Hector Menzies, although old enough to be Hub's father, had been second on that team and a friend of the Hawkins family ever since. His grandfatherly friendship had come in handy during the awful weeks of the previous fall when the farm had been under siege. Not from grasshoppers or groundhogs â things a farmer learns to cope with â but from news men and women banging on the door at any time of the day or night. They parked their cars and satellite-rigged vans all over the place â in the way of the barn so that Iris couldn't get her cattle out to pasture, in the way of the fields so that good neighbours couldn't get in to help with the harvest. It was hard enough for Jim and Iris, but the media hounds made it even worse.
Until Hector stepped in.
Hector Protector.
Hec set himself up as a kind of self-appointed spokesman for the family, deflecting the advances of the most obnoxious snoops and bringing some order into an otherwise chaotic situation.
He never once used his privileged insider status to benefit his own insignificant little weekly. No glimpses of the family in mourning, no scoops. He kept private what he felt deserved to remain private. Which was pretty well everything.
Jim had put Hec out of his mind once the siege was
over, but he was glad to see him again, despite the memories his lined old face evoked. He squeezed into the only other chair in Hec's office. The computer terminai looked out of place on the desk, and Hec looked out of place sitting behind it.
“What can I do for you, Jimbo?” he said.
“I want to find out about a fire that happened up near us in 1972.”
Hec's forehead wrinkled for a moment. He looked like he was going through a file in his head that included so many fires and car crashes and hunting accidents no reasonable human could hope to keep track of them.
“A kid died in it,” Jim added hurriedly. “A kid named Francis Tufts. It was New Year's. Don't you have it on your computer or something?”
A light went on in Hector's grizzled face. He smiled, raising one of his bushy eyebrows. “Oh, I can find what you're looking for since you've got the date and all. But I'm still a newspaperman, Jimbo, and a newspaperman depends on a sharp memory even more than he depends on a sharp pencil.” He patted the computer monitor. “You won't find it in here,” he said. “What you want is hard copy.”
He pushed himself up and out of his chair. “Follow me.”
Jim followed him down a long corridor with offices on one side and a wide sloped counter all along the other. Under it, row and rows of shelves buckled with the weight of bound volumes of the
Expositor
. Hec dragged one off the shelf and laid it down on the counter at eye level: 1972 was embossed in gold on the cover.
“Voilà !” he said, opening the volume to the very
first page. “Easy as pie. The lead story in the first issue of the year.”
There before Jim's eyes was a grey and grainy photograph of a log cabin kind of slumping in the middle, as if a giant had sat on it. The windows and door were boarded up, but the stoop was recognizable as the one where the Three Musketeers had been sitting in the photo at home. Above the picture was the headline:
BOY DIES IN NEW YEAR'S EVE BLAZE.
Jim looked at Hec. If he was wondering what Jim wanted with the story, he didn't show it. He just seemed proud to be able to provide the information.
Jim saw that the article continued on the following page. “Can I photocopy this?” he asked.
Hec shook his head. “Newspaper isn't meant for the long haul. It's meant to get read and put in the bottom of your bird cage. See how fragile the paper is?”
Fragile and fading fast, thought Jim, suddenly worried that he might not even have time to read it.
“But,” said Hec. “I can give you a pen with the
Expositor
logo on it and a sheet or two of yellow foolscap and you're free to copy it out longhand.”
So Jim did. He copied the whole thing. He wrote in his best hand as if it were the good draft of a school assignment.
A New Year's Eve blaze took the life of former North Blandford resident, nineteen-year-old Francis Tufts. The fire burned to the ground a local landmark. The log cabin, situated on the Twelfth Line, and once lived in by the Tufts family, was in the news several years ago, when it was believed to be haunted.
The fire was reported by Jock Boomhower
who was attending a get-together across the road at the home of Purvis Poole. The volunteer fire brigade made good time considering the snowy conditions but was unable to save the building. Volunteer Fire Chief, August Sweeney, stated that they had no idea there was anyone inside. It was not until Ontario Provincial Police were combing the site the following morning that they discovered the charred remains of the Tufts boy. He was identified by a silver allergy bracelet. Contacting his parents now living in Brockville, the police were able to ascertain that the boy had been expected home for Christmas but had not shown up.
