Something Fishy

by Hilary MacLeod

  She had sent the children into danger. Because of her, all the village children might have died. It was a mercy that none was even injured. But she had a vivid picture in her mind, not of what she had seen, but of what might have happened. She punished herself for sending them into danger. She couldn’t let it go.

  Murdo tried to get her to sit down and relax when she got home, body aching from hours of bending, but she was impelled to keep busy and distract herself. She began sterilizing canning jars and tools, preparing the fruit and sugar, stuffing wood into the range, ordering Murdo to fetch more, until the room was steaming in the hot summer night.

  She plucked the stems from the berries, her fingers reddening at the tips from the juice. Red-handed. She was red-handed. Guilty of a crime against the youngest, most innocent and most vulnerable.

  She wiped her hands on her apron, and smears of red defaced it.

  She stirred the mixture of berries and sugar in the pot, seeing the deep red of it as blood that might have been shed. She stirred mechanically, until the juice reached temperature – hot enough that it would solidify.

  Murdo wished he hadn’t put on his freshly ironed shirt. Sweat was dripping off him, and April. In her mind, it was washing away her sin. Boiling over, the sweet syrup rose and dissolved in the air, the liquid in the pot thickening and shrinking. When she was finished, for all her effort, she had one jar. She labeled it and put it high up on a shelf where the children couldn’t reach it, and where Murdo knew he mustn’t.

  He knew better. He had not only his freshly ironed shirt to mourn, but this year’s wild strawberry jam, his favourite.

  When April returned to the kitchen, she looked down, distressed, at her blood-red apron.

  She undid the bow at the back. It was a family heirloom.

  She slipped the straps off her shoulders. Her mother’s. And grandmother’s before that.

  She pulled it off.

  She bunched it into a ball, opened the range, and shoved it in with the wood poker. It caught fire before she was able to seal it in, sending sparks and black ash up into the room.

  Murdo didn’t say a word. He didn’t dare.

  He knew the jam wasn’t for him. There had been none of April’s teasing glances and offers to taste. The jar stood, alone on its shelf in the pantry, a rare and precious thing.

  So who, what was it for? All that effort for one jar.

  She couldn’t explain it herself.

  But she knew who it was for.

  It was Gus’s idea. It came to her while looking out her back window at the devastation on the cape. The horizon was flattened, with the trailer gone, the dome a blackened circle, and the turbine a giant metallic skeleton clinging to the cape.

  They could do something about the turbine. Sell off the metal.

  Gus wanted rid of it. “I think young Lili’s right. It’s evil, that turbine—standing or lying down. We want it out of here.”

  “How?” Hy was staring out the window at the damaged cape.

  “Fetch a pretty penny for the metal in that. ’Spect Ben knows who’d take it. ’Spect Ben could use the money.” The tower had demolished Ben’s farm tractors – his livelihood. Billy and Madeline were agonizing over that fact, although everyone, including Ben, kept reassuring them that it had been worth it, that you couldn’t put a price on children’s lives.

  “No, no, don’t even think about it,” Ben had told a worried Billy who kept swearing to repay him. “I’ll worry about it.” Ben was worried. He had a bit in the bank, but that was for their retirement. Farmers don’t have company pension plans.

  “How he’ll replace them otherwise, I don’t know.” Gus sat down and picked up her sewing. “Those tractors and balers don’t come cheap. Sell the metal, that’s what I say. Get rid of it.”

  “But Newton…it belongs…”

  “Where’s he now? We want clear of it. It’ll hurt tourism more than that trailer of Fiona’s, rest her soul.”

  “I’m not sure…Jamieson…”

  “If she has a problem with it, tell her to come to me.” End of argument.

  Hy went down to the cape for a close look at the devastation. There was a dirty blue quarter-ton truck with a peeling sign painted on the cab: Scruffer’s Scrap Metal and Sanitation. A short, odd-looking man with bowed legs stood beside it. His hair lived a life of its own atop his head, thinning, a mix of ginger and white, frizzing out in all directions. Ginger-and-white stubble peppered his chin. He looked a bit like a homeless elf.

  “Heard that this come down yesterday,” he said as Hy approached.

  “You live nearby?”

  “Oh no. T’other end of the oi-land.”

  Word travelled fast on this “oiland,” Hy thought.

  “Come t’see if mebbe I can make somethin’ of it.” He kicked a blade.

  “We’d like to sell it as scrap.”

  Scruffer surveyed the cape, his ginger brows hooding his eyes so that Hy couldn’t read the expression in them. He scratched his stubble.

  He shook his head slowly.

  “I dunno. I dunno. It’s tempting, but I’ll have to think about it.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  Scruffer pointed at the heap of metal. “That,” he said. “That turbine. I seen it was ours. We only just got rid of it. Why would I take it back?”

  “We? Got rid of it? Take it back?”

  He looked at her as if she were crazy, repeating everything he said.

  “We is the folks in Herring Cove. Not called that fer nuthin’. But when that fella from away planted that whiney windmill in Herring Cove, our fish disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. Overnight. Some said mebbe someone come and fished them out while we was sleepin’. I dunno. I just know they was gone.”

