Mother Lode (41 page)

“I—I, no!” Jorie rubbed his sweaty hands on
his trousers. “Not yet.”

“You must be pretty upset about that.”

Jorie turned to face the sheriff. “Yes. But
if you think I’d kill for it, you don’t know me very well, Mr.
Foster.”

It was Earl’s turn to color.

When the sheriff left, memories flooded in
like the spring run-off in the hills behind their home, insidiously
seeping into the crevices, pooling in the dark recesses of his
mind. But they were as ephemeral as his mental state. Like some
fairy-tale cupboard that sometimes offered sweet pies and cakes, he
might get worms and snakes the next time. He wasn’t sure of
anything; nothing was as it seemed.

If he could only connect with his star line,
he thought he could find the answers, but there were no stars, only
clouds.

Sometimes he remembered,
no,
felt
all the
love he had for his mother, how close they’d been. At these times
he absolutely
knew
he’d never harm her.

Jorie tried to sleep. That way he wouldn’t
be tempted to read the diary. With the sleet beating against the
small window, whipped up by sudden gusts of wind, the pane rattled
like a madman trying to get in, a demon come to torture him. He
slept fitfully all day off and on until the turnkey brought his
supper.

Prisoners weren’t allowed candles. In
another hour it would be too dark to read — if he could just hold
out.

He hated his weakness.

The page he opened to was about the silkie
stories from Scotland that she told him—how they’d act them out
together when he was small.

He is so precious, and oh, so earnest in the
parts he plays! A more bonnie lad I could not wish for.

How had these games gotten as out of control
as a runaway horse? What was it trying to edge its way into his
consciousness?

He turned back to the diary.

August 1, 1888

Jorie awakens frequently with nightmares
that started after that awful business with Walter.

He put the book down and tried to evoke some
picture of that time so long ago. He remembered Walter was always
trying to frighten or hurt him as a child, and that one time he’d
dumped a pile of coal on him. He thought that was probably when his
step-brother was sent away.

He comes to our bed, and not wanting him to
wake Thomas, I pull him to me and quiet his sobs. I am frightened
for my boy. I know Thomas will not tolerate his bedwetting for
long. My poor lad.

Jorie closed the diary. As the past elbowed
its way in, the specter of his father hovered over him.
Involuntarily the muscles in his buttocks contracted.

Boys like you have to be punished, do you
understand?

“You all right in there?”

From down the hall the night turnkey’s voice
broke through his reverie. Jorie could hear the night watchman
coming toward him, see his lantern swinging at his side.

He covered the diary with his arm, pretended
to be sleeping. He heard the lantern clank against the iron door,
knew the man was peering in at him.

When the turnkey left he turned on the
narrow cot. What else had she to say about his bedwetting? Did she
remember it the way he did?

Thomas, drawing Jorie’s confession from him
over breakfast, looked at this regression as a deliberate act of
sloth and defiance, and marched him upstairs.

Jorie closed the book, rammed it under his
mattress, and lay on his stomach. The acrid odor of urine from
former occupants invaded his nostrils, heightening his memory of
those days — his father, the villain, and his mother, the heroine
who tried to rescue him. Tossing and turning half the night,
finally he fell into a fitful sleep.

He heard the thump, thump, thumping, turned
and twisted, trying to escape the blows. They were harder now, and
his mother was in the doorway screaming ‘Stop!’ But his father
applied the strap ever more vigorously.

Jorie awoke in a cold sweat, breathing
heavily. He flipped over on his back, lay listening. The thumps
were coming from the hot water pipes above, which provided steam
heat to the building. He was drenched in sweat and out of breath.
He sat on the edge of his cot and tried to rein in his wits.

When he’d managed to calm himself, he
attempted once again to go inside. What was it he wouldn’t let
himself see? Had he really committed this most outrageous of
crimes? It seemed sometimes he had, and others he hadn’t. Every
time he thought he was close to the truth, a veil would descend and
he could see no more.

