It’s not mine,” Glenna was squealing, her hair a storm cloud around her face, “got nothing to do with me or Mother. Get that thing out of here!” Then Fay Hubbard shouting, “I can’t have a skeleton lying around a respectable B and B! Bury it up in that field. Mr. Crowningshield’ll be back any minute. He’ll tell the chamber of commerce. Then what?”

“I’ll get his room,” Hartley said. “Mice, I don’t mind. But I’m not sleeping with a dead man outside the door.”

“Do we know it’s a man?” said Ruth, trying to bring logic to the scene, placing a firm hand on Glenna’s trembly shoulder.

“It’s Mac. We know it’s Mac, right, Aunty?” said Hartley, grinning into her great-aunt’s face. “Admit it, it’s Mac. So he had a heart attack and you buried him. Saved a lot of money, right. Aunty? None of that funeral home stuff for you?”

“No, it’s not right,” yelled Glenna. “That’s not Mac. It’s too—too—it doesn’t even look like him, not one bit. He was smaller than that. He had rusty-colored hair.”

“The mice got it,” said Hartley.

There were fringes of dirty ashy hair on the crest and sides of the skull. The teeth looked equine; the bones were brownish and spongy-looking; a thin vine had wound itself about the anklebone, where the weathered boots had fallen loose. The fingernails were long and thick and yellow—they gave Ruth the shivers. Yet the bones appeared to be separate, disconnected. And something that looked like a pointed rock—an arrowhead?—was stuck into the sternum. Was it an Indian, as the girls were shouting? Was the skeleton really that old? What was left of the clothing had been nibbled at by something—though still recognizable as dungarees and a plaid shirt—the standard uniform around town. It was no Stone Age Indian. And a mildewed cap on the skull, like a plaid Scots bonnet, half-chewed, or merely worn away. When Hartley picked it up—ignoring Ruth’s warning—Glenna screamed and said, “Bum it!”

Still, one thing was obvious, as Colm Hanna pointed out when he arrived, breathless, in baggy brown cords and a green tweed Irish cap—one of a hundred hats he owned—and stopped to examine the pile of bones: “It’s missing a finger bone. The rest of the limbs are accounted for.” Ruth looked back at him, feeling her face get hot.

“A finger with a gold ring,” Emily whispered, and Hartley made a hissing sound; her face flushed bright pink with wind and intrigue, and her chestnut hair danced in the wind: “What? What ring? What ring, Emily? Whose ring? Whoa, tell me.”

“That’s what we have to find out, right, Mother?” said Emily, ignoring the other girl, and Ruth nodded, while Colm wheeled about and ran up to the house, shirttail climbing out of his pants and flapping loose in the October breeze.

“What’s he doing?” shouted Fay. “He’s not calling the police! He can’t do that. I’m running a business here.”

Aunty joined in the protest then, her hoarse voice riding low under the others. While in the barn Dandelion bellowed, and the greyhound lifted its nose and wailed.

“It’s him,” Hartley whispered to Ruth. “I know it is. It’s him. It’s old Mac. She did him in.”

Fay clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Shut up, girl.
You
want our aunt to fry?”

“ ‘Our’ aunt?” said Hartley. “You’re owning up now?” And then she said, “ ‘Fry’? You mean—oh no, oh no. Aunty, no!” She lunged at Glenna, threw a possessive arm around her shoulders.

Glenna stood frozen in her niece’s embrace. “It’s not Mac—is it?” she whispered, and dropped her head onto her grand-niece’s quivering shoulder.

Chapter Six

Ruth was carrying wood down the basement steps when her load was suddenly lightened. She looked up, to see Kevin Crowningshield, the B and B guest from next door. She’d met him briefly the night before. “Oh, hello,” she said. She was tired—she’d had an unscheduled barn inspection that morning from Agri-Mark. The fellow had a list of complaints, was “put-out” by Vic’s chickens in the barn. “I’ll see that they stay out,” she’d said, knowing it was impossible, what with people and animals in and out all day.

“A woman shouldn’t carry that load,” Kevin Crowningshield said. The voice was quite thrilling actually, deep; the man could be a baritone soloist. “My—well, my wife used to say that,” he apologized when she glanced up at him. “It crushes the organs or something.”

Ruth had to smile. “I’ve been carrying wood for twenty years, and my organs are still intact—far as I know.” Actually, she was two years overdue for a physical—Pap smear, mammogram, all that female business. She had no health insurance, for one thing: it was a rip-off, Pete always said, and she had to agree for once. Of course, health insurance probably came with his new sales job. But she and the children wouldn’t benefit—only that would-be actress “friend,” if he married her, as he evidently wanted to do. She swallowed, hard.

