by Keith Weaver
Beneath this piece of wood in the file was an envelope. It contained a single picture. The picture was of a young woman, smiling, appearing as though she were about to break into a laugh. She was leaning back, in a completely relaxed pose, against an expanse of white stone that looked like marble. There was nothing in the envelope or on the back of the picture to say who she was, or where or when the picture had been taken.
Sanford turned to the other files, which were numbered simply “1” to “5”, and sorted them by number. He looked quickly through all the files. The files numbered “2” to “5” recorded all Joe’s dealings with people in the village, although one of them contained intriguing correspondence between Joe and various individuals, including several of Sanford’s teachers. Sanford began by opening the file labelled “1”.
This file contained about fifty pages of notes, extending over a period of many years. Sanford settled in to read the notes. Each note was dated.
It was apparent soon enough that these were notes Joe had made on conversations he had had with Aileen Sanford, Jim’s mother.
Joe’s notes recorded discussions between Aileen and Joe on practical, financial, and personal matters. It was evident that Joe and Aileen had been confidants. Aileen had also confided her uncertainties, her worries, her insecurities, and many of these discussions had concerned him, her son.
Sanford could sense a slow anger growing within him. Where the hell had my father been? Sanford asked himself gruffly.
But Sanford knew very well where his father had been. His father, whom he knew only as “Harold”, was a deadbeat. Sanford had no recollection of him whatsoever, although he assumed they must have spent some time together when Sanford had been an infant or a toddler. “Harold” was always off somewhere. When Sanford was old enough to ask, he would say to his mother “Where’s Dad?” The answer was always the same: “He’s on the road. He has to travel a lot for his work.” By the time Sanford was six or seven, he no longer believed these statements, and he had become, by turns, indifferent to and resentful of his father. “Harold” apparently sent money home to Aileen, which was something, but hardly a substitute for being around.
The notes covered discussions throughout Sanford’s childhood and early teen years. They fell away somewhat during the time Sanford was working his way across the country, but they never ceased entirely. Then, very recently, there was a change. The notes reported a change in Aileen’s behaviour, her outlook, her equilibrium. They started just a few weeks before Aileen’s death. Then they mentioned a disturbing visit to Aileen from a man called Charles Jeffers.
Sanford came to the final two notes.
The second-to-last note was dated just a week before Aileen’s death. Joe had written the following:
Saw Jeffers’ car pull into Aileen’s drive. Jeffers jumped out energetically, grabbed a bag from the back seat, and went into Aileen’s house. This time, I decided I would not wait to hear about things after the fact. I walked across to Aileen’s house and stood beside the kitchen window, which was open because of the lovely weather. There were voices, not quite normal, but not raised in anger. Then suddenly there was an argument. I heard Jeffers say loudly, “Yes, you will!” There was pleading from Aileen, words that I couldn’t catch, then she cried out. I had no choice but to intervene, and that ended the argument. Jeffers then left without a word.
The last note was dated just the next day. Joe had written simply this:
The problem has been solved. Material no good for milk.
The account ended there. Joe had written nothing further. The last sentence meant something, but the meaning came from a far distant past. The memory that rose in Sanford’s mind was clear and unambiguous. Joe would muck out the cows’ stalls every second day, and Sanford almost always watched. He was then far too young to lift forksful of the heavy dung and straw mixture, but he liked to watch Joe work. Whenever Sanford wrinkled his nose in distaste, Joe would almost always wink at him, and say through a smile “Material no good for milk”.
Sanford sat back in bewilderment. Why did this statement appear here in Joe’s notes? What could it possibly mean? Sanford rose from Joe’s desk and walked into the kitchen. He crossed the kitchen and looked into Joe’s bedroom. He went outside and looked across the road to the house where he had grown up, where Anne Ferguson now lived.
He felt cold fingers at the base of his spine. Something dark began filling his head.
It took a good hour before he had his answer. The answer was, initially, a horrific stench, and then a brown leather shoe. The shoe was on the right foot of a body that lay at the bottom of a pit about four feet deep.
There was a body under Joe’s manure pile, a pile whose surface was now dry and shrunken, not having had cow dung added to it for at least three years.
Sanford had stumbled back to Joe’s office as the afternoon closed in, where he sat, shocked and bewildered, trying to think it all through. A few things occurred to him almost immediately.
What about Jeffers’ car?
Sanford shook his head, trying to clear the fog, trying to find a rationale to support the denial that was rushing in.
Joe wouldn’t do something like that. Joe was one of the most civilized men Sanford had ever known. There had to be some other explanation. It couldn’t be Jeffers.
But, if so, then just who was buried under Joe’s manure pile? Indeed, why was anyone buried under Joe’s manure pile?
Against Sanford’s deepest resistance, and despite the fact that it was the very last thing he wanted to do, he went back to the manure pile. Dusk was settling by the time he had the answer. The body was dressed in a good suit. There was nothing resembling a wallet. Nothing that looked in any way like a scrap of paper. The stench was unbearable, and Sanford suppressed the reflex vomit impulse only by a supreme effort of will. The face was discoloured but the features were clear. It was a face Sanford would never forget.
