John Finn

by Vincent McCaffrey

  ​I had briefly met her before at the restaurant. We both got out and he did the formalities, and she hugged me like an old friend when I tried to shake her hand. I wondered what kind of stories Burley had told her.

  Right off she says she’s starved and wants me to come have dinner with them. I suddenly forgot about the pizza I had eaten earlier. It was Therese who insisted that we could all fit in that little Ford Ranger if I drove and Therese sat in Burley’s lap. The smell of her make-up remover filled the cab and I started feeling even hungrier. I offered to buy, just to avoid any dickering, and we went over to Stefani’s pizzeria in Cambridge because they stay open late for the students.

  She’s a good girl. It doesn’t take fifteen minutes before I know why Burley is hooked on Therese. We were looking for a parking space near the restaurant when she says, “Burley told me about what you’ve been doing. Do you have any idea what happened yet? You don’t really think she could have been murdered?”

  Burley had his arms around her in the seat, but he turns his head away from me. I could imagine his face.

  I said, “I suppose she could have been killed by accident, but that wouldn’t explain why she was thrown down the well.”

  Therese says, “No. I didn’t mean that girl. I meant your girlfriend. The girl from Texas.”

  Now, the fact is, I used to tell Mary Ellen everything when we were married. She actually hated that. I don’t think she ever really wanted to know. But I just wanted to tell her. As if everything that happened to me was important to both of us. So, it was easy to see how Burley might have told Therese about Desiree. And right there was everything else I really needed to know about Therese. That, and she wasn’t given to keeping secrets.

  I said, “Maybe. I don’t know yet. Des kept a lot of things to herself. Too much. She might have gotten herself in a bad situation. But then, she might have simply run away. She‘d done that before. I just don’t know yet.”

  Burley was still facing the other direction, but I could hear him sigh.

  Therese squeezes his arm, “What? Was I not supposed to mention that? I’m sorry.” She’s looking like she broke something.

  I said, “It’s okay.”

  Actually, I was thinking something else again.

  The job I wanted Burley to do was simple enough. That is, if you can act a little and don’t mind flying in airplanes. And like a real schmuck, I’d been intending to wait until Burley had taken the money before I told him exactly what the job was. I thought I could convince him to do it anyway, but I wanted to be sure. Now, with the door opened to the subject by Therese, I decided to go for it. I told Burley what I needed him to do right there while we ate our pizza.

  I even pointed out that some nights would be involved.

  As it turned out, it was Therese who made the difference. As Burley likes to say, Therese was down with the idea.

  31. The way it was

  Peter Hansen worked his way slowly through the shadows just beyond the rough of the gutter at the side of the road, dropping his leg over the crook of the pasture fence without touching wood. He could not afford to be seen now. He could not run. His boots, the only pair he owned, were better made for steadier work. Blisters had started at his toes. And if he were caught, in times like these, he might be quickly hung and counted with the casualties of the rebellion.

  He would be happy to be off this road sooner than later. It was the route the Regulars had taken and the events of the day had left everyone too raw by here. He should have calculated this in his scheme. Better to have cut back to Wilson’s Lane and gone south by Little Pond . . . True, old Whittemore had dogs there, but Hansen had gotten by the dogs before. Though, that was with a smaller sack. And the mosquitoes were something fierce down by that swamp. He hated the mosquitoes.

  Lights had shone from each house Hansen passed. Even at this hour, people were awake. Not easy to sleep atop all the trouble of the day, perhaps. Or else they had kept a candle burning because they would have others to believe they were awake. Well enough.

  This was exactly what had made pickings so easy in the early evening. The empty houses were all of them darkened and might as well have advertised their goods on a string. But now, late into the night, it made slow going to pass each house as if there might be a watch-out.

  He would have to count himself lucky that he had heard the voices at the Black Horse, before he had seen the ember of a pipe blaze in the dark. That was just in time. He had been forced to head across the field at the back, though the extra jog was unfortunate for the added distance as well as the briars.

