Apples For Vinegar

  Apples For Vinegar

  RJ Fournier

  Prologue

  Retrieving the rifle went smoothly. The garage door was unlocked, the key hanging from a nail above the gun safe. A last minute decision to use the boots—his boots—that stood at the ready by the door.

  A quarter moon cast pale light on house and field. In the distance, a fox shouted its strangled yelp. Nearby, two groups of frogs croaked at regular but different tempos. When their calls were in synch the sound reached a unified climax only to die off into rival choruses interweaving their similar songs at slower then faster intervals. Otherwise, all was quiet.

  No lights inside.

  The rifle butt made easy work of the kitchen door window. Reached carefully inside to turn the lock.

  No barking dog. That was taken care of weeks before. An unintended perk.

  A door opened down the hall.

  “Who’s there?”

  Did he recognize the danger? Unlikely he’d call the police. Not in his line of business. Would he hide or would he come out wielding a gun? No matter. It’s the first shot that counts.

  A hall light flared on. The fool stepped into view.

  “Didn’t you do enough damage last night?”

  He advanced toward the kitchen, toward his fate, leaving his frame silhouetted in the light.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  His hand reached out to flick on the kitchen lights. There was advantage in keeping it dark.

  The rifle raised. Fired.

  Killing the dog had been harder.

  Too risky to check if he was dead. Trust in the bullet having done its job.

  A quick look to make sure no one was outside, alerted by the gunshot.

  A car on the road, but it drove on.

  Out the door and across the drive, back to the garage. Return the rifle and boots.

  Easy-peasy.

  Early November

  One

  The rutted gravel lane leading to the Duddas’ farm ran between once-plowed fields now left to invasive grasses so brown and sere they defied hope of anything green ever growing there again. Further on, houses were scattered on one side of the road and an orchard on the other, its trees gnarled and stunted from years of torturous pruning. A few apples that should have been picked a month before still clung to the branches; the rest lay rotting on the ground.

  Delyth Bitersee was barely aware of the passing scenery, her mind preoccupied with the lede for her feature article about the decline of family farms in the county. This was the first plum assignment she’d gotten since she started at the Redwood Post. That didn’t mean she was free of her duties as a general assignment reporter. As soon as she got back to the office, she still had to write up the Board of Education meeting she’d attended the night before, organize the events calendar and weather report, and pull together three obits. As Ted, her editor, liked to remind her, the beast is always hungry.

  Her interviews so far had been with “new farmers,” new to the area and practicing new approaches to farming. Educated, articulate and charismatic, they referred her to one another like a Frisbee being tossed on the beach. For balance she wanted to talk with a few more-traditional farmers like the Duddas, but Ted was impatient for a story and the next day was the deadline for the Sunday edition. Whatever came of the interview, she’d have to go with what she had.

  She turned onto a short, dirt drive leading to a comfortable-looking, two-story, clapboard house with a woman standing in front, her long, auburn hair glinting in the November sun.

  Delyth parked and got out. “Hi. You must be Karen Dudda.”

  The woman smiled.

  Delyth approached and extended a hand. “I’m Delyth Bitersee. I really appreciate your meeting with me.”

  Karen gave a limp tug on Delyth’s fingers. “We’re happy to.” Up close, her hair was as thick as a shampoo model’s but, despite their luxurious frame, her freckled face and anemic-blue eyes gave her an exposed and vulnerable look. The muted grey of her sweater added to the impression. “My husband’s inside.” She led the way into the house.

  They entered a small living room dominated by a flagstone fireplace. A fixed picture window failed to enliven the dark-wood wainscoting and faded-to-olive-drab, wall-to-wall carpet.

  A dog rushed toward Delyth and frisked at her feet, its long white coat splotched with black and gray as if someone had done a slapdash job cleaning up an ink spill. She put out a hand to keep it from jumping on her.

  “Jerzy, come get your dog,” Karen called.

  A man appeared in a doorway at the other end of the room. He was big and ruddy, his hair a thicket of blond. “Mate, get over here.” He snapped his fingers. The dog trotted to his side and sat looking up at him.

