The Boy in the Burning House (9 page)

“How he did it,” she said. “The day he killed Hub.”

Now it was Jim's turn to go silent.

If Ruth Rose had expected some kind of response, she didn't wait long for it. She hurried on. “The big thing was he had to make sure no one saw him. He couldn't take any chances. So what did he do? He put on your dad's clothes.”

“What?”

“Before he ever set foot in the Malibu, he put on your dad's boots. Puts on your dad's Dodds & Erwin Feed & Seed cap. Everything. That way there would be no ‘alien fibres' for those forensic people to find, no threads or footprints or whatever that didn't belong to your dad.”

Jim could hardly breathe. It was like an obscene
phone call. And yet he couldn't quite bring himself to hang up.

“Go on.”

There wasn't much encouragement in his voice, but it was enough to launch Ruth Rose again. “The way I figure it, they met somewhere else — somewhere no one was likely to see them. Then, when Father had finished him off, he put on your dad's stuff and drove the Malibu back to your place.”

Jim could feel the bile rising in his throat.

“They were about the same size, right? About the same weight. Both of them were big, anyway. Father drives the Malibu back to your place. He's got gloves on so he doesn't leave any fingerprints. If anyone passes him on the road, he could lower his head and they'd just think it was Hub — his hair's covered by the ball cap. Your mother's at the church and you're at school — no one's going to see him. He drives down the lane all the way to the cedar grove. He leaves the car there, then he walks south towards the train tracks, leaving nice juicy footprints. Then he crosses the tracks and leaves some more prints, some more clues. It looks like he's heading for the quarry. Somebody drowned in that quarry a few years back. Right? He's making it look like your dad just wandered off to kill himself. From there Father makes his way back to his own car, making sure this time he doesn't leave
any
tracks. Takes off the boots, walks on rock — I don't know. Then he dumps Hub's clothes — burns them, probably — and drives home.”

There was a note of breathless triumph in her voice as she reached the end of her story.

The whole thing was gross. Somehow Jim kept down his nausea.

“Putting on a dead man's clothes?” he said. “Driving around pretending to be an old friend you just bumped off?”

Ruth Rose met his scorn with her own. “You really think that would be such a big stretch for a man like Father?” she asked. “Every Sunday he eats the flesh of the Saviour and drinks His blood.”

“You are disgusting,” said Jim, his voice shaking.

“No,” she said. “He is disgusting.” There was a note of panic in her voice. “Jim, you've got to believe me.”

“Who told you all this?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Did one of your
voices
tell you this?”

For a moment there were only street sounds. Then she spoke. “So he's been talking to you,” she said. “I should have known he would.”

“Listen…” said Jim softly.

But before he could continue, she burst out, “Yeah, 1 hear voices, all right. I already told you that.
His
voice, Jim.
Father's
voice. That's because I listen at his door. And if you heard it — heard the stuff he says — maybe you'd begin to understand.”

“I want to understand,” said Jim. “It's just…”

“Yeah, right,” she said. He heard her sniffing. He wondered if she was crying but before he could find out, she hung up.

The Church of the Blessed Transfiguration was not grand, but it was big enough to require a public address system. It was not the kind of church that lavished attention on stained-glass windows or altar dressings or brass zibzobs or painted statues of Jesus. It was a modest church. A modest church with a very good public address system. That was the first thing Father Fisher bought when he became pastor. And the congregation was pleased because that way they could catch every word of his stirring sermons or his funny homilies full of memorable analogies. It was such a good public address system that it never squeaked or buzzed. It made the pastor's rich baritone voice sound like he was sitting right beside you, talking to you alone, which kept the children and their parents attentive.

Jim felt strange being back. He hadn't been to church since last Easter, and his Sunday clothes didn't fit so well anymore. He had grown a lot since then. He had grown a lot in the last week. Grown to realize that church might be a good place for him to go after all.

Folks at the church smiled and greeted him with sympathy-hands and condolence-eyes. But for all that, it was almost worth going just because of how happy it made his mother. She hadn't pushed him. She hadn't
said anything more to him about the church helping them out financially and how nice it would be for him to return the favour.

