FURNACE

by Muriel Gray

  “What’s the deal with this town? Where’s the money coming from?”

  Pace raised an eyebrow as if the question was not only irrelevant but also impertinent. He shrugged. “Same as anywhere. Rich folks here got old money, poorer folks do what poor folks do. Work.”

  Josh shook his head, undeterred by this oblique answer. “No, I mean what’s the bottom line? Farming? Mining? What?”

  Pace looked like he was thinking hard. “Well, I guess that’s a good question. I reckon mostly it’s land and timber, but we got a few people here deal mostly in money, know what I mean? Like they don’t make nothing, they just sit on the phone or the fax and move money around the world. Seems to make more.”

  “Up here? In the mountains?”

  “You got a phone and a fax, it don’t matter if you’re on the moon. I guess they like the mountain air.”

  Josh nodded, disappointed at the mundane explanation. The easy resolution of the mystery did little to make him feel better. But then, he was far from feeling good. He was feeling worse than he’d ever felt in his life. The image of that tiny foot, that thick black blood bobbed to the surface of his consciousness like a plastic ball held under bathwater and released. He swallowed hard, fighting back his horror, as Pace brought the car to a stop outside a sprawling white house. The sheriff cut the engine and sighed deeply. He tapped the wheel thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to Josh.

  “This is out of order and I ain’t no psychiatrist, but I reckon if you meet this lady you’re goin’ to realize that you made a mistake.”

  Josh felt cold. My God. This was her house. John Pace was going to make him talk to her, make him look again into those eyes that had drilled him just before she…

  “But I don’t want you tellin’ her why we’re here, you understand? That’s important. No way am I goin’ to treat Councillor McFarlane like a suspect. This here visit is just so you can straighten things out in your mind and get on your way again. Can you handle that?”

  Josh looked up to the dark windows of the great house and knew he had to see her. He nodded. Pace studied his face for a moment, returned the nod, then got out of the car. Josh followed him, a few steps behind.

  The arrival of the police car had already made one of the drapes twitch. A child’s face looked out from behind pale flowery material, and opened its mouth in naked delight that the sheriff was coming up their driveway. The drapes fell and swung as the child dived away.

  Pace rang a doorbell that buzzed deep inside the house. There were voices, children’s and an adult cheerfully telling them to be quiet, and then the mock-period door swung open.

  She opened it. The murderer.

  Councillor Nelly McFarlane was wiping her hands on an apron that hung loosely around the waist of a plain denim knee-length dress. Her red hair was tied back in a knot and her open friendly face was without makeup. Clinging to her skirt was a girl of about nine or ten, and in the background a younger boy and a slightly older girl hopped around with open curiosity.

  Nelly McFarlane looked at them both and smiled, showing those fine white teeth that graced her campaign handbill.

  “John! Hi! Come in.”

  She motioned to the men to enter, but looking questioningly at Josh. He was aware that he looked like a criminal. Take a trucker from his truck and he always does. He was well used to being followed around factory outlet malls by store detectives who fixed on his clothes and haircut like pointer dogs on a duck. But right now, he was more aware that he was looking at a criminal. A first-degree murderer. Pace put a hand behind Josh to push him gently forward, speaking to the woman as he did so.

  “I want you to meet Josh Spiller. He’s a trucker from Pittsburgh.”

  She widened her smile and raised her eyebrows. Josh was grateful that she didn’t offer a hand to shake. He was barely in control, but to have been forced to touch the flesh that had launched the baby into oblivion…

  The children scuttled away inside and vanished, satisfied that the police visit was to be a dull social one.

  Josh hesitated, his heart racing in his chest. The space between his shoulder blades told him that he was about to be clubbed from behind with a baseball bat, but his eyes, his logic, his head told him he was the unannounced guest of a bewildered and respectable Furnace citizen. He stepped into the large, cool hall. In the spacious living room to which she led them, a television was blaring cartoons to a room now vacated by children. Nelly McFarlane moved to a low mahogany coffee table, picked up the remote and silenced the noise.

