A bucket of ashes

by P. B. Ryan

  “She did,” Nell said. This is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Jamie. Wear it for strength. You’re my only son. You’re the head of the family now. Make me proud. Nell was gratified, if a bit surprised, that her brother had kept the medal all these years. “Claire, I don’t suppose you would know what became of that medal. It wasn’t among the items that were taken off my brother after the fire.”

  Claire regarded Nell blankly for a moment, then looked away, shaking her head. “I couldn’t say, miss. Sorry.”

  “So Jamie earned your trust?” Will said.

  “He swore on his ma’s soul that he didn’t kill that lady and he wouldn’t hurt me. I could see in his eyes he was tellin’ the truth. He had these eyes, they were... like the eyes of Jesus in the pictures. You couldn’t look away from ‘em.” She bit her lip, he eyes damp.

  “I know,” Nell said. As, no doubt, had Jamie, who’d always found it indecently easy to bend females to his will. He’d been thirteen the first time he talked himself under a girl’s skirts; she was seventeen, a voluptuous redheaded barmaid.

  “He said he could tell I was kind and sweet and would help him,” Claire continued. “He said I was beautiful, not just on the outside like some girls, but deep in my heart, where only God could see. I think I musta turned red as a beet.”

  “Because he said you were beautiful on the outside?” Nell asked.

  “No fella ever told me that before.”

  “So you helped him,” Will said. “The next day when everyone else was that ice cream social, you came back and gathered up some food and whatnot and brought it to him.”

  “I went back there every day after supper to bring him food, stuff I didn’t think Ma would miss. She thought I was going there to clean up. I knew I couldn’t let her know Jim was there, ‘cause if she knew, she’d turn him in for sure. She’s real big on walkin’ the straight and narrow.” Claire seemed to be warming to her subject, perhaps because she’d had no one to confide in until now.

  “Jim used to ask me to stay and talk,” she said, “‘cause he was lonely. Nobody ever talked to me like he did, all quiet and serious. He talked about important things. He made me feel important. He asked me what I thought about this or that. It got to where all I could think about during the day while I was doing my chores was getting’ back to the cranberry house that night, so I could be with Jim. He always seemed so happy to see me. But then he’d get...”

  “What?” Nell said. “Melancholy? Did he feel guilty about Mrs. Cunningham?”

  “No, no not at all. I told you, he said the other fella done it, a fella called Davey. Jim said he was real mad at Davey for doing that. And that’s why they went their separate ways, ‘cause Jim didn’t want to have nothing more to do with Davey after that.”

  “My brother didn’t feel bad at all that an innocent woman died during a burglary he had engineered?”

  Claire frowned as if trying to remember. “No, he told me it was all Davey’s fault, and his conscience was clean.”

  They came to the split in the path that Mrs. Gilmartin had mentioned and followed the lefthand fork as it veered into another patch of woods. Nell thought about the tears Jamie used to shed as a boy when one of the orphaned or injured animals he would try to rescue didn’t make it. She recalled his frenzied sobbing whenever someone died—not just family members, but neighbors he barely knew, or other inmates of the poor house. It would appear that his skin had thickened since she’d last seen him, perhaps as a result of his years behind bars.

  “How did your mother find out he was hiding in the cranberry shed?” Will asked the girl.

  Claire winced. “She came there one night to see how much I’d gotten done, and she saw me and Jim... We was...” She bit her lip, her cheeks stained pink.

  “Oh,” Nell said. “Claire, don’t be embarrassed. You’re not the first young girl to be seduced by a handsome, charming—”

  “What? No, I didn’t mean that. We weren’t... you know. Jim said he knew I was a good girl, and he didn’t want to... you know, ruin me. But he... he kissed me sometimes, and I kissed him back, even though he said he couldn’t ever... pay me his addresses or nothin’. He said I’d best know up front he was gonna be leavin’ soon as the time was right, and that would be the end of us. I asked him was he gonna say goodbye or would I just come out there one night and find him gone. He said he was sick of goodbyes. He’d had a whole lifetime of goodbyes.

