“I see,” Wilf said.
Carole’s rogue lock of hair slipped down. She didn’t bother pushing it back up. She began to type.
The Reverend fixed his remarkably bright blue eyes on Wilf. “Why don’t you come out into the country tonight? Seven o’clock. All you have to do is drive out the Galt highway, turn east on Kipple Road and keep on until you come to the Cuthbert farm. That’s where my son Josh and I now reside. That’s where miracles are happening, my friend. Don’t be shy.” He turned to Carole. “You’re invited as well, Miss.”
Carole continued to type. “I don’t know whether we can go. We’re busy. Aren’t we, Wilf?”
“I’ll come out.”
Carole stopped typing.
“Well, praise The Lord,” the Reverend said. “I didn’t ask your name.”
“Wilf McLauchlin.”
“The Reverend Gene C. Cooney. And yours, Miss?”
“Carole,” Carole said.
“Honoured to meet you both.” He smiled his practised smile once more, turned on his heels and went back out the door.
“I’m not going out there.”
“His son has a club foot.”
“Whose?”
“His.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying that he does. We could make a trip or two out to the cottage with some of our stuff. And then we could go to the meeting.”
“It’s on the other side of the river.”
“We could cross at Glen Morris. There’s a bridge there.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? No! I thought the idea was to get away from everything. Have some peace and rest and be by ourselves.”
Wilf didn’t seem to hear. He sat down at Dorothy Dale’s desk and picked up the phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Just Andy.”
“Why?”
The operator came on the line and it wasn’t Nancy. Wilf gave her the number and Ted Bolton answered. “Hi there, Ted. It’s Wilf. Can I speak to Andy?”
Carole got up and pushed through the wooden gate. Wilf thought she might be going home but she just stood by the window looking blindly out on Main Street.
“Long time no see,” Andy said.
“You said you’d given that Reverend Cooney a ticket. What was it for?”
“Unlawful assembly in a public place. Causing a disturbance.”
“Did you get any information on him? How long he’s been here? Where he’s from?”
“He hasn’t paid his fine yet. I know that.”
“Is that all you know?”
“You don’t quit, do you?”
“No.”
There was a long silence. “I guess I could check my notes.”
Wilf looked back at Carole. She hadn’t moved from the window.
“I do want to go out to the cottage. That’s what I want to do,” Wilf said to her.
“Then why are you getting in the middle of everything? Again?”
“Someone did something to a helpless little boy, Carole. That’s all.” And I’m flying, Wilf thought to himself, careening through the sky. I’m at thirty thousand feet.
“He might have been sick,” Carole was saying. “He might have died of natural causes.”
“Heartless and neglectful then at the very least. But probably worse. Much worse.” Because the doctors were anything but neglectful. Inspected every child. Recorded every name.
“I just have a couple of things,” Andy was saying in Wilf’s ear.
“Okay. What?”
“He lives out at the old Cuthbert place with his fourteen-year-old son. Only been there since just after Christmas. Rents the house but not the land. He’s unemployed except for his ministry, such as it is. Comes from near Owen Sound. Last job was with the Grey County Children’s Home. That’s it.”
“The Grey County Children’s Home?”
“That’s what I’ve got.”
“What would that be?”
“A place for kids, I guess. Orphans, maybe.”
“Unwanted children? That kind of thing?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“Did he say what he did there?”
“He said he was their minister. The chaplain.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Wilf hung up. “Reverend Cooney worked for a home for children. Orphans.”
Carole was staring at him. “I don’t know what to do.” Tears were shining in her eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” Wilf said.
Carole shook her head.
“What do you mean, you don’t know what to do?”
“For you,” she whispered. “For you.”
* * *
When Clarence returned from Brantford Wilf was standing beside the filing cabinets staring into space and trying to imagine how the bacterium worked. When did he have anything to do with that little boy? Or any of the others? Sylvia Young. Cruikshank. Basil. How was it possible? But he must have because the one thing he knew for certain, he was carrying a plague.
And where was the man with the rags on his feet? Where was the barefoot boy?
Nowhere to be seen. But their absence had to mean something, confirm something. They’d been wanting him to go somewhere, that’s what it was, they’d been leading him somewhere. Which meant he’d finally arrived. In those trees. On that night.