  Josh flicked his eyes to it just in time to see a coyote being pursued on a dusty road by a huge rolling rock before the picture fizzled away to black. He looked away quickly, a hot, sick feeling returning to his head. She sat down on a long sofa and motioned for the men to do the same on an identical one on the opposite side of the coffee table. They sat, and Pace clasped his hands on his knees.

  “Sorry to trouble you, Nelly, but there’s been a real bad accident.”

  Josh watched her face carefully as a line of fear and confusion passed over its undoubtedly handsome structure. She was much younger than he’d thought. In her late forties maybe. It was hard to tell. But she looked good. He held his breath. He was confused and light-headed. Pace saw what she was thinking and hurried along to halt it.

  “Alice Nevin’s baby was killed this morning.”

  Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, sweet Lord. Alice? Berry Nevin’s girl?”

  Pace nodded.

  “How?”

  Her voice was croaky.

  “It was out the front of the mall. Maybe you saw some of the commotion if you were in town early?”

  He looked at her carefully, but if there was to be any flicker of guilt or duplicity, it was not going to register on this woman’s sympathetically open face.

  She shook her head slowly, her hand now at her neck.

  “We haven’t been out yet, John. What happened?”

  “Stroller rolled right out into the street. I’m here to tell you ‘cos I know that’s a big piece of your campaign, Nelly. To get them metal barriers up in front of the store.”

  She was shaking her head in disbelief now, and Josh watched her, seeing only a woman in genuine distress at an appalling tragedy. Pace was continuing.

  “Mr. Spiller here, well, he was the real unfortunate one who just happened to be passing by slowly in his truck. Just shows you, you were right about an accident waitin’ to happen. He was way under the speed limit, braked an’ everythin’, but there was nothin’ he could do. Little Amy rolled right under there. Didn’t stand a chance.”

  She silently mouthed the words “little Amy” to herself, then turned her eyes on Josh. There was a fleeting second, no, less than that; a fraction of a second in which a cold wind blew across his heart and he imagined he saw the same cold, reptilian eyes that had stared him down at seven o’clock this morning, light-years away.

  And then his bruised mind allowed him to see what was really in front of him: two eyes that were already glazing with tears and regarding him with an expression of horror that the killer, albeit an unwitting one, was here in her house, which was being replaced with some obvious effort by a sympathy that seemed so warm and genuine he felt tears prick his own eyes again.

  John Pace looked concerned. “You okay, Nelly?”

  She swallowed and waved a hand at him. When she spoke, she was still visibly wrestling with revulsion and compassion. “I don’t know what to say. You poor man.”

  Pace looked at his feet.

  “Like I say, Nelly, if those barriers had been up like you’ve been shoutin’ for, this’d never have happened. I just wanted Mr. Spiller here to know that it ain’t never goin’ to happen again. Kind of put a bit of his mind at ease.”

  Josh stared at her, his mind spinning. How did he get here? A few hours ago he was on the interstate trying to find his breakfast, and now he was in a living nightmare that he was never going to wake from. Nothing would ever be the same again. He h
ad killed a child. Not her. Not this middle-class, bland and ordinary woman who spent her life campaigning for tiny small-town victories. Him. He had been sleepless and crazy. Seeing things. He had seen some dumb poster on a wall and his mixed-up, fucked-up brain had concocted that stuff. It was no one else but him. He was the killer.

  She got to her feet. Her face told the story that she was still unsure of him, almost as though she were reading his guilty mind, and as she spoke her next hospitable words, her eyes suggested she were thinking of running to get a gun.

  “Can I fetch you something, Mr. Spiller? A coffee? A cold drink?”

  Josh shook his head. “No. Thank you.”

  She paused, staring at him with an expression that was difficult to read, then spoke gently. “Well, let me give you this. Please.”

  She went to a drawer in an elegant sideboard, took out a small yellow pamphlet, crossed the room and handed it to him.

