Poison Apples by Nancy Means Wright Page A

could hardly bear to look at it herself, thinking it would soon become curried stew. It clambered up the walkway Mr. Atwood had prepared for it, but then balked; it didn’t want to get into the truck. They might have to leave it there, forget about goat stew—Moira almost hoped so. But she remembered how eager the Jamaicans had been, how important the goat was to the harvest supper. They had to get it in the truck.
    “She’ll go, she’ll do it, give her a push now,” said Mr. Atwood, and finally, with a concentrated effort and a few giggles on Moira’s part, they were able to shove it up in. He locked the tailgate behind and tethered the goat to the side of the pickup.
    “So,” the old man said when they were done, when she had paid him, “pickin’ goin’ well up t’the orchard?” She glanced at him to see if there was a deeper meaning behind the words, but his round pleasant face was innocent of innuendo.
    “Well enough,” she said, “though there’s been a lot of rain lately just at dawn. All they’re picking today is brushwood and drops. We don’t need our Jamaicans for that.” She wasn’t going to say any more. Everyone knew about last spring’s spraying fiasco, it had been in all the papers. Stan hadn’t reported the most recent incident. He wanted it kept quiet.
    “Guess not,” he agreed. “Don’t help the haying none, either.” Mr. Atwood had a dozen cows along with his goats, and a huge garden full of corn and pumpkins and green vegetables. His farm was an example of self-sufficiency farming at its best.
    They were off then, with Opal holding her nose as if, even up front, she could smell the goat. Back at the orchard, where they’d parked down by the Jamaicans’ bunkhouse, she scrambled out of the pickup and raced up to the house. Moira heard the screen door bang behind her.
    “He’s a good’un,” Bartholomew said as he came running up when Moira honked. He still had a bucket of drops around his neck; he slipped it off to help untether the animal. “Ex-cell-ent stew, oh, you see.” The whites of his eyes shone in the dark brown face. He had a red cotton bandanna wrapped twice about his thick neck, though it couldn’t be any less than sixty degrees outside. She could see the drops of sweat on his wrinkled forehead.
    “You be sure to save us some of that stew,” Moira said. “We don’t want to miss out on the feast.”
    “Oh, we make a big potful, don’t you worry, mum.”
    “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she teased. “Poor goat!”
    “I got a new recipe,” he went on. “Lot of spice, my wife make it up. But first we got to fatten her up more, you know.” He grinned, and trotted on to the bunkhouse with the goat, his free arm swinging.
    It was raining lightly again; there wouldn’t be any picking until it stopped. She heard a harmonica playing a lively tune inside the bunkhouse, then a shout, and laughter. Then Adam Golding came down the path from the barn, with Emily Willmarth. The girl was wearing a cotton shirt, a bright green bandanna—no coat in spite of the rain. Her face was rosy, it seemed her cheeks would crack with the smiling; Adam’s face had a look of satisfaction, the way boys looked when they’d made a conquest. Moira knew the look; she’d seen it on Hilly Winner, on Jake Candido’s face, when they came looking for Carol, and Carol gave them all the same warm smile, the same close attention—but then she always kept something to herself. She didn’t give her full self until. .. that last boy, the one who caused her death. The boy with the handsome face, the shock of dark brown hair that fell almost into his eyes so you couldn’t tell what color they were, what the boy was looking at, thinking. And Carol believed in him; Carol, who was so discriminating, whose judgment of people rarely erred, who saw through a teacher when that teacher tried to throw the bull, or the parent who tried to dismiss a teacher who was hardworking, teaching what she