Her next worry concerned her privacy. A sense of violated propriety—her house, her yard, her porch, her her—found expression in contemptuous anger mingled with mild curiosity and surprising embarrassment at being discovered naked. Without looking away from him, she rose to her full height, slowly untangled herself from the sequined strap, set the guitar on the glider, turned around, walked in hieratic, ceremonial steps inside the house, and closed the door.
A minute later, she emerged in denim cutoffs, yellow top, and yellow running shoes.
Both pretended the earlier moment had not occurred. Something completely unrelated to it caused them to be unable to make eye contact.
“July Montgomery said I should come over and check your lawn mower. I’m Jacob Helm.”
“Hello,” she said, without offering her name.
“I called earlier, there was no answer . . . I knocked on the front door, but, I’m sorry . . .”
“July should have said something to me. I hate him. Nobody minds their own business anymore.”
“No, I don’t suppose.”
She stepped off the porch and into the back yard. Jacob looked away from her mouth to the ground, but soon had his attention drawn to a yellow shoelace, untied, falling loosely over her instep and quickly gathering significance—a drama threatening to invoke the scene of her ankle—and he looked up again.
“Did you look at it?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“It has gasoline but it won’t start.”
“What?”
“The lawn mower.”
“I mean yes, I did look at it. A switch needs replacing. You can use it, though, while I order a new one, but you have to remember not to start it with the blades engaged. It’s hard on the motor and solenoid.”
“You’re the owner of the repair shop,” said Gail, as though making a general announcement.
“Yes, and I’ll be leaving now. Remember not to start the engine with the blades engaged.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. I was on my way home anyway . . . and that was a Barbara Jean song you were playing. I recognized it: ‘Cradle of Your Smile.’ ”
Gail tried to keep her face still, but a pleased-with-herself smile that she couldn’t swallow crept into her mouth.
“Really?”
“Really. It’s unmistakable.”
HOT MILK
THE MORNING FOLLOWING CORA’S CALL TO THE DEPARTMENT of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, early, her husband, Grahm, walked to the barn. The air seemed unusually fresh, and the sky drew the dew away from the ground in long curls of smoking water—hundreds of tiny, silent geysers erupting.
Unlike on other mornings, the dog did not greet him. Once Grahm was inside the barn, he discovered the north door, which he routinely closed each night after milking—a door that could only be fastened from inside because of a broken latch spring—wide open. But this seemed of no consequence.
The dog appeared in the afternoon, with dried blood in her fur and a lump above her left ear, but Grahm thought no more about it until the following day when the driver of the milk truck handed him a bill for $5,314—the cost of a tanker-load of milk.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Sorry, Grahm,” said Hubert Shorn. “Your antibiotics contaminated the whole load.”
“Can’t be,” said Grahm.
“Sorry. There it is—black and white. I don’t do the testing, just haul milk and bring in samples.”
“There’s some mistake.”
“Talk to the lab about that, or management. The whole lot was hot. Had to be dumped. Your sample, when tested, turned as green as food coloring.”
“It says penicillin.”
“That’s what they mostly test for.”
“We haven’t used penicillin since summer before last. We applied for organic certification and they won’t allow it. Don’t use antibiotics.”
“Like I said, I just haul milk.”
“Five thousand dollars!”
“Talk to management. Hell, I’m on your side.”
Grahm drove to the branch office in Grange, met with the plant manager, and talked to the head of the testing lab. He insisted they run a second test on a sample he had brought with him. The test showed no antibiotic residue and Grahm asked how his milk could be contaminated one day and clean the next.
The technician rearranged utensils on the counter. “Milk from treated cows was not put in the bulk tank today,” he said.
“But the amount of milk was the same. If I’d withheld milk it would show up in volume. If I’d added water, the butterfat would be off.”
“Perhaps treatments were discontinued, or milk was brought in from another farm. Ninety-five percent of hot milk clears up the second day.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Of course not,” said the branch manager, stepping between the technician and Grahm. “Mistakes are always possible. If you want to contest the assessment you can file a complaint with DATCP. They set the standards and make the rules.”
By the time Grahm returned home, his thoughts were swimming in mud. He needed help. He needed Cora.
But when Cora came home, Grahm could tell from clear across the barnyard that something was wrong.
“What’s the matter?” he asked when he reached her.
“The second set of files in the Madison office—the filing cabinets—are gone. They just disappeared. I asked about them and everyone ignored me. That woman, Harriet, who has worked there for twenty years said she couldn’t remember any file cabinets.”
An hour later a solid blue Chevrolet pulled into the drive. A deputy sheriff walked disdainfully around the tractor ruts and through the yard. Cora met him on the porch and he placed a legal summons in her hand. It ordered her to appear before an administrative judge at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Monday morning, Grahm and Cora dressed in their best clothes and drove into Madison, the cardboard box of photocopied documents in the back of the station wagon.
Inside the slate gray building they were directed to the fourth floor. They waited in an empty waiting room for almost an hour, sitting in sculptured plastic chairs.
“Cora Shotwell,” said a woman with short reddish-orange hair, carrying a yellow notepad. “Come with me, please.”
Grahm rose to follow but was told to remain. Cora walked behind the woman down a long hallway and into a room with men seated at tables. She was told to sit down, and she did.
The five men seated at the tables appeared to be reading from papers in ringed binders. Because of the position of her chair she could not face them all at once. They continued reading and paging through the thick volumes without speaking.
“We understand you have a grievance with your milk plant,” said one of the two men seated at the furthest table from her.
“It’s not a grievance,” said Cora, turning her chair to address her comments in his direction. She thought he might be a judge, but wasn’t sure. “I have proof American Milk has been robbing