Killing Weather
Dirt stirs in spring.
Sap rises.
Blood thins.
Which is why it was no surprise to Herbie
Fussell when Avril Malarkey’s third husband took off with a travelling
Electrolux saleswoman.
The first asparagus spears of the season had
begun to break ground. The signs were clear.
The earth was moving.
* * *
Avril broke the news to Herbie’s wife, Ruthie,
at their Tuesday cross-stitch class.
‘It’s most
inconvenient.’ She sighed as she twiddled with a hank of cotton, then bit
through the required length with her perfect teeth. ‘He could have had the
grace to wait until I’d got my new asparagus crowns planted.’
‘He’s a weak man,
pet. Weak!’ Ruthie whispered. Her
thin lips puckered, as though an invisible thread had drawn them in. She marvelled
at the younger woman’s powers of understatement.
She lowered her eyes to her work, hiding the
knowledge in them. She’d seen it coming, of course. No woman of her experience
could endure a full term listening to the new bride’s accounts of Melvin Malarkey’s
behaviour without a growing sense of foreboding.
Only Ruthie’s
needle, jabbing furiously at the sweet pea table runner she’d half completed,
betrayed the anger boiling inside her. Avril was a hard worker, despite what
Herbert said. Out in all weathers. Carting barrow loads of manure from the
poultry farm up wind of her ground. Turning back-breaking heaps of compost into
mulch.
She’d even made a token effort to get rid of the
castor oil weed Herbert so detested. Had to dig it out by hand, given her
aversion to sprays.
And she was passionate about her asparagus. Passionate! Women like Avril deserved
better than layabout philanderers like Malarkey.
Not that Ruthie actually knew the man all that
well. He’d kept himself to himself in the six months he’d lived next door. Still waters run deep…
‘Steady on, Mrs F….’ Avril reached across to
settle an erratically stitching hand. ‘….Keep stabbing your work like that and
you’ll have to unpick.’
Ruthie could feel calluses on the palms of the
small hand pressed against her wrist. And the half moon crescent finger nails
held more dirt than was fitting for a young woman working a linen tray cloth. A
lump began to swell in her turkey wattles.
She forced
herself to glance over the top of her bifocals at Avril, who was peering at her
through the milk bottle lenses that magnified her cornflower blue eyes.
‘It’s just
that….’ Ruthie hesitated. Two women from the group working on a dinner cloth in
the corner were looking at her strangely. ‘You’re a good woman, pet,’ she
managed at last, setting her runner aside to clasp that tiny, work worn hand.
‘You deserve a good man.’
‘Hah!’ Avril
sniffed, reclaiming her hand to push her glasses up to the bridge of her short,
square nose. ‘Men! Who needs them.’
She bent her head to her tray cloth and began
stoically stitching the Brunswick green fronds of an asparagus fern.
* * *
‘Electrolux woman never came here!’ Herbie Fussell’s bewildered
shoulders slumped even before Ruthie set the plate of reheated mutton in front
of him.
He reached for the salt. Shook it vigorously
over the meat. Grinned. Winked at the elderly border collie slumped
optimistically at his feet. ‘Missed our big chance, Jasper. Could’ve asked for
a personal demonstration.’
‘Have some respect.’ Ruthie snatched the salt
shaker and slammed it on the table between them.
Avril Malarkey was too organic for Herbie’s
traditional tastes. He believed in fertiliser and weed killer. And plenty of
it.
Then there’d been the incident with the dog.
Avril had turned up on their doorstep in a
ferment. Said she’d discovered Jasper in a compromising squat on one of her
picking beds. There’s the hygiene to
consider Mr F. After all, I am
selling a consumable. I shall have no recourse but to impound if it happens
again.
Ruthie, who’d never wanted a dog and relied on
Avril for a lift to her weekly cross-stitch, refused to buy into the argument.
Much to Herbie’s disgust.
Now, he shrank
back on to his perch beside the kitchen table. The wife had been on the simmer
ever since she’d got back from her embroidery class. Wouldn’t let on why, at
first. I’m not one to gossip, Herbert.
He’d been married long enough to know when he
was walking barefoot through a minefield. There again, he liked a bit of
fishing…specially when the fish were biting.
‘Met Malarkey a
few times.’
‘Oh.’ Ruthie made
out she was busy with the gravy. She stabbed at imaginary lumps with the flat
of a wooden spoon. Then stirred it fit to rub rings in the bottom of the heavy
based pan. ‘And?’
