The Boy in the Burning House (18 page)

Jim looked at her with dawning awareness. “You think I'm nuts,” he said.

His mother shook her head. “I don't know what to think.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. “You think I've lost it. Like I'm having delusions. Hey, maybe
I
did this,” he shouted, holding out his hands to take in the defiled kitchen.

Iris looked distressed. “Talking like that is only making things worse.”

Suddenly Jim knew what it must be like to be Ruth Rose. To always be under a cloud of suspicion, to never be accepted at face value. As soon as you knew she was under medication, that she had been institutionalized, you could never be sure. And Father had made sure
everybody
knew that.

Then he recalled something Fisher had said, about Jim being sick, about it running in the family.

“Hey, maybe I'm like Dad,” he said.

Iris sighed.

“That's what Fisher said. Last night. I have the same thing Dad has.”

“He didn't say that,” said Iris furiously.

“How would you know?” said Jim. “You weren't here.” Then he dropped his voice. “Or maybe it wasn't Fisher. Maybe my
voices
told me that.”

“Jim!” Iris pushed her hair back off her forehead. “This is no time for joking.”

“He threatened me. You think that's a joke?”

“Enough!” said Iris.

He was going to argue, but she stopped him with a steely glance. She closed her eyes. Without opening them again, she said, “I'm going to the hardware store. You think you'll be okay here alone?”

Jim thought of something smart-ass to say, but kept it to himself. “I'll be okay,” he said. “I can start cleaning up. When Hec phones I'll ask him to come up here.”

He watched her closely, wondered whether he had sounded sane enough. She nodded. Smiled. And, without another word, went upstairs to change. She left with only a hug and a promise to hurry back.

She wasn't gone more than a few minutes when Hec called.

“Jimbo?” he said, his voice wound up tight. “I just heard that your mother called, but I'm glad you're there. I was on the verge of calling you.”

“You were?”

“I'm out at the Sagittarius Motel. You know, near the 511 turn-off. There's something I want to talk to you about. Tell your mom I can be up there in fifteen minutes.”

Seventeen minutes later, Hec's behemoth old Buick splashed into the yard, looking a bit like a tank and sounding like one, too. It was slathered with mud, basted with it. Hector Protector had waded into battle at a terrible fast pace.

Jim was out in the yard in time to hold the door open as the elderly journalist climbed out of his car.

“What's up?”

Hec's eyes were shining. “Things are hopping all over.” With a hand in the small of Jim's back he started to propel him, grandfatherly fashion, towards the house, but Jim stopped in his tracks.

“You'd better tell me out here,” Jim said.

Hec looked towards the house, but he didn't push for an explanation.

“Where's Iris?”

“She'll be back in an hour or so.” Hec's bushy eyebrows came together in a frown. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Jim added hurriedly.

It was clear that Hec was full of news, but he looked at Jim a moment, the way he might look at a blank page before starting to write a story.

“I'm a newspaperman, born and bred, and I've come to believe that there isn't any such thing as a coincidence.” He paused and Jim wondered if he was
supposed to say something. But Hec was only composing his story. “When you were in the
Expositor
office a couple of weeks back, you were looking up the fire that took the life of the Tufts lad.”

“Francis.”

“Right. Now, what would you say if I told you Stanley Tufts was in the neighbourhood?”

“His brother.”

“None other,” said Hec. “I picked up a call on the police band first thing this morning about some trouble at the Sagittarius Motel, and the trouble had to do with Stanley Tufts.”

“But they moved,” said Jim. “Down south.”

Hec nodded. “The address in the motel registry was Baton Rouge, Louisiana.”

“What kind of trouble?” asked Jim.

Hec stuck his hands in his pants pockets. “Trashed his room and took off. Except he didn't take off in his own car. His rental was still sitting right out front. And he left all his stuff behind at the scene of the crime.” Hec paused for dramatic effect. “including some blood.”

Jim shook his head in wonderment. It didn't sound like the kind of thing that happened in Ladybank.

