“It gets steep,” Ralphie said as Wilf limped up to him. He was eyeing the cane, taking Wilf’s measure.
“Where’s Andy?”
“He knows the way.”
The woods behind Ralphie fell steeply down into a dark fold in the earth. They started the descent along a narrow dirt path, the lantern seeming as much a hindrance as a help as far as Wilf was concerned. He felt blinded by it.
Ralphie went first and Wilf found himself bracing against the boy’s shoulder rather than trusting his cane on some of the steeper spots. Ralphie didn’t say a word, just accepted Wilf’s weight as if they’d been doing that descent every night of their lives. Wilf could see another pool of lantern light farther down.
“That’s Dad,” Ralphie said. “Blue found it first and then Dollie was all over it. I had to put them on their leads and haul them back up to the house. Me and Earl did. They were going crazy.”
Wilf nodded. He didn’t feel like asking a question.
The ground levelled off. Wilf could see the other light some small distance off the path. Ralphie went first, pushing through the branches and then holding them so they wouldn’t whip back into Wilf’s face.
Andy and an older man were standing in a grove of trees. The man looked Wilf’s way as Wilf came into the light. He had a short grey growth of beard as if he’d been caught by surprise and hadn’t had a chance to shave.
“This is Wilf,” Andy said. “My uncle, John Moss.”
The man nodded cordially enough and then turned to look at something on the ground. Wilf couldn’t see anything at first in the shifting ring of light. He took a step forward and now he could see something, a large wire cage sitting beside a tree. There was something inside it but he couldn’t make out what it was. He took another few steps. A small white hand came into view, and between each finger Wilf could see a faint pink membrane, like a webbing.
He knelt down and forced himself to look toward the face. Puckering lips, round eyes set wide apart, a slanting forehead. The child inside looked for all the world like a fish. A fish with a fringe of blonde silky hair.
“What the hell is it?” Andy whispered.
Curled up on its side it was as naked as the day it was born. A piteous rib cage pushed out, each small bone defined in the light of the lantern, each bone rippling under translucent skin.
“It’s a boy,” Wilf said.
“A water boy,” John Moss added. “Looks like something that came up out of the river.”
For the first time Wilf could hear a soft rush of water somewhere nearby. “Life unworthy of life,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Andy was still whispering, as if the boy, clearly dead, might hear.
“That’s what they called them.”
“Who? What are you talking about?” Andy was sounding a little alarmed.
“Children.”
“There’s only one child here, Wilf,” Andy said.
“How old do you figure it is?” John Moss had moved closer.
“He looks maybe seven,” Andy said. “It’s hard to tell.”
“Who would do this?” Ralphie asked. He looked dazed in the lantern light. Frightened.
Hansel in the heart of the woods, Wilf thought.
“I’ll have to call the Chief in again. Jesus Christ,” Andy said.
“I’ll wait here.” Wilf struggled to his feet.
“You don’t have to do that.” Andy was already moving away.
“Someone should,” Wilf said.
Ralphie was backing up into the trees. It wasn’t going to be him.
“I’ll just slow you down, anyway. Besides, I need a rest.”
“I better check on Bess,” John Moss said. “If I know her, she’ll be thinking we’re all dead and buried by now. We’ll get back here as soon as we can.”
“I’ll hold the fort.” Wilf leaned on his cane.
“We’ll leave you the lantern,” the farmer said.
The men moved off. Wilf stepped outside the pool of light and watched the other lantern move away, slant upwards, break into separate fragile beams and disappear.
He turned back to the boy. A criss-cross of shadows lay over his small body. The longer Wilf stood there and the longer he stared, the more it seemed that the boy was floating in the air.
Wilf walked back to the cage and knelt down. A large closed padlock hung from a latch on the door. He looked around. He knew it was only a matter of time before they crept out of the shadows. The boy in his stripes. The man in his dark coat.
All Wilf could hear was the river moving restlessly, somewhere unseen.
All he could see were the surrounding trees.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Wilf didn’t go home that night. He didn’t want to continue to torture his father. He chose to sleep on Andy’s couch instead.
Another murder. Of course everyone was trying to convince themselves it was no such thing. Even the hard-bitten Chief of Police.
The kid had died of natural causes. A creature like that would be sickly anyway, wouldn’t he? And an embarrassment. Whoever had been looking after him, no doubt someone from some distance away, had decided the best thing to do was to drop him off in the woods like an unwanted puppy. No involvement that way, whether it had been a private individual or some Dickensian institution for the retarded. No uncomfortable questions.
Even Andy’s Aunt Bess had brightened at that theory. She made pots of tea and handed out pieces of pie to Bolton and the Chief and some curious neighbours. It was a stranger’s problem. Strangers were driving by the farm and throwing out kittens and puppies and garbage all the time, Aunt Bess declared. It was becoming a disgrace.
Wilf sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and eating peach pie, and every once in a while when Aunt Bess bustled by they’d exchange glances. He could see that she hadn’t been fooled, not even by herself. A deep unease haunted her eyes.