Herbie lifted his
knife and fork and began to slowly saw at a chunk of mutton. Half way through
he stopped. ‘Gravy ready yet?’
Ruthie lifted the
pan off the stove. Dipped a ladle into the hot brown liquid. Held it out over
the dry meat. Didn’t pour.
‘Seemed a quiet
sort of a bloke.’ Herbie warmed up as he watched the ladle slowly incline.
‘Didn’t say a lot.’
‘Didn’t do a great deal neither, from what I
hear.’ Ruthie could contain herself no longer. The ladle flashed silver.
‘Unlike Avril, breaking her back in all weathers, even digging up castor oil to
humour the neighbours….’ Her eyes stabbed a rebuke in Herbie’s direction.
‘…working the asparagus single handed ever since her last misfortune…’
She faltered.
Avril’s last misfortune – she’d been Avril
Kennedy then – was a
subject seldom spoken about in polite company. Not even with
Herbie.
Hock Kennedy had seemed such an amiable chap.
Too amiable, apparently. Ruthie coloured, suddenly noticing the lake of gravy
drowning the meat. ‘Spoon, pet?’
‘Hasn’t had much success with the
blokes, has she?’ Herbie echoed his wife’s thoughts as he broke a crust to dip
in the gravy. ‘Reels them in right enough, but they don’t seem to keep.’
He paused to swallow a soaked finger of bread.
‘Kennedy seemed all right, until he got in with that barmaid up town.’
‘Aye, pet.’
‘And Charlie
Parkins…’
Ruthie’s eyes
slammed shut. She sucked in a breath. She always did at any mention of Avril’s
first, disastrous marriage. ‘You needn’t remind me, pet.’
But Herbie did.
‘Shocked me senseless when she told us he’d run off with that Elders bloke.’
He took advantage of his wife’s distraction to
palm a hunk of mutton to the dog.
A saucepan
clattered in the sink. ‘You weren’t alone, pet.’
‘Avril’s a mighty
attractive woman,’ Herbie conceded as he mopped the last of the gravy, then got
up and pushed the dry mutton off his plate into a chipped enamel bowl on the
hearth. ‘Big shoulders for someone trained as a shop girl.’
Ruthie sniffed.
‘Pharmacy assistant, Herbert.’ She scrubbed steel wool over a burn on the pan.
‘It’s that market garden. You wouldn’t credit the state of her nails.’
She grimaced as she heard Jasper gulping down
lumps of mutton without chewing.
* * *
Avril O’Keefe – she always reverted to her maiden name between courses, as Herbie Fussell put
it – blanched asparagus tips in a steamer inside her roadside stall. The green
and white striped canvas was not unlike the bunches of stems it displayed, with
an awning at the front to keep out the worst of the afternoon sun.
‘More like a
puppeteer’s tent,’ Herbie Fussell had remarked when he’d seen it go up, soon
after the news got out about Charlie Parkins and the Elders rep. ‘What’s she up
to? Punch and Judy?’
‘Hush yourself,
pet,’ Ruthie had admonished. But Herbie hadn’t missed the way she’d hot footed
it to the sink window for a good look at the new landmark at the edge of their
main road.
They’d both been
cynical about Avril’s enterprise at first. Didn’t think she’d last the year.
She’d told them she’d had the devil’s own job
persuading Charlie to take on the run down five acres so she could grow
asparagus. He’d wanted her to keep her job at the pharmacy. Said it’d pay
better any day than a market garden miles from nowhere.
Herbie agreed.
‘Never understood what folk saw in that sparrow grass,’ he announced,
overriding a warning jab from Ruthie’s right stiletto. ‘Tried it once and it
turned my piss black.’
He could imagine Avril in a white overall,
quietly extolling the virtues of haemorrhoid ointment. Professionally discrete.
Or clutching a mortar and pestle, grinding helpless powders into oblivion. But
farming dirt? Never!
He’d told her so, too.
‘You’ll never make a living,’ he’d scoffed.
‘Three years before you get any production, for a start.’
Avril, however, had shown enormous confidence in her own
ability. ‘I’ll have spears within the
year with my organic method Mr F.’
She’d shown even greater pleasure in proving Herbie wrong.
She started her business selling asparagus in
dozen bundles from her stall at weekends. The stems were tied with raffia and
stood to attention in bowls of iced water to keep them hard. Beside the sales
bundles she kept a tray of freshly blanched tips which she used to tempt
customers.