  “Didn’t they come back?”

  “Oh, yep, they come back, but not ’til we got rid of that.” He spat on the blade, a large glob that splattered when it hit the metal.

  “We convinced him to sell it off – to another come from away, and – ” he snapped his fingers again. “The fish came back.”

  Newton. That other “‘come from away”’ had been Newton.

  “Would’ve killed our village without the herring harvest.”

  “Almost killed ours, too,” said Hy. Scruffer lifted his ginger eyebrows in query.

  “The children. It went for the children.”

  Again, Scruffer surveyed the cape and the wreck of metal lying there.

  “I dunno, might be different now that it’s in bits. I dunno.”

  “What do you think it’s worth?”

  “Couldn’t say. Alls I know is there’s somethin’ about it. Somethin’ I don’t like. Somethin’…uh…what is it they say? Somethin’…”

  “Fishy?” said Hy.

  He smiled. There was a gap between his two front teeth.

  “That’s it…somethin’ fishy.”

  Hy thought of everything that had happened in The Shores while the wind turbine had been there. None of it good.

  She nodded her head. “Yep. Definitely something fishy.”

  She pulled out a business card.

  “If you do decide to take it, call me.”

  He took the card and stuck it in his shirt pocket. He pulled out one of his.

  “Scrap metal and sanitation,” she read. “That’s quite a combination.”

  “Guess I don’t mind cleaning up other people’s messes.”

  She watched as he walked back to his truck. He leapt over the metal nimbly. She wondered if he would be back. Should she worry about who to sell the metal to? Where its evil might go?

  Hy told Jamieson about her meeting with Scruffer and the plan to sell the turbine for scrap metal.

  Jamieson was doubtful.

  “It is Newton’s property. His estate�
�s.”

  “Then it should be his responsibility. But he can’t do anything about it. There must be some law against leaving an unsightly mess like that in a prime tourist location.”

  “If there is, I don’t know of it.” Jamieson sounded firm, but she felt herself caving in. She said nothing more for a moment.

  “If there isn’t, there should be,” Hy said. Jamieson still didn’t speak.

  They were standing on the steps of the police house. Hy had found Jamieson there, staring down at the cape, the wind turbine a dominant feature, twisted and brought to ground.

  “What do you think about Scruffer’s story? Do you think it was to blame?”

  “What? The windmill?” There was disbelief in Jamieson’s response.

  “Lili thinks it was evil.”

  “Yes, well, Lili.” Jamieson dismissed the idea and the woman. Flaky. Sweet and as flaky as a chocolate croissant.

  “Wind turbines are not a good thing, so close to people. Credible studies have shown that the noise affects the mind.”

  “How is that different from farm equipment, cars on the road, our washing machines or fridges?”

  “It’s continuous, for one thing, and invisible. It’s sound people can’t hear, sound waves called infrasound. It penetrates indoors through windows. People may not hear it, but it can affect their minds. Make them dizzy, give them vertigo, depression, insomnia, extreme annoyance.”

  “Someone would kill because they were in a bad mood?”

  “I’m sure people have killed over trying to get a decent night’s sleep.”

  Jamieson was silent for a moment, thinking about what Hy had said. Could there be something in it?

  “All of them – Viola, Fiona, Newton, and Anton were closer than anyone else to that turbine, and you have to admit they were all nuts. Mental instability. It’s one of the side-effects.”

  “They were all a bit nuts anyway – without benefit of the turbine.” Jamieson gave Hy the suggestion of a smile.

  “You’re right there, but I think it made them all spin right out. That windmill was the real killer, the force behind the deaths of Viola, Fiona, and Newton.”

  “And the children,” Jamieson said softly, realization coming to her, unable to take her eyes off the mass of buckled metal on the cape. “It came for the children.”

  “It did. A strike straight to the heart.”

  Jamieson made her decision. “Get rid of the metal. Get it out of here. The sooner the better.”

  Jamieson was in so deep, what did one more transgression matter?

  There were plenty of rational reasons to remove it – safety was foremost – but what she really thought was that once that hunk of metal was removed from the village, things would get better.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The one shadow remaining over The Shores was what was going to happen to Jamieson.

  The Superintendent had expressed his outrage at Jamieson’s behaviour to fan his own self-importance at a detachment meeting. It took less than a day for that confidential information to travel from the meeting in Charlottetown to the front parlours and kitchens of The Shores.

  The villagers had become not fond of, but accustomed to, Jamieson. There were a few who, like the Superintendent, were outraged at her sending blank pages instead of reports.

  Gus found it endearing.

  “Just right,” she said to Hy. “They can mind their business and we’ll mind ours.”

  Mostly they admired Jamieson’s pluck in bucking authority and closing a circle of justice around The Shores. Her justice. Their justice.

  Her actions in saving the children from the tower had sealed the villagers’ loyalty to her. She wasn’t exactly one of their own, but she was one of their own “come from aways.”

  Jamieson confided in Hy that the Superintendent was coming back and that she expected to be stripped of her posting. Hy went door to door to remind people how much they had to thank Jamieson for.

  The Superintendent had called a meeting at the hall, and invited the whole village. They didn’t need to be asked twice.