“I found myself contemplating,” said Hec, “whether you might be able to shed some light on why Stanley Tufts was around here a few weeks after you looked up that story?”

Jim stared off for a moment, his head buzzing. “I don't know,” he said. He scratched his head. “Maybe.”

Hec took off his glasses and cleaned them with the end of his tie. He put them back on his nose and squinted at Jim. Jim grabbed him by the cuff of his
sports jacket and led him towards the kitchen.

Hec stood, amazed, on the threshold. “What in God's sweet name is this all about?” he murmured.

So Jim led him outside to where the kitchen table now stood on the lawn, sat him down on a chair and, as best he could, told him what had happened. He tried to stick to the facts, but whenever he got off track, Hec was quick to steer him back on course, in a manner that embarrassed and somehow reassured Jim at the same time.

When Jim was done, Hec looked at him for a long time, as if the boy were some rare specimen of beetle and Hec was a scientist trying to figure out what genus he belonged to.

“Stanley Tufts, blackmailer?” he said at long last. He didn't roll his eyes, but Jim felt suddenly like a child playing at make-believe.

“Maybe he saw something the night of the fire,” said Jim. But Hec shook his head.

“They'd already moved down to Brockville,” he said. “I went back and read the report in the
Ex
myself. Stanley would have been…oh, ten or so. Doubt he was up this way alone.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jim, dropping his head to hide the blush of embarrassment. Then he remembered something else, something that was fact. “Fisher, last night. He looked like he'd been in a fight.”

Now Hec looked plainly distrustful. Jim quickly realized his mistake. “I mean, I don't know if it was a fight, but he had a cut on his face, right here.” He painted a line along his right cheekbone. “And the collar of his coat was kind of wet with something and there were scratches on his neck. And he didn't have his cross on, the one he always wears.”

At this Hec looked genuinely interested. He put his hands on his splayed knees, thumbs out, and leaned forward.

“A crucifix, you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did this crucifix look like?” Jim described it. Hec pondered something for a moment, looking out over the sopping lawn. “Mind if I use your phone?” he asked.

Jim followed him inside and stood at a respectful distance, but not so far that he couldn't hear what Hec was saying.

Hec was phoning the police. Chief Lorne Braithewaite had been the rookie cop who had arrested Francis for arson back in '67, Jim recalled, and it was Constable Braithewaite who had been the first at the site of the fire in '72. Another coincidence, but not a big one in such a small town.

“He's not in? Still up at the scene, eh? No, that's all right. I'll catch up with him.”

Hec hung up. He took one last sad look at the graffiti that defiled the kitchen and shook his head. Jim walked him out to the car.

“You stay around, Jimbo,” he said. “I've a feeling the chief will want to talk to you real soon.” Hec patted his hand and wheeled out of the yard.

Jim was already at work in the kitchen when his mother arrived home. He had unscrewed some shelves, taken down the curtains, removed whatever he could. He went to meet Iris in the yard to help her carry her purchases. Among other things, she had rented a floor sander.

They set to work. Jim let the job at hand claim his whole attention. His mother didn't look like she wanted
to talk. Cleaning seemed to be what she had in mind.

Together, they manhandled the fridge and the stove into the parlour. Then she put on a pair of ear-protectors and flipped on the sander. She had only been at it for five minutes when Jim cupped his hands and shouted at her to stop.

The phone was ringing. It was Hec. Ruth Rose had been arrested.

Jim listened to Hec without a word, mechanically nodding his head. He thanked him, his voice listless, barely audible.

Then, as Hec was hanging up, Jim thought of something he wanted to say.

“Did she ask after me? I mean, did she want to see me or anything?”

No, she hadn't. Jim grimaced. Then he hung up and stared at his mother for a moment before he could bring himself to explain. He spoke in a flat monotone.

“She broke into the Blessed T. some time this morning. She was painting slogans all over the walls. The same ones as here. Dickie Patterhew caught her, called the cops.” Iris shook her head sadly. Jim glared at her. “Don't say it, okay?”