  Peter Hansen’s head buzzed from the blow of the guard at the bridge, but the blood on his lip had stiffened. His shoulders ached with the bruises of the struggle. That was a near thing. He was getting too old for it. Thirty-six this next birthday. Or was it thirty-five? He had never been sure. Just a matter of whether his father had been at sea, away on the Kent fighting Spaniards, or home that year. His mother was never clear on the point. But here he was, no matter. Getting older by the step. And all of it a damned loss. His sack had broken into the gutter. All that good silver lost.

  Truly, there was no one to blame but himself. He had sewn that sack for potatoes the previous fall and thought it was plenty strong. He had failed to check it again before setting out though Dezell had warned him about it. Now, she would remind him again of that. She would. She always minded his errors as close as she did the P’s and Q’s at Bailey’s Tavern.

  More importantly, he was weary. He needed to lie down a bit but the grass in the pastures was wet and the cold would go quickly to his bones. And then there was Bill to deal with. Bill would expect him to work at dawn. The hogs were always hungry, and he could not be quitting the job as he had hoped to. Not now his fortune had been made and lost in the one night.

  Hansen walked with a deliberate step to clear the stones of the pasture. His stomach growled into the dark as loud as a dog at his heels. Soon enough he would be seeing Cooper’s Tavern to the right. If there was no lamp there, he might have a chance to lift some food from the larder before heading west on the road to Watertown. He could even be home by dawn with time to spare for a nap.

  And there was still no sign of Dick. As far as Hansen knew, his friend was floating in the tide of the Menotomy river even now. No matter. Dick was feeble and unreliable. An extra pair of hands. No more.

  The pain of it was that he’d had a year’s wages in that sack. Maybe two if he’d been lucky with that toad of a silversmith Jonas Barker. The man was a snake. A weasel. Had he ever been lucky with Barker before? But then, he had never had such a load of plunder before in his life. What was an honest thief to do? Everything had gone too well. His plan had been that fine. If he had only not been so careless at the bridge.

  He had told Dezell to leave the melting pot by the fire. She would turn it over at him now in the ashes and make a point of it being empty in the morning.

  Clouds broke in a tattered edge, silvered by a hidden moon above him, illuminating the road. This was the only silver he’d be seeing now. He strained his eyes into the gloom ahead. It was apparently empty to the next bending. To the left a smaller opening lead off toward Spy Pond. In that direction a barn loomed above the tree-line against the dark.

  Unconsciously he shifted his weight across the gutter toward the smaller road, but his foot caught against something and he lost balance. He sprawled, turning on his sore shoulder with a yelp, half in the mud of the gutter and half on a stony edge that scraped at raw flesh.

  What was that? A devil’s root, no doubt. He kicked back at it in frustration. The sound of metal nicked a stone in the dark.

  His fingers probed blindly, as one sore hand found the smooth wood of a stock. His other hand grabbed at the barrel. He knew it in an instant by the feel alone. The soldiers’ patrols always stopped at the trough in front of Bill’s, and more than a dozen times he had asked one or another of the Regulars if he could heft their muskets. A beautiful thing. Worth
its weight in Spanish dollars. Maybe more now with the new demand the rebellion had caused. Not as good as the silver he’s lost, but something, at the least.

  Dezell could not scoff as loudly at his venture now. But the bitch would still laugh.

  He rubbed the dew from the metal of the barrel beneath the arm of his coat and wiped the bayonet clean on a nose rag from his pocket. Hefting the musket one more time as he imagined a soldier would, only then did he realize the problem. The barrel was bent. Probably ruined beneath the boot of a soldier, hasty in retreat. His prize was worthless.

  He cursed aloud, “God almighty damn! Damned fool!”

  Jerking a look up and down the road to see if there might be anyone to hear his curse, he saw the way was empty. He pulled up the hem of his coat then and held tight to the blade of the bayonet, twisting at the catch. It would not budge. He cursed again aloud but did not bother to look up afterward. He found the grooves with his bare hand in the dark and finally succeeded in releasing the shaft by using a copper from his pocket. At least he would have that much out of it. Gingerly, careful of cutting the leather, he slid the loose bayonet beneath his belt strap.

  Fatigue dragged at Hansen’s body once more. He needed a rest. He turned up the smaller road toward the barn. He only needed just a bit of sleep.

  Cary Peet kept to the center of the road, his eyes attacking each darker shadow to either side as he passed. He had been stopped twice already, but it was not the guards that worried him. It was the ghosts.

  He had seen ghosts before. More than once.

  One time, with his Da working the rake against a rising bed of oysters beneath them and the tide pulling away, Cary had been playing the tiller furiously to hold their place while his own eyes watched the fog roll from the fens. A pretty sight he was thinking. Then, suddenly, where no land was, a light had come. A glow. And it filled the mists as if they were burning. And the sea birds screeched and swarmed about it and the center of the glow darkened into a throat and a voice spoke at them. “Grace. Grace. Grace.” And his father had pulled the rake into the boat and they had set the sheets quickly for home. However, by the time they had reached their door that night, his sister was already three hours dead of the pox.

  ​And other times, after his mum had passed, he had seen her shade brush against the neglected flowers of the garden where she had so often spent her time. Unable to pluck the withered stems herself, she had shown him which ones to cut away to keep the blooming fresh. He had done this for two summers and kept the best blossoms for her grave.

  ​But he had never seen the ghost of his Da.

  Reverend Frost had come for Cary there at his father’s graveside, at the end of the service, and taken him directly to the parsonage. It was not long afterward he had been sent north to live with Izaak Andrews, who had no boy of his own for chores.

  ​Mind, he was not afraid of the ghosts themselves. Not truly. It was only what they had showed of what had never been that scared him. What they revealed of things that could not happen. That was the worst of it. When the future was known, the present was made smaller. As if it was nothing.

  His body shivered with the thought. How was that? Like a dream where running made no progress. Where all that was done was lost in the doing. When you could see something you wished for, but it was out of reach with no means to make it your own.

  ​His Da had been saving a shilling a week for a new boat. A terrible expense for them to bear, but his mum had stood with Da on the plan and they made do with less. Each week, after Saturday supper, the shilling was dropped in the empty vinegar jug and they all clapped. It was the best moment of the week. Would they have been so glad then if they had known what was to come?

  Once, Cary had been with his Da as he looked at one boat in particular—broad beamed it was but low to the water, the single mast rigged with a long spar for delicate maneuvering. And the two of them had talked about it over and again as they dredged the oysters up in their mended baskets. His father nearly chuckled then with his words, as happy as he would ever be. How to handle the extra ropes. How to move when an unexpected wind grabbed at the yard. How life would be after they finally had a worthy boat.

  Cary had imagined them with the boat so clearly. He had conjured the sight of it every night—before the pox came and stole all of those dreams away. That dream had been as real to him—more real in fact than the little boat that was theirs. Odd—he could hardly remember that little boat now. He could not even conjure the look of it in his head. But the dream of the larger boat they would never have, the one that was never theirs, still visited him in his sleep and woke him with his own tears.

  ​“You there! Fellow!”

  ​Cary wiped his eyes and looked toward the voice.

  ​“Who is it?” another voice said. A figure took shape from the dark, musket at the ready.

  ​Cary answered, “Cary Peet. I’ve come at my mistress’ command to watch the Andrews house.”

  ​The musket lowered. The voice dropped to a low rumble.

  ​“I fear, too late, boy. The regulars was through there this afternoon.”

  ​That voice he knew from Sunday service was Deacon Adams. Another figure had stayed back in the shadows and this person came forward now.

  ​“There’s scavengers about, Mr. Peet. Word is that there was two that was stopped at the Bridge.”

  ​Cary had heard the same when he passed that way. “They say one went into the water and might have sunk with the weight of the loot stuffed in his coat pockets. The other got away but left his plunder behind. I saw the pile when I passed. Silver enough to light the dark.”