The house was being used by a neighbour, Wilfred Fisher, to store hay. An inquest will be held into the death, but according to Constable Lorne Braithewaite, there do not seem to be any signs of foul play. Among the remains around the boy were found several beer bottles and a 40 ounce rye bottle, all empty.
Heavy snowfall through the night obliterated any footsteps leading to the building so it was not clear from which direction the boy might have journeyed. Constable Braithewaite noted the next morning that even the tracks of the fire truck and the sizeable area the fire fighters had disturbed in their efforts were completely blanketed by the new snowfall.
Francis's presence back in the Ladybank area was a surprise. The house had been the last dwelling place of the deceased and his family before leaving the area five years ago.
Jim stopped to rest his fingers. He stared at the photograph, tried to imagine stepping inside a house that had once been your home, at night, with the windows boarded up, and finding it filled to the rafters with hay. It would be like a nightmare, he thought.
Francis had been serving a sentence in the Orillia Reformatory, sent there in 1967 after being convicted in juvenile court of several cases of arson in and around Ladybank. His arrest came about in a most unusual way. In 1967, during the week of August 8-15, the Tufts family had reported a number of strange occurrences. Laverne Tufts claimed that “Stove lids danced in the air, the teapots jumped off the stove into the wood box, three flat irons walked down the staircase and dishes pranced on the dining room table.”
A neighbour, Ormond McCoy, declared that a bone thrown out of the home, time and time again, had always returned to the house for no explicable reason.
On the Sunday directly following the report of “Ghosts,” a flotilla of cars and the chopper from Ottawa television station CJOH arrived at the Tufts home. “Ghost Hunters” and paranormal experts descended upon the community from as far away as Buffalo, New York.
Believing there had to be a more reasonable explanation for the occurrences, the Perth OPP detachment stationed an inspector on the property for the night. That inspector was Lorne Braithewaite, a rookie at the time, fresh out of Police College. He remembers having tea at the
kitchen table with Mrs. Tufts at about 11:0() PM when 14-year-old Francis arrived home smelling strongly of gasoline. When Braithewaite received a call shortly thereafter regarding a fire at a farm down the road and later learned that arson was suspected, he returned to the Tufts household and apprehended Francis for questioning.
Not only did Francis plead guilty to setting the fire, but he also owned up to several other fires in the area. As well, he ended speculation by admitting that he had been the “ghost“of the Tufts home. The youth was sent away and his family moved from North Bland ford. Francis is survived by his parents Wendall and Laverne Tufts and his younger brother Stanley, now residents of Brockville.
Jim's hand was shaking. He reread the last sentence, scarcely able to believe it. Laverne was Tuffy's mother. He reread the whole article and then stood leaning against the wooden counter, thinking.
The ghost incident had happened when Francis Tufts was fourteen. The white-haired Musketeer had looked around that age â around Jim's age â in the photo. So Eldon Fisher and Hub had been friends of the fire starter right around the time of the haunting of the Tufts house.
Jim closed the newspaper yearbook. He didn't want to think about the log cabin any longer, or the flames that had consumed the boy trapped inside.
His mother was in town to do her weekly grocery shopping and they had agreed to meet at the library. He had said he had some research to do and would be there at five. It was important that he not lie to her. It
had not been all that long ago that he had been so twisted up inside he couldn't speak, so twisted up he had tried, more than once, to kill himself. Ruth Rose had been right about the tree jumping. Jim had lied to his mother a lot in that bleak time. He couldn't talk but he would write on the pad on the kitchen table that he had been playing in the woods or in the sand pits up the road at Purvis Poole's or over at Jesse Desjardin's.
He didn't want to have to lie to her ever again.
Billy Bones had brought him back to his senses. Jim thought about Billy now. He thought about Ruth Rose. Maybe crazy people were the only ones he could associate with anymore. Maybe he was half crazy himself.