Wilf sat on Andy’s couch and looked out the front window. The house was quiet. Andy and Linda and Davey and Carmen were fast asleep somewhere upstairs. It was comforting to know that they were just above his head, breathing softly, trusting, untroubled by his presence.
He looked at his watch. It was almost two o’clock. He looked out the window again. No lights in the house across the street.
He had no doubt that it was another murder. It fit the pattern. They were useless eaters. That’s what the doctors had officially designated them, and then they had starved or injected or gassed them by the hundreds. Wilf had no doubt at all.
Five murders and a suicide in the space of two months in a town of less than four thousand people. How was that possible?
The bacterium hadn’t worked, Chasson had said.
Wilf stretched out on the couch. He could feel the injection site high on his inner right thigh, though there was no mark left to see. He’d felt it there ever since he’d talked to Chasson.
“You’re a bomb that failed to go off,” Chasson had said.
Wilf looked up at the ceiling. He could feel something moving through his bloodstream. He could feel his body beginning to tremble.
When Wilf woke up the next morning, Linda was standing across the room clutching a tea towel and staring at him.
“What time is it?”
“It’s after ten.”
“Where’s Andy?”
“He’s gone to work. The kids have gone to school.”
“They were quiet.”
“I guess so. And you were really in a deep sleep.”
Wilf pushed himself up to a sitting position. Though he’d left most of his clothes on, he thought Linda might leave the room and give him some privacy but she didn’t.
“I’ll put some coffee on,” she finally said.
“Good.”
She didn’t move. “What happened last night. That little boy. Do you think Andy’s going to get into any more trouble?”
“No. Why would he? He left the scene untouched. Called the Chief right away.”
“That’s what he said.”
“There you are, then.”
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t get involved any more than you are, and don’t get Andy involved this time, just stay out of it, okay? I don’t say this to be mean, but Andy has a family.”
“I know he does.”
“Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I don’t want him fired! There are terrible things going on. Everyone’s frightened. You know that, don’t you? The whole town is frightened. All we want is for everything to go back just the way it was.”
“Before I came home, you mean?”
“No! I don’t mean that, I mean these things! These awful things! I know I’m sounding stupid but everyone should just stop and not try to do too much. That’s what I’m saying. Let’s just everybody stay still and let things get back to normal. Like it was. That’s all I’m saying.” Linda’s face looked blotched and pinched.
“Okay.”
“I’m not saying you can’t be friends.”
“I know you’re not.”
“Anyway, that’s fine then. I’ll get you a coffee.”
Linda would have cooked him up some eggs and sausages but Wilf said he wasn’t all that hungry. He drank one coffee and ate a piece of toast and told Linda not to worry. Linda nodded her head but looked unconvinced. Wilf pushed out the side door. His father’s Buick Roadmaster was still sitting there.
Wilf pulled out of the drive and wondered what his father was thinking. Dark thoughts, no doubt. He drove slowly toward the bridge that led to the downtown.
It had taken Andy about an hour to return to Wilf and that spot in the woods. Wilf had waited and watched all that time. The man and the boy hadn’t appeared. Only the wire cage and the child inside to keep him company.
Don’t think about it, he commanded himself as he drove along. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. What kind of person would leave a dead boy in a cage in a woods and not expect it to be found? A city person? A stupid person? Of course it would be found. And anyone with a pair of eyes could see that he’d been starved to death. His rib cage looked to be as much on the outside of his skin as on the inside. His parched and swollen mouth.
He passed the office before he realized he’d gone too far. He circled around the cenotaph, came back and pulled into a parking spot. And what could he say to his father this time? How could he explain everything once again? Another dead body?
Father. I have a plague
Wilf closed his eyes. His breath had gone away somewhere. And Carole would be there, too. And it was a sure thing that Nancy Dearborn would have called.
Wilf pushed the car door open. He could hear a voice ringing through the cool air.
A man was preaching on the other side of the street.
“Jesus has given us a gift,” he was calling out. “In our frailty, in our blindness. We have been given a gentle and surprising light.”
The man had positioned himself in front of the town hall and was gathering quite a crowd. A few startled faces were peering down from the town-hall windows. Wilf crossed the street.
“We can see him clearly. We can see him in our mind’s eye. This maimed one who has been given to us kindly, as a sign, as an instruction, as a guiding star.”
A ragged boy seemed to be bobbing wildly through the crowd. As Wilf came closer he could see that the boy was limping in his dilapidated boots, his one foot turned completely over on an outside ankle. He was holding a sign up.
THE REVEREND GENE C. COONEY, NEW HOPE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, COME AND JOIN US.
“We don’t know which way to turn,” the Reverend was preaching. “We are in the midst of catastrophe and confusion. We hear about a boy found in a woods and a blindness seems to overwhelm us, and not just in this, but in all the misfortunes that have lately befallen this town. But know that nothing under Heaven is by chance. Know that everything that happens is for our instruction and our salvation.”