What to do? What the hell should he do?
He covered the body again, and arranged the manure pile so that it looked natural, and the disturbed manure would take on a dried, sun-bleached, and undisturbed look after just a few days. Sanford then stumbled back to Joe’s house, shaken and shaking.
A moment’s thought convinced Sanford that this could not be reported. The implications of his taking such an action, of going to the police, became obvious immediately. There would be an investigation, and an investigation would bring out everything. His mother’s memory could well be blackened. All the good Joe had ever done, all his acts of kindness and generosity would be swept away and replaced by the dark suspicion: ‘Murderer’. No. Sanford was going to sit on this information and not tell anyone.
Besides all that, Joe could think clearly. If this was Jeffers, and if Joe had indeed killed him, he would have done it only for a very good reason, and he certainly would have considered all alternatives, such as trying to scare Jeffers off or reporting him. But there was no hint in Joe’s notes on why Jeffers was suddenly paying close attention to and harassing Aileen. Without knowing the “why” it would be difficult to formulate an effective “scaring off” strategy. And as for reporting Jeffers? Joe probably knew, or suspected, that Jeffers would have been able to weasel away, while he had been alive, from any taint or accusation concerning dealings with Aileen. If, as Sanford was becoming convinced, the body was that of Jeffers, and if Joe had put it where it was, then Sanford needed to understand why Joe had done this. A very good reason would have been Joe becoming convinced that there was some dark intent on Jeffers’ part in approaching Aileen. But Sanford felt that whatever such intent might have been, it probably did not involve something as straightforward as harassment or abuse. Most likely, there was something else going on, and he suspected that Joe had probably guessed what that something else was.
So, had Joe concluded that the only way to deal with the matter once and for all was to eliminate Jeffers? Looking back through Joe’s notes, Sanford realized that there was nothing in the
notes that would lead anyone but Sanford even to guess at the presence of a body, and to suspect what had happened. But there was more than enough for Sanford himself, Sanford alone, to reach the conclusion he had reached. Joe had left the message, clear and unambiguous, for Sanford’s eyes only.
Why?
Sanford concluded that Joe wanted him to be informed, and not stumble into anything very unpleasant.
Sanford looked carefully once again through the file. He had missed nothing important the first time. The pages had been punched at the top and were held in the file by a brass clip. They were numbered, and no pages were missing. He lifted the pages and looked at the inside back of the file. Nothing. He turned the file over. There was a note on the back:
Remember to show Elias Wilson favourite spot for reflecting.
Elias Wilson had been dead for more than ten years, pre-dating all but about the final quarter of the entries in the file. More importantly, Sanford knew that Wilson had been one of Joe’s least favourite people. They never spoke, and Joe would certainly not involve Wilson in anything as intimate as sharing a “favourite spot for reflecting”.
What’s more, Sanford knew exactly where that spot was. About ten miles from Stanley Falls, there was a quiet back road that skirted Eagle Lake. The road followed a gentle curve past the lake, and at a certain spot one could climb down from the roadside to a ledge that was just right for sitting and looking. This ledge gave a view, particularly stunning at sunset, over the lake and two small islands several hundred metres from the shore. At sunset, on calm evenings in July and August, these islands cast surreal and haunting images across the lake. Looking down from the ledge when the sun was still above the horizon, one was met by dark water – just there the rock cliff plunged straight down.
The water there was deep. Deep enough for a car to vanish without a trace.
Nine
Sanford got no sleep that night.
It wasn’t that he tossed and turned. He didn’t go to bed at all. He spent the rest of the night poring over the files Joe had left him. And the following morning. And that afternoon, until he fell asleep at Joe’s desk.
By that time, Sanford had gone through all the files, including the one labelled “5”, a file which appeared to indicate that Charles Jeffers didn’t exist. Everything in the file was oblique, probably to avoid any fingers being pointed anywhere, since the discovery of a body beneath Joe’s manure pile as a result of any such pointing could have been disastrous for both him and Aileen. It appeared that Joe had used two or three independent operatives to try to track down Jeffers. Did Joe want to know who it was that he had killed because he felt remorse? Did he want to know just because he wished to unmask, if only for himself, the identity of a very unpleasant leech who perhaps had tried to attach himself, somehow, for some reason, to Aileen? Or did he want to know whether there was something else behind the whole episode?
All this caused Sanford considerable anguish, and he had to go out for a walk again to regain the quiet and equilibrium needed to come to some conclusion on what he had learned thus far from Joe’s files. This time, he walked past Joe’s flower beds in front of and to the left of the house, as one looked from the house toward the west. There were four flower beds, of different sizes and shapes, and Joe used them to different effects. In one bed Joe grew tall, exuberant flowers, like oriental poppies, hollyhocks, gladioli, and mullein, against a backdrop of forsythia that produced cascades of bright yellow in the spring. In another bed, he had planted low fragrant flowers, and these were dominated now by the marigolds. In a third bed, Joe had laid out a variety of climbing plants, each clambering up its own trellis or pergola. And in the fourth bed were what Joe called his “kitchen flowers” – dozens of pansies and nasturtium, whose flowers he used for decorating food; various pepper plants; and about a dozen sorts of annuals that were his cutting garden. Sanford recalled the number of occasions when Joe had cut some of these flowers, brought them into his kitchen, arranged them in vases, and stepped back wearing a huge delighted smile.