He had not told Ruth Rose he was coming to the
Expositor
. He wasn't sure he would help her. All he knew was that she had lit a fire inside him. Some kind of burning need to know.
He checked his watch. It was time to leave. But there was something else he needed to look up, while he was here. Plucking up his courage, he dug out the newspaper yearbook for 1997 and turned to September. With his heart pumping and a lump as big as a bullfrog in his throat, he turned the pages until he found the edition that featured his father's disappearance.
There was an out-of-focus photo on the front page of volunteers combing the Hawkins land for traces of the missing man. With a shaking finger he scanned the article for something he dimly remembered reading there. Then his finger landed and his eyes scanned the paragraph.
A buzz of excitement arose at one point early
on Friday afternoon when a searcher discovered a brand new lip balm dispenser in a deep thicket near the property line and far from any road or byway. As instructed, the searcher did not touch the article but reported the find to the nearest police officer. Sadly, it turned out that the discovery was a red herring. The lip balm belonged to one of the other volunteers who had wandered out of his prescribed search area. The searcher apologized for raising the team's hopes. It was Father Fisher of the Church of the Blessed Transfiguration, who was Hub Hawkins' pastor and friend
.
Without a sound, Jim closed the heavy book and leaned against the sloping counter. Dorothy wandered by from the front office on her way to the print shop. He didn't acknowledge her smile. It crossed his mind that he must look lost in thought.
But he wasn't lost. For the first time in a year he felt he saw the faintest trace of a trail opening up before him.
Jim stepped out of the
Ladybank Expositor
building onto McMartin Street and stood for a moment stock-still. The sunlight â what there was left of it â made him blink after almost an hour in the stuffy, windowless corridor. He still had the smell of aging newsprint in his nose.
He took a deep breath â a good strong whiff of fall-cooled air and car fumes. His head was buzzing with strange images: a burning log cabin in a field of snow, flat irons dancing down a staircase, and a tiny little plastic dispenser of lip balm lying on the rotting floor of the forest. In his mind's eye the dispenser glowed like something lit from inside.
He heard his name and turned to see Hec Menzies at the door of the newspaper office, his glasses on his head.
“Didn't see you leave, Jimbo,” he said. “Get what you were after?”
“I'm not sure,” said Jim. “But, thanks.”
“No problem. That's what a paper is for.” Hec smiled at him but there were little searchlights in his eyes. “Working on a school project, are you?”
“No, sir,” said Jim, his hand instinctively closing around the folded piece of foolscap in his pocket. “Just something I was interested in, that's all.”
Hec nodded, rolled down his sleeves against the chill in the air.
“Well, glad to be of service,” he said. He held out his hand. Jim shook it. The old man held on an extra second. “Good to see you back on your feet, Jimbo. If there's anything else you're after, don't hesitate to come around for another visit, you hear?”
“Promise,” said Jim. Then he waved and turned along McMartin Street. As he turned left down Truelove towards the library, he saw that Hec was still standing in the doorway following him with his eyes.
It wasn't far to the library and there was still half an hour before his mother was to pick him up. Time enough to set himself up behind a wall of books and try to sort out the jumble of images in his head.
Ruth Rose had accused him of being afraid. “You're not ready for this,” she had told him. Twice. Well, she had that right. But there was stuff Jim couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried, and now it came elbowing its way into his brain.
For months before Hub went missing he had suffered from what the family called nerves and what the inquest called paranoid delusions. He believed someone or something was after him. Jim saw little evidence of the symptoms at the time; his father kept the worst from him. What Jim experienced was his father's long silences and longer walks and then moments of holding Jim in his arms too tightly and telling him how much he loved him. Iris begged Hub to see a doctor but he told her â and Jim did hear this â “I don't need a doctor to tell me what I already know.” He prayed a lot, worked his farm and took his troubles to his spiritual advisor, Father Fisher. At the inquest Father spoke of Hub's delusional state, revealing
no source for it beyond the “mysteries of the Lord's working.”