FURNACE

by Muriel Gray

  “If this is what I saw, how could I have known the suit was pink? This picture is black and white.”

  John Pace looked across at his deputy and then back at Josh, who was breathing more quickly now. The deputy’s mouth remained slightly open, as though he wished to continue his reading aloud. Pace spoke slowly.

  “Well, now, that’s a fair point. A fair point.”

  He turned to the deputy, his voice casual and light.

  “Archie. Any of these posters around town in colour?”

  The man with his mouth still open closed it, and scanned Pace’s face carefully before speaking.

  “Eh, I can’t rightly say.”

  Pace rubbed his chin. “I guess the only explanation is that there must be.”

  Josh’s heart raced. “But it’s something you can find out.”

  “For sure.”

  “And if there aren’t any in colour, then where does that leave our theory about how I’d seen her before?”

  There was a pause. A long pause, and then Sheriff John Pace clasped his hands together in front of him and looked Josh straight in the eye.

  “Up shit creek, Josh.”

  Josh sat back in the chair and almost smiled. But there was very little to smile about.

  “Then I stick by my statement. Until you find out about the poster.”

  Pace paused again for an awkward length of time, then unclasped his hands and wagged a finger like he was scolding an invisible dog.

  “Okay. We’re gonna get right on that. But after you’ve paid your fine for that dumb stunt with your logbook, there ain’t no reason to keep you here anymore. You feel up to drivin’?”

  Josh nodded, unsure how the atmosphere in the room had changed, but certain it had.

  “Sure. I kinda feel better already knowing I might not be crazy.”

  This time, Pace snorted. “Yeah? You saw Nelly. Even if a decent woman like that could have slipped in and out of town in broad daylight to do the deed unseen by anyone but you, what motive would she have for doin’ somethin’ as wicked as happened?”

  “How should I know? Jesus freaks are always missin’ a few floorboards upstairs.”

  As soon as he’d said it, Josh knew he shouldn’t have. Archie made a blowing motion with his mouth and Pace’s voice dropped an octave and darkened to the same degree as his face.

  “Now I reckon you ought to keep that smartass truckin’ talk to yourself. ‘Specially when you’re referrin’ to good folks who choose to follow the Lord’s path.”

  Archie said a quiet “Amen” and they both looked at Josh with matching contempt. Josh ran his hand over the stubble of his hair and looked from one man’s face to the other.

  “Sorry. No offence.”

  Pace’s face told him that offence had indeed been taken. He stood, pulled Josh’s licence from his pocket, dropped it on the table and waved a hand at the paper in front of Archie.

  “Sign your original statement, take a copy. When you’ve paid your fine, deputy’ll give you back the truck keys.”

  Josh opened his mouth to speak and was silenced by a fat finger held up and pointed rather too directly at his face.

  “We’ll be in touch if we got anythin’ to tell you.”

  Pace turned to leave the room, speaking as he went with his back to Josh.

  “Drive careful.”

  The two men were left in the room, facing each other over the table. Archie Cameron turned the statement towards Josh. It had been neatly typed, presumably when they were out on their less than social visit. He read it through, then held out his hand for Archie’s pen. It was given with bad grace, and retrieved with the same.

  “You wait here. I’ll have this photocopied and you get to keep one.”

  The deputy left the room. Josh rocked back on the legs of his chair and exhaled deeply. His mind was racing with more than his embarrassing error. The sheriff had almost convinced him he’d seen McFarlane’s poster and subconsciously dropped her into his mad and confused recollection. Now he didn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed that the theory wouldn’t wash. His mind was working like an abacus, clicking possibilities, fantasy and realities together like wooden balls on a wire. Except nothing was adding up.