What she didn't know was that he had his own reasons for showing up at the Blessed T. Something more than worship on his mind.

Ruth Rose had horrified him with her rendition of his father's death at the hands of Fisher. But no matter how deranged it sounded, he couldn't shake the vision from his head. It was as if he had been at sea for a year and she had thrown him this wrecked bit of flotsam, something to grab onto. He had no idea where it was carrying him but, somehow, she had stopped him from sinking.

However little Jim cared to believe what she had said, Fisher had lied to him. About a mystery book, about it being a coincidence that they had met outside the library, when the pastor had known Jim was going to be there all along. It wasn't much, but if he could lie about such things, then maybe he could lie about a tube of lip balm. He could say he lost it while on a search party in an area where he wasn't supposed to have been searching when, in fact, he might have lost it a lot earlier, walking away from Hub's car in the cedar grove, in Hub's clothes, just as Ruth Rose had said. Was she as crazy as Father made her sound?

The church filled up slowly. Organ music played in the background. There was no organ — the Blessed T. wasn't that kind of a church — but the very good P.A. system had a tape deck.

Tepid sunlight painted the pale church walls. Jim kept turning in his seat to see who was entering the church. Nancy Fisher arrived in her wheelchair, pushed by a member of the congregation. Jim stared
at the door, hoping Ruth Rose might follow, the good daughter. Ha!

Her mother took her station beside the last pew by the wall, so as not to be in anybody's way. She was dressed in a colourful blouse and a bright blue pleated skirt. She looked cheery enough. She smiled a lot. People came over to say hello, and she chatted with each person in a nice subdued way, but as soon as they left, Jim noticed that her face fell and her eyes went neutral. There were pouches under her eyes, as if she didn't get much sleep. And her hands in her bright blue lap held onto each other tightly. Poor Nancy.

From the vestry at the back of the church the old sexton, Dickie Patterhew, appeared and turned off the organ music tape at the P.A. control panel. The congregation took their seats and stopped talking and then Father Fisher appeared from the vestry, in a cassock that was almost the same blue as his wife's skirt. He wore a starched white collar but, apart from his cross of glinty green rock, nothing fancy. Nothing to draw a person's attention from his smooth and handsome face and his neatly combed, lustrous black hair.

He began with a Bible reading. Everyone was supposed to be praying, but Jim noticed that a lot of the congregation glanced at the pastor. The people of the Blessed Transfiguration were so proud of him. He was the first home-grown boy to make it to pastor, and it was generally considered that he could have gone to a much larger parish in a much grander place. No, he had said. When God spoke to him, He told him he must stay right there amongst his people. The congregation was glad about that. And they were smug, too, because the other churches in town which were bigger and older and fancier didn't have a pastor who could
hold a candle to their own Father Fisher when it came to preaching the word of the Lord. And no wonder. He was a man who had been saved from the fires of Hell and was thankful every day for his salvation.

Every child who grew up at the Blessed T. knew the story of how their pastor had been called to the sacred ministry. To Jim it had always sounded like a legend or something, and he had never questioned it. Just the way he had never really known that his dad and Father Fisher grew up together, right there on the Twelfth Line. It was as if the story told at church and the real story were cards in two separate piles. In the watery light filtering through the tall, plain windows of the church, with the farmer of souls leading his cattle in song and prayer, Jim sat and began, for the first time, to try to shuffle the deck together.

Fisher was the son of a shrewd and Godless farmer, so the legend had it. Wilfred Fisher had become rich capitalizing on the misfortunes of his neighbours. He had bought up half of North Blandford Township and young Eldon showed every sign of following in his father's money-grubbing ways. Gifted with money and a clever mind, he had gone off to university to study business administration and take over the Fisher empire. He had got as far as his final year with top honours. And that's when the Spirit of the Lord moved in him. The voice of the Lord spoke to him and told him to leave behind the ways of wickedness and go forth in the way of righteousness. And he had listened, forsaking his father's fortune and becoming a farmer of souls.