  “Don’t worry,” Delyth said. “He was just saying hello”

  The man gave the dog a quick pat on the head then looked back at Delyth. “You must be the reporter lady.” He didn’t move, maintaining the length of the room between them.

  Delyth waved. “Nice meeting you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karen intervened. “I should have introduced you. Delyth, this is my husband Jerzy.”

  Jerzy smiled. “I was just going to pour myself some coffee. Want a cup?”

  “I’d love some,” Delyth said, although she’d already reached her limit of two cups for the day. “Can I help?”

  “Oh, no. I’ll get it,” Karen said, but Jerzy had already gone back through the doorway with Delyth close behind.

  The room they entered was a half-dining room/half-enclosed porch. Even with opaque plastic covering the inside of the jalousie windows, Delyth felt a chill as she walked in. The kitchen beyond was small, but the wainscoting, painted bright white, and the light from two windows above the sink, their glass wavy with age, made a cheerful contrast to the previous room. A small, round table was wedged in the corner.

  Delyth preferred doing interviews sitting around a kitchen table, where people tended to be more relaxed and candid. Without being invited, she sat down, planning not to budge until husband and wife had joined her.

  Karen slipped past Jerzy. “I’ll do it.” She grabbed the pot from the coffeemaker, and quickly filled a cup, and handed it to him. She turned to Delyth. “Do you use milk?”

  “Black’s fine.” Delyth wasn’t going to drink it in any case.

  Jerzy placed his cup on the table opposite her. “Where’s Ben?”

  “I knocked on his door and told him to join us,” Karen said. Setting the cup in front of Delyth, she added, “It’s not everyday you’re interviewed for a newspaper article, but you know teenagers; they can’t get out of bed in the morning.”

  “I’ll get him,” Jerzy said. “Maybe he can learn something.” Walking back into the dining room, he shouted, “Ben, get your ass in here.” There was a muffled voice to which Jerzy answered, “I don’t care. You should hear this.”

  Karen sat next to Delyth. “Ben is Jerzy’s son from a previous marriage. He’s staying with us while… while his mother is in the hospital.”

  Jerzy came back and sat facing Delyth.

  With them both in place, Delyth laid a pad and pen on the table and, pulling out her phone, asked, “Do you mind if I record our talk?” She didn’t tend to listen to recordings—relying more on her notes—but it was helpful when a quote she didn’t write down exactly turned out to be important. When neither objected, she pressed record. “To start, it’d help if I could get some background first. What kind of farm is this? I saw you had a lot of apple trees.”

  “Pfft!” Jerzy scoffed. “They’re only good for vinegar. It hardly pays to pick them.”

  “My dad made a pretty good living with them before I was born,” Karen explained. “But today a
pples are shipped from all over the world. We can’t compete.”

  A small girl tramped into the kitchen, wearing boots and a hooded coat that extended beyond her knees. The bright red fabric seemed so stiff and unbending it could have been fuzzy cardboard.

  “Kyla,” Karen said, “say hello to Mrs. Bitersee.”

  Delyth didn’t bother to correct her marital status. “Kyla, that’s a beautiful name. And that’s a beautiful red coat.”

  Kyla looked up. “It’s like Red Riding Hood’s.”

  “I see.”

  A teenage boy trudged in. Without speaking, he went to the coffee and poured himself a mug. He wore flip-flops, a tee shirt with the word QuickSilver across the back, and a pair of jeans two sizes two big. When he reached for the milk carton, his shirt pulled up revealing the curve of buttocks that alone were keeping the pants from falling to his knees, a pale crescent of un-tanned skin emphasizing where underwear should’ve been.

  “Uncle Ben,” Kyla cried.

  “S’up?”

  “The catsup,” Kyla responded in the way of a ritualized joke. “I’m going to feed the cats. Want to come?”

  “Nah. I’m supposed to listen to some lame interview.”

  Karen watched her daughter leave. “Don’t get your coat all muddy.” She turned toward Delyth. “We feed the feral cats. I told Kyla we could bring one inside as a real pet, but she didn’t want to hurt the other cats’ feelings.”

  Delyth crinkled her face in what she hoped was an expression of appropriate delight then, looking down at her notes, jumped back to the interview. “If there’s no market for apples, why not turn the land over to something that does pay?”

