The Boy in the Burning House (11 page)

Jim went out into the rain with a sign he had made under his coat. He had wrapped the sign in a clear plastic bag. With safety pins he attached it to Gladys out at the dam. The sign read, “I know who Tabor is.”

A week passed.

At church, Jim watched Father Fisher, watched his every move, half expecting to see clues drop off him like buttons. Or lip balm dispensers. After the service Jim lined up at the door and shook the pastor's hand. He looked into his eyes and came face to face with someone looking hard into his own eyes, and they were both looking for the same person.

The rain was so bad Monday afternoon that Everett pulled the bus over at the bottom of the cut road. He turned in his seat to look back at his only passenger.

“This is what you'd call raining cats and dogs, eh, Jimbo? Mind if we wait up a bit? I can't see a thing and I hate getting them cats and dogs smeared all over the undercarriage, know what I mean?”

Jim minded, all right, but what could he do? The windshield wipers could barely keep up with the
downpour. Cats and dogs didn't begin to describe the deluge. More like beavers and bears.

On the floor of the bus lay a canary yellow notice with muddy shoe marks on it. Jim had one in his binder; all the kids were taking them home. It was about Father Fisher's Kosovo Relief Fund. They were going to adopt a town in that war-torn Serbian province, a town the size of Ladybank, a few kilometres northeast of Srbica where refugees were flooding. The title of the notice read, “From Ladybank to Ljivno.”

Jim looked up and saw Everett leaning back in his chair reading the same notice. He was wagging his head. “And we think we've got problems, eh, Jimbo?”

Jim turned back to the window. Being stuck in the rain was one thing; getting caught up in a one-way conversation with Everett was another.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright in his seat. What was he thinking? Everett had grown up in these parts. And he was Father's age, more or less.

Jim got up and walked to the front, pretending that all he wanted to do was look out the windshield to check on the road. The hill up ahead — what he could see of it — looked more like a river.

He plunked himself down in the front seat. Everett smiled at him, folded up the notice and tucked it in his pocket.

“Hear they're nicknamin' it the Father Plan,” he said.

Jim nodded. “Father Fisher sure gets himself involved, doesn't he? Was he always like that?”

Everett hooted. “Well, you could say that. But involved in what, would be the question.”

“Like he was wild, kind of?”

“He was a real caution,” said Everett. He whooped again, punched the horn to emphasize the point. Then he leaned towards Jim and whispered behind his hand, as if there was anyone to overhear. “Drinkin', carousin' — you name it. Wheelin' and dealin'. Always near the cow plop but never got his shoes soiled, if you know what I mean.”

“So what changed him?”

Everett leaned back in his seat, scratched his belly. “I guess it was after the fire. The Tufts boy dyin'. You hear about that?” Jim nodded. “Fisher, he just dropped outa sight, eh. Gone. Next thing his drinkin' buddies hear he's in Ohio somewhere at theology school. Boy, did that get a few laughs. But people laughed out the other side of their face when he come back, a reg'lar sobersides with a dog collar to boot.”

“Must have come as a shock,” said Jim.

Everett nodded. “Oh, jeez, yeah. His father was fit to be tied. Oh, boy, Wilf Fisher. Now there was a piece of work, if I ever seen one.”

“But the fire…” said Jim, sensing that he was losing Everett.

“Oh, the fire. Well, that was somethin' else. I chummed around with Stan Tufts a bit — Frankie's little brother —'til they moved down to Brockville. He and I even wrote once or twice when they headed down to Mississippi. Pen pals, like. Baton Rouge. Hot down there, so I hear.”

This was the trouble with Everett. He could keep his bus on the road, more or less, but not a conversation.

“She was following up on her Acadian roots, Laverne Tufts — except her maiden name was Roncelier, see — French. Never liked it here. So she
left that old slug-a-bed Wendall Tufts in Brockville and highed off south with little Stanley. I guess after Frankie died…”

Jim saw his chance. “Why do you think Tuff…I mean, Frankie's…death tore up Father Fisher so much?”

Everett looked momentarily confused, as if he had lost the thread and couldn't find his way back. Then he flashed a snaggle-toothed smile.

