Reprisal (11 page)

"Guess not enough," Captain Duffield said, "to be out here by his lonesome."

Joanna was walking around the fire pit again, looking down into the dark water as if something of her father might still be under it. "This is the way he wanted to live."

"Oh, sure. We got a bunch of old folks out here."

"And it was just an accident? Absolutely just an accident. ..."

"Didn' say that. We don't say accident till the insurance guys say accident--but the police were out here last night, an' Ted Lujack from Beaconsfield FD came out, too--an' he's an ace. Said it looked like a hot coal thing, which is what we think, too, and we see a lot of 'em.--Stove door was left open just a little bit, some coals rolled out on the floor, and that's all she wrote. Nighttime, so your dad would have been asleep." Duffield closed his eyes for an instant, leaned his head to the left to illustrate sleep.

"I see."

"He probably woke up, came out to deal with it, threw a little water on an'

that was no use. People ... people live right through the woods there, they called it in.--An' you know, most cases, there isn't much sufferin'. Fumes'll get you before the flames."

Joanna was across the pit from Duffield as he was talking. She wondered how many families had been told fumes got the person before the flames.

"Are you saying ... and those people who live nearby ... are you saying he just died and didn't suffer so terribly?"

Captain Duffield looked at her across the ruin. Joanna could see his reflection beneath him, in the black water. His reflection seemed to open its mouth to speak an instant before he did. "No, can't say that for sure, Mrs.

Reed. Wish I could."

His reflection seemed to want to add something more ... to warn her not to inquire further about suffering. About being burned to death, and crying out.

Joanna walked back around the edge of the pit, but didn't look into it anymore. "... And nothing strange, nothing unusual? My father wasn't senile, Mr. Duffield. He'd lived here, starting with summers, and heated with that stove for almost forty years."

"Yeah, but it only takes one mistake. You foolin' with fire, one mistake is all it takes."

"And nothing--nothing at all strange about this?"

"Only thing was a small pour pattern in the char, what had been a couple of floor planks --the width of that charcoal is what tells us they were floor planks. That's why I said he probably threw a little water on there. Any liquid'll pattern like that, a wet stain. It'll burn that pattern right into the wood, charred doesn' make any difference."

"A pour pattern. ..."

"Yeah, something just spilled there, and not much. An' Ted thought maybe an accelerant, you know, your dad got up at night, tried to jump-start his fire with a little kerosene or whatever?"

"He would never, never do that."

"Well, you're right. He didn' do that. Ted had that wood looked at first thing this morning, just to cover the bases, and it definitely wasn't a regular accelerant. You got esters and oils and so forth in that kind of liquid--those products are real complicated--and there was no chemical residue at all in those planks. Whatever it was just evaporated away real quick an' clean, so it was probably water. We think your dad woke up, found the fire an' threw some water on it, an' that didn' do any good."

Mr. Duffield--Captain Duffield; she was meeting captains now ... sea captains, fire captains--Captain Duffield made a graceful dismissive gesture with his right hand, showing how little good the water had done. "You know, small amount of water's not much use on an advanced pine-wood fire, you get old dry-cured lumber. The water hits an' you get a little pattern an' it effervesces an' it's gone."

"But something was poured on the fire."

"Right."

"--Something."

"Probably water."

"Could it have been anything else?"

"I guess ... umm ... lab alcohol wouldn' leave any residue. But I don't see why he would do that, Mrs. Reed."

Joanna tried to imagine her father in his flowered boxer shorts--Fruit of the Loom--standing sleepy and surprised. Pale, large, and lumbering, his body welted, softened, melted by time like candle wax, he poured an improbable small vase of water on a fire--a fire young, beautiful, full of ferocious energy, and growing.

Captain Duffield, apparently with other things to do, turned from the site and walked away toward their cars, his shoes making no sound on pine needles.

Joanna hurried after him as if she had another question she must ask, though she couldn't think of it.

He heard her coming and stopped, waiting for her.

"My husband," she said, surprising herself. "My husband was killed--drowned--a little over two weeks ago. This is the second person in my family." She said that as if this sturdy, pleasant man might be the one to do something about it.

