Dirty Chick (7 page)

“He's like the Grim Reaper.” Autumn had come up behind us. “Anything you need killed, he'll do it. That man's like a cockroach. He'll be here long after the rest of us are gone.”

“Autumn!” Abi chided. “That's a rude thing to say.”

Autumn reached for a glass of cider. “It's a compliment, really. He can kill and butcher. He can fish; he hunts pigs. When the zombie apocalypse happens, I'm sticking with Skin.”

Maris ran by, chasing Nova, and I noticed she had a blood-soaked gash dripping down the side of one arm. Her neck also appeared to be slit. “Nice work, Maris!” I called, pointing at the gore. She grinned back and waved, taking off in the direction of the trampoline.

“Why are the alpacas tied up?” Amanda asked, peering toward the back of the paddock. “I thought maybe the children could go out and visit them.”

“
No!
” Peter yelled, then coughed when everyone looked concerned. “I mean, we thought it might not be safe.”

“It's just . . .” I stammered. “I think they want to eat people's brains.”

Amanda looked as though she had something to say about this revelation, but she stopped short, as Sophia had just arrived with her boyfriend, Bill, in a silver Mercedes. She stepped out of the passenger seat dressed entirely in snowy white linen. Bill, an older businessman from Auckland, parked the car and took her arm. The silver cufflinks on his crisp white dress shirt glinted in the sun.

“Thank you, you sweet thing,” Sophia said as she took a glass of peach wine from Peter. “I'm simply gasping.”

“You're not serious about the alpacas,” Amanda said, nudging me. “Look at them! They're such gentle animals!”

I shrugged. “We can go out there, if you want. But I wouldn't take the kids if I were you. Alpacas are highly unpredictable.”

“I had the most ghastly week,” Sophia volunteered, wilting onto a deck chair.

Abi plopped down beside her. “Oh, no! What happened?”

“Duncan,” Sophia said ruefully, then took a sip of her wine.

Amanda's voice turned serious. “But Michiko's on holiday. Was he up at the school?”

“He made an appearance. I had to do a lockdown procedure with the children. I shut them in the classroom and made them hide under their desks whilst I got him off the property.”

“Wait,” I interjected, alarmed. “What? At Purua School?”

“It's Michiko's husband,” Autumn explained. “His name's Duncan. He's—what is he, Sophia? Manic-depressive?”

“The guy's nuts,” Bill interrupted. “He's nuts, and I keep telling her she should call the cops.”

“He's . . . rather unstable,” Sophia smoothed. “And he's fine when he's on his medication, but when he goes off, he's very unpredictable, and he makes these awful threats against Michiko. Then he comes to the school and rants at the children.”

This gave me pause. I hadn't anticipated mental illness or lockdown procedures in the Shire. “He's not dangerous, is he?”

Sophia shook her head. “He'd never strike the children. He just can't modulate his behavior. He uses inappropriate language—”

“Told one student to fuck off, as I recall,” Amanda interjected.

“—or he yells, just acts erratic. And the children are entirely my responsibility when I'm out there. I can't be too careful.”

“So call the cops,” Bill repeated irritably. “That's what they're there for.”

“But Michiko seems like such a gentle lady,” I protested. “I can't believe she's got a violent husband.”

“Every community has its secrets,” Sophia said dryly. “Come to Purua. Runny scrummy honey. Best drunken parties. Only slightly insane.”

“We're all a bit nutty to be out here,” Abi agreed. “You'd have to be, really. It's not like any of us knows what we're doing, with the animals and this country life. I can't even cope with my chickens.”

Bill tipped his glass at Sophia. “That's what I tell the woman.
Why live in the sticks when you can come to the bright lights of Auckland?”

Autumn still looked worried. “So, was it all right?” she asked. “You got Duncan off the school grounds?”

“Of course.” Sophia waved her glass dismissively. “He wasn't making any sense. He just needed a firm hand, that's all.”

“Sheep's done,” Peter announced, coming over from the spit. “Skin's carving it up now.”

A single sheep produces a formidable pile of meat, enough to feed the whole community. Skin carved up the roast with his buck knife, and the way he glided it through the flesh, it was clear that blade was as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. There were slices of haunch, big chunks of backbone dripping with fat, and drumsticks so huge they looked Jurassic. The children came running when they saw the meat, the older ones helping themselves to plates, the younger ones hanging on their parents, demanding to be served. Kowhai and Phoenix stood around hopefully, wagging their tails and looking mournful. Skin tossed them a handful of scraps, and they fell on the meat in rapture.