“Well, they was as thick as thieves, lad. They and…” Everett's face clouded suddenly. His mouth had gotten away on him.

“They and my dad,” said Jim.

Everett looked up the road, sniffed, pinched his nose with his fingers.

“I knew they hung out,” said Jim, not wanting the tap turned off just yet.

“He was just a kid,” Everett said at last. “Just taggin' along.”

Jim primed the pump. “Frankie's death upset him a lot, too,” he said.

Everett nodded thoughtfully, but then his memory uncovered something to smile about. “Old Wilf was pretty sore about it, that's for sure. He was wild as a rabid fox, let me tell you.”

It took Jim a moment to remember that the abandoned cabin had been full of Wilfred Fisher's hay.

“'Course Wilf was mad most near all the time, except when he was buying somebody's farm out from underneath 'em. The only thing made him truly happy was lining his purse. Most everybody hated that man.”

Jim was about to throw in the towel, but then Everett said, “Your daddy — now he hated Wilf Fisher somethin' awful.”

“Hub?”

“Well, who could blame him? Everybody in the county kept a weather eye on that horse thief. But Hub…” He shook his head.

Hate was a word that was never heard in the Hawkins house. A word Jim's father had forbidden him to use. Jim had never heard his father utter hateful words about anything, or anybody.

“Why?” asked Jim, draping himself over his backpack. “Why did he hate Wilf? I mean, if he was thick with Fisher.”

Everett glowered, staring out at the rain. “Same reason we all did,” he said. “He tried to buy your grandaddy out when he was down. Old man Hawkins was just scraping by — this would be the late sixties. Your grandfather had made some bad loans, interest rates went sky high, and Wilf was just hanging around like a vulture waiting to gobble up the place.” He snapped his fingers. Then he laughed. “Why, one time Hub come across Wilf on his tractor and Hub, he pelted that old crow with crabapples 'til the old man near crashed the thing.” Everett let out a great guffaw of laughter.

“My dad?” said Jim incredulously.

“The same. I seen it. Me and Stanley. Oh, it was somethin' to behold.” He laughed some more, his gut jiggling at the memory.

“Another time he stove in the windscreen on the old man's pick-up.”

Jim sat back, limp with disbelief, shaking his head. From the corner of his eye, Everett noticed and looked sheepish.

“Oh, you mustn't think I'm sayin' anything bad about your pop, Jimbo. Why, I remember my own
daddy sayin' that Hub Hawkins deserved a medal for showing some backbone, havin' some spunk. And he was just a lad, mind you. A bit hot-headed, a bit of what you'd call a firebrand, eh. Nothin' wrong with that in a young fella. No, sir.”

Jim could see that Everett was afraid he might have offended him. “Phew!” he said, grinning. “My dad, the dragon slayer.”

“You got 'er, Jimbo. And as fine a man as I ever met,” said Everett. Then he decided it was time to move on, mudslide or no mudslide. With his tongue in his cheek, and his bushy eyebrows jutting out like twin visors, he let out the brake and steered the school bus out into the flood.

The engine was revving high, the wheels spun, the bus shimmied from side to side. Jim clutched the guard rail as they made their way through one turn and climbed into the next.

His father a hot-head, a firebrand. This wasn't what he had been looking for.

They pulled up finally to the stop sign at the Twelfth Line. Jim was pressing his face to the window, looking out the other side of the bus, not at his own land but at the fields that sloped down towards the old Tufts place, now nothing more than a grassy hummock. He could almost make it out through the fence-line trees, the wild grasses and the slanting rain. Or maybe he was just imagining it.

A log cabin converted to storage, filled with hay, consumed by flames. And a boy inside — a self-confessed fire-starter — stupid with drink, but maybe just sober enough to be hammering on the door, trying to get out.

Suddenly, the stench of the bus got to Jim: the airborne
residue of lunch-pail fumes, stale farts and damp clothing. He felt like he was burning up, and there was a boy inside him hammering to get out into the air.

They turned west onto the flat and stopped at the end of his laneway.

“Thanks,” said Jim,

“Don't you ever doubt your daddy was a good man,” said Everett.

