The Friends of Meager Fortune (33 page)

“No, I didn’t—I knew I shouldn’t go down there because it was where Daddy and Mommy were.”

“But you went back.”

“I did not—ever.”

“The letter from Lula Brower proves you did. Perhaps you were there alone—or with Reggie—”

Silence.

With hardly a breath, he switched topics: “Who wanted Owen home?”

“Well—Mrs. Jameson.”

“But it was you, wasn’t it, who wanted him off the train?”

“I did suggest it to some of the men—”

“Why did you suggest it—did you suggest it—well—you tell us why.”

“To help Mrs. Jameson with the mill.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“I was the last in town to know he was on his way home—”

“But did you want him back?”

“Yes—but—”

“Oh, you wanted him back—a hero, a Victoria Cross recipient—you wanted him back.”

“Yes—to help Reggie—so Reggie would take his job back and be himself.”

“But was Reggie here?”

“No.”

“You were here—you were at the house—you were staying at Jameson’s during the week—”

She had no idea this was coming, and neither did Owen—though to the end of her life she must have thought that Owen did know. And it must have broken her heart.

“So you felt betrayed not only by the Browers but perhaps by Mr. Jameson too.”

“No.”

“What else did you know about Owen—you say you knew he saved Reggie Glidden?”

“Yes—I knew that.”

“But you would marry Reggie Glidden?”

“Yes—”

“Why, did you love him?”

Camellia didn’t answer. The judge instructed her to.

“Did you love him?”

“I don’t think so then—but now I—”

Pillar interrupted: “Do you love Owen?”

There was silence.

“Do you love Owen?” Mr. Pillar stated.

“In a way,” she whispered, “but he was my friend.”

“From the moment he kissed you—isn’t that right?”

She didn’t answer. Tears started down her face.

“From the moment he kissed you?”

“Before,” she whispered, “when he was a boy, just as I would think of anyone being teased and—”

“Do you care for everyone when they kiss you?”

Loud laughter, judge’s gavel.

Pillar turned away, adding, “Let’s just end with this. Reggie coming back did not destroy Owen’s plans—they destroyed yours.”

Pillar turned and walked back to the desk where Owen was sitting in a state of helplessness.

“I think we got her,” Pillar whispered to him.

After the trial was adjourned for the day Owen was frantic to see her, to explain he’d had no idea the questions his lawyer was about to ask. She didn’t come.

EIGHT

The next day Pillar seemed to lose energy. He called few witnesses. One was Sonny Estabrook. He asked about the letter but was never able to refute the prosecution’s claim that one of the main reasons for Owen’s anger was the fact that Reggie was about to shift jobs. He was about to lose his best Push, who disagreed about men on Good Friday. Reggie had shown Monk this letter and bragged about it, had told Monk what a dangerous place Good Friday was.

The other witness Pillar called was Mary Jameson. The first thing they cleared up was the matter of the fingerprints. Mary had gone down to the warehouse, which she said she periodically did because of Will’s memory, seen the old suitcase and put it inside the wall.

“There was nothing intended by it, was there?”

“Of course not,” Mary said.

Mary, her hat on sideways and her new suit jacket already looking wrinkled, also told the court that nothing had gone on in her house between Owen and Camellia. That there had been a celebration and the kiss got mixed up. A great uproar occurred, and the judge said he would clear the court.

She said that Owen had been away in the woods, so how would he have known Camellia was enticing her husband to come back—and how would he have known that Reggie Glidden was in town, or how would he have lured Reggie Glidden anywhere when he was not sure how long he would be on Good Friday. If anyone had known, it would be Camellia.

“You didn’t see Owen flustered or covered in blood or any of those things?”

“No—never—well, I mean not since he murdered Solomon Hickey—”

This brought an uproar, and even Owen laughed.

The prosecutor countered with this: “Of course you want to blame this on Camellia—it would be nice if you could. You would have it all sewn up. Well, Reggie did wait where Owen wanted him to. And Owen met him there. Reggie wanted to know about his wife. Owen was at the old warehouse—he had been seen there twice. Of course he would say he was going there for no other reason than to look for a place to store board. Of course he would lure Reggie there. Why haven’t we seen Reggie, yet seen his bloody coat? And why hasn’t live Reggie Glidden come forward to help refute the coroner’s assertion that dead Reggie Glidden is still in the morgue?”

Laughter, objection overruled.

That night, alone in the dark, his leg paining so badly he could hardly walk, Owen thought of something utterly fantastic—something that linked this to what was happening in his camp.

At first it was just a flicker—some substance lingering in his thought—but once pressured by his intellect it glowed, and over time glowed again.

He thought of two things. The first was that his men were in danger—in some internecine way beyond the storm. Then, almost asleep, he sat straight up. He got up and dressed and waited until dawn. It was a bitterly cold night. Jail seemed safe.