  ​“So we’ve heard. And so be careful. Leave a lamp alight where it can be seen from the road.”

  ​“Yes sir.” Cary squinted at the second figure. “Is that Mr. Cutter?”

  ​“It is. Now go on and be safe.”

  Mary Andrews had arrived back at the house well after dark. She had stayed too long with Jane Browne—had intended to leave earlier—at least they had fed her. She might even have stayed another night but could not. Their baby had the colic and cried more than slept. Besides, Tom might have returned already and found Mary gone. And in truth, there was no staying with the Brownes. Jacob Browne had his eye on what wasn’t his to be had. He had stood too close more than once. He had touched Mary’s hand while Jane was busy nursing. That was no accident. Another night spent there might have been a disaster for all concerned.

  In the door with only the faint illumination of moonlit clouds behind her, she fumbled too much time away just to confirm that her step-mother had taken all the candles with her, and the flints as well. Stupid woman! Always something. Always meaning well but causing trouble. Never thinking to look a step to the fore, or see what might have happened behind in consequence.

  Mary sucked her lungs full of air and said a penance for her thoughts. Her step-mother had problems enough without Mary’s scold.

  Then she lifted the lid and stooped into the larder at the corner, passing her hands over the empty shelves. The pantry was bare but for wrappings. Not a cracker. And there would be no garden for months.

  Tomorrow she would go across to the Cutters’s and ask for a bite to eat. And Sarah Adams had an infant and was in need of a helping hand, her other children being too young and her husband worthless for anything but complaint and play. Mary could offer her service there. And then, her Tom would finally come. He must. He had promised.

  She pulled a broken fork from the hook by the mantle where it was kept to turn the meat and stirred the coals in the hearth. They were quite dead.

  And the woodbin too was empty. She knew the pile outside the door to be wet. She would have to pull boards out of the barn. A waste, but it would be the only wood dry enough to burn.

  Again, fingers feeling blindly, she found the turning stick still hung inside the hearth with the fire bowl propped beneath it. The poker was there as well, and this startled her when her hand knocked against it and the ir
on fell to the stone below. She turned and bent lower into the total blackness of the woodbin and scraped some shavings and wood bits out of the corners with her hands at the minor expense of a few splinters.

  She could not be fumbling in the dark for much longer before having an accident. This she knew. But she should have a light at the window in any case. She knew that much too.

  At least her step-mother had not taken the fat!

  The bowl for the drippings sat in its usual place beyond the end of the hearth, and she found it quickly with her foot and then lifted it onto the table. The wiping rag that usually hung there above it was missing, but she had noticed another in the faint light of the open door when she had entered—lying aside as if dropped by accident, and she grabbed this now. Opening the empty larder again she felt the shelf there and found two pieces of thin cord normally used to re-tie sacks of flour from the mill. There were often a few there left behind as the sacks emptied. Mary pushed both of these into the fat with her fingers, working the grease into the fiber. Only when she wiped her fingers on the rag did she realize this was the doll dress she had made with her younger half-sister Celia only weeks before. Mary paused to wonder if she would ever see little Celia, or any of them again—and then shook the thought away—before tying the doll dress onto the crook of the poker from the hearth and twisting this into the fat in the bowl as well.

  ​Finally she took up the fire stick and bow and then the oak bowl and the shavings and set them on the table before her in a row so that she could reach them all at the right moment in the darkness. She slipped the bow over the fire stick and used a wooden spoon cupped in the palm of her hand at the top end, to lock the stick in place. Then she began to work the bow carefully back and forth, spinning the stick. She smelled the burn before she could see it. And then the ember. She fed a bit of the shavings into the side of the bowl and this caught fire. It was a small blaze but enough to blind her momentarily as much as the dark had done before. She placed the end of the greased cord to the flame and it caught. This she set against a dollop of grease in the bowl of drippings until it glistened, and then pinned the burning cord against the side of the bowl with the broken fork, finishing her crude candle.