Spit Delaney's Island by Jack Hodgins Page A

visiting Mrs. Starbuck in jail and
offering to be her attorney.
    Then Mrs. Starbuck brought the axe down square on the calf’s forehead, raised it and brought it down again. The head dropped forward
between its forelegs, chin on the ground, and shuddered. Pink froth bubbled from its mouth. Mrs. Wright couldn’t help but think of the way Edna
Starbuck, halfway across the field, had stopped with her head down as if
to say I just can’t go on, just like that calf.
    Mrs. Starbuck raised the axe again. She hissed. She looked at Charlene
Porter cowering under a fir tree, and at Mr. Porter with one foot ahead as
if he wanted to come closer and take his axe away, and at Mrs. Wright
standing at the side of her pickup truck wishing there were some way she
could write all this up for the paper and knowing she couldn’t. Then she
said “Go home” to them, hissed it at them as if they were a herd of balky
cattle. “Get out of here. Leave me alone.”
    Mr. Porter lifted his hat and put it back on again. Then he stepped up
and released his axe from Mrs. Starbuck’s grip. His daughter put her hand
in his and they started walking up past the stumps and blackberry bushes
towards home.
    Mrs. Wright didn’t move. She wasn’t budging. She trained her eyes on
Mrs. Starbuck’s and held them steady. No screeching fishwife was going
to beg her for help and then tell her to go. She stared straight into those
two round eyes until Mrs. Starbuck looked away and sat down beside her
dead calf. She took her baseball cap off and ran it under her nose and
wiped her forearm across her eyes.
    â€œEdna Starbuck,” Mrs. Wright said, “I think you must be insane.” And
she swung around to get back inside the cab of the pickup truck.
    By the time she had the engine started Mrs. Starbuck was at the window. Her big face, a brighter red now than ever before, shone through a
smear of tears. “Don’t tell Mr. Wright,” she said.
    Mrs. Wright stared. She knew there were people who were afraid of
her husband but it had never passed through her mind before that Mrs.
Starbuck was afraid of anything . “He wouldn’t be interested,” she said.
“You can do whatever you want with your own livestock.”
    Mrs. Wright wanted to go home. What was she doing over here anyway, with all the work she had to do at home? “Step back,” she said, and
when Mrs. Starbuck had taken her hands off the truck she started up the
hill away from the well, away from that calf, and rode the bumps and hollows with impatience. At the barn she was careful to close the gate behind
her. She didn’t even want to think how much trouble there’d be if Mrs.
Starbuck’s cattle got off her farm and out onto the road, stopping traffic
and eating up other people’s lawns.

    II

    Charlene was already sitting on the verandah chair and watching the
gable of Mrs. Starbuck’s house when her father came up out of the bush
and headed across the orchard towards her. She leaned ahead, elbows on
her knees, and rested her chin in the palms of both hands so she wouldn’t
be tempted to glance his way. Here, though the verandah roof hid her
from the sun, she felt as if the warm heavy air she breathed had just been
exhaled by someone else.
    Out in the front yard hot air wrinkled upward from the short green
orchard grass, making the apple trees and plum trees seem to waver a little, as if they’d been dipped in water. Along the path that led to the picket
gate and the gravel road, the oyster shells were a white so harsh that it hurt
her eyes to look. A big lazy cat, somebody’s stray, stretched and settled to
sleep at the base of a honeysuckle bush.
    Charlene sighed at her father’s approach. She had run ahead and lefthim on the trail up from the back of Mrs. Starbuck’s farm. Well, let him
walk alone if he couldn’t be bothered to do any more than he had to help
Mrs. Starbuck. She was in