  April had arrived with a small gift she slipped into Jamieson’s hands. She had meant to give it at Christmas, but now seemed the right time.

  It was the jar of wild strawberry jam. The label read “Jamieson’s Jam.”

  “The only one of its kind,” April whispered, and was rewarded with a wide smile. Jamieson loved strawberry jam, but would never eat it. It would remain sealed in her pantry, a reminder of the day they very nearly lost the children. If that had happened – the soul would have gone out of The Shores. Its heart would have been broken.

  That mattered very, very much to Jamieson, in a way it never had before about any other place. But it was too late. Unless she was very wrong, she was about to be removed from the village.

  Murdo, bless him, stood solidly by Jamieson’s side, apparently willing to share whatever fate Jamieson met. Little Alice Dewey had slipped up on Jamieson’s other side, trying to catch hold of her hand. Jamieson resisted, but then clutched the child’s hand like a lifeline. Alice, smothering a Snow White figurine in her other sticky fist, beamed up in admiration at her real-life heroine with the secret identity.

  Hy stood on the sidelines, anxiety etched on her face, and Ian stood beside her, a hand of support lightly on her shoulder. They liked Jamieson. Whatever the nature of their own topsy-turvy relationship, what happened to her mattered to them.

  Gus wasn’t there. She was waiting for a Skype call from Antarctica. Anxious moments. Internet connectivity was poor at The Shores. Gus was convinced the network performed better when she had a fresh cup of tea. She’d had quite a few.

  The Superintendent stood on the stage, preparing to speak, but he couldn’t get a word in, as the villagers rushed to the defence of their Mountie.

  “My Wayne would of lost his way without her,” said Mimi Taylor, a new addition to the village from Winterside. “I brought him here to get him away from that bad crowd he was running with. But he got caught up with Jared MacPherson. She – Constable Jamieson – put a stop to that, took him under her wing. He’d been terrorizing the older folks , now he’s gentle as a lamb. Wants to be a police officer hisself one day. She beamed at the taciturn Wayne, who, though not a model of good behaviour, had improved considerably under Jamieson’s vigilance.

  “She saved my Buffy’s life,” said Olive MacLean of her six-year-old granddaughter. “She was nearly drownded last summer, but the officer here pulled her out. Musta wrecked her uniform – went in boots and all.”

  The Superintendent held up his hand.

  “All very fine,” he said. “But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.”

  Here it comes. They all thought the same thing.

  “I’m here to talk about yesterday.”

  The floodgates opened.

  A cacophony of cries went up – the villagers all talking at once – about what might have happened to all the children if Jamieson hadn’t responded so quickly and bravely when the wind turbine came down.

  Parents hugging their children were reliving their fear, expressing their relief, tears in their eyes.

  The Superintendent held up his hand, but they didn’t respond. A group of teenage boys at the back of the hall began chanting, “We want Jamieson.”

  Finally, Jamieson put up her hand, and gradually the crowd calmed down.

  The Superintendent cleared his throat a few times to silence them.

  “I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but it’s unnecessary.”

  That’s it, they all thought. She’s really going to go.

  “Constable Jamieson has operated in some…uh…unorthodox ways. But what she did on the cape the other day was nothing short of heroic. I am recommending her for a medal.”

  “I am not the one who should rec
eive it,” she protested. “There were many heroes on the cape. Madeline and Billy. Hy, Ian, the children who helped other children…”

  Superintendent Constable held up his hand.

  “All in good time. Perhaps you’ll write a report…a full report, detailing it for me.”

  “I will.”

  “No blank pages.”

  “No blank pages.”

  It would be nice to get a medal instead of a pink slip, but the village’s acceptance and defence of her was more important. It warmed Jamieson’s cold heart and broke the ice around it. It was painful at first, and so, too, was the feeling that surged in and replaced the ice,– such a feeling, warm, full of… joy. Yes, joy. The last time Jamieson had felt real joy was as a child, before the tragedy that had killed her parents.

  Maybe saving the children here would go some way towards expiating that guilt. But it would never fully leave her, as April Dewey’s sense of guilt about what she had done, though not fatal, would never leave her.

  Thump. Thud. Thump.

  Something was hitting the metal roof. Hailstones. Not sharp enough to be hailstones.

  Everyone crowded to the front door – Jamieson and Constable and Hy and Ian pushing their way through to emerge first.

  Snakes.

  Live snakes.

  Snakes falling from the sky.

  To Ian, it looked like the real deal this time.

  They looked up. Listened to see if there were an airplane. Nothing but the sound of the snakes, thumping to the ground and slithering away, those that weren’t smashed and killed.

  There were only two types of snake on the island. None of these were of either species.

  There was a stampede of villagers, heading in every direction, mostly into their cars.

  Ian pulled out his iPhone and began taking photographs.

  “Get control of this, Jamieson. It’s your turf.” Superintendent Constable dove for his vehicle. He was sweating in beads. He was terrified of snakes.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, as he peeled out, cutting off a couple of other cars, and bringing them to a screeching halt.

  Jamieson looked at Hy. She smiled. And winked.

  Smiled. And winked. Jamieson.