‘Try
them with a little olive oil and lemon, or balsamic vinegar if that’s more to
your taste,’ Avril would say with quiet persuasion. Then she’d choose a fat, warm stem, swivel it in a little of the
golden oil she kept in an earthenware ramekin beside the tray and drizzle a
squeeze of lemon over the length before closing her lips over the tip.
The act of eating would render Avril speechless
for a good minute as she surrendered to the pleasure of warm oil and crisp
organic vegetable flesh sharpened with the tang of acid. Long enough for most
customers to overcome their embarrassment at the strangely erotic performance
and sample a finger.
Having tasted the sweet, firm flesh, they would
invariably invest in a bunch or two from the ice bowl kept stocked with fresh
pickings from the red loam trenches within sight of the stall.
Avril Parkins’s asparagus – all organically grown with no artificial sprays or fertilisers –
proved a huge success. The stall, with its roadside signs adorned with a
phallic asparagus spear, soon warranted enough trade to open six days per week
through the growing season.
Tuesday was Avril’s day off. Wouldn’t miss cross-stitch, Mrs F. I need
the mental discipline.
Demand for Avril’s asparagus was such that, in
her third year of production, she’d had to expand her beds.
By then she was Avril Kennedy and had set her
sights on the local restaurant market.
The head chef from a new French restaurant left
his sous chef in charge of the kitchen to call at her roadside stall in person.
‘Tu est une jardiniere extraordinaire!’ he
proclaimed, producing a business card on which he scribbled a standing weekly
order for 150 premium bunches.
Avril’s permanently pink lips parted in a smile.
She hadn’t understood a word her delicious customer had uttered in faltering
French, but she knew from the way he’d licked his fingers that she’d soon be
planting more of her beloved asparagus to keep up with demand.
Her marriage to Hock Kennedy was the first
casualty of her growing workload.
‘She works in one of them
big town pubs.’ Avril had hauled up her
glasses to dab at her eyes after breaking the news about the barmaid to Ruthie. ‘ Met her when he went up town to pick up an
order of styrofoam trays.’
Herbie overheard from the privacy of the
verandah. He’d retreated there with Jasper. As usual, Avril’s visit irritated
him more than he cared to admit. To lose one husband was unlucky; two was
downright negligent.
The concern edging Ruthie’s voice rode out to
him through the louvre windows. ‘Ever
considered easing up, pet? Everyone needs a bit of fun once in a while.’
‘Growing asparagus is fun, Mrs F,’ came the startled reply.
The workload did ease through the following lay
season, or so it seemed to the Fussells who had an excellent vantage point from
their kitchen window.
By then, Melvin Malarkey – Herbert! Is it my eyes or is that a pair of
man’s Y-fronts on next door’s line? – was warming the marital bed.
Malarkey’s defection came three weeks to the day
after Avril won a contract to supply a local supermarket.
Ruthie watched from her window as more ground
was worked over to cope with the anticipated demand. She could tell from
Avril’s body language and Malarkey’s frequent rests, leaning on a long handled
shovel, that he wouldn’t last.
‘The blisters hardly had a chance to form on his
hands before he shot through,’ Avril whispered, wide-eyed over the top of her
tray cloth as she formed precise green crosses with the point of her needle the
following Tuesday.
‘Not everyone’s cut out for the land, pet,’ Ruthie
responded. Avril set herself high standards. Little wonder she appeared to
neglect the other side of marriage.
* * *
Herbie Fussell licked his right index finger and thrust a salute
at the sedan riding the bumps along his track to the main road. His lips broke
in a thin smile. A light wind was puffing from the west. He turned and headed
for his shed.
Weeds were Herbie Fussell’s pet hate. The
district had been clean when he was growing up. Before the greenie farmers
moved in. Weed blind, most of them. And precious when it came to using sprays
to control them.
Now Paterson’s curse, cape tulip, turnip, love
grass; all had cast a stranglehold on the soil dear to his heart. Not to
mention castor oil. Herbie’s stomach still churned at the thought of his mother
pinching his nose and tipping his head back to dose him as a kid.
He spat as he unlocked the door of his shed and
strode to the low, locked cupboard where he kept a selection of herbicides. He
lifted out a heavy black drum and measured a dose of clear liquid into a
pump-action spray backpack. Then he filled the backpack with water and hoisted
it on to his back. He slapped his thigh to call Jasper away from the mummified
body of a rat and set off.
The chemical solution slopped inside the
backpack as he loped, head down, eyes casting for any weed that had escaped his
daily patrols. He hated weeds. Hated
them! Almost as much as he hated the vermin small holders who’d let them
prosper.
He’d tried reasoning with the new landowners.