How had he come to think of this? Well, he was thinking of his hanging. He had been told that there were many who wanted to help build the gallows, Colson and Davies and Lloyd being three. Then he wondered where they would get the wood.

“Hopefully from you,” the jailer had told him. “Estabrook won’t let a scaler do a rod—people think his wood’s bonkers—and Sloan is out.”

“You can have my wood—it may as well be stamped Estabrook—”

And then he slept fitfully, woke sweating and thinking of his wood. Then he sat up as if scalded.

If they wanted prophecy, he would give them it.

Someone was going to try and steal his wood, and he would hang unless Reggie Glidden came home, so they must let him out of jail and he must go and find him.

Owen Jameson took the stand at 10:17 on the morning of the 101st day of the haul.

What he had to say his lawyer was not prepared for, nor was the Crown. Nor was his mother, or anyone else. He said they had to let him go because he must do something, and lives were in danger if he did not.

Everyone laughed, but nervously, unsure if this was a madman like people now said.

“What do you have to do?”

“I have to go and check my stamps.”

Pillar did not understand this at all, but certain woodsmen laughed.

“I don’t understand.”

“It is no matter—but lives are now in danger.”

“What lives are in danger?”

“I suspect my teamsters are—”

“It’s a good time to find out,” someone yelled.

Uproar, laughing, clapping, hooting.

“My teamsters are in danger. And I’ll tell you this: the body
in the morgue might be a Dan or a George but it is not Reggie Glidden.”

Hilarious uproar.

“How is that—can you tell us where Reggie is now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But what do you wish us to do?”

“I want you to let me go, and I will help my men get the wood down—stop the culprit from stamping my logs with someone else’s stamp and figure out who that poor man in the morgue actually is.”

The court was adjourned for an hour. People stood near the door, wanting to get back in as soon as possible. “He’s out of his goddamn mind,” they said.

Just after one o’clock in the afternoon the trial resumed.

Angus Brower, of the farming Browers, his blondish-red hair over his reddish face, his bow tie just slightly askew, walked to the stand, and then turned his back on Owen before he asked his first question. He spoke very softly. It increased the weight of what he had to say. “Let you go—yes, you would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course—and I’d be able to help you solve this.”

“Of course you would, and we would all be so grateful to you again—just as we were during the war. You love gratitude, don’t you?”

Owen said nothing.

“What you are actually feeling is guilt, isn’t it, sir?”

“I suppose I am a little.”

“Why?”

“Because—well, because of Camellia and Reggie—who should have been left alone to solve their problems like any married couple.”

“But you were willing to go to Montreal with her.”

“No, I wasn’t—”

“But you gave her money?”

“Yes—”

“You didn’t mind compromising her with phone calls and money?”

There was silence for almost a minute.

Chairs squeaked. The prosecutor turned and faced the stand again. He looked nonplused, continued: “Did you like kissing Camellia?”

Pause.

“Did you like kissing her?”

“Well—of course, who wouldn’t—but I didn’t know who she was.”

Loud laughter.

“And you liked putting the VC on her breast, didn’t you—that must have been for her husband’s benefit, and you told her you would marry her.”

“That was a joke—I didn’t know who she was—I mean, already married.”

“Perhaps she didn’t think it a joke?”

“I only wanted to help Reggie.”

“Ahhh—helping Reggie—yes, men have been using that ploy for three thousand years, I am sure—and women have been anticipating it—?”

“Not at all.”

“Now your lawyer wants to blame it on her.”

“I do not wish to.”

“No, you know where the guilt lies.”

Objection.

“That’s why you want to save everyone now—it is your guilt at having destroyed everything one man had and was.”

Objection.

“No further questions.”

That night, in the dark, upon George Street, Brower walked. The lights were out in the house. Usually most of the lights would be on and supper made. It was physiotherapy day, and usually Lula was more optimistic on these days.

On the veranda he felt something—an anticipation in the cold. The light was out in the hall. But to his surprise he saw his daughter sitting in their living room alone, darkness coming down upon her, the books she so enjoyed as a girl behind her on shelves. These were not the books of Owen Jameson, these were the books of proud young ladies accomplished at winning spelling bees, which their stern daddies had always equated with genius. She knew this now—the books a reprimand not only to her but to him. There was no
Ulysses
here, no Conrad or Hardy, no Brontë either. There were excerpts of tedious novels from the
Ladies’ Home Journal
. There was
Picks of 1936
, which never did include Faulkner or Hemingway or Fitzgerald. A book by Steinbeck had made it to the third shelf. There was no George Orwell; there was Pearl S. Buck.

This is who Owen Jameson had thought would be a kindred soul when he was fifteen.

“Can you hear the wind?” she said when he entered. “I have been hearing it—well, all my life now. I should have been prepared for this—you never know when or how ‘this’ will happen,” she said, and she waved her hand toward her face. “Both of us, I suppose, should have been,” she smiled. “We would have gotten along much better, I think—without the obligatory search for a husband.”