As if the child in the cage held the answer to everything.
“Wilf?” Clarence was standing in the middle of the office holding two worn and bulging briefcases in his hands.
Wilf looked at him as if he were just waking up, and then he started to talk about the move out to the cottage and why he and Carole needed to have the use of the car that afternoon.
“I have to admit,” Clarence interrupted, “that I am nonplussed. Andy told me about the events of last night.”
Clarence looked at Carole. He looked back at Wilf.
Wilf just shook his head.
“Well, it’s the damnedest thing.” He began to walk toward his office. “If you and Carole want to move in today, why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? It’s Friday, anyway.”
“We can wait until five,” Carole said. She’d been working at her desk and trying not to see Wilf standing in a trance by the filing cabinets.
“But it’s still getting dark by seven. Do you even have electricity out there?”
She hadn’t thought about that. She could see the small white electric stove sitting beside the old wood one. “Yes.”
Clarence stopped in the hallway. “Is it connected?”
“I’ll call the landlord first,” Wilf said.
“Good idea. And then, if you could work it in, you and I should have another chat about Scarfe Telfer. In the meanwhile I want you to promise to stay out of this latest mess. As your lawyer, I have to tell you that you are in no position to get further involved in anything. Will you do that for me?”
“What has Scarfe Telfer got to do with that boy in the cage?”
“I wish I knew,” Clarence said.
Father and son stared at each other for a long moment, and then not hearing an answer and looking more than a little dismayed Clarence turned and headed back toward his office. The door closed behind him.
“You see? No further involvement. Your father thinks the same way I do,” Carole said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Duncan looked out his bedroom window. A police car was coming along the road. He thumped down the stairs.
His hands were free of the chain now. He’d spent all the previous day in the shop working with an old file he’d found, sawing away. The heavy metal bands on his wrists were still on, though. His wrists were sore enough before, but with all the effort just to get rid of the chain the bands had worn right through the skin. Now they were riding on wide circles of red flesh and yellow pus and both his arms had caught on fire.
He peered out between the boards that someone had nailed across the broken kitchen window. The car was coasting to a stop in the side yard. A lone policeman got out. Duncan didn’t recognize him. He didn’t look all that big. Not near as big as he was himself.
He looked around. He knew where he’d hide. There was a crawl space under the stairs. He’d hid in there lots of times when his father was still alive. That way he could listen to the radio too, without his father asking him why the hell he was sitting there gawking like a moron, and sometimes when he was hiding in there, even though he didn’t want to, he’d have to listen to his mother getting cross at his father and his father saying, “He’s dumber than Mortimer Snerd.”
Duncan opened the little doorway under the stairs and looked in. His mother had kept her cleaning products in there ready for the next onslaught of mice. There wasn’t much room at all among the bottles and the cartons, not nearly as much as he’d remembered when he was a boy.
He shoved everything to the one side and squeezed in with his feet first. His boots fit under the first step or two, his back dug into the next two steps and he still couldn’t close the door. He put his fingers in the space between the floor and the door and pulled back as firmly as he could. A cramp began to shoot up one of his legs. His arms burned.
He could hear the back door open, then the kitchen door, and then the sound of boots coming across the floor. The policeman walked right by his hiding place and into the front room.
Duncan had been very cautious about going out to the shop the previous day because it had snowed and he didn’t want to leave any tracks, but no matter how he’d twisted and weaved around it was impossible to miss all the patches of snow. He’d worried about that all that day, but though a few people had driven by luckily no one had turned in.
The snow was the reason why he hadn’t gone searching for Babe and Dandy the previous night, too. He hadn’t wanted to leave his tracks for everyone to see, leading from barn to barn. The snow was almost all melted today though, and he could tell the policeman hadn’t seen any tracks. If he had he wouldn’t have walked into the house as if he owned the place. He wouldn’t have come in at all, he’d have been afraid.
This thought took away the pain in Duncan’s arms and in his cramping leg. The man was all alone. There was just the man and himself. Alone in the house. He could hear his own breath panting faintly against the dusty floor. The policeman began to walk up the stairs right over his head. He was going up to check on the bedrooms. Too late. Why hadn’t he done something about all the stealing? Why hadn’t he stopped those people from having a party and tramping all over his mother’s bed?