"Jesus," he said. "That's just terrible. ..."

Wanda Dufour kept her offices in the Gertner--an elderly two-story brick building on Second Street. Chaumette, a shrinking town, now had only seven through streets. The others had gradually gone to lanes and dead ends on the south side, lined with shacks, mobile homes, and sheds. Past the tracks to the north, New England's pines and hemlocks had returned to vacant lots, a slow, steady triumph over the lumbermen who had seemed to conquer them through the last two centuries.

The Gertner was still a fully occupied structure. A small corner cafe, a shoemaker, and a beauty shop on the ground floor, real estate and lawyers'

offices on the second.

Joanna parked on the dirt lot in back, then had to walk around to the building's front. The back entrance had been nailed over with plywood. --The reason, the door's broken glass, still lay scattered on the steps.

She went in the front entrance, and through a heavy odor of chemicals from the beauty shop. Permanents being done. ... She climbed narrow creaking wooden stairs to the first landing, turned and climbed again. It was always a little surprising to notice how high the ceilings were in these old buildings. Even small rooms had ceilings twelve feet and higher, as if the nineteenth century had expected its children and grandchildren to become giants.

On the second floor, there was no sound, no sign of activity behind the first office doors--they had the sleepy look of locked. The last office, at the end of the short hall and overlooking the street, had W. Dufour--Attorney at Law in gilt paint on its door's frosted glass.

Sleigh bells jangled as Joanna walked in, and a stocky young woman in a white sleeveless blouse looked up from a desk. She was smiling, seemed happy to have company.

"Hi.--Can I help you?" She was a little too plump for the sleeveless blouse.

"I called. Joanna Reed."

"Oh, right. I'm Bobbie Munn; I was the one who talked with you. Ms. Dufour is in her office and you can go right up."

"Up?" Then Joanna saw three shallow steps leading to another level, and door, across the office. "Oh ... thanks."

... Wanda Dufour was bent behind her desk, searching for something in a side drawer. Only a thinning French knot of yellow-white hair was visible, and a small rounded hump high on her narrow back. Despite summer, she was wearing a black Chanel suit--an original, by the worn slate its black had faded to--and now too big for her.

"Joanna?" A reedy voice from behind the desk. There was a minor liquid sound.

"Yes."

"Sit down, dear." There was no aging quaver to Wanda Dufour's voice. It stayed on its notes, but as very thin sound with a whistle to it. Something, Joanna thought, to do with her teeth. False teeth.

Wanda shut the drawer and sat suddenly up with a glass in her hand that seemed to hold scotch or bourbon. She stared as if Joanna might have changed--as Wanda had certainly changed. Joanna hadn't seen her in five or six years, and those must have been harsh years into Wanda's late seventies. Her face, that in her youth had been big-eyed, blue-eyed, soft and neat, retroussee as a Persian kitten's --and that had, even when Joanna last saw her, remained a worn, softer, but acceptable version-had now collapsed. It was a sick old Persian now, its face fallen, blotched and crumpled. The blue eyes, watery, squinted out.

"I know," Wanda said. "Don't say it.--But you, thanks to that Indian blood, are still looking very good. You'll look good when you're sixty."

"Oh, I'll probably get fat. ..." Joanna sat in the only chair facing the desk

--an elderly straw-bottom bentwood. "Wanda, I'm sorry I didn't get your phone call. Sorry you had to go through the college and so forth."

"Well, your father was a reluctantly aging man. He hated it, took it very personally. He could have made sure his attorney had his daughter's vacation phone number in case of an emergency--but he didn't."

"I went out to look at the cabin--"

"Funeral pyre," Wanda said, as if she were correcting her. "It looked like that, and it smelled like that, and that's what I call it." She took a careful sip of her drink.

"Yes. ..."

"You know, Joanna, children never understand their parents at all--never know the real people they were. It's all Mommy-Daddy stuff, and believe me that's not the real person."

"I suppose that's true."