  Josh took it and looked down at its cover. It showed a poor drawing of a family, a mother and father straight out of the Brady Bunch, all big collars and bad seventies haircuts, and two apple-cheeked children encircled by their parents’ arms. At the back of the family, the figure of Christ was holding his shepherd’s crook out and beaming great rays of light over them. Large serifed type declared, JESUS, THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY OF MAN. HIS LOVE HEALS ALL.

  He looked up at Nelly McFarlane in dismay. She had almost lost all trace of uncertainty, and now adopted the brain-damaged expression of the born-again Christian, beaming at him as though she had given him some delightful gift.

  “Are you a believer, Mr. Spiller?”

  He looked at the pamphlet again to avoid her eyes. “No. I’m afraid not.”

  “Please read it anyway. It might help you. Jesus wants to help the unbeliever not only to be at peace, to be healed, but also to come to him and embrace the word of God.”

  Pace was looking at the table, his hands still clasped, and it was impossible for Josh to see if it was out of embarrassment or piety. The woman turned her attention back to the silent sheriff.

  “Should I go around there, do you think, John?”

  “She’s been taken to the clinic, Nelly. She’s pretty shook up. I reckon you should wait a piece.”

  She nodded, then turned back to Josh.

  “May I pray for you, Mr. Spiller?”

  Josh felt awkward and silly. “Sure. Thank you.”

  “Then I will. I’ll pray very hard. You must be in terrible pain.”

  He nodded and then looked to Pace, telegraphing that he was desperate to leave. The sheriff read the face of his companion and stood up. Josh did likewise.

  “Anyhows, Nelly, I’m real sorry to intrude, but like I say, I thought you should know. Hope it’s helped Mr. Spiller here too, knowing that it’s something that’s goin’ to get fixed.”

  Nelly McFarlane stood up, moved quickly around the table and grasped Josh’s arm. He recoiled, but her touch was not the horror he had dreaded. Her hand was warm and soft.

  “You can be sure of that, Mr. Spiller. Barriers are going up on that sidewalk if I have to build them myself. But for the moment, while the pain of this is still crippling you, try and let Christ into your life. He can help too.”

  Josh nodded dumbly and shifted his feet. She scanned his face for a few more moments, then led them into the hall. At the door Josh unzipped his jacket pocket to put away the pamphlet, and as he did so the handbill that Pace had given him poked out of the corner. She saw it, smiled and pointed with a slender finger, clipped, clean nails without varnish. The finger of a neat, God-fearing mother. Not the painted nails of a terrifying harpy.

  “Guess you hoped I’d be a slice more glamorous if you saw that picture before we met, Mr. Spiller. Sorry you caught me in Grandma mode.”

  Josh managed a weak smile.

  “You look just fine.”

  She responded with the coquettish grin of a woman flattered. “Well, I just throw that old pink suit on when I need to look like I mean business. This is me, really.” She lifted the sides of her denim skirt like a little girl.

  Josh gave an embarrassed upward nod of acknowledgment. The sheriff shook her hand, asked to be remembered to Jim, and they walked back to the car. She watched them go, then quietly pushed the door shut.

  Josh was silent for the first few minutes of the return journey, gazing out at the passing houses and their uniform blankets of velvet gardens. Pace broke the silence.

  “Well?”

  Josh remained quiet, thinking. Agonizing.

  Pace looked sideways at him.

  “That your murderer?”

  Josh hesitated. It was still so real. But of course it couldn’t be. That woman, that ordinary woman wasn’t capable of anything more than boring the nuts off you at a church social. There was no other explanation. He was ill. He hadn’t slept. He’d made it up.

  “I guess not.” Josh continued to stare out the window, then turned to his driver. “Why are you being so kind?”

  “You think I’m being kind?”

  “Yeah. I do. I reckon some of your deputies would be mighty pleased to see me strung up.”

  Pace drummed the wheel with a finger, his eyes still forward.