With another unruly drunk in the next cell
kicking the wall, plaster again fell on Jorie’s side. Maybe he
could draw with it. The walls were light green, or used to be. One
had a barred door, the opposite a small barred window. He chose a
surface with nothing on it, except a lot of boot prints.

He didn’t want to think about what kind of
picture he’d make. He’d just let his hand move where it wanted to.
Perhaps the picture would tell him something.

He drew until it was too dark to see. But
there was barely anything on the wall; the piece of plaster was not
a good medium.

The storm had stopped. Light from the
streetlight found its way through the cell window, casting its
eerie glow below. Shadows from the window bars pushed their way to
the pool of light on the stone floor, surrounding him. The bars of
imprisonment were everywhere.

Chapter 32

Earl scratched his hand and turned the page.
In the second diary he was reading the account of the night Jorie
broke the door down and Catherine called him over.

Poor Earl Foster is not the brightest light,
but he was a comfort to me last night. And I believe he convinced
Jorie that he should remain at home and take care of us.

Humph! Not the brightest light! Well, he’d
known she didn’t have any particular affection for him, but this
was putting it plainly.

She ended with:
I shall have to be clever to think of ways to
make my Jorie stay. Those to whom you give your love have no right
to abandon you. This is where he belongs, and I’ll do whatever I
must to keep him here.

He dabbed at the blood on his hand,
wondering if he’d done the right thing, persuading him to stay with
his mother. He knew Thomas would have liked to see him at the
University, but if there wasn’t any money. . .

He continued reading. Her tales got more and
more bizarre. He could hardly believe she’d had an affair with an
itinerant worker. Did Thomas know about this surveyor, or did he
have his own secrets? There was that Redson woman he’d seen him
with a couple of times. He wondered how many other people in
Hancock had been unfaithful to their wives or husbands.

If he thought he was being
invasive before to read her diary, he felt downright shameless now,
almost as though he’d walked right into the bedroom and watched.
The things she talked about doing with this Chester fellow sounded
like they were right out of a scandalous book the boys in school
had passed around:
The Illicit Loves of
Lacy Loomis
. They were embarrassing to
read, but sort of excited him too. He couldn’t help wondering what
it would be like if he were to attempt that sort of thing with
Cora. The thought of turning her over his knee pleasured him
immensely. He could just see her plump, round rump turning rosy
beneath his hand. Then they’d have a good laugh, and maybe she’d
let him take her from behind. . .

But that was ridiculous; she’d think he’d
gone plum loony.

He set his prurient interests
aside and brought his thoughts back to the diary. There was this
Catholic business. Something else he hadn’t known about. That’s
where the rosary came into the picture. This Father Dumas — he
wasn’t like any priest Earl had ever heard of.
Perhaps it’s your conscience bothering you, not the actual
act.
Words to that effect. Well, wouldn’t
we all be Catholics if the priests were so easy on us!

There were other words in
the diary that wouldn’t go away. After she gave up her lover, she
wrote,
I have made a great sacrifice. I
intend to reap its rewards!

What did she mean by that?

Earl finished the second
diary and dropped it off for Jorie before going home. All this talk
about the
Golden Bubble
, whatever that was. Something so private Jorie wasn’t
allowed to tell anybody, nor even have friends.

Her ideas about penance and sacrifice —
making it sound so sacred and noble for him to give things up. The
way she thought about punishment gave him the creeps.

Catherine MacGaurin had fallen off her
pedestal.

But so far there was nothing to tie these
two diaries to her death. He couldn’t help feeling there must be a
third one some place. Catherine had written regularly, and had
filled the whole of the second diary two years ago. He doubted
she’d have given up this practice just because the book was filled.
If there was another diary, it could be important, especially if it
were up to date. Perhaps the inciting incident which led to her
demise would be in it. There were too many secrets in the shadows
yet to be uncovered. So far, the diaries were his best lead.