  “Yes, he did,” Nell said in a low, shaky voice. His father, his mother, his siblings, one after the other, Duncan, her...

  Will stroked her shoulder.

  “The day Ma came to the cranberry shed,” Claire said, “Jim and me was laying together on this quilt I’d brung him to sleep on, and I know what Ma was thinking, but it wasn’t like that. We were just kissing, but she didn’t believe it. She started ranting and railing and threatening Jamie cause she knew right away who he was, ‘cause of him living there in secret. He just stood there real calm, while she screamed in his face. She slapped him—hard—and he just took it like it didn’t even happen, even though she’s as strong as a man. He told her he was sorry for livin’ on her property without permission, but she should know I hadn’t done nothin’ sinful. She called him a liar and slapped him again. I couldn’t stop crying. She said she didn’t want to turn him in cause then everybody would find out I gave myself cheap to a murdering thug, but that she would unless he left that night.”

  “When was this?” Nell asked.

  “A couple-three days before the fire. Thursday, I think.”

  “But he didn’t leave?” Will asked.

  “He told her he would, but...” Her voice damp and unsteady, Claire said, “I wish he had. I wish he’d of just left like he should of, gotten off the Cape and gone somewhere far away.”

  Nell patted her arm, saying “So do I.”

  “I told Ma he left,” Claire said.

  “And she didn’t check to make sure that was true?” Nell asked.

  “Um, no. No, I guess not.”

  “And then, three nights later,” Will said, “you went there to see him, only to find the shed on fire and Jamie trapped inside.”

  No wonder Claire had risked her life to save Jamie’s, Nell thought. She had clearly been smitten by him.

  “We’re close,” Will said. “I can smell it.”

  Nell inhaled the smoky tang of burned wood.

  “That’s it,” said Claire, pointing to a clearing up ahead where the path widened into a road big enough to accommodate the wagons used to transport the cranberry barrels to market. To the left of the road was the roofless, carbonized vestige of a structure about the size of the hovel in which Nell and Jamie had spent their early years.

  They entered this blackened skeleton through what was left of the doorway. Burned-up rafters, roofing shingles, barrels, lath pallets, crates, chairs, tables, and tools lay amid drifts of ash and cinders. In the middle of the room stood a freestanding contraption of blackened metal with a large chute that looked as if it had been cobbled together from old farm equipment—the cranberry sorter, presumably. To one side of it lay a folded quilt burned around the edges, but not down the middle, where Jamie had slept—and died.

  Will noticed the direction of her gaze and rested a hand on the small of her back. He said, “Why don’t you go wait in the buggy? I’ll have a look around here.”

  “No, I want to see it. At least it’s something, something real, something I can touch.”

  “When the constables came to take the body away,” Will asked Claire, “did they search through this stuff at all?”

  “I wasn’t here, but Ma said they just put the body in a hearse and left.”

  “I’m surprised there’s even this much left,” said Will, gesturing toward the charred remnants of the walls. “It must have been burning for some time before you raised the alarm, considering how long it would have taken you to run back to the house.”

  “There’s a shortcut through the woods that takes about h
alf a minute,” she said from the doorway. “Less than that, if you’re running and I was running fast as I could. I didn’t want to take you that way ‘cause you’re dressed so fine, and there’s no real path. If you don’t mind my asking, what are you folks looking for?”

  “I want to know whether Jamie died of the fire or the smoke,” said Nell as she knelt to stroke a hand over the quilt bedding, which was damp from yesterday’s rain. It wasn’t the truth, of course, for she and Will were primarily looking for evidence, such as blood or a knife, that Jamie may have died from being stabbed in the chest. Unfortunately, the top quilt was of a honeycomb pattern in shades of brown, maroon, and black that had suffered a month’s worth of summer rainstorms. The dye—and any blood that may have been there—had run together in mottled splotches clustered mostly in the middle, where the weight of Jamie’s body had created an indentation. She noticed scorched remnants of a brown woolen blanket, bits of which Cyril had seen on Jamie’s corpse.