Jim didn't look at Everett. “I never did,” he said.

“Give my best to your mother,” said Everett. Then the doors opened and Jim stepped out into the rain.

Jim saw the light in the driveshed and headed directly there, shoulders hunched, head bowed under the downpour. He opened the shed door, only to find the place empty.

“Mom?” he called.

There was no answer, just the rain on the roof and the scurrying of mice in the walls. Paint fumes filled the air. The Malibu showed signs of Iris's touch-up work, red primer like blemishes on a yellow fruit. His father's prized possession; in fact, his father's only possession that wasn't entirely utilitarian. Jim had always hoped to drive it one day when he had his licence. But they couldn't afford to keep it.

And they couldn't afford to leave lights on, either, thought Jim. It wasn't like his mother to do that. He flipped off the switch. Slamming the shed door behind him, he stepped out into the yard. It was only then that he noticed the truck was gone.

A note on the kitchen table explained that Iris had gone to the feed store for a supplement the vet had recommended for the cows. A stew bubbled in the crockpot and fresh bread cooled on the counter. The fire in the woodstove was down. Jim was cold and wet. He sat down in the rocker, stroking Snoot, feeling sorry for himself.

Ruth Rose had thrown his life into a turmoil and then she had disappeared and left a vacuum behind her.

It was as if until she had come along he had been floating. He had gotten over the worst of his grief, gotten over the terror, the urges to kill himself and after that — floated. A balloon cut loose. Going to school, coming home from school — a pendulum swinging back and forth, wound up by food and sleep but with no momentum to change the course of his life.

Now his head was filled to bursting with conflicting thoughts, his heart with conflicting emotions.

Snoot played with the strings of his sweatshirt. He leaned his face towards her warm grey face and got swiped across the nose.

“Ow!” he said and threw her off his lap. She immediately curled up on the rug in front of the fire and started washing herself as if nothing had happened.

She had drawn blood. Jim licked his finger and touched his wounded nose. Then he got up with a sigh and went to get more firewood from the porch.

He loaded up until his muscles strained and he couldn't see where he was going. He had left the door ajar so that he wouldn't have to open it again with his hands full. The door slammed against the wall, driven by the wind.

Back in the kitchen, he dropped the logs into the wood box, opened the stove, fully opened the vent and made a tepee of kindling. He squatted, blowing on the embers until they glowed and the kindling caught. Then he watched as the flames wrapped their greedy hands around the dry offering.

He loved to watch fire. Didn't everybody? Or was he a pyromaniac, too?

A chair moved behind him. He turned casually,
expecting to see the kitten en route to the table.

Instead he saw Ruth Rose sitting, looking at him. She was waving a kitchen knife in front of her.

“Just listen to me,” she said. “Don't do anything until you've heard me out.”

“Nice to see you, too,” he said.

He turned back to his task as if it was no big deal to have some soaking sneak sitting in your kitchen waving a weapon at you. From the wood box he found a couple of birch logs to throw into the good old Ashley heater. Suddenly everything became a lot warmer.

“You sure are quick,” he said as he closed the stove door. “And quiet.”

Compliments were the best weapons you could use on Ruth Rose. They threw her. She didn't seem quite sure what to do or say and that gave Jim the time he needed to look her over. Her hair was bedraggled, her jacket waterlogged, her jeans mud-splattered and her sneakers — her sneakers looked like they were made of clay.

“You look great,” said Jim. “Where've you been?”

She snickered and put the knife down on the table. “I've been okay,” she said in a breezy way. “I've got lots of places to stay.”

“Ruth Rose Way?”

She looked unexpectedly pleased, as if she wasn't used to people listening to her, let alone remembering what she said.

“Yeah. There's a million places to hide.”

Jim was looking at her closely. “Like our hay mow, for instance?”

She looked wary. “Did you know I was there?”

He clicked his tongue like a scolding teacher. “You
need help with detective work and then you act surprised when I do some detecting.” He stepped closer and pulled some stringy hay from her hair. He held it up for her to see. “Bet it wasn't very warm.” She didn't answer.

“I slept out there once,” he said. “I thought it would be cool. It was cool, all right. It was only August and I nearly froze.”