“So I see,” said Kevin, with an admiring glance that should have annoyed her but somehow didn’t. How long since a handsome man had looked at her in that way? There was Colm Hanna, yes—but who could call that pepper-haired, sunken-cheeked, bony Irishman handsome? Colm was, well, Colm. Comfortable. A savior, really, since Pete’s defection. “Back off,” she’d tell him on occasion, and he would. She was grateful for that.

Kevin had come over to talk—if she had a free minute, he said. He’d finish the stacking job with her to create that minute. There was something familiar about him. Had she seen him before? But, of course, he’d lived here once, he said, in town, years ago, worked for a company up in Vergennes. She and Kevin had probably encountered one another in the post office or the local hardware store. She would have been in her twenties then, not looking at anyone but Pete. Oh but Pete was gorgeous then: tall and lanky, that dark brown hair curling all over his head....

Pete was growing bald now, the hair receding above his temples. She was glad, wasn’t she?

Kevin had a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled. A self-deprecating smile, crooked—a relief really; she was suspicious of “perfect” men: They were usually stuck on themselves. Too many people in the Flint kitchen—that’s why he’d come over, he explained: to use the phone. His eyebrow questioned, and of course she nodded. “All shouting at the top of their lungs over there,” he said, smiling. “How could I make a phone call?”

They made short work of the wood stacking with his help, heaving the logs up in tiers in her dank basement. He didn’t seem afraid to soil his clothes, though he wore a clean blue shirt, dark pressed pants, nice shoes. In short, he dressed “city.” So why wasn’t she suspicious of him? Was she sex-starved? Well, she’d better make it clear she wasn’t.

“I just need someone, uh, rational to talk to,” he said, the brief phone call over. He settled into a kitchen chair, hands cupping the apple cider she offered. He didn’t drink coffee, he said—he had high blood pressure, took something for it. Already she sensed his vulnerability.

“I’m not much on advice. But I’ll listen. I mean, until the cows—you know. Tim, the hired man, he’s had flu. I made him go home early. My daughter Emily’s bogged down with homework—she claims. And my son, Vic—well, he’s upstairs. Worn-out from building a pen for his chickens. So they’ll stay out of the barn—Mother’s orders. And then, he’s worried about a hawk he found in the pasture. He calls the vet every day.”

“A hawk?”

“Red-tailed hawk, yes. Poisoned—we don’t know how. Pesticides, the vet seems to think. But not from here. Already we have another victim, a crow. Vic found it; we took it to the vet’s. She’s understandably upset about it.”

Kevin nodded in sympathy. “I promise not to overstay.”

At least, she thought, he was still staying next door. Hadn’t been put off by that skeleton. He’d encountered it yesterday, just as the police came to remove it, to send it on to the forensics lab up in Burlington. Along with the separated hand, of course—though the bones in general looked pretty well deteriorated. But she’d kept the ring. What would the forensics people know about a ring? Of course, the police would want to know about the ring now. But that Indian arrowhead in the breastbone. Someone had jammed it in there. Was it Glenna?

Outside, it was raining, a cold October rain. At least it was melting the ice left over from an earlier freezing rain. She’d have to bring the cows in soon, for the night anyway. She hated doing that. So much extra work, feeding and hoeing out the manure.

But it was warm in the kitchen—she dropped another log into the woodstove; the cider she shared was comforting. She could spare another ten or fifteen minutes, couldn’t she? His eyes begged. He was talking about his wife.

“And so she left with another woman, to join this group, this healing center or whatever it is. Just left me a note. ‘You’ll make out,’ it said. Or something like that. I couldn’t reread it; I tore it up in a fit of frenzy. I couldn’t imagine her leaving like that. She’d always been so ... easy to get along with, so loving. I was devastated. You know.”

Ruth nodded. She knew. Though at least Pete had had the courage to confront her before he left. But then, he had three children. “Children?” she asked Kevin, but he shook his head.

“Angie couldn’t have any. For one thing, she has this, um, bleeding defect—something genetic. Supposed to take a blood thinner. Her own mother died in childbirth—a second pregnancy—hemorrhaging. I didn’t want Angie to get pregnant! So she wanted to adopt, but I—well, you hear things about that. You never really know where they come from. A neighbor was shot by an adopted child.”