He was a powerfully built man, raw-boned and thinly dressed against the cold, his face bright with the unwavering certainty of his trade, Wilf thought.
Wilf stepped up on the sidewalk and looked around at the mix of men and women, young and old. Their faces looked not so much exalted as surly, begrudging, fearful, particularly fearful when anyone looked his way.
“This boy, found last night, dead and naked, like a revelation in the heart of a storm. Let’s pray for a holy man who can read by lightning. Let’s pray for a stranger who can interpret these miraculous works of the Lord.”
Wilf turned away from the crowd and walked down the alley toward the police station. Ted Bolton looked up when he came in through the swinging doors and shook his head as if to say “Here we go again.” Andy was helping Ralphie write out a statement.
Wilf could hear what sounded like the Chief of Police talking loudly to someone behind closed doors. “It’s busy around here.”
Andy glanced toward the Chief’s office. “Upset citizens.”
“Right now the rest of them are being entertained outside.”
“By who?”
“By the Reverend Gene C. Cooney, I believe.” Wilf came around the counter.
“I’ve already given him two warnings and a ticket.”
“This morning?”
“No. Over the last few weeks.”
“Hi, Wilf.” Ralphie looked up from his composition. He seemed recovered from the night before. “Lots of excitement, eh?”
“You bet.”
“There’s a bunch of cops out at our house this morning.”
“OPP,” Andy said. “They’re talking about opening up a branch office here in town.”
Ted Bolton snorted out a laugh, “Could be.”
Wilf sat down on a chair. “So what’s happening? Are you still working on the theory that some strangers drove by, carried the cage a mile into the bush and dropped him off?”
Andy looked uncomfortable. “I’m not working on any theory. I’m getting Ralphie’s statement and that’s all I’m doing. Did Linda talk to you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not supposed to get you into any more trouble.”
Bolton snorted again.
Andy’s ruddy cheeks went a shade brighter. “Don’t listen to her. She’s just upset.”
Wilf nodded. He liked Linda a lot. He liked Andy even more. He knew he should leave him alone. He should just get up and walk out. He couldn’t. “That cage had a countrified look to it, didn’t you think? It looked like two poultry cages welded together.”
“It is two poultry cages welded together.” Andy looked down at Ralphie’s statement. “Ralphie’s illiterate.”
“No, I’m not.”
“How do you spell ‘discovered’?”
“The way I’m spelling it.”
“Yeah, but how are you supposed to spell it?”
Ralphie winked at Wilf. “I don’t know. That’s a different question.”
“
D I S
, not
D E S
, you idiot.”
“Has Doc Robinson seen the boy?” Wilf asked. Andy remained silent. Wilf persisted. “What did Doc have to say?”
“Not much. Said he was probably closer to ten than six or seven. Just small for his age.”
“Cause of death?”
“He’s not sure yet.”
“Starvation?”
“I must have missed something,” Bolton said. “I didn’t realize we’d taken another man on the force.”
Wilf got up out of the chair. “Whoever it was, they were on their way to the river. That’s why the padlock was on the cage, to make sure his body didn’t float away, but Ralphie’s dogs came running up before they could get that far and Ralphie and his brother were following. They dropped the cage and took off back through the woods.”
“We all know they were headed for the river,” Andy said. “Anyway, the OPP are on the case,” He was looking a little wistful. “By the way, your father was in earlier wondering if I knew where you were. I explained everything, what we’d run into, all that. And that you’d spent the night at my place. I guess you should have called him.”
Wilf nodded and went out the door.
* * *
Carole was sitting at her desk when Wilf came into the office. He stole a glance her way. She looked tense. “Morning. Where’s the solicitor?”
“He’s in court. He had to take a taxi to Brantford.”
“Oh? That’s too bad. I went out to get a truck last night for our move.”
“That’s what your dad was saying. With Andy.”
Wilf pushed through the gate. He wanted to sit down at his desk but for some reason he couldn’t. He stood there in the middle of the office. He felt marooned. “Have you talked to Nancy Dearborn?”
“Yes.”
“There was more trouble.”
Carole got up from her desk. She touched Wilf’s face. Kissed his cheek.
Wilf didn’t know whether he should pull away from her and save her life. He didn’t know what to do. “We can use the car to move most things. We can start to move after work today. We can get the truck some other time.”
The door opened and Reverend Cooney stepped in. “Morning,” he said, a warm smile on his face.
Carole, caught and looking embarrassed, pulled away from Wilf. “Good morning. May I help you?”
Cooney pointed his Bible toward Wilf. “I think I saw you earlier, didn’t I? I’m inviting everyone in town to a meeting tonight. A prayer meeting. To talk about that boy, the one they found in a cage. I know the answer to all that.”
“Oh?” Wilf said.
Carole sat back down at her desk.
“All you have to know is how to read signs, which is a gift, like the prophets of old did. And you have to know your Bible. And most of all you have to be a prisoner of love. Captured by the Holy Spirit and lifted into Rapture!”