Half of Joe’s ashes had been scattered on these gardens.
“What happened Joe?” Sanford asked the flowers. “What’s going on?” And he shivered as the frightful image of that dead face rose up again in his mind.
Sanford’s walk led him to the barn. It was scented of hay, grain, and large animals. But it was now also quiet and somewhat forlorn. The scents were subdued, missing the sharp edges that warm live fur exudes, and missing the ammoniacal pungency of excreta. Unlike barns made of timber frame and boards, Joe’s barn was more log-cabin style, large hewn baulks fitted together carefully on their long dimensions, well caulked along these lines, solidly mortised at their ends. The interfaces between the baulks were filled, inside and out, by whitewashed plaster, forming long, attractive, horizontal white stripes against the weathered grey of the wood. Because of this solid and generally airtight construction, there would have been no continuous breeze through the barn, not a good condition when one is keeping animals inside for long periods, so Joe had installed a set of louvred vents, and these had kept the air inside clean and fresh, but always, of course, laced by heavy underlying animal odours. Even after all these years, Sanford’s youthful memory of the place was fresh, vivid, and clearly defined. Walking to the far wall, Sanford examined the filled lines between the baulks. Even here, Joe’s recent hand was evident.
The names of the cows were still in place, burnt into the short planks mounted above where their heads had been.
But outside, less than twenty feet away, there was something unspeakable, and Sanford could feel its black claws rasping at his thoughts.
Sanford’s all-nighter was now catching up to him, and he knew that he would need to turn in early. Better, then, to get back to Joe’s desk and carry on while he still had the energy and the focus to do that. By then it was late afternoon. Seated again at Joe’s desk, he pressed on for another hour.
Sanford’s eyes were beginning to sting from lack of sleep, and he took another break to select some vegetables and herbs from the garden for an early dinner. He had decided to make an arrabbiata sauce, full of life and flavour. He also took the opportunity to feed Reggie, who responded with his usual infectious enthusiasm.
Returning once more to Joe’s desk, Sanford felt that he was in the home stretch, but it was now close to seven in the evening. Having skimmed over sections in Joe’s notes, he went back now and read them more closely. There was a long section of notes that recorded Aileen’s concern over Sanford’s decision to put off university in favour of a few years’ work, and Joe’s assurance that “Jim knows what he’s doing”. Joe’s notes related his discussions with Aileen on conversations Joe and Sanford had had on what Sanford would study eventually when he took a university course, and how Sanford was looking forward to all that. These, in fact, were discussions that Sanford remembered clearly.
He closed the file, rubbed his weary face, and hoped that spending time in the kitchen preparing his dinner would put some distance between his satisfaction at the progress he was making and the dark things he had just learned. But all he actually felt over the rest of the evening was a massive and ominous uncertainty.
Ten
A modest helping of what Sanford was pleased to admit was a timely and welcome meal left him in better spirits. But it was the exuberant final minutes of an airplane running on fumes. In order not to be solitary for what was left of the evening before he crashed, he invited Reggie to join him on the front porch. Reggie displayed his usual apparent instant mood swing, by going from somnolence to full enthusiasm in less than a second, and they both walked into the house via the scullery, and through to the door onto the porch. The front porch was a comfortable space that Joe had enclosed in screening, and Sanford could sense the rage of hundreds of mosquitoes detecting blood but having their access to it barred. The western sky was a symphony of practically the entire visible spectrum. Reggie sat quietly next to Sanford, just the way a civilized friend o
f Joe’s would be expected to do, and occasionally looked up to Sanford, in that canine way that spoke of life being truly good.
It took less than half an hour for the tank to run dry, at which point Sanford dragged himself to his feet, fighting off the tender and alluring clutches of Hypnos, first to lead Reggie back to his kennel and drape his mosquito netting over the frame that surrounded it, then to re-enter the house, batting away the last few bloodsuckers. He had just about enough energy left to brush his teeth and fall into bed.
The sun was already well up when Sanford awoke, feeling better, and at least having a sense of energy and purpose. After washing, shaving, and dressing, but before doing anything else, he called his boss in Toronto.
“Maxwell.”
“Stephen. It’s Jim.”
“Ah! Jim! How’s it going? Er, sorry, I mean how are you coping?”
“Fine thanks. Look, Stephen. I want to come into the office today” – a grunt of objection here that he ignored – “and make sure that all my projects are on track.”
“There’s really no need, Jim. I assure you that everything is in place.”
“I’m sure it is, Stephen, but this whole thing is going to take a little longer than I expected, I’m afraid, and I want to make sure that there are no messes or screw-ups.”
“Well, Jim, I think you’re worrying about nothing, but by all means, come in and do what you need to do. How much longer do you think you might need?”
“Probably not more than another two weeks. I have the leave available, but I’m more than willing to take time without pay.”