Mad Cow Nightmare Read Free

insensitivity.
    “Aw,” he said, coming over to her, “five hours of sleep is plenty, I never needed more, ma’am, not even when I was a kid.” He grinned into her face.
    “Colm,” she said, addressing the infuriating figure in the white boxer shorts. “This is your relative. Please explain things to him. And who gave permission for that tent?” She pointed to the tent where the bearded newcomer was emerging now, stomping over to the group of spectators squatting on the grass.
    Squatters. The word came to her. They squatted on your unoccupied land until they claimed it for their own, and who could get them off? She’d heard that about the Irish. Who were these people anyway? Gypsies, she thought. She didn’t care what Colm called them. Travellers like Maggie were surely to be classified as gypsies. Not European Roma gypsies, but itinerant wandering Irish-Americans who thought nothing, folk said, of taking the corn you’d just brought to fruition in your garden, or the ripe tomatoes or pole beans. Human raccoons! Come in an ancient pickup and a trailer painted a canary yellow.
    Colm was whispering to Darren; the tall lanky fellow was all apologies as though he’d no idea the music could have disturbed anyone’s rest. “Right,” Darren said, “we’ll put it all away and let you go back and have your night’s sleep. We’ll be fresh as buttercups in the dawn and you’ll get a day’s work out of me’ll make you fall on your knees and shout a-men.”
    “And that?” she said, ignoring the bullshit (that word again but fitting this time)—she pointed at the newcomers’ tent.
    Darren squinted as though surprised to see it there, a thin plastic structure with tiny holes as though it had been attacked by a swarm of killer bees. He laughed. “Oh, that’s just my big brother, Ritchie, come to take me back to Uncle’s farm. The hired guy quit when he couldn’t take Uncle’s temper, and now he’s short of hands. But would I leave you in the lurch? Aw, hell, you know I wouldn’t— I swear—got a Bible around here?” He crossed himself with a flourish, glanced at Maggie for support; she trilled a few high notes. “Not this summer, not when I promised to stay, and Maggie here’s got a concert next month, up to Burlington, in one of them cafés there. Good pay, too, I tell you, am I right, Mag?”
    “Right,” she said, and rubbed her palms together. She gave the younger sister a slap on the bum and sent her into the trailer, presumably to sleep.
    “They’re not staying, any of them,” Ruth mumbled, and glared at the yellow trailer, which was clearly profiled now where the moon had swung back into view. Beyond the trailer she saw a second pickup that someone had driven into her pasture, mowing down a hundred new trees no doubt. And then a horse grazing on her scotch pine. She was dumbstruck with the audacity of it. And there was her lover, Colm, smiling, calm as a summer’s night, thumbs stuck into the band of his white boxer shorts. They were all alike, the Irish—on both sides of the ocean. Not like her own rational Scots, who’d feel the weight of an awful guilt to be exploiting another’s hospitality.
    “Darren. Please. I want them out by tomorrow night.”
    “But, ma’am, the woman’s sick—she had surgery, Nola did, two weeks ago—up to Canada,” Darren said, looking innocent. “You can’t throw her out. It’s just till she recoups, you know, and they’ll be outa here. I give you my solemn promise.” He held out his large calloused hands as though a Bible might suddenly drop into them.
    “Day after tomorrow then,” Ruth said, relenting. “Tell your brother to find a place for the two of them. These are new young trees on this pasture. I need the income. And see to it that horse is out of here at dawn. Can’t you see it’s digging up the grass?”
    She blinked, and the place was suddenly empty. The spectators, horse and all, had gone, crawled away it seemed, into the dark. Were