The Boy in the Burning House (19 page)

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.

At the door stood Father Fisher with a rifle in his hands. He had just engaged the bolt action to put a shell into the firing chamber. The rifle was aimed at Jim.

Fisher was smiling. “My, but the Lord does go on answering my prayers,” he said. “That's the power of faith, Jim Hawkins.”

Jim knew the rifle. It was a Cooie bolt action .22. It usually sat in a rack above the door in the back room. It was for varmints — raccoons with a taste for the hen house, groundhogs who set up shop in the vegetable garden, beavers that couldn't be persuaded to build elsewhere.

Jim stared at Father Fisher defiantly. Fisher raised the rifle to his shoulder, expertly looking down the sights.

“I grew up in the country, Jim. I know how to use this thing.” Jim flinched. It was enough to make Fisher lower the firearm to rest in the crook of his arm. But he didn't engage the safety.

He glanced around the half-painted room. “What a difference a day makes,” he said.

“You did it, didn't you?”

Fisher held Jim's angry gaze as if it were a wasp in a jar. “If that's what you care to believe.”

“It's what's
true
.”

“It's what you
believe
to be true, jimbo. That doesn't quite make it the Gospel Truth.”

“Don't talk to me about the Gospel,” said Jim. “You've got red paint all over your hands.”

Fisher glanced at the fingers of his hand, unperturbed. “Who's to say it isn't blood?”

“You killed my father,” shouted Jim.

Fisher showed no emotion. “Only a lunatic would think to say such a thing.” He spoke softly. “Start spreading it around and people just might think you're as crazy as Ruth Rose.”

“You killed Francis Tufts,” said Jim. “And you killed my father because he was going to tell on you.”

“Really?” said Fisher placidly. “You must tell me all about it. Sometime. But right now, I'm on a tight schedule.” His eyes wandered again to the letters.

“If this is what you came for, take it,” rasped Jim. He threw the letters, which fluttered to the floor in front of the pastor.

Fisher kneeled to retrieve the little bundle. “Thank you,” he said. “It would have been far better had I found it last night,” he added wearily.

“Ruth Rose didn't have it,” said Jim.

Fisher was reading the letter from Laverne, his gaze darting back and forth from the page to his captor.

“I know,” he said. “When I didn't have any luck here, I put two and two together and went home again.” He folded up the letters and put them in the back pocket of his jeans. He was wearing a denim jacket over a work shirt. He wasn't wearing his dog collar. Jim couldn't recall ever seeing him without it. On his feet were sneakers, wet and speckled with greyish grit. Jim had never seen him dressed in normal clothes.

“Nancy was gone, of course, but I was able to reconstruct her treachery,” he said. His eyes invited Jim to ask him how and it gave Jim a certain amount of pleasure not to. But Fisher could not resist a captive audience.

“I found a discarded piece of note paper in the garbage can: an 800 number — FedEx, as it turned out — with the confirmation number jotted down underneath. Handy thing, a confirmation number. That's how I was able to trace the parcel and find that it would be delivered here by three o'clock today.” He laughed at this. “Only three hours late,” he said. “I have had to wait with the patience of Job.”

He had been around the farm somewhere all afternoon. Jim shuddered.

“I must admit,” continued Fisher, “I wasn't quite sure how I would handle it. I thought maybe I could cut the courier off at the pass, before you or your mother noticed — what with all the noise and all. I didn't fancy a run-in with Iris. I'm sure you've been telling her all kinds of wild and fanciful stories. I trusted in the Lord to make my way easier. And voilà! Off goes Iris on some errand.” He looked at his watch. “It's too early for work, I guess, but there's nowhere she could be going that would take less than half an hour, so here we are, Jim, alone at the end of the world.”

The menace in his voice was studied, calculated to frighten. This time Jim didn't flinch. But he had to stop himself from spitting in the man's face. Fisher grinned.

“You hate me, dont you,” he said. “Go on, admit it.” Jim clenched his fists and swallowed the venom that was filling his mouth.

“Hate will do you in, Jimbo,” said the pastor. “Just like it did your father.”

Jim launched himself at the man — hurled himself with a vengeance, pushing off from the ladder, which crashed to the floor behind him. His head met Fisher square in the chest, his arms swinging. Fisher gave, but
only a little, and the next moment Jim was lying on his back on the floor with the muzzle of the rifle pressed painfully against his chest. He laid his head back, breathing hard, his nose sucking in the burned smell of fine sawdust.

“Hate warps a man, Jim,” said Fisher. “Makes him putty in the Devil's hands. It killed Francis Tufts, too. You want to hear the story?”

“No,” said Jim. Carefully, he pushed the barrel of the rifle away from his chest. Fisher didn't stop him. His eyes were blazing.

“Your father started the fire that killed Francis Tufts. Bet you didn't know that! No, of course not. Well, it's true. He thought he was burning down my father's hay mow. But he was too full of hate to know or care what the consequences of his action might be. See how it happens? When you're burning up with hate, it doesn't take much.”

Fisher's eyes were watering, though his voice remained more or less composed. Jim closed his own eyes, tried to control his breathing. Then he smelled, suddenly, the acrid stink of sweat near his face and opened his eyes to find Fisher kneeling over him, his face so close that Jim had to turn away from the stench.

“After the fire I was scared,” said Fisher. “I ran off and hid. Hid and prayed. And that's when the miracle happened. The Lord came into my heart and took up permanent residence there. He decided there was a lot of life in me and it would be a shame to waste it. I did some fierce praying and it
saved our hides
, Jimbo. But did your daddy accept that gift from above? No. He couldn't. Didn't have the faith. And when Stanley and his impertinent mother crawled out of the woodwork a year or so back, Hub got to hating again. Hating
himself
.
As if he hadn't learned from that fire what hatred can do to a man. He couldn't stop himself, couldn't stand it anymore. You hear what I'm saying, boy?”

Jim lay perfectly still, his head pressed to the floor.

“My trust in the Lord never faltered,” said Fisher. “I led Hub to that cabin New Year's Eve. I knew I was a sinner for my part in the whole thing, but I knew the Lord loved me anyway. ‘Hated the sin, loved the sinner,' as we like to say. ‘Hub,' I told him. The Lord knows of our sins. No one else
needs
to. One day we will answer to Him. In the meantime, let's get on with this life the best way we know how.' But could 1 convince him of that? No, I could not.”

Fisher leaned back on his haunches. He lay the rifle across his thighs, looked thoughtful. His face was drawn, his eyes tired.

Then, abruptly, he was back in the present, looking at his watch, climbing to his feet.