“We are all of us sinners,” he was fond of saying. “And I am a great sinner, unworthy of God's love, worthy only of being trampled under His feet.” He
always sounded so proud saying that. God, it seemed, had shown compassion and had seen fit to shine His light upon him.

There was a picture that some child had drawn in Sunday school. It was part of the unofficial legend of Father Fisher, a comic strip showing Father wrestling with the Devil in a cave, the Devil overpowering him and laughing in his face, and God's finger lighting a nearby torch that Father Fisher could thrust into the face of the Devil.

The child had coloured it with pencil crayons. He had made the cave all shadowy and the devil fire-engine red. The fire had been yellow and orange and the Sunday schooler had broken his pencil making Father Fisher's hair black. The Sunday school teacher had urged the young artist to give it to the pastor. It was hanging in the basement meeting room even now, years later.

From what Jim knew, Fisher had lived just up the road from him. Jim had never seen Wilfred Fisher, the Godless capitalist of the story. They had never talked about him at home. Was he the Devil? Had Father actually fought with his own father? Who was to know? That was the problem with Sunday school stories. Who was to know which parts were real?

And what were the sins that made Father Fisher such a great sinner? Were they real sins or did he mean he was a bad person because he was just human, the son of Adam?

Father's voice suddenly cut into Jim's thoughts. He had mounted the pulpit and Dickie Patterhew, from his control station at the back of the church, had turned on the pulpit mike.

“Let us pray,” said the pastor.

Everybody bowed their heads. But as Jim bowed his, he heard the sound of the entrance door opening. He turned to look.

It was her!

She was dressed all in black. Like a thief.

Jim glanced over to where Nancy Fisher was sitting in her corner. She had seen her daughter, too. For a moment her face lit up and then, just as quickly, she paled.

Jim's gaze returned to Ruth Rose. She was standing perfectly still, her head bowed, her hands folded in front of her. She looked humble, as if she were praying along with the rest of the congregation. But there was something in her hand. Something dark. For one horrible instant, Jim thought it was a gun. But it was too small.

Jim snapped his head back to look at the pastor. If Father had seen Ruth Rose, he showed no signs of it. And then Jim figured that from the pastor's angle up high, he probably couldn't see her under the lower roof of the narthex. Father Fisher's head was bent solemnly in prayer and his voice did not falter.

Jim dared to look back at Ruth Rose. She was sidling along the back wall of the church. Her mother was watching her intently with a frightened look in her eyes, her hands grasping the rims of her wheelchair.

What was going on?

Jim's mother touched his arm and gave him a look that he hadn't seen in years. It was a quit-squirming-around-in-your-seat look.

Jim faced the front again, but as the pastor finished his prayer and asked the congregation to please be seated for the sermon, Jim managed another quick glance
towards the back. Ruth Rose was nowhere to be seen.

“The leaves are turning to glorious gold,” began the pastor. “And we, Lord, call it fall.”

Slowly, so as not to draw his mother's attention, Jim turned his head to the right until he could see Nancy Fisher. Her eyes were rivetted on something happening on the other side of the church.

Jim carefully returned his attention to the front, glanced at his mother to see if she was watching, and then very cautiously turned his head to the left until he could see all the way to the back. He could see Dickie the sexton, the only person in the back row. He was seated but his head was bowed in prayer. Or so it seemed. Upon further inspection, Jim was quite certain the sexton was dozing.

Behind him, Jim caught a glimpse of black. It was Ruth Rose. She must have ducked down behind the last pew.

“We see in the fallen leaves, the bare trees, the end of things. Death. But the Lord in His bounteous wisdom has seen fit to give busy Mother Nature a break. A nap. That's all. The beautiful maple isn't dead, it's just having a little snooze.”

The members of the congregation chuckled and took the opportunity to make themselves more comfortable in their seats. In the resulting racket, Jim caught sight of Ruth Rose again. She had dashed behind the wooden podium that housed the controls of the public address system.