Going Through the Notions(6)

“Oh.” Deflated, I fell silent, too.

We passed the turnoff to Burning Barn Road, which led to an artists’ colony where a semifamous watercolor painter taught classes. On either side of us, fields of crops bordered with split rail fences stretched as far as they could until dense forests barred their progress. With some of these rural towns, there was no way to get there from here other than to go the long way around.

Betty and I had lunch together in Sheepville, and then I brought her home. She gave me Angus’s eyeglasses and a couple more things he’d requested. I promised I’d call her after I saw him again.

I made a stop at the town’s supermarket to pick up some essentials. In the winter I stocked up on multiples of paper towels, laundry detergent, toilet paper, and yes, several bottles of wine, like a crazed domesticated squirrel. River Road wasn’t much fun in deep snow and treacherous black ice. During the summer, Joe and I enjoyed a bounty of vegetables from our garden. There was a farm stand close by, and I only needed to make the trip once a week.

About half a mile down Sheepville Pike, I passed Jimmy’s place. I wasn’t quite sure where he lived, but I recognized the battered gray Chevy pickup truck with the magnetic signs on its sides for CleanUp and CloseOut.

A long gravel driveway led up to a white Colonial farmhouse, with its adjacent barn and henhouses. It was set a good distance back from the road, surrounded by open pasture, with one large oak tree in front. Dust kicked up around my car as I turned in, sincerely hoping that Jimmy’s wife didn’t shoot strangers on sight.

The bed of his truck was still stuffed with all kinds of junk—broken kitchen chairs, stained mattresses, and cardboard boxes. The bumper was splattered with stickers such as I LOVE MY COUNTRY, BUT FEAR MY GOVERNMENT, and GUT SALMON? A wooden dresser caught my eye until I got closer and saw that the legs were broken off, and there was an ugly gash in the side.

Jimmy’s house was the same way. From the road it looked all right, but up close it was pretty dilapidated. The white stucco over stone was missing in places, and green asphalt shingles were peeling up where the angles of roof met. A wide porch around the front of the house held some webbed deck chairs and a lumpy harvest gold and green brocade couch.

Jimmy’s wife appeared as I pulled up next to the barn and got out of the car. Her body was that of a skinny sixteen-year-old, and her hair was light brown and baby fine. She wore a faded summer shift, and her feet were bare in the dust.

“Hi, Reenie.”

Her real name was Noreen, but everyone called her Reenie.

“What are you doing here, Mrs. Buchanan?”

Two small children with grubby faces ran up and clung to her side. They wore the same wary look as their mother.

“Please. Call me Daisy. I—um—stopped to see how you were doing. I’m so sorry about Jimmy.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Well, I have to finish the afternoon milking,” Reenie said.

“I don’t mean to intrude. I just thought that—”

“You can come with me if you’d like to visit.”

“Okay.”

I followed her into the barn, which was in the same sad state of disrepair as the house. I glanced around quickly, but there was no sign of blood on the ground, for which I was truly thankful.

She washed her hands and sat down next to a black and white Holstein, which was standing on a concrete slab in the milking parlor. From another bucket of water, she washed and dried the udder carefully. She set a stainless steel pail underneath the cow, and bumped her fist gently against it. I guessed she was imitating the action of a calf coming to suckle against its mother.

“Do you think Angus did it, Reenie?” I asked quietly.

She shrugged. “Who knows? Men can do some pretty bad things when they’re drunk and angry.”

Reenie seemed to relax as she warmed to her task, taking the teats in both hands from opposite corners of the udder, producing a thin squirt, and working in a sure rhythm until the flow became more constant. The cow stood placidly chewing on grain, surveying me with calm brown eyes. I didn’t think I’d have been so content to have someone pulling on my nipples like that.

“It doesn’t hurt them,” she said as if reading my mind. “If she wasn’t milked, she’d be swollen and sore. They actually come up to the barn themselves at milking time.”

I stood near the head of the cow, not at its bony rear end. I might be a city girl, but I knew enough to stay out of range of a swift kick.

“Jimmy and Angus came out here for a nightcap,” Reenie said. “I’d had enough of waiting up for him by that time, so I went to bed. How they ever made it to Angus’s house, I don’t know. They were stumbling drunk. Jimmy must have slept in the barn when he came home. He often did that when he tied one on.”