“It can work out. So many children, needing a home. I’ve thought of it myself.”

“I guess. But. Well, she agreed with me later, didn’t want to take the chance herself. She got quieter and quieter. Joined this religion.”

“What is it exactly? This religion? I mean, is it a religion?”

He shook his head. “She’d never explain, though I asked her. Her stepmother runs a so-called healing center in California. I blame her for Angie’s defection—Angie took a trip out there, came back . . . well, different. Angie calls it ‘meditation.’ Healing. Something about the hara, words I’d never heard. New Age stuff. The head woman here’s a disciple of Angie’s step-mother. So after that California trip, Angie took up this meditating, squatting on a mat on the floor. I couldn’t watch. Say, could I have another cider? We still have”—he consulted his watch—”five minutes. Don’t get up. I’ll get it.”

Vic came halfway down the back stairs, saw she had a guest, and halted on the bottom step, a scrawny boy in last year’s tight jeans—she saw him through the stranger’s eyes.

“My son,” she said. “He’s glad you’re here. You’ve saved him from ten orders. Right, Vic?”

“That magazine come today?” Vic asked, retreating a step. She knew what he meant, and she smiled. “Sorry. Maybe tomorrow. Astronomy,” she told Kevin. “He saved his money for a telescope. He made a perfectly good one, but it wasn’t strong enough, he said. He wants to see into the universe.”

“Good for him,” said Kevin, “I wish I could.” He leaned his elbows on the table. “I worry about Angie. That’s why I’m here, you know. I have to get her out. I don’t know how. You seem a sensible woman, grounded, I thought you might—”

Now she was wary. What did he want of her? “Me? I mean, I can’t just go invade ...”

“I meant, some thoughts on how I might ... I heard about—your husband. I thought you’d understand what it is to be left, you know.”

She flushed. She was glad of Vic, who was in the kitchen now, fumbling through a pile of letters, ads, flyers—junk mail. He gave the stranger a side scowl. “How’s Zelda’s calf doing?” the boy demanded, butting into the conversation. “It looked bad this morning when I left for school. It’s not getting what it needs.”

“Calcium deficiency,” she explained to her son. “I gave it an intravenous shot this morning. You’ll have to bottle-feed it yourself. It’s your calf, if you want it. Obviously Zelda doesn’t.”

“You mean that? Jeezum.” He started out the door in his shirtsleeves.

“Vic, come back. Put on a coat.”

He backed up, reluctantly, grabbed a denim jacket, and hooked it onto one arm. “This is Mr. Crowningshield; he’s staying at the Flint farm.”

“Huh,” said Vic, and flung out the door, letting it slam.

“Boys,” she apologized, hands over her ears. “I’d better—I mean, he’ll need help. And that calf isn’t right. It’s true— maybe it got dehydrated early on, with its mother leaving it.”

“She died?”

“No, just refused to feed it. Defected, you might say.”

“Ah.” He understood what that meant.

She considered. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called it Vic’s, in case—”

“It dies,” Kevin said, looking sympathetic. He has cow eyes, she thought, deep brown; she looked away quickly. “That’s what worries me,” he said, “about Angie. You know, she abandoned her pills, the blood thinners, after she came back from California. Didn’t trust doctors anymore. Who’s going to take care of her in that Healing House? I keep thinking of that cult—Heaven’s Gate? They had a suicide pact. I don’t trust this place, Ruth.”

When he used her first name like that, there was a small explosion in her head. He stood up, followed her out onto the porch; his shoes made a crunching sound on the old boards where they’d tracked up leaves.

“Maybe you’d better go over there,” she said. “Talk to the head woman. Make an appeal. Or, I don’t know, just wait. Till your wife comes to her senses.”

Wait, she thought, when Kevin had gone; she was running to the barn through a swirl of orangy-brown leaves. Was that why she couldn’t agree to the divorce Pete wanted? She was waiting for him to come back?

* * * *

Hartley couldn’t stand it. Another reporter at the door, and Fay in town at the Food Co-op. Aunty had refused to talk to the others; of course, she wouldn’t want to see this one, either, even though the woman was from the
New York Times.
Some Albany paper had gotten hold of the local
Independent
and blown up the skeleton find out of all proportion. Aunty was angry. Aunty was another Harriet Sedley, their cartoonist said, who took an ax and gave her parents forty whacks. Only this time, it was a pitchfork: “Glenna Flint, she popped her cork— and stuck her husband with a fork!”