“Mama, look what Maris did!” Miranda yelled, holding up her doll for inspection. “Isn't that cool?” That Baby appeared to have been the victim of a slasher attack. Her plastic throat was slit and her belly eviscerated. The doll was soaked in ketchup, a spoonful of canned spaghetti standing in for her entrails.

“That's very nice, Miranda.” I smiled, feeling ill. “Would you like something to eat?”

The sheep, it turned out, was delectable. The meat was meltingly tender, each bite suffused with fat like a fine marbled steak. “Yep, that lamb you get in the shop's no good,” Skin explained. “Kill it too early, before it's had a chance to develop the flavor. This one's done proper, all the grease and the fat still in.”

“Done at both ends.” Maria raised her glass. “To perfection!”

“Thank you, Skin,” I told him, this time with a smile. “The meat is incredible. It's some of the best I've ever had. Do—I mean, do you think you might teach me how to cook a sheep sometime? I'd like to try it.”

He looked pleased. “Yep, we could do that.”

But Lish just shook her head. “He'll never tell. Moans all day about the work it takes, but he loves it. Wouldn't give it up for the world.”

Skin laughed and shoved her arm with affection.

After our meal, we sat under the stars sipping the ninth or tenth bottle of peach wine. Or maybe it was cider. Or maybe it was both. By that time, I didn't much care.

STRIPPER CALVES WITH SATAN TONGUES

F
ollowing their lurid performance at the party, I decided that Nova and Maris needed a better palette to draw from. I poked around on the Internet and found a theatrical makeup supplier in Hamilton.

Later that week, I ran into Autumn at the school. “I have sort of a strange question for you,” I began.

Autumn waited.

“Would you mind if I gave your children blood?”

She did a double take. “Pardon?”

Thankfully, it wasn't too awkward to explain, and in the next few days, I put together a little care package for the girls: a dozen blood capsules, a package of wound wax for creating realistic effects, and half a liter of stage blood, in a purplish, arterial hue. I dropped the package on their doorstep, feeling good about playing Secret Santa, and promptly forgot about it.

And that's when things got really dark. One night in March,
Abi woke to a strange sound in her house. “It was like a bowl of Rice Bubbles,” she told me. “You know, the cereal? With Snap, Crackle, and Pop? Just a real soft popping noise.”

She padded out into the lounge to see where the sound was coming from. It should have been pitch-black at two in the morning, but the room was lit up with a pale yellow glow. When she drew back the curtains, she saw Michiko's house, just across the road—or rather, what was left of it. The house was consumed in flames.

No one was home when it happened. Michiko and her kids were on their way back from a holiday abroad. When Michiko got the news the next day, she moved away to stay with friends. Her home, clothing, furniture—everything she owned was in ashes. All she had was her kids and their bags, still packed from their fun-filled holiday.

For the next few days, everyone talked about the fire. We all wondered how it had happened. Was it an electrical fault? Or maybe a broken hot water cylinder? But it didn't take long for people to start whispering about the husband.

I told Peter the news about the fire. “And that's not the worst thing,” I told him. “People think it might be arson.”

Miranda looked confused.
“Our
son set the house on fire?”

“Do they know who did it?” Peter asked.

“No, there's no evidence yet. But her husband was always making threats.”

“Did Silas burn the house?” Miranda was still trying to puzzle out the mystery.

“No, Magnolia,” I corrected. “
Arson.
It means somebody burned the house down on purpose.”

“Oh, okay.” Miranda thought about it. “Arson. That's good.”

“Is Michiko okay?” Peter asked. “Can we bring her anything?”

“No.” I shook my head. “She's in hiding, staying with friends or something. She's going to change her name. We're probably not gonna see her again.”

That put a pall on the day. I started washing the breakfast dishes while Peter took the kids out to ride bikes, but I couldn't stop thinking about the fire. The green hills outside our kitchen window were lit up with sunshine, and I could hear my kids shrieking happily outside with their father, but it all seemed so fragile now. Was this where we wanted to live? A place where houses burned under suspicious circumstances? Where people were scared of their neighbors? And where was this husband now? Would he come after the rest of us?

When I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I berthed my sailboat in Richmond because it was the only place where I could afford a slip. Even in the boom years, Richmond was poor and shabby, plagued by drugs and gang violence. Peter and I used to lie awake at night listening to gunshots in the streets. I taught for a while at the local high school, and I remember being shocked to see the heavy gray metal detectors guarding the front entrance, the walls scarred with decades of graffiti. Once we moved to New Zealand, I thought we'd left all that behind. There weren't any wars here. New Zealand wouldn't even let nuclear subs in its territorial waters. Purua's charming one-room schoolhouse, the cute kids who made their own honey—where did arson and mental illness fit into that mix?

I wasn't worried just about the four of us. Peter's niece Rebecca was coming to live with us soon, a shy, introverted twenty-year-old who was studying fiber arts in college. Though she'd been raised in suburban New York, Rebecca was a placid vegetarian who liked petting cows and spinning wool. A perfect evening for Becca might
consist of a mug of hot chamomile tea and a nice sock-knitting project.

I dried my hands on a tea towel and called Amanda. She answered the phone on the first ring.

“Look, Amanda. I heard about the fire, and . . . I'd like to help.” It seemed weird to say, since we'd been in this community only a couple of months. “I know I just met Michiko that one time, but—”

She answered before I'd even finished. “Absolutely. Karl rang me earlier today. He's doing a collection over at the school—anything you can spare. Clothes, food, furniture, gift cards. She lost all her family photographs, too, so I'm making an album with pictures of her and her kids.”

“But I thought she went into hiding. How does he know where she is?”

“He doesn't. No one does. But we can leave stuff with her friends in town. We have to help her; she's got nothing. Oh, and by the way, did you still want that goat? Because you can come and get Pearl whenever.”

“Yeah, yes. Definitely.”

She paused. I had the impression Amanda was jotting something down. “What do you want to do with her, anyway?”

“Knock her up. I mean, not personally, but, you know. Find a ram.”

“A buck.”

“You want money? I can pay you.”

“No.” Amanda laughed. “You'll need to get a
buck
on her. A ram is a sheep. You won't get far with that one.”

Clearly, I had a lot to learn. I said my good-byes and hung up the phone before I could disgrace myself further.

The next day was Saturday, and I drove to the school with a gift certificate from our local big-box store, thinking that Michiko might
want the basics: new toothbrushes, clean shirts, fresh pajamas. On the way back, I planned to stop at Amanda's. My backseat was folded down, the rear of the station wagon lined with old feed bags. I was picking up our new goat.

And that's how Pearl trotted into our lives. Her luggage consisted of a chain and two steel posts that screwed into the ground. “You have to use two,” Amanda explained. “If you stake her with one, she'll pull it right out.”

“I just thought I'd let her roam free,” I suggested, with the optimism of someone who's never had a goat. “She can browse her way through the paddocks.”

“That's really stupid.” Amanda's eyebrows sparred like two angry caterpillars. “She'll eat your garden and then she'll eat your trees. She'll eat everything she finds, if you let her. She might even take a bite off your kids.”

A flock of chickens shuffled past, pecking and scratching at the grass. A tall white rooster with a black ruff of feathers at his throat strode among them. He threw his head back and let loose a vigorous crow.

“You have a rooster,” I observed pointlessly.

“Yep, that's Goldie.” Amanda crossed her arms in front of her chest and nodded in his direction. “We'll have to find a home for him soon.”

“You don't want him? I'll take him.” Idyllic farm visions flashed through my head. Dozens of tiny chicks, adorable little puffballs that tumbled on my children and tickled their tummies. The sound of a rooster's crow in the morning, just like we heard in our years of sailing, when we'd anchor near small villages in Mexico and Central America.

Amanda said something, but I'd missed it. “What?”

“I said, ‘You can have him.' No problem. You can take him today, if you want.”

“No, that's all right. I have a lot on my plate with the goat. Besides, I don't have anything to carry him in.”

But Amanda was already hustling toward the garage. “No worries. I've got an old cat carrier you can use. Hang on one sec while I dig it out.”

I should probably have asked why Amanda was so eager to give away her rooster, why she stuffed it in a crate and tossed it in the back of my car, then waved good-bye with such a cheerful smile on her face. But I didn't. Instead, I just drove home, too excited about our new goat to think about much else.

We staked Pearl with the two steel posts right outside our window, and she seemed relaxed in the comforting shade of the palm tree. In the mornings we'd drink our coffee, watching her as she got to know our other animals. Kowhai liked to play with Pearl, and by play, I mean “chew on her leg.” When she spied the dog, Pearl's ears went on high alert. If Kowhai got closer, she'd rear up, her ears standing straight up like devil's horns.

Toward the middle of May, Rebecca arrived in New Zealand. Her plan was to spend eight months with us, taking the fall term off, and to return to college in January. Peter drove to town one Saturday to pick her up, and when he came back with her, she was just as I remembered: a hippie pastiche of ankle bracelets, bare feet, and organic hemp chic.

Tall and slender, with long dark hair and a smattering of freckles across her face, Rebecca is seriously into the natural look. No makeup, no hair products. Embroidered jeans. Moccasins. Clothing purchased by the pound from a thrift store. And she'd flown to New Zealand with her own wooden spinning wheel.

“Is this, uh, everything?” I asked, helping to lift her medieval contraption from the trunk.

Rebecca giggled. “Oh no, I have a suitcase,” she said, pulling out a small bag on wheels. “I don't need very much stuff.”

“Becca!” Miranda called, shooting out of the house. “You did fly from
America
?”
Though she'd met Rebecca before, when she was a baby, Miranda couldn't have remembered her. Nonetheless, she was ecstatic to have a brand-new playmate.

Rebecca knelt down to talk to her. “That's right,” she told her solemnly. “And I took
five airplanes
to get here.”

Miranda's eyes grew wide. “Five airplanes?” she repeated. “That's amazing!” I'm not sure Miranda even knew what an airplane was. Nonetheless, at three, she was ready to be impressed.

Silas appeared on the deck, his Dart pressed to his ear. He smiled shyly at Rebecca. When she caught sight of him, she scooped him up and hugged him, and over her shoulder I could see a wide, happy grin on his face.
He probably does remember her
, I reflected. He was three years old the last time she visited.

For the rest of the afternoon, the children were glued to Rebecca. She went out to meet the alpacas and visit the goat, and they followed her to the paddocks. She sat down to eat the spanakopita and salad I'd prepared for lunch, and the children warred over who would sit on her lap. She flopped on the couch to tell us her family's news, and the children sat on either side of her, pressed against her skin. She looked like some mythological hippie monster staggering around with embroidered jeans, six arms, and three heads.

And she didn't have just a spinning wheel with her. She'd also brought her iPod. “Have you heard the ‘Harlem Shake'?” she asked Miranda, plugging her gadget into our speakers. A pulsing dance beat filled the room, and Silas started hopping up and down while
Miranda merely stared in open-mouthed amazement. Then Rebecca plugged into our wireless Internet connection and pulled up all the viral videos we'd missed while raising kids in New Zealand: a killer snowman, the ghost of a dead girl in an elevator, and all the newest hip-hop videos. By the end of the night, Miranda was wearing a hot pink bathing suit and rotating her rear end like a gifted stripper.

“Booty wurk, booty wurk,” she sang along with the video. “Left cheek, right cheek! Left cheek, right cheek!”

I cast a worried glance at Peter.

“It's cultural!” he protested. “T-Pain's teaching her left from right!”

Toward eight o'clock, Rebecca yawned and stretched, pulling her faded hoodie on over her T-shirt. “I gotta go,” she sighed. “I'm wrecked.”

Miranda was alarmed. “Are you going back to America?” she demanded. “Will you take five airplanes?”

“No, honey.” Rebecca ruffled her hair. “I'm just going to the sleep-out. That's where I'll sleep while I'm here.”

“
Away
,” Silas volunteered.

“That's right.” Rebecca gave him a squeeze. “I'll be back in the morning.”

The sleep-out was a shed we'd fixed up behind the house so Rebecca could have some privacy while she stayed with us. But our efforts were hopelessly optimistic. The next day was Sunday, and Miranda woke up before dawn and padded through the wet grass in bare feet to wake up Rebecca in her not-so-private room.

Peter and I lay in bed, grateful for the chance to sleep in. From our window, we could see Pearl rising up on her hind legs, nibbling the palm fronds from the bottom of the tree. “I think I love our goat,” Peter observed. “I mean, I really have a
relationship
with her.”
And it was true. Each day, when he got home from work, he'd bend down and press his head into Pearl's. She'd press back with surprising strength. Peter didn't always win.

But our affection for Pearl was tempered with a note of anxiety. After the chicken leprosy fiasco and the unfortunate incident with the leg mites, I was determined to do some research on our first real farm animal. I checked out every goat book from the local library, and what I learned was somewhat disturbing.

Take mating, for example. The male goat, or “buck,” as he is called, is a known sex maniac. He can be “in rut,” as the period of sexual arousal is known,
for months on end.
During this time, he will groom himself for romance by repeatedly urinating in his beard until he is surrounded by a miasma of pee-soaked goaty funk. Then, just to be thorough, he pees in his own mouth and blows himself.