She came and gave him a hug, but he jerked away. “You think Dickie could have held her if she didn't want to get arrested?” he said. His mother didn't answer.

“Where is she now?” she asked.

“They've got her over at the jail until they can figure out what to do with her.” Even before Jim had finished the statement, his eyes flashed with panic. “Cripes!” he said, and he punched in the phone number at the
Expositor
again. Dorothy put him through to Hec.

“Hec, it's me,” said Jim. “You've got to tell them not to let Father Fisher take her. Not let him
near
her.” His mother protested, but Jim turned away and cupped the phone protectively so that she couldn't take it from him. She stood nearby, her arms folded, frowning. He hardly noticed; he was too busy listening to what Hec had to say.

Finally, he hung up again.

“Jim,” his mother said, “Father is her legal guardian.”

“That's what Hec said, but it doesn't matter anyway. They can't find him. He's not at home. Dickie says he hasn't been at the church. He was supposed to speak at some luncheon in Smiths Falls and he never showed up.”

“Maybe he's doing his rounds — the hospital, the nursing homes?”

Jim raised an eyebrow. “They checked everywhere. He's gone.”

The two of them stood for a moment in a kind of combative silence. Fisher's disappearance meant only one thing to Jim. He was on the run. His eyes challenged his mother to say different.

Ultimately, she gave up the staring match, put her ear protectors back on and continued to sand the floor. Jim had been washing the walls in preparation for painting, but he abandoned the task and headed outside. He sat at the table in the garden and tried to imagine Ruth Rose in a cell down at the lock-up behind the court. He imagined her shaking the bars and screaming at the guards. You couldn't cage someone like Ruth Rose. What would they do with her? He didn't want to think about it.

Hey, Jim, you've got to admit. This is a great idea.

What if it wasn't an admission, but a declaration? Maybe she hadn't spray-painted their kitchen. Maybe she just liked the idea enough to borrow it. Was that what she had meant?

Jim walked out into the yard past the old pickup, pounding the grimy cab with his fist as he passed. The sound of the sander was lost to him as he headed across the Twelfth Line, picking his way through the puddles.

Finally he stood on the edge of the road in waist-high goldenrod and dried-up Queen Anne's lace. Late September had rusted the greenness but tinted everything lavender with wild aster.

He stared northeast up towards the ridge.

Back in the house he marched straight through the kitchen and the parlour to the little room his mother used as an office. There was a sign on the door that read, Action Central, but it was just a cubbyhole of a room, a place where Iris paid bills and kept seed catalogues.

The survey map lay open on the old roll-top desk where he had left it the other day when he had been searching for Mount Tabor. Now he followed his finger until he found the little black square that represented his own house, pushed on up from there to Purvis Poole's sand and gravel pit and from there worked his way up to the ridge. The contour rings grew closer and closer together with numbers 575, 625, 675 to the highest point of land for miles around, 725. Seven hundred and twenty-five whats? Feet, yards, metres? He didn't know. But high. And there was a little crossed pickaxe and spade that represented a mine with the word “abandoned” written beside it. There were other mine markers, all abandoned, but none so close, none so handy.

He hadn't mentioned Mount Tabor to Hec. His story was unbelievable enough without dragging Biblical references into it. But he remembered what Ruth Rose had said about the ridge that very morning.

“Now we're getting somewhere,” he muttered.

He looked up suddenly. His mother was leaning against the door jamb. He hadn't even heard the sander stop. She was frowning. Mercifully, it wasn't a my-son-is-going-crazy kind of frown. More like a there's-work-to-be-done-and-you're-goofing-off kind of a frown. He threw down the map and jumped to his feet.

“Sorry,” he said, saluting her as he passed. The last thing he needed now was to have his mother on his case.

They worked hard. Physical labour was not new to either of them but there was more at stake than a job to do. It was like getting back in the saddle when you've been thrown, parachuting again after a risky fall. As he painted, Jim thought of the bright red Coke can he had picked up in the back field only a few weeks earlier, how upset it had made him to know that anyone had been walking around on their land. Who would have thought it would come to this?