He had gone through every drawer in
Catherine’s dresser and armoire, searching for false bottoms. He’d
rummaged around the desk downstairs, and Jorie’s room as well,
looked in the pantry, under rugs, mattresses, and loose
floorboards. But an investigation of the Radcliff home turned up no
further diaries. Maybe Jorie had burned that too.

The judge was getting impatient.

“How long you plan to keep him in the jug
without a hearing?”

“I’m trying to gather information. It takes
time, and patience.”

“Three more days. That’s all I give you,
Foster. The hearing will be on Friday.”

Earl hadn’t been able to sleep well ever
since this thing began, and his psoriasis had left ugly red patches
on three areas of his body. He had started a fireball rolling that
he couldn’t stop. With sleep again eluding him, he rose early and
made his own breakfast.

He’d pretty much exhausted ideas on how to
get Jorie to open up. Yesterday he’d thought that maybe if he
shared some of his feelings with the boy, some of the mistakes he’d
made as a young man, the lad might start to thaw. He even told him
about the shivaree he and some chaps had staged on his parents’
wedding night. He knew getting someone to open up when they wanted
to clam up wasn’t his strong suit. He’d never been able to get Cora
to talk when she didn’t want to. It didn’t work with Jorie
either.

Today he had another plan. Maybe it was a
mean trick, or maybe it wouldn’t cause any reaction at all. But
he’d packed Jorie’s lunch himself, with a purpose in mind, and
started off to work.

At six o’clock, November skies had not
allowed even a sliver of light to break the night. He walked from
one gaslight to the next, watching his step in the dark stretches
between, feeling the uneven surface of slippery slush beneath his
feet. Earl sighed; the good citizens of Hancock had voted against
electric streetlights. At least it wasn’t as cold as it had been.
He grabbed a handful of snow. Good packing, the kind they liked to
make iceballs with when he was a kid. He held it to the back of his
hand until it was numb enough to stop the itching.

He passed the houses, all in a row,
occasionally seeing a light inside, hearing a baby cry in another.
Did each have its own dark tale carefully closeted within?

He stood back in shock as he entered the
cell. Somehow Jorie had gotten a hold of some coal and drawn a
ghastly mural in heavy black. Two walls were covered, and he was
still at it. They looked like the workings of a madman.

His knee-jerk reaction was that the boy was
defacing public property, but his second thought was that maybe
he’d reveal something through his drawing that he couldn’t
otherwise express. Besides, it would be a good excuse to give these
filthy cells a fresh coat of paint, once Jorie was out of here.

An ominous chill went through him as he
tried to decipher the scribbles. People — he guessed that’s what
they were — heads skull shaped, with wide, elongated mouths hung
open, screaming. Some lay prone, and in another section, they were
climbing all over each other, trying to get to the top of a tower.
Looking closer he could see that the tower was made entirely of
humans.

He wasn’t an expert on lunacy, but he knew
enough to see that these scenes represented a very troubled
soul.

Jorie threw down a scrap of coal and picked
up a bigger chunk.

Earl cleared his throat. “I see you’ve been
hard at work.”

Jorie didn’t answer.

“Who gave you the coal?

“The night turnkey.”

“What’s your picture about?”

“I think it speaks for itself.”

Jorie had read that statement in a book
about some artist who would never explain his work; it seemed
somehow useful now. He stood back and surveyed the scene
himself.

“Over here,” he said pointing to one corner,
“it gets kind of messy.”

Earl thought the whole thing a mess.

“Doesn’t looking at this give you
nightmares?”

“No. When I sleep my eyes
are closed. The pictures that give me nightmares come from
the
inside.”

Jorie threw down the piece of coal and
dropped on his cot.

In the silence Earl studied the wall, trying
to decipher its meaning. He saw only someone’s dismal, tormented
view of humanity.

“Have you been reading the diary?”

“I open the same book, but each time the
story’s different. That ever happen to you?”