Jim listened to Hec without a word, mechanically nodding his head. He thanked him, his voice listless, barely audible.
Then, as Hec was hanging up, Jim thought of something he wanted to say.
“Did she ask after me? I mean, did she want to see me or anything?”
No, she hadn’t. Jim grimaced. Then he hung up and stared at his mother for a moment before he could bring himself to explain. He spoke in a flat monotone.
“She broke into the Blessed T. some time this morning. She was painting slogans all over the walls. The same ones as here. Dickie Patterhew caught her, called the cops.” Iris shook her head sadly. Jim glared at her. “Don’t say it, okay?”
She came and gave him a hug, but he jerked away. “You think Dickie could have held her if she didn’t want to get arrested?” he said. His mother didn’t answer.
“Where is she now?” she asked.
“They’ve got her over at the jail until they can figure out what to do with her.” Even before Jim had finished the statement, his eyes flashed with panic. “Cripes!” he said, and he punched in the phone number at the Expositor again. Dorothy put him through to Hec.
“Hec, it’s me,” said Jim. “You’ve got to tell them not to let Father Fisher take her. Not let him near her.” His mother protested, but Jim turned away and cupped the phone protectively so that she couldn’t take it from him. She stood nearby, her arms folded, frowning. He hardly noticed; he was too busy listening to what Hec had to say.
Finally, he hung up again.
“Jim,” his mother said, “Father is her legal guardian.”
“That’s what Hec said, but it doesn’t matter anyway. They can’t find him. He’s not at home. Dickie says he hasn’t been at the church. He was supposed to speak at some luncheon in Smiths Falls and he never showed up.”
“Maybe he’s doing his rounds — the hospital, the nursing homes?”
Jim raised an eyebrow. “They checked everywhere. He’s gone.”
The two of them stood for a moment in a kind of combative silence. Fisher’s disappearance meant only one thing to Jim. He was on the run. His eyes challenged his mother to say different.
Ultimately, she gave up the staring match, put her ear protectors back on and continued to sand the floor. Jim had been washing the walls in preparation for painting, but he abandoned the task and headed outside. He sat at the table in the garden and tried to imagine Ruth Rose in a cell down at the lock-up behind the court. He imagined her shaking the bars and screaming at the guards. You couldn’t cage someone like Ruth Rose. What would they do with her? He didn’t want to think about it.
Hey, Jim, you’ve got to admit. This is a great idea.
What if it wasn’t an admission, but a declaration? Maybe she hadn’t spray-painted their kitchen. Maybe she just liked the idea enough to borrow it. Was that what she had meant?
Jim walked out into the yard past the old pickup, pounding the grimy cab with his fist as he passed. The sound of the sander was lost to him as he headed across the Twelfth Line, picking his way through the puddles.
Finally he stood on the edge of the road in waist-high goldenrod and dried-up Queen Anne’s lace. Late September had rusted the greenness but tinted everything lavender with wild aster.
He stared northeast up towards the ridge.
Back in the house he marched straight through the kitchen and the parlour to the little room his mother used as an office. There was a sign on the door that read, Action Central, but it was just a cubbyhole of a room, a place where Iris paid bills and kept seed catalogues.
The survey map lay open on the old roll-top desk where he had left it the other day when he had been searching for Mount Tabor. Now he followed his finger until he found the little black square that represented his own house, pushed on up from there to Purvis Poole’s sand and gravel pit and from there worked his way up to the ridge. The contour rings grew closer and closer together with numbers 575, 625, 675 to the highest point of land for miles around, 725. Seven hundred and twenty-five whats? Feet, yards, metres? He didn’t know. But high. And there was a little crossed pickaxe and spade that represented a mine with the word “abandoned” written beside it. There were other mine markers, all abandoned, but none so close, none so handy.
He hadn’t mentioned Mount Tabor to Hec. His story was unbelievable enough without dragging Biblical references into it. But he remembered what Ruth Rose had said about the ridge that very morning.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he muttered.
He looked up suddenly. His mother was leaning against the door jamb. He hadn’t even heard the sander stop. She was frowning. Mercifully, it wasn’t a my-son-is-going-crazy kind of frown. More like a there’s-work-to-be-done-and-you’re-goofing-off kind of a frown. He threw down the map and jumped to his feet.
“Sorry,” he said, saluting her as he passed. The last thing he needed now was to have his mother on his case.
They worked hard. Physical labour was not new to either of them but there was more at stake than a job to do. It was like getting back in the saddle when you’ve been thrown, parachuting again after a risky fall. As he painted, Jim thought of the bright red Coke can he had picked up in the back field only a few weeks earlier, how upset it had made him to know that anyone had been walking around on their land. Who would have thought it would come to this?
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.
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.