The Boy in the Burning House

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  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.

  21

  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 spe
ak 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?

  Once the sanding was finished, they worked in companionable silence. His mother turned on the local country music station but declared it too bouncy. She turned on CBC-2 for classical music, turned it off when the news came on.

  By six, they had a first coat of paint on the walls. Jim had peeled the primer paint off the fridge easily enough, and Iris had taken a hand-sander to the table out on the lawn. Apart from the odd splash and smear, the kitchen looked more or less like home again. They planned on giving the walls a second coat that evening, and, if everything went all right, Iris hoped she might even get a first coat of urethane on the floor by bedtime.

  “It’s going to look better than ever,” she declared as they cleaned up for supper. She could bounce back, find the good in a bad thing. But Jim wondered if he could. There was no use trying to convince anyone that Ruth Rose was a good thing. He needed proof and he was going to get it.

  Refreshed by the effort, Iris surprised Jim by suggesting they pick up a pizza. They never ordered take-out. For one thing, they weren’t all that near anywhere. For another, they simply didn’t have the money for extras.

  “Pepperoni and sausage,” said Jim. Iris made a face as if he were driving a hard bargain.

  She made the call — pretended she wanted anchovies, just to watch Jim squirm. They were too far in the boonies to have pizza delivered, but Attila the Hungry, down on Highway 7, was less than twenty minutes away. She set off with a tootle of the horn, and Jim waved and headed back to the house.

  It was already getting dark, turning cooler. The wind was picking up, jostling the sky around. He breathed out paint fumes, took in a great big lungful of camomile-scented evening.

  He hadn’t reached the porch before he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, a big red, white and blue FedEx van. It was creeping along.

  Then, to Jim’s surprise, it turned into their yard. He went over expecting to give directions.

  “Hawkins?” the man asked. Jim nodded. “Thank God,” said the man, waving an imaginary flag in the air in weary triumph. “I been drivin’ around these back roads for near forty-five minutes looking for you.” He hopped out of the van with a package addressed to Iris Hawkins.

  “She’s not here,” said Jim.

  “But she’s coming back, right?” said the man, looking panicky. “She didn’t move away or nothin’?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jim. “I mean, no. She’ll be back.”

  “You her secretary?”

  Jim smiled. “Sure,” he said.

  It was all the courier needed to hear. He thrust a clipboard at Jim and showed him where to sign his name. He handed him the package — a shiny plastic FedEx envelope. Then he tipped his hat.

  “Pleased to do business with you,” he said. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get home in time for my son’s graduation.”

  Jim scrinched up his face. “Fall convocation isn’t for weeks,” he said.

  The man winked at him. “Boy, my son is only three.” Laughing heartily, he jumped back into the van and wheeled out of the yard the way he had come, but a lot faster.

  Jim looked the package over, stared at the return address. It was from Nancy Fisher. By the time he reached the house, he knew he was going to open it.

  The stepladder stood alone in the centre of the kitchen. Jim perched on it and tore open the envelope. Inside he found two sheets of cream-coloured stationery written on both sides in purple ink. There were flowers around the border. Forget-me-nots. The letter was signed, “Yours most truly, Nancy,” and dated the previous day. Attached to it with a purple paper clip was a business-sized envelope, torn open, but with a letter folded inside. The stamp was American, the return address Baton Rouge. The letter was addressed to Father Fisher.

  With his heart pounding, Jim read Nancy’s note first.

  My Dear Iris;

  I have always thought of you as a good and kind and brave person.

  I am not brave. It has been very hard to bring myself to do what I am doing. I hope you will not think ill of me for intruding on your life or adding to the misery you have already suffered.

  The letter attached was written to Father, as you will see. I cannot face the consequences of what it reveals. I am running away. You will think me a feeble and stupid woman, to be passing the buck. I just don’t know where to turn! Believe me, it took all my courage to even do this much.

  I have tried so
hard to believe that the enclosed letter is just a mean and evil lie. I have sat many times by the telephone about to call the author of this letter, but I could not bring myself to do it.

  But I cannot go on like this. I am afraid all the time now. May God be with you for taking in Ruth Rose. She is such a difficult soul. Life has never been easy for her. She needed me and I failed her. Please let her know that I love her very much and that I pray we can be reunited someday, God willing.

  Yours most truly,

  Nancy

  Jim could scarcely breathe. He laid Nancy’s letter aside on the step of the ladder, carefully, as if it were an explosive device. He opened the envelope. It was typed on off-white bond in lowercase letters. The message was not long.

  fisher:

  that does it, scumbag. as if thirty-five thou could buy back my son. hawkins has already paid up the hard way. are we happy? no. it isn’t what we wanted. we want justice and we’ll get it. your time is up.

  laverne roncelier

  Jim placed the letter on the step but his hand was shaking so badly it fluttered to the newly sanded floor. He picked it up, brushed off the wood dust, read it again, placed it carefully beside the companion letter.

  He whimpered. It was just as Ruth Rose had said. But it was worse. Way worse. His father reduced like that to “hawkins.” The glorious hub of his life whose disappearance had almost killed him and yet was not enough to satisfy the blood thirst of Tuffy’s mother.

  They had been in it together. They had killed Tuffy.

  He leaned his face against the cool metal rail of the ladder. If this was the truth, he didn’t want anything to do with it. He hated Ruth Rose for dragging him down into this. He hated Nancy. He hated Fisher. He hated Laverne Roncelier and Stanley and Francis Tufts — hated him for dying. And he hated his father, too, for leaving him alone to handle all this.

  He clung to the ladder and closed his eyes. But a sound — a short, sharp metallic click-slide-click — brought him reeling back to the present.