Where the Bodies Lie

by Mark Lisac

  Manchester turned to her after laying down the preparatory glitter of talk about the library. He said he was happy to have a visit from a fine-looking young woman. “How is it you knew Mister Devereaux?”

  Sandra and Jackson saw him and heard his words clearly. It was different for Manchester. He saw his visitors through a gauzy film of incipient cataracts. His concentration wavered as well, adding to the filmy effect. He was still able to recognize an old faithful supporter and a delightfully mature woman with a fine figure and streaked blonde-brown hair. The streaks seemed to bathe her hair in a light that rose and fell in intensity. He saw the fine bones in her neck and the smooth beginning of her shoulders and then the welcome sight faded. His vision had become unreliable. Sometimes he could see the room behind them and sometimes he was aