Archie Goes Home

Chapter 13

So it was that the next morning, my mother and I ventured forth on a mission with mixed goals: Christian fellowship and an ongoing death investigation. I drove south on the Portsmouth Road until my mother said, “It’s coming up on the left, Archie. There’s the grove of oak trees I mentioned.”

The farm buildings looked prosperous. The white house with green shutters and a bay window was set well back from the road, nestled in those trees, and two big red barns were flanked by smaller outbuildings.

I drove in on a blacktop drive neatly edged with bricks and pulled up close to the front entrance. We got out, my mother carrying the fruit basket, and before we could get to the bell, the door swung open.

A gray-haired woman of middle age looked over rimless glasses at us, her face a question mark.

“Hello, Mrs. Mapes, I am Marjorie Goodwin, from the Presbyterian church in town. You may not remember me.”

“Oh yes,” the woman said, slowly breaking into a dimpled smile. “Of course I remember; you were the very first person to greet us when we were at the church that first time, and you made us feel so welcome. Please do come in.”

“This is my son, Archie,” Mom said. “He just happened to be in town visiting me, and I asked him to come along.”

“I am happy to see you both,” our hostess said, gesturing us through an entrance hall and into a sun-filled living room with two large windows on its south wall and that bay window on the west. “Please sit down. Would you care for some coffee?”

We both said we would, and Mrs. Mapes left for the kitchen. She must have opened a back door, because I could hear her calling to the outside, “Harold, come on in, we have some guests.”

Before she returned with the coffee, a tall, lean man with white hair falling over one eye stepped in and looked at us with his own questioning expression. My mother explained who we were, and he nodded.

“Yeah, I do remember meeting you at the church. That was a while back,” he said, easing into a chair. “I believe Emily is bringing coffee. And I’m here to tell you that she makes good coffee,” he added, tugging at the collar of his blue work shirt.

“We hope you both have been well, and we’ve brought some fruit, although I wouldn’t be surprised if you may grow some of your own, at least apples,” my mother said, handing him the basket.

He took it gingerly just as Emily Mapes returned carrying a tray with four coffee cups. “There’s always a pot brewing here,” she said as she served each of us. “Harold can’t live without it, or so he tells me.”

“We’re happy to find you both at home and hope you are doing well,” my mother said.

“We are, Mrs. Goodwin, thank you,” Emily replied. “I am afraid I’m embarrassed to say that we haven’t been to church for some time now. Life on a farm can be very busy, and...”

“No need whatever to be embarrassed or to explain,” Mom said, waving away the spoken concern with a hand. “It’s just that we at the church have missed you and wanted you to have this little expression of our affection. Whenever you are able to come back, you would be most welcome.”

“Things here can get a little hectic sometimes,” Mapes said, directing his comment at me. “I don’t believe you’re from these parts, are you?”

“No, I live in New York and am visiting my mother for a few days. It’s nice to get away from the city sometimes.”

“By golly, it’s been at least a dozen years since I’ve been to New York, and that was only for a couple of days when I got mustered out of the Marines. I saw service in the Pacific during the war and got wounded at Okinawa, although not badly. It was pure hell on that island, though. Were you in the service?”

“Army,” I said. “I spent most of my time in Washington.”

“I would’ve gladly traded places with you,” Mapes said with a wry grin, “but I know that everybody had a part to play. Did you have to work in that big Pentagon building they built during the war?”

“Only briefly, I’m happy to report. Say, I’m not a farmer, but I must tell you that I’m impressed with what I’ve seen of your spread.”

Mapes nodded curtly. “I’m happy to show you around, if you care to.”

“I’d like that, if the ladies will excuse us,” I said.

“You two go ahead,” Emily Mapes said. “It’s such a nice day to be outside. We will just stay in here and chat.”

I followed Mapes out through the kitchen to the back door. “None of my crew are here today,” he said as we stepped outside. “I milked the cows alone this morning, and I’ll do it again tonight, but that’s okay; it’s not all that hard now with milking machines. But they’ll be back tomorrow.”

“How many do you have working here?”

“Two, and the three of us are enough to handle everything except at harvest time, when I bring in some others,” he said as we walked out to one of the barns. “Just so that you know, I don’t own this farm, I wish I did. I work it as a tenant for a very rich man who lives out of town.”

“Maybe you can buy it from him sometime,” I suggested.

“Hah! That is not very damned likely,” he said. “Maybe you don’t know this, but I had a spread of my own at one time, and I lost it because of... well, I lost it.”

“Because of what? Or if you’d prefer not to say, I would understand.”

“No, I don’t care,” Mapes said, brushing back the errant shock of hair from his forehead. “Everybody around here knows about it anyway. I couldn’t keep up the payments on my own farm and... well, it got foreclosed on.”

“That had to be a bitter pill,” I said as we walked into a barn and Mapes leaned on a green-and-yellow tractor, rubbing a hand along the gleaming chassis as if caressing it.

“Bitter, yeah. I heard somebody say once that lawyers are the meanest people in the world. Well, Mr. Goodwin, they’re wrong; it’s bankers, those sons of bitches. Or at least one banker, who... oh, never mind. My wife says that I’ve become too damned sour.”

“It sounds to me like you have good reason.”

“Maybe, but I’ve got to learn to quit griping. Besides, one thing turned out okay.”

“What’s that?”

“The bastard who foreclosed on me, well... he’ll never foreclose on anybody else again,” Mapes said.

“How so?”

“He’s dead, that’s how so.”

“Oh, wait. Are you talking about that Logan Mulgrew? I heard that he shot himself.”

“He’s dead, that counts for something, anyway.”

“Do you think it was a suicide?”

“That I couldn’t say,” Mapes replied, his expression grim. “Let me show you the milking shed.” This was a low building a short distance from the barn we had been in. There wasn’t much to look at, as the cows were not in it, but were, as I was to learn, out in a pasture grazing.

“We milk sixty Holsteins in here, twice every day. Using the machines, it goes a lot faster than back in the old days, when it was all done by hand.”

“I don’t know a lot about cows, but my father was a farmer. I do remember that the Holsteins are the black-and-white ones, right?”

“Yep, and they give the most milk of any breed. Well, I suppose we should get back to the ladies.”

“Thanks for the little tour. This is quite an operation.”

Mapes did not respond. Since Mulgrew came up in the discussion the farmer had become sullen, and I was not about to bring up the man again.