  “He apparently died flat on his back with a blanket over him,” Nell said.

  Claire said, “He musta been sleeping.”

  “But you heard him scream for help.”

  “Oh. Um. Yeah.” The girl looked down, jamming her hands in her pockets. “I reckon that wasn’t exactly true.”

  Nell said, “You made that up to explain why you would have gone running into a burning building that was presumably unoccupied.”

  Claire nodded. “It wouldn’t of made no sense ‘less I thought somebody was trapped in there. ‘Course I did figure Jim was in there, but I couldn’t of told Ma that, ‘cause I already told her he left.”

  “Claire, how do you think this fire started?” Will asked as he lifted a fallen beam and tossed it aside.

  She shrugged. “I reckon it was like Ma said, a cigarette or a candle.”

  “Did you ever see him smoke?” asked Nell as she lifted her skirts to pick her way through the wreckage, looking for a knife blade.

  “No, uh-uh.” She thought about it for a moment. “But maybe he just didn’t smoke in front of me. Gentlemen ain’t supposed to smoke in front of ladies.”

  “Well yes,” Nell said. Except that Jamie hadn’t exactly been what one would call a gentleman. As she recalled from her days among the petty grafters and hoods of Cape Cod, the men had never let the presence of a female keep them from enjoying their cigarettes.

  Nell said, “There was no match safe among his personal items, and I don’t see any here. They’re always metal, so if there was one it would have survived the fire. I’ll keep on the lookout for melted wax that might have been a candle, but I haven’t seen any yet. As for your mother’s theory that he was drunk, there’s no flask or bottle around, at least not in this general vicinity.”

  After a few more minutes of picking and searching among the detritus, Will said, “Look at this.” He made his way over to Nell, rubbing the ash off two pale pink shards of glass, one small and the other about the size of his hand.

  “A bottle?” Nell asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, showing her his finds. The pieces of glass were curved and embossed with a design of swags and medallions. “I found them some distance apart. I think they’re from a lamp.”

  Nell took one of the shards and held it to her nose, inhaling a hint of camphor. In concert with the acrid old smoke odor, filling her nostrils, it made her stomach roil. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, but that only made her feel as if the ground were shifting beneath her feet.

  “Nell?” Will grabbed her by the upper arms. “What’s the matter? You’re white as a—”

  “It’s nothing. It’s the smell.”

  “Here, put your head down,” he said, supporting her with his arms around her waist.

  It helped. After a minute, she told him she was better and he helped her to straighten up. With a sardonic little smile, he said, “You’ve become rather delicate since I last saw you.”

  You have no idea.

  “You all right, miss?” Claire asked. “There’s a little stream nearby if you want some water. I’d bring you some if I had a cup, but—”

  “Thank you, but I’m fine, really,” said Nell, wanting to deflect attention from her “delicate” condition. Nell asked Claire if she had any camphene lamps on the property. The most common fuel for lamps until the advent of kerosene about ten years ago, camphene was a volatile mixture of alcohol and turpentine with a little camphor to mask the turpentine smell.

  Claire frowned in evident puzzlement. “Camphene?”

  “Burning fluid,” Will said as he continued sorting through the wreckage.

  “Oh. Um... I dunno. Yeah, I guess maybe there’s a couple old ones in the barn. Ma doesn’t want ‘em in the house anymore.”

  “Was one of them pink?” Nell asked.

  “I reckon.”

  “Here’s the burner,” said Will, holding up what looked like a blackened brass jar lid with two splayed spouts for the wicks, each dangling a brass cap by a tiny chain. “It looks as if an oil lamp was converted into a camphene lamp by replacing a regular burner with a camphene burner. Not an uncommon practice a few years ago, but not a safe one.”

  “Camphene produces gases that can explode if they get too hot,” Nell explained to Claire. “The more camphene in the lamp, the bigger the explosion.”

  “Did you hear an explosion as you were approaching the shed that night?” Will asked her.

  “Um, no. I, um, I don’t think so.”

  “If you were some distance away, it may have just sounded like a pop.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Will said, “I’ll wager if we checked the barn, we’d find one of those lamps missing.”

  “Or did you bring it here?” Nell asked her.

  “No!” Claire said, holding her hands up. “I never brought it. He must of.”

  Nell said, “If you did, I can understand your feeling a certain measure of guilt, given that this lamp probably started the fire. But you shouldn’t. You were only trying to—”

  “I didn’t bring it!” She said, her face reddening. “I didn’t.”

  “All right, Nell said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s just… this whole business has been so… so…” Claire lifted her apron to wipe away the tears welling in her eyes. Will handed her his handkerchief, which she accepted with a bashful nod. “I’d best be gettin’ back to that chicken,” she said. “Ma won’t like it if she comes home and doesn’t find it in the pot.”

  Nell stopped Claire with a hand on her arm as she turned to leave. “My brother… He told you about me?”

  “Oh, yes, miss,” said Claire as she wiped her ruddy nose with the handkerchief. “He called you Nelly. He told me all about how you and him and your little sister, the one that died…”

  “Tess,” Nell said in a near whisper.

  “He told me about the poor house, and how he left and fell in with a bad crowd. He told me you was always at him to straighten up, but he didn’t listen.”

  “I nagged him about how he should live his life,” Nell said. “He grew to resent me. Eventually he just didn’t what to have anything more to do with me.”

  “That ain’t what he told me, miss. He said you were the only person in the world that ever really cared about him. He said you tried to talk sense to him, but he thought he was smarter than you, only he really wasn’t. He said after he got sent to jail the first time, he didn’t want you to see him no more till he got out of there and set himself straight.”

  “He wanted to go straight?”

  “That was his plan, ‘cause he was ashamed of himself, ashamed of what you thought of him. He said you sent him a letter in jail telling him your husband done you wrong, and that made him feel worse than ever. He said you never would of fell in with that fella if it weren’t for him. When he got out of jail, the war had just started, so he went straight to Boston and enlisted.”

  “But you had to be eighteen to enlist,�
�� Nell said. “Jamie would have been just seventeen.”

  “He fibbed about his age. He just wanted to do somethin’ right for once to prove to you that he wasn’t just some lowlife grabber. After he mustered out—I think he said that was June of ‘sixty-four—he came back here and try to get honest work, but it was hard to come by even with so many fellas still off fighting. I reckon he was telling the truth, cause Ma says things ain’t what they used to be ‘round here. She says all the young fellas are leavin’ the Cape cause there ain’t enough jobs to go around.”

  “That’s true,” Nell said. The industries that had supported the Cape for so many years—whaling, fishing, shipping, the saltworks—had been in decline for the better part of a decade.

  Claire said, “Jim didn’t want to get sucked back into his old life, but he did, cause it was the only way to put food in his belly.”

  Will said, “It seems to me he could have gotten work in Boston or New York.”

  “He told me the Cape was his home,” Claire said. “He felt lost in Boston, like he was a little ant crawling along the sidewalk trying not to get stepped on. But here he had friends, even if they was the wrong kind of friends, and he knew the lay of the land. But a couple times, he told me he wished his folks would of stayed in County Donegal instead of comin’ here for a better life, ‘cause it wasn’t no better life. He said he would of rather been a fisherman in the old country, no matter how poor, than what he was.”

  “Did he say whether he’d ever tried to contact me?” Nell asked.

  Claire shook her head. “He heard you were a governess in Boston, and he said he was real proud of you, but you wouldn’t be proud of him if you knew he was right back where he’d always been. He said he missed you something terrible, but he just couldn’t let you see him like that.”

  “Oh.” Nell’s voice sounded small and faraway to her ears.

  Curling an arm around her waist, Will said softly, “Come, Nell. There’s nothing more to see here.”

  Nell nodded forlornly

  “Um, before you go,” Claire said, “I... I lied to you. I’m real sorry.” Fumbling under the collar of her calico frock, she withdrew a little silver pendant on a chain. “He, um... He gave me this.”