  “You made a mistake forgettin’ to log, Josh, but we both know the accident weren’t your fault. Now there’s already one person dead. We can’t change that. But I’m damned if I want you freakin’ out on the highway out there and have me come and scrape up some more mess. I seen men confused and lost about a lot less than you been through.”

  Pace sighed through his nose and then spoke again wearily as though this kind of bizarre incident happened on a daily basis.

  “Now. Want to change your statement?”

  Josh chewed at a fingernail. “That necessary?”

  When Pace replied, his tone was one of irritation. The concerned policeman was disappearing; he sounded like a man who had proved a point and needed to get about his business.

  “Sure, it’s necessary. You change your mind about what happened, you have to change your statement.”

  Josh said nothing, but they drove back to the sheriff’s office in the silent understanding that the favour was over and it was time to clean up. The problem was he had no idea what he would say in a new statement. How could he say the stroller rolled with the wind, when he didn’t see that? He’d seen it being pushed. He had. He closed his eyes and the picture was still there.

  Suddenly Josh wanted Elizabeth very badly. He wanted to be held in her arms, have her run her hands over the shaved nape of his neck the way she did, and smell the clean, sweet smell of her body. He needed her to tell him it was going to be okay. Only it wasn’t okay. A baby was dead and he was losing his mind. Panic rose in his throat again, and he turned his attention to the sanitized landscape of Furnace’s tidy houses to help battle it.

  Moments later he was back in the small room they had left less than half an hour ago, walking with his eyes fixed firmly on the man’s back to avoid even the tiny task of thinking about where to take his next step.

  He was lost and dazed and the emotions were so alien to him that he reeled from them. Once, lounging on the sofa at home, he and Elizabeth had been watching that dumb TV game show where the glazed-eyed contestants begin by describing their own characters. She’d laughed and made him do the same. He recalled pulling a serious face and adopting a joke manly voice to say,

  “Hi. I’m Josh Spiller and I get things done. I take control.” Would he say that today and still expect her to laugh? The truth wouldn’t make either of them laugh. Try “Hi. I’m Josh Spiller. Things happen. I run away.” Right now he was seriously out of control and there was nowhere to run. He sat back in the shaky wooden chair and let his arms flop heavily onto the table.

  The deputy who’d taken the statement returned, bringing with him a pile of paperwork, arranged himself at the table and looked to the sheriff for instruction. Pace nodded and the man smoothed a new piece of paper with his hand, held his pen expe
ctantly and looked to Josh.

  “You want me to read you back your first statement and amend it, or just start from new?”

  Josh looked at him with dull eyes, still unsure what he could say that would replace the one he’d given. He stalled for time.

  “Can I hear it back?”

  The man straightened his shoulders and started to read haltingly like a shy child standing up in class.

  Josh listened, his mind playing the movie that went with the words, fighting to make himself believe that his clear and accurate account was the product of a temporarily fevered brain. As the deputy reached the description of the woman, Josh slid the crumpled handbill picture of Nelly McFarlane out of his pocket and onto the table in front of him. He gazed down at the woman’s open, friendly face as the man’s voice droned in the air like some monotonous tour guide in a national monument.

  “… hard to tell her age, but older than the mother, wearing a little too much makeup, and a tailored pink suit. Her hair…”

  Josh looked up.

  “Wait.”

  Pace, who had been picking at his thumbnail, apparently bored and barely seeming to listen, looked up at Josh.

  Josh was excited, his eyes flashing with impatience. He spoke quickly, turning to Pace to make his point.

  “Pink. You hear? I said it was a pink suit.”

  Pace put his wide hands out palms up, and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Josh stabbed at the handbill with a finger.

  “You heard her as we left, Sheriff. She mentioned this pink suit, the one in this picture.”

  Pace was still looking quizzical, but Josh could detect falsehood in that expression, could see the conclusion to his observation being born behind the sheriff’s narrowed eyes before Josh spoke it.