  “My grandfather planted the trees and my father tended them his whole life. Personally I’m not sentimental about them. They’ve outlived their usefulness. The problem is what to replace them with. Jerzy tried all kind of crops, but it’s too much work for just one man, and we can’t afford to hire anyone, not even illegals.”

  “Some do-gooders are organizing them,” Jerzy said, shaking his head. “Do you know how much an hour they expect now?”

  Ben, who’d remained standing by the sink, piped in, “We could grow weed like Zad.”

  “Zad Ajnabee’s our neighbor,” Karen explained to Delyth. “We don’t know for sure he grows marijuana.”

  “He doesn’t work,” Ben said, “yet he can afford that house. And he’s always talking about his land in Mendocino. You know what that means.”

  “It’s illegal,” Karen told him.

  “Not no more,” the boy sneered. “Prop 64 passed if you hadn’t heard. Recreational cannabis is legal for law-abiding citizens in the state of California.”

  “Not in the United States. And be that as it may, it’s still immoral. I won’t have it in the house. And I don’t want to grow it for other people to ruin their lives. Jerzy agrees with me.”

  “So what’re you going to do?” Ben countered. “Give up?”

  “The Lord gave us dominion of all the earth, and this farm is our portion of that earth. Farming is our daily prayer.”

  To Delyth, it sounded like a practiced response about a capricious God. But if God wanted them to be farmers, why was he making it so hard? She knew Karen’s answer would be that it didn’t matter; farming this plot of land was what they were supposed to do. Delyth’s own religious upbringing taught her the logic; her adult non-belief saw the flaw.

  She was about to ask about a more practical plan to save the farm, when Kyla came running in, sobbing. “She’s dead.”

  Karen quickly went to her and, kneeling, held her close. The girl fit neatly against her mother’s body, like a key to its lock. “Who’s dead, sweetie?”

  The dog nosed against the little girl.

  “The new cat.” Kyla had already stopped crying but didn’t move out of Karen’s arms.

  “The gray and white one?”

  Kyla nodded into Karen’s shoulder.

  Jerzy stood and put a hesitant hand on his daughter’s head. “I’ll go see what happened.” Ben went out with him.

  Delyth hoped they could get back to the interview, but in the meantime she discreetly turned off the recorder.

  “Oh, it was probably sick when it got here,” Karen told Kyla. “It wanted a safe place to get better, but sometimes animals just can’t get better.” She and Kyla looked up when Jerzy returned followed closely by Ben.

  “It was outside the coop,” he announced. “Something killed it.”

  “Grabbed it by the throat and snapped its neck,” Ben added with a touch of glee.

  Jerzy seemed as worked up as his son. “Could’ve been a coyote, but seems more like a dog did it.”

  “A crow already found it and was pecking at its eyes,” Ben added.

  Kyla swung around and, burying her face into her mother’s shoulder, burst into new sobs.

  “You two are not helping,” Karen said.

  Jerzy knelt beside them. “Oh, dumpling, don’t cry.” He put a hand on his daughter’s back, rubbing softly as if begging for a share of her attention. “I promise I won’t let it happen again.”

  Kyla stopped crying, but didn’t turn from her mother’s embrace.

  Jerzy jumped up. “I bet anything it was Zad’s ugly, old mongrel that did it. It’s always coming over here to take a crap. Only a matter of time before it killed something. Good thing it wasn’t one of the goats or a chicken.”

  Karen cradled Kyla’s head into the crook of her neck. “Enough talk about killing.”

  “You gonna make him pay?” Ben said, as much a statement as a question.

  “What do you mean?” Jerzy asked.

  “You know. Pay. Money. Like his dog destroyed your stuff, and he has to pay for it.”

  Karen didn’t get up, but pulled away from her daughter slightly. “It was just a stray cat.”

  “Then kill his dog. An eye for an eye. You should know about that.” He drained the dregs from the coffee pot into his cup, then put the pot back and leaned against the counter. “You can’t let him get away with it,” he told his father. “You wimp out now, and he’ll walk all over you.”