"For example--if you don't mind a little digression, a slight delay in our doing legal business--if you don't mind a little digression, I can tell you you never knew your father. ... Hell, your mother didn't know him. She thought your father was exactly what he seemed, a local lawyer with a local practice and two terms, a long time ago, as district attorney." Wanda swayed very slightly in her chair.

"--Well, let me correct that incorrect impression. Louis was a deeply unhappy man all his life; that's why he was so snotty to everybody but you--and me, because I knew the man. Louis Bernard did not like being a lawyer--which I always have liked, by the way. He absolutely hated it; he started hating it in law school. You'll notice he didn't care to do even his own legal work. ...

Speaking of which, I suppose we better talk a little will-and-testament business." Wanda lifted her glass, but didn't drink from it.

"--By the way, did you know your father wanted a career in the military? Does that surprise you? He wanted to be an officer in the artillery, of all things.

He had a book about a young man named Pelham. He had books on firing tables, for God's sake--you know, how to time explosive shells and drop them right on some poor dopes thirty miles away? Called a "guy thing," these days."

"I think I've heard of firing tables, but don't computers do that now?"

"Honey, how the hell do I know? All I know is, he wanted to be an officer in the artillery--and the man couldn't even get into the Korean thing when he was a kid. Not with that hockey knee."

"That's so strange. That's ... that sounds so odd."

"Oh, I know how bizarre it sounds, because I laughed at him when he mentioned it. ... That was thirty-four years ago, and he never mentioned it to me again.

That's how smart I was. Oh, I was very smart with Louis Bernard. It's called throwing your life away with both hands." Wanda sipped. "Okay, and so to business. ..."

"Daddy never said anything about it. He never mentioned it. Never ever mentioned going into the Army, or anything. ..."

"Joanna, let me give you some advice about men--well, it's a little late for either of us to be giving or taking that particular advice, I suppose. Still, let me give you some advice about men, which you may not be too old to take advantage of, once you're over these catastrophes." Wanda paused to sip again

... appeared to lose her thought, and sat looking at Joanna as if wondering what she was doing there. A few moments almost restful.

Then, as if her worn machinery had slipped back into gear, Wanda blinked, and said, "My advice is, pay attention to what men don't mention. And what I mean by that is, no man is ever really satisfied with what he's doing. There's always something else he has wanted to do, so there is always some sadness and unhappiness there, and of course we assume it's a love problem and we're the centerpiece and it's all about us or some other woman.--Wrong." She put her glass firmly down on the desk blotter.

"Frank loved to sail. I suppose that's what he would really have liked--something to do with the sea."

"Well, there you are. Frank was in that gymnasium or whatever down at your college, or out on the fields blowing his whistle at some muscular young idiots. Now, do you really think that is what he dreamed offor his life?"

"I suppose not. But he seemed happy, Wanda." Joanna wished the old lady would stop drinking while they talked ... at least change the subject from men's questionable happiness.

"Don't be silly--and we do have some business to do here, and we need to get to it--but don't be silly. Men usually seem happy. They're not like us, at least the good ones aren't. They may betray, they may beat us, they may leave.

But they don't whine. Your father was not a whiner. ..." Having said so much, Wanda seemed to need to catch her breath, and sat softly panting, very much an elderly cat, and ill.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, don't be an ass, Joanna. How could I be all right? I'm an elderly woman and I'm alone and Louis is dead and I've been drinking ... I am drinking. You are such a talent--and by the way, I read your last book and I was enormously impressed with those plant poems; I suppose you have to call them plant poems--"

""Xylem.""

"Yes. You could have had a better title, not something so botanical, but still those poems were beautiful. "Stems never knot, pause only to push out thorns along their way, then keep right on to break in blossoms. After that splitting, spraddling for bees, only their death surprises them. And not much.""

""And that not much.""

"Right--that's right. "And that not much." ... All too apropos. Anyway, those poems made me want to garden, which I have never done and have no wish to do--but a poet ought to know better than to ask me if I'm all right.

Okay?--Now, regarding Louis's will. ..."

"Wanda, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that you and Father were even seeing each other anymore."