City johnnies most of them. Soft. He’d even organised a field walk with one of
the agriculture protection boys from up town. To no avail.
You’re
advocating we use a toxin Mr F.
Avril’s outburst, in front of the crowd on that
field walk, had surprised him. She’d had a navy linen hat pulled down over her
platinum hair. Some kind of wrap around skirt. Matching top. Low cut. Her voice
was honeyed gravel. It’s been
scientifically proven to kill frogs.
‘This stuff’s frog friendly!’ he’d argued.
A nervous tic resurrected itself
beneath Herbie’s right eye at the memory. Ruthie’d had to administer a half
bottle of Glenfiddich after the field walk to calm it.
He’d been going to tell the small
holders about the toxins in the plants they were harbouring. Alkaloids for a
start. Paterson’s Curse was riddled
with them.
‘See what effect they’ll have on those fat little hobby farm ponies after a flush of summer rain.’
He knew the line by heart, having rehearsed it often enough in his
head.
And cape tulip.
‘Bring a house cow from a clean paddock on to the deadly tulip and see how long it’ll last.’
And any fool knew that castor oil beans contained
ricin, the deadliest toxin known to man.
Herbie had pumped himself up to impress the
crowd.
Ice maiden Avril hadn’t given him a chance.
So he’d had to take action.
His way.
It was only right.
Herbie’s
mood lifted as he crossed the dividing line and entered the asparagus territory
next door.
His
big strides skirted one side of the beds that Avril had positioned with
mathematical precision.
‘Like her flamin’ sewing,’ he mused as he
watched Jasper bound ahead on the trail of a rabbit. It shot into a wattle
thicket behind the heavy, locked door of a weatherboard packing shed.
The arm on the spray rig squeaked as Herbie
began pumping herbicide over a big stand of oil bean plants nearby.
He worked slowly. Thoroughly. No need to check
the house for any sign of habitation. Today was Tuesday. The women would be gas
bagging over their sewing until it was time for Ruthie to put on his tea.
Herbie felt content. It was rare these days that
he felt content, rarer still that he was aware of his contentment. But it was
perfect spray weather. Warm, with the faintest hint of a breeze. A good killing
day.
A smile settled on his weather beaten features
as he watched the drops of potent liquid shine the hand-like leaves. The drops
formed pleasing pools that skittered along the veins and dripped into the rich,
red soil.
Dirt darkened where the moisture fell.
Like bloodstains.
‘Whoa!’
Herbie screwed up his face in disgust as Jasper
returned to slump at his feet.
‘What y’got boy?’ he said absently, moving on to
the next patch of oil plants. ‘Another rat?’
* * *
‘What the devil’s going on next door?’
Ruthie Fussell stopped on her way to change out
of the sensible slack suit she’d worn to embroidery class.
She tore off her reading glasses and snatched
the binoculars she kept handy on a ledge above the sink.
Raised the spies.
Bent her knees.
Squinted.
Herbie waited in uneasy silence. He was on the
verandah. Elbow deep in coal tar soap suds. Trying to disinfect Jasper before
Ruthie caught wind of him. Be guaranteed to bring on one of her turns.
‘Looks like some kind of digging machine, pet.’
Ruthie talked to herself as much as she talked
to Herbie. Like a fridge droning in the background he’d once realised. Since
then he’d formed the habit of tuning out. But today his charged mind fired at
every syllable.
He could see Ruthie’s face through the gap in
the louvres. Her mouth hung slack as she adjusted the focus on the binoculars.
‘Strange Avril didn’t say…looks like she’s getting some trenching done.’ She let
out a maternal cluck. ‘That’ll save her a lot of worry.’
Herbie wasn’t so
sure.
He could see what Ruthie couldn’t. Another
vehicle had turned off the main road and was beetling down the drive. Past the
rectangular asparagus beds, neat as graves.
It was the same
vehicle he’d hailed earlier in the day. The vehicle he knew had been parked
beside the main road for the past hour.
Waiting.
In a sealed
plastic bag on the back seat was a woman’s jacket. Dark with soil. And tainted
with the putrid stench of rotting flesh.
It had the word ‘Electrolux’ machine stitched on
the pocket.
Herbie scooped a
dipper of warmed water and poured it slowly, tracing the contours of his old
dog’s spine.
‘That a police car?’ he began…
Please note that permission to publish stories from the Scarlet Stiletto Awards 2002 online has been expressly granted to Sisters in Crime Australia Inc. You may not republish, reproduce electronically or in paper form, or otherwise make use of these stories without the permission of the author.
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