  Without saying anything, Karen stood, crossed the kitchen and reached in front of him to turn off the coffee maker. The boy didn’t move. “This isn’t the jungle,” she said, their faces two feet apart. “Someone does something to you, you take them to court. And if you don’t have a case—like we don’t have a case, we can’t even prove the dog did it—you drop it. It’s the law.”

  “What law is that? The turn-the-other-cheek law?” he asked with a smirk.

  Karen stared straight at him. “That’s not a bad law to live by.”

  The boy pulled himself up from his slouch. Delyth could see a smart aleck remark pass behind his eyes. Finally he said, “But it doesn’t get you far in this world.”

  Karen didn’t take her eyes off him, but said nothing.

  The boy, his face flushed, turned away.

  Pacing, Jerzy muttered, “The boy’s right. I’ve got to do something. I can’t just sit on my hands and let that goddamn pothead threaten my family.”

  “Calm down,” Karen said. “The cat didn’t even have a name.”

  “But Kyla found it. She shouldn’t have to deal with something like that.” Jerzy made another circuit around the kitchen. “I have a good mind to go over there right now, and tell Zad he has to keep his dog under control. I’ll kill it if I see it on our property again.” He stormed out.

  Kyla stared after her father.

  Ben, his eyes bright, said, “I’m going to get some shoes and check it out.” His flip-flops slapped against his feet as he hurried out.

  “Don’t worry,” Karen said to Kyla. “Daddy’s just going over to talk with Mr. Ajnabee.” She ruffled the girl’s hair. “How would you like some hot chocolate?” To Delyth she said, “I’m sorry about all this.” She made a wry face. “Do you have children?”

  To Delyth the question felt like being asked for a secret handshake.
Although she had neither husband nor plans to get pregnant, she answered, “Not yet.”

  Karen helped Kyla out of her Red Riding Hood coat. “When you do, you’ll understand.”

  There it was: the self-righteous sorority of mothers. Delyth would have enjoyed saying she had sufficient imagination to understand now.

  Karen went on, “Children Kyla’s age get over things quickly. Don’t you, sweetie?” She gave her daughter a quick kiss on the top of the head. “You can color while I make the hot chocolate.” She pulled a coloring book and some crayons from a high shelf.

  “Still, you have a lot on your hands right now. We can do the interview some other time,” Delyth said, although she knew there would be no other time.

  “Oh, I hate to make you drive all this way again. Jerzy will be fine. He’s like a big, old guard dog who barks at every little sound in the night then almost immediately forgets what he was barking at. Besides, Zad’s a little pipsqueak. No way he could hurt my Jerzy.” A smug smile flashed across her lips.

  Good reporters should keep the interview going no matter what; they would continue asking questions in middle of a warzone. Delyth believed she could brave bullets flying and bombs going off, but she couldn’t endure the embarrassment she felt at the Duddas in action. Such dramas must happen in families all the time, but behind closed doors. Her Welsh parents would never have been so open in front of a total stranger. She dug for an excuse to leave. “I’m sure you’re right, but it will be a while before Jerzy gets back, and I have lots of work waiting for me at the office.”

  “I guess it would be for the best. Jerzy’s the real farmer in the family.”

  Delyth gathered her phone and notepad. When Karen started to walk her to the door, she said, “I can find my way out. Stay and fix the hot chocolate you promised a special little girl.” The last sounded insincere to her, but Karen, smiling a thank you, didn’t seem to notice. Kyla didn’t look up from her coloring.

  Once outside, Delyth took a relieved gulp of fresh air, got in her car and started down the drive. As she turned onto the gravel road, she spotted Ben standing half-obscured by a short palm tree. He was looking away from her, and didn’t seem to notice her behind him. When Delyth stopped and got out to investigate, she heard someone yelling, “Your God damn dog killed our cat!” She followed the voice to where she could see Jerzy confronting a smaller man who stood in the front doorway of a faux hacienda painted a dirty mustard. The two of them looked the antithesis of each other: Jerzy sturdy, tanned and blond, the other man short and thin with skin so pale it seemed to have never seen the sun. The contrast was exaggerated because the man was dressed only in a pair of nylon shorts without a shirt despite the November chill. He had to be the neighbor Zad.