  The baby’s mother slid uncomfortably back into those thoughts. Why would she, the most important and relevant witness of all, say it was an accident? He let the chair bump forward again and ended up with his head in his hands, elbows on the table. Josh looked miserably through his wrists at the papers in front of him, a pile of official-looking forms, mostly handwritten. He glanced up at the door, then put a hesitant hand out and rotated the papers towards him. The top sheet was a scrawl of notes and observations on the position of the truck and the time of the incident, but the next two pages had a hastily written list of witnesses’ names and addresses. He scanned it quickly, found Alice Nevin, and before understanding why he was doing it memorized the address and turned the papers back to face the empty chair in front of him.

  The deputy’s return was abrupt, but he was formal to the point of a lawyer serving a summons in making sure Josh took his copy of the statement. “This here is yours. You take that now.” He held out a brown business envelope with the neatly folded paper protruding slightly from the open end.

  Josh took it from the deputy’s hand and was observed carefully as he pressed it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “And you get these back.”

  From another larger brown envelope the man brought out a plastic bag of Josh’s personal belongings that had been removed from his pockets when they put him in the cell.

  He watched Josh as he removed the items and started putting them back in his jacket. When it came to the wallet the deputy smiled unkindly.

  “Guess you’re gonna need that, all right. I’ll get Deputy Busby to bring in the paperwork for your ticket.”

  He walked to the door, opened it and called down the corridor. As Josh suspected, the man who answered the call was the angry policeman who had led him from the cell. He was holding a pad of tickets, a credit card swipe machine, and he was grinning.

  Archie Cameron left the room with a long look at Josh, and Deputy Busby took a chair.

  “You take a copy of your statement to keep?”

  Josh nodded numbly, trying hard not to think of the horror contained in the words that were tucked so neatly inside his jacket.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? Well, here’s another souvenir from Furnace, Virginia.” He slid the square of paper towards Josh.

  “One thousand bucks.”

  Josh stared at him, his eyes narrowing. “The maximum? Even though my stopover checked out?”

  “Mister, if I were you I’d be pretty thankful for walkin’ outta here at all after what you done. Looked in your wallet and I guess those hundred and forty-five dollars ain’t goin’ to cover it. Pleased to tell you we take Master Card.”

  Josh was about to protest further, but the policeman’s face told him it was useless. Part of Josh wanted to pay a fine. A huge fine. But no amount of money would undo his deed.

  The transaction was performed in an uncomfortable silence until the deputy folded up the credit card receipt and a copy of the ticket into an envelope and handed it to Josh. He watched Josh’s face as he took it.

  “You keep hold of that, now.”

  Josh looked at him suspiciously, since the man’s tone was of a dishonest merchant who has successfully swindled a fool. The deputy read his face and added with a glare of indignance, “In case anyone needs to check up on you. Believe me. I’m goin’ to make damned sure they do.”

  Only when the envelope was safely away did Deputy Busby hand Josh the keys to Jezebel and the licence that he’d scooped up from the table.

  “You need a ride back to the truck? I’m supposed to ask.”

  Josh shook his head. “It’s only a few blocks. I need the walk.”

  “Good. ‘Cause you ain’t gettin’ a ride.”

  Josh s
tood up and pocketed his keys. He looked long and hard at the man’s face, but any aggression he might have been able to muster before today was dissipated by the knowledge of his own inner guilt. He broke the stare first, turned and left the room.

  John Pace was gone from the main office and Josh was oddly disappointed he hadn’t stayed to say good-bye. He’d heard enough horror stories from other drivers about the consequences of committing a violation in backwater towns to know that by the sheriff, at least, he’d been treated fairly and with respect. But even though the law had decided he’d done nothing wrong, as he walked down the concrete steps to the clean sidewalk, he felt like a man being released from prison.

  The air smelled sweetly of catkins and sap, and a gentle breeze moved the young chestnuts that lined the street. Josh walked slowly at first, then picked up speed as the fresh air revived and invigorated him.