Duncan could see the man walking into his mother’s room. He could see him standing there in front of her mirror in the afternoon light.
FREAK
it still said because for some reason he hadn’t been able to wipe it off.
The man was looking through all the drawers in her dresser. He was touching the hair ribbons and the combs that were still there.
Touching her clothes. Underclothes.
Duncan could see himself as plain as day pushing the little door open and creeping up the stairs. He could see himself looking in through the bedroom door.
The man was naked on his mother’s bed.
Soon there would be blood all over the walls and the ceiling, all over the floor.
He was coming down the stairs again. Duncan held the door tight. The man went right by his fingers and crossed the kitchen floor. A regular Mortimer Snerd, this cop. He wasn’t even going to check down in the cellar.
Duncan could hear the kitchen door closing, the outside door slamming shut. He was probably going to look into the shop now. The stable. Too late.
Everything was gone.
He knew what he was going to do as soon as it got dark enough. He was going to look for Dandy and Babe. Search every barn within ten miles. Find them somewhere. Breathing softly. Great heads moving in the night.
“It’s me,” he’d say and he’d wrap his arms around their necks and they’d be so happy they’d lift him right up off his feet. And then what? What would he do?
He thought he could hear the police car starting up. He listened as hard as he could.
Duncan opened the little door and looked out.
* * *
By the time Wilf and Carole turned into the lane that led to the stone cottage with their first load of clothes and blankets and groceries, the sky had turned a darkening bruised purple. The landlord had said that the power would be on though. It better be, Carole thought to herself.
She looked out the window. The trees were already a mass of undifferentiated shadows, the house invisible although she was looking at exactly where it was supposed to be.
She thought of Duncan. Where was he? Hiding in a dark woods somewhere? In an abandoned barn? There had been talk that someone had seen him walking beside the river. It made sense that he’d try to make his way home. Where else would he go? But of course the police would be watching for him there.
She thought he must be hungry. And cold. Frightened, too. Angry. Why wouldn’t he be angry? It was Wilf who had gone out there that night. It was Wilf who had tricked him into confessing in some way, some way she could hardly imagine.
She glanced over at Wilf. He was concentrating on driving up the narrow lane. She wondered if he even knew that Duncan Getty had escaped. Because of everything else that was going on she had decided not to tell him.
The headlights swept across the front of the cottage.
“We’re home.” Wilf said, pulling the car up.
When they got out the air felt colder than it had in town. The dark sky was moving west, squeezing a small strip of sunset into a long thin line. Carole looked off toward the sunset. Duncan’s house was on the other side of the river
“Let’s try the lights.” Wilf walked toward the cottage.
Carole followed along.
Earlier, when Wilf had helped her gather up her clothes she’d thought he’d been overly polite with her mother. She knew it was just from tension though. His face was smiling but his body looked absolutely rigid. And then he turned to her father who was still sitting stubbornly in the front room. “Hello, Sir,” he said, putting out his hand, “I assume Carole’s told you about our plans. We’re not going to move in tonight, but we thought we could get a jump on moving out some of her things.”
Instead of standing up and shaking Wilf’s extended hand, her father remained sitting in his easy chair, which was very unusual behaviour for him. “Is that right? And you’re who? The famous Wilf McLauchlin?”
“Yes, Sir,” Wilf replied and turned away and let her father sit there as if everything had been settled to everyone’s satisfaction which was certainly not the case because her father had gotten up and had walked right out the front door without even putting on his coat.
Wilf felt around in the dark in the cottage and found a switch just inside the living room. The house lit up.
“Thank God,” Carole said. It didn’t take her long to make the cottage look like it might actually be inhabitable, just some of her clothes hanging in the little closet off the living room and a few dishes in the cupboards managed it. She began to feel encouraged. She surveyed the bedroom. Not having a closet was still a problem, though.
“We’ll need a wardrobe,” she called out to Wilf who was unpacking some of her mother’s extra pots and pans. He had to do it with one arm of course, which made it look for the moment like he was taking everything, including the move, very casually.
“Oh?” Wilf replied.
