Meanwhile, the police vehicles had pulled into a semi-circle on the plateau. There were three of them already â more coming. Their headlights were all aimed up at the ridge.
Jim was blinded; he didn't care. He heard doors opening and slamming shut. Shadowy figures emerged and trained spotlights up at the bush. He heard voices.
“Here!” he cried, waving his hands. “Over here.”
Immediately, a searchlight swung around looking for him, dazzling him so that he had to cover his eyes from the glare.
“Jim Hawkins? You all right?”
“I'm okay!” he shouted, waving his arms victoriously
Then suddenly a shadow peeled itself from the trees and blocked out the light. Fisher. Jim swerved around him but not far enough or fast enough. Fisher's arm flew out and a huge hand closed around his burned wrist, yanking him clear off his feet.
Jim howled in pain and crumpled into Fisher's arms. Then he heard his mother call his name and he fought with all his might, yelling at the top of his lungs until Fisher forced his right arm up high between his shoulder blades, and the pain punched the voice right out of him. Fisher's arm closed tightly across his neck.
An amplified voice came out of the translucent wall of fog.
“The area is completely sealed off, Fisher. We don't want any trouble.”
Jim felt Fisher's heart pounding against his back. Then he felt the mighty chest expand, heard the pastor clear his throat.
“Lome? Is that you?” he said, as if he was calling to an old friend.
“You know it is, Fisher”
“
Father
Fisher, Lome,” he said. He actually chuckled, as if the chief were guilty of a lack of respect. “Listen, Lome,” he said smoothly. “I'm sure we can work something out.”
“I'm sure we can, too,” said the invisible voice over the loud-hailer. “Just as soon as you let the boy go.”
Fisher sighed. “Ah, but that's just it. I can't let the boy go. Surely you must see that.”
More spotlights blazed from the left and from the right. Jim watched spectral figures fanning out around him. Through slit eyes, he saw them crouching, running, conferring. He heard the unmistakable sound of firearms being prepared for business. Fisher immediately tightened the grip of his forearm across Jim's windpipe.
“The boy and I are friends, Lome.”
“I know that, Father,” came the voice over the loud-hailer. “We're all friends here, so let's take 'er good and easy. Have ourselves a talk.”
Jim could hardly breathe. He was on the brink of passing out when, all of a sudden, the pressure across his windpipe lessened. Something had distracted Fisher's attention.
Then Jim heard the dog, the cornfield dog, barking somewhere in the woods just off to the west.
“Over here, Poochie!” screamed a girl's voice from below.
“Ruth Rose!” shouted Jim.
Fisher's huge hand, stinking of kerosene, closed over Jim's mouth. But Jim would not be silenced. Knowing Ruth Rose was there gave him a jolt of courage. He shook his head just free enough to bite down hard on the flesh at the base of his captor's thumb. Fisher yowled and withdrew his hand, but Jim wasn't finished. He lifted his right foot high and brought the heel of his work boot down with all his strength on Fisher's foot. Fisher grunted with pain and Jim tore himself away from the man's grasp and rolled out of his reach.
“Stop!” yelled Braithewaite. “Somebody grab her.”
Ruth Rose had broken through the police cordon and run to Jim's aid. She reached him before Fisher and stood between the man and the boy, crouching like a wrestler, daring him to come closer. Others followed Ruth Rose but Fisher seemed not even to notice them. Something in his stepdaughter's eyes seemed to bring him up short. Then the cornfield dog burst into the light and went directly to Ruth Rose's side. She held the dog by his collar, and Fisher backed away as if it was a hound of hell.
Fisher retreated up the stream bed, stumbling, falling. Jim lay watching as several armed police swarmed past him.
Suddenly Jim gasped. For one startling instant, Fisher must have stepped into the convergence of all the searchlight beams. His face became radiant, shining. His clothes glowed as if they were made of light â as if beams of light were passing clear through him.
Then, out of the dazzling haze behind him stepped a fog-enshrouded ghost. It was Stanley Tufts, but his long pale hair was loose and wild and the light was trapped in it like a broken halo. His blue eyes were half mad and in his hands he carried a rock the size of a child's head.
Fisher did not see him. He stepped back right into his path, turned, looked up, cringed and covered his head. Stanley brought the rock down, a glancing blow on Fisher's shoulder. But enough to fell him.
His mother held him and, somehow, Jim held her and managed to hold onto Ruth Rose at the same time. Then Hec joined in, holding them all. Even the cornfield dog got his licks in before bounding off into the night.
All the hugging put some colour into Ruth Rose's cheeks but she seemed in shock. She watched two attendants carry Fisher on a stretcher to an ambulance, and her wide eyes blinked like someone waking up from a nightmare.
Laverne Roncelier was wanted for questioning but they didn't need to extradite her; she came on her own as fast as she could. And once she had checked up on Stanley in the Great War Memorial Hospital in Ladybank, she turned herself in to the police. But the blackmail letters, which Fisher had been keeping in the old clubhouse in the cave, clearly revealed that money had never been the object of the exercise. Just as Stanley had said, all she had ever wanted was justice.
Fisher's offer of money had not only been the final insult, but also all the proof she needed of his guilt. It didn't go unnoticed by Jim or other folks in the Ladybank area that the amount Fisher offered
Laverne Roncelier to keep her mouth shut roughly coincided with the money he had raised for the Kosovo relief campaign.
Father Fisher had all kinds of things to say. He had a story for anyone who cared to listen, and they varied as the weather did that autumn. He claimed no responsibility for any wrong-doings. But then, other times his mind slipped a gear and he babbled whole scenes of the drama that had led up to the disappearance of Hub Hawkins. It was as if a little voice inside him was trying to break through the walls of denial behind which he had retreated so many years ago.