  Alice Nevin. The woman who started today with two children and ended up with one. Thanks to him. He knew she wouldn’t be home. He could almost see her now, lying on a hospital bed somewhere, her pupils dilated with tranquillizers and her thin arms lying immobile by her sides. But maybe something… anything…

  Josh had no idea what he was going to do. He just wanted to go to her house. There was a drugstore at the end of the block. He pushed open its glass door and walked to the empty counter. A pretty but dull-eyed girl stopped stacking packets of sanitary towels, walked slowly over and filled the space behind the cash register.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know where Strachan Boulevard is from here?”

  She looked at him. He knew she’d be weighing the hair, the clothes, the earring. But he moulded his face into contours of friendly expectation and she broke into a half-smile as she decided to cooperate.

  “Okay. You want to make a right here, then take a left into Frobisher Place and then two blocks down you’re there.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  As he turned to go Josh’s gaze swept past a telephone on the wall. His heart lurched. Elizabeth. He should phone Elizabeth. He felt in his pocket for his wallet and found his phone card. He could feel the girl’s eyes burning into his back and knew that although this call, of all the calls in the history of time, should be made in private, he couldn’t wait anymore.

  He punched in the complex code, waited for that monotonous and irritating voice to tell him how much time he had and then at last heard the long ring of his own phone. There was a click, then the heart-sinking hiss that meant the answering machine had kicked in. His own voice.

  “Hi. You’ve guessed. We’re out. Try the numbers that follow, call back or leave a message. Here we go, the shop number is…”

  He hung up. He hadn’t left the answering machine on, so at least that meant she’d come home and been there to switch it on. So she was safe. Cold comfort. She wasn’t answering.

  He stood for a moment and let his heart slow down. What would he have said if she’d picked up the phone? This was new territory. Josh Spiller was a man, and a man who drove forty tons of truck around America. Yet right now, he wanted to put his forehead against this wall and weep. For a moment he saw himself reflected in the shiny chrome of the telephone, saw himself as he knew the girl behind the counter was seeing him: a haggard, haunted face that belonged to someone he barely recognized.

  He dug his fingernails into his palm, took a breath and walked quickly out of the store. Movement. As always, it was the only cure.

  8

  Sim was worried about his lemon balm. The leaves were turning brown around the edges and there were aphid casts on the next shoots. He bent over the big terra-cotta pot and poked pointlessly at the sick plant with a gnarled finger. Herbs were tricky. You had to know when they came indoors, to avoid the frost, and when they should go out again to harden off. He reckoned this time he’d got it wrong, underestimating once again the bitter spring winds that chilled Pittsburgh, and he tutted as one of the leaves fell off with his touch.

  Inside the house, Josh and Elizabeth’s phone rang. The old man straightened up and shuffled towards the open window. Sim liked it when they had their answering machine on. He could hear all their messages clearly through the window, whether open or shut, and it made him feel part of their lives that he knew what was going on, often before they did. Sometimes it was just messages from Josh’s work, and sometimes it was Elizabeth’s family. But he always listened in the hope of hearing something secretive and exciting. And there was something else.

  Sim had a pointless but amusing little gift. Mostly, although occasionally he got it wrong, he could tell who was phoning while it was still ringing.

  He had no idea how he knew, but he did. He liked to play the game with himself as the phone rang its four short peals before the answering machine intercepted.

  “Dispatcher,” he would say out loud on the second ring, and then slap his thigh when the familiar voice came on, droning, “Josh? Got a pretty high-paying load with your name on it. Call me, would you?”

  Or he would mouth, “Oh oh, Elizabeth’s brother,” and then look delighted when the sulky sibling’s voice left its disgruntled message. If he were ever forced to explain the process, and he knew he never would, Sim would have to say that he could see not so much the person, but the essence of the person as the phone rang, and the times he got it wrong he believed were simply the times when he just wasn’t concentrating hard enough.

  Of course he never mentioned any of this to Josh or Elizabeth. Sim thought they probably knew he listened to their messages but said nothing. They were so kind. They knew no one ever phoned Sim, and he guessed Elizabeth left the window of the office open purposely so he could hear. Maybe one day he would show her what he could do. He would like that, to see her pretty face light up in delight as he performed the trick for her. Only it wasn’t strictly speaking a trick. It was real. He just knew who was on the line.

  Today, however, it was habit rather than design that made him move to the window. Sim wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the message after the fight he’d heard yesterday. He’d heard Elizabeth’s car screech away after Josh had come home, and last night her crying had kept him awake, wondering whether he should go upstairs and comfort her or just leave her alone. He’d opted for the latter, so hysterical and forlorn were her wails. How could anything an old man would say heal that kind of wound? Things must be bad, he thought, for such good people to hurt each other so badly. He waited by the window as the four short phone rings completed and the answering machine clicked on.

  “Josh,” Sim said to himself, supporting himself against the wall with an outstretched hand.

  An eavesdropper couldn’t hear the outgoing message, only wait patiently for the caller to start speaking. Sim waited to hear Josh’s voice, but the caller hung up.

  “Josh,” he confirmed with himself, nodding as he shuffled back to his herbs.

  A cold wind eddied around the edge of the house and stirred the lemon balm. Two more leaves dropped from the stem and Sim cursed in Korean. He bent down again and resumed fussing with the plant.

  “Josh,” he repeated to the herb. It ignored him, and dropped another leaf.

  By Furnace standards. Alice Nevin’s house was pretty ordinary. By anywhere else’s yardstick, it was an expensive and desirable property. But unlike a Bostonian or Beverly Hills house, where the lawn is God, here the front garden was littered with toys. Two plastic pedal cars lay on their sides as if there had been a collision. A ragged fun-fur horse was splayed over the porch steps and an odd assortment of tiny plastic figures was distributed so evenly around the property it was as though they had been placed there to serve some kind of gardening function. Josh stood across the street and stared up at its long white wooden porch and Colonial dormer windows, wondering what he was going to do next.

  She wasn’t here. Why was he?

  A figure came to the downstairs window. A man. He had a crying child in his arms that looked about a year old and small heads mo
ved about at his hips, betraying the presence of more children. The man was trying to make the baby look out into the garden, pointing at things and jogging it up and down in his arms in a vain effort to comfort it. It was only a matter of seconds until he saw Josh, and when he did, he stopped moving. He stared at him for a moment, then moved away from the window.

  Thinking was getting in the way. So Josh stopped thinking and walked swiftly across the street, picking his way through the toys to mount the steps and ring the doorbell. A distant dog barked, as though shut in a room, accompanied by a variety of screams and shouts that reinforced his belief he’d seen several children. The door opened wide and aggressively fast. The man, wearing a sweat-stained T-shirt, cheap stone-washed jeans, and holding his tearful burden, stared at Josh. At this close range Josh could see that the man had eyes almost as red and puffy as his baby’s. He had been crying.

  “Need somethin’?”

  It was a challenge rather than a question, a voice and demeanour Josh might have expected in a pool hall if he’d knocked a guy’s pile of dimes off the table. It was way out of place in the doorway of an elegant house. Josh felt colour come to his neck and cheeks. This was all wrong, but there was no going back.

  “Mr. Nevin?”

  The man’s face crinkled from aggression to suspicious aggression. “Who the fuck are you?”

  A child screamed from the core of the house. Josh looked past the man at the sound, but it screamed on ignored.

  “I just need to know if you’re Mr. Nevin.”

  “There ain’t no Mr. fuckin’ Nevin. And I asked you a question.”

  Josh remembered. Berry Nevin’s girl. That’s what McFarlane had said. That would mean that either Alice Nevin had kept her maiden name in an unlikely modern fashion for this small mountain town, or that quite simply, she wasn’t married. The baby in the man’s arms started a high-pitched whine again and was swayed from side to side by the man in an unconscious act of comforting. It was the action of someone used to holding kids.

  Josh lowered his voice and spoke quietly, never taking his eyes off those of the man opposite him. He was glad he was burdened with the child. It would be harder for him to hit Josh when he heard what was coming.