Carole put her head around the kitchen door. “But I think the bedroom’s too small for a wardrobe. Maybe, if we can find a nice enough one we could put it in the living room.”
“How about this? Maybe we could sleep in the living room and give the bedroom to the wardrobe.”
“I don’t want to sleep in the living room. I want it to be nice.”
“Me, too. Anyway, I don’t care where I sleep, as long as it’s with you.”
“You know all the right things to say.”
“That’s because I think about them first and then I say them.”
“I know you do.”
“Actually, I don’t. They just come out.”
“I know.” Carole’s voice broke a little, though the last thing she wanted to do was show the confusion she was feeling.
Wilf turned to look at her.
“I just hope you’ll be happy here,” Carole said. “I hope you’re not feeling pushed into anything.”
“Carole, come on. Of course not. I was thinking the same thing about you. I hope you’re not feeling that way. Being pushed.”
“No.”
“I want to be with you.”
“Just say if you don’t though, will you? I mean, if you change your mind anytime. Don’t go on pretending. Don’t surprise me.”
“Do you know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think this was meant to be. I think we’ll grow old together. That’s what I think.”
Carole made a face. “Let’s not grow old too soon.”
They drove back to town to pick up some things of Wilf’s and some more clothes for Carole, because though it was still March and she’d need her winter things, spring wasn’t far off and she’d soon require some lighter clothing and of course it could suddenly turn very hot so it wouldn’t hurt to have a few summer things, and also there was the card table and four folding chairs her mother had volunteered until they had a chance to buy some furniture. Carole’s bed and dresser and her grandmother’s settee would have to wait for the truck.
It was completely dark by the time they arrived back at the cottage with the second load. They’d left the outside light on though, and Carole was relieved to see how welcoming the house looked glowing at the end of its lane. It was almost eight o’clock by the time they had the card table and chairs set up and the rest of Carole’s clothes that needed to be hung up stuffed into the living room closet. Everything else would have to stay in cartons until the dresser arrived and a wardrobe was purchased or found.
Carole was hoping that by this time Wilf would have forgotten about the prayer meeting, but as soon as they were finished he looked at his watch and said in a determined way that he could run her back to town and go to the meeting himself or she could stay there and wait for him to pick her up on the way back, which would save time. Or she could go to the meeting with him.
“Why would it save time?”
“I can cross the river at Glen Morris.”
“Well, I’m not staying here alone.” Carole was standing by the door putting her coat back on, “It’s freezing, for one thing.”
They’d brought an electric heater with them on the first trip and actually the living room had grown quite warm.
Wilf hadn’t moved. He was still sitting on one of the folding chairs watching her.
Carole knew that if he’d only get up and pull his coat on in as aggressive a manner as he’d just given her her three options, she’d ask him to drive her home. And if his face didn’t look so tired. And if the flesh around his eyes didn’t look so dark. And if he’d quit looking at her. And if she didn’t love him so much.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll go.”
* * *
The Cuthbert place wasn’t difficult to find. The old frame house sat on top of a knoll; there were cars parked all along the side of the gravel road and the implement shed beside it was radiating light.
As soon as Carole got out of the car she could hear shouts and amens and cries of exaltation coming from the assembled crowd. “I hate this kind of thing,” she said, stumbling along the road.
Wilf caught up to her. “Have you been to one before?”
“Once. A whole gang of us went, just to make fun. I felt sick.”
“Why?”
“It’s upsetting, that’s why. All the shouting and praying and rolling around. Like something was actually happening that a normal person couldn’t see.”
They’d reached a muddy lane and had just turned in when a figure came out of the dark. “Going to the meeting, I guess,” the Reverend’s son said.
“We were invited by your father.” Wilf could feel Carole taking a firm grip on his arm. “Sorry we’re late.” He was trying to remember the boy’s name.
He was a head shorter than either of them, his hair uncut and tangled, his slight body wrapped in a long winter coat. He held out a small cardboard box. His face looked wan and tired in the reflected light.
“I thought that would come later,” Wilf said. And he remembered. “Josh.”
“Two offerings.” Josh’s body tilted, shifting over on his twisted ankle. “One now. And one just before the Holy Spirit arrives.”