One rainy November morning, he told a forensic psychiatrist that he had pushed Hub into a deep mine shaft at Tabor just to put him out of his misery. He seemed to believe he had been doing his old friend a favour. He told how he covered his tracks, leaving the car in the cedar grove, walking away in Hub's own shoes, just as Ruth Rose had suspected. The lip balm dispenser had been his only mistake and he had covered that well enough. He was an impressive liar. A pathological liar.
A police team following up on Fisher's confession, discovered the bones, the earthly remains of Hub Hawkins, at the bottom of a shaft deep inside the mine. He could be laid to rest at last.
It was a strange funeral, well attended, including every preacher from every church in Ladybank and the surrounding countryside.
Jim overheard Hec talking to Iris later about the flock of preachers. “They're here to mourn the loss of something more than a good man,” he said. Jim wasn't quite sure what he meant, but he saw a grievous sadness in the eyes of the preachers. Father Fisher had
been one of them and yet never really one of them at all. For all his good deeds, he had been an imposter, a fake. He had abused his power horribly and in his actions had made a mockery of what was for them a profound and abiding belief.
Ormond McCoy built a pine coffin for the funeral. Pat McCoy and Daisy Tysick helped Iris with the luncheon which was held at the farm. Nancy helped, too. It was hard for her to be there at all, but she returned from Tweed at Iris's request. And at the request of Ruth Rose. It was Ruth Rose who reminded anyone who would listen of her mother's bravery in sending the letters to Iris.
Lettie Kitchen brought her horrible green Jello with miniature marshmallows to the funeral. Hec Menzies went around getting people to try it. “Ever taste anything like that?” he asked in disbelief.
The Church of the Blessed Transfiguration came through with a loan to help out Jim and Iris. Iris had a good mind not to accept it, but Hec was able to convince her that she would be doing
them
a favour if she could accept the donation. The Church had a lot of healing to do.
So Iris was able to quit her job at the soap factory and concentrate on the farm. She and Jim planned crops together on winter evenings. Sometimes Ruth Rose was there. She seemed to live somewhere between her own new home, an apartment on the outskirts of Ladybank that she shared with Nancy, and her adopted home with Jim and Iris. The two households were connected by Ruth Rose Way.
Jim showed her how to do farm chores. She didn't much like farm chores. In the fullness of winter when
the land hibernated under a thick goose-down of snow, he taught her to cross-country ski.
One day they followed the lane down through the cornfields to the low land. They passed through the cedar grove, Jim in the lead, carving a path. The grove held no ghosts for him any longer. Ruth Rose followed at a safe distance â she wasn't all that sure on her skis. But as the hill grew steeper, the distance between them grew shorter. She was going too fast â couldn't help it. She was out of control.
“Look out!” she called â too late. Before Jim could get out of her path, she slammed into him, sending him flying head first into the snow. She came tumbling after.
They finally stopped laughing and extricated themselves from the pile of pick-up sticks that were their limbs and poles and skis. Ruth Rose, glad to be on her own two feet again, ploughed through the snow to the beaver dam.
“Look at this,” she called excitedly to Jim.
It was Gladys, long forgotten, up to her waist in a snowdrift, but still standing guard over the breech in the dam. Her purple fedora had blown away and was caught in the branches of a nearby tree. Her pink fright-wig was more frightful than ever, embroidered with brown leaves and twigs.
“Poor old thing,” said Ruth Rose. “Let's straighten you up.”
She groomed the scarecrow's tousled locks while Jim reclaimed her fedora with the help of a ski pole.
“What's this?” Ruth Rose asked. She had found the plastic bag Jim had pinned to Gladys's chest. There was a sheet of water-stained paper inside; the message was no longer decipherable. Jim took the sheet from her.
“It said something like No Beavers or Crazy Girls Allowed.”
“I figured as much,” said Ruth Rose and shoved him off the beaver dam into a deep drift of snow. Then she turned her attention to the scarecrow. “We can stay if we want, can't we, Gladdy?” She wrapped her arms around the stick figure to give her a hug but pulled away quickly. “Pee-ew!” she said. “You stink, girl.” She made a face at Jim, then her eyes lit up. “But I know how to fix that.” And, unzipping her parka, she dug from an inner pocket a glass vial half filled with rose water. The vial glittered in the snow-white light.
She opened the bottle and sprinkled a few drops over Gladys. She put a dab or two behind where her ears might have been if she'd had any. She stopped and gazed at the little bottle, smiling at some memory. Then suddenly she tipped it over the scarecrow until the last drop glistening on the glass lip dripped off, soaked up in its ragtag clothes.
Jim closed his eyes, breathed in deeply. It was like bottled spring when the world was still knee-deep in winter.
When he opened his eyes, Ruth Rose was tucking the empty vial into one of Gladys's tuxedo pockets.
They headed back to their skis, but when they were all strapped in and Ruth Rose had already got her skis in the groove for home, Jim said, “I'll catch you up,” turned the other way and headed down through the gulch alone.
He crossed Incognito Creek â invisible now, buried, waiting for the melt. Then he slogged up the hill that led to the back meadow. Out in the open, the sun was warm, though the wind was brisk. It felt wonderfully
cool on his face, flushed with the exertion of his climb.
He stopped in the middle of the field and looked around. There were fences that needed mending, but nothing a few cedar poles and wire couldn't fix. Ormond had mentioned he had some cedar, if Jim was interested. And once the meadow was secure, they could think about getting in a head or two of beef cattle again. Start slowly, begin to build up a herd. It was good grazing land up here. A shame to waste.
He turned and started heading back towards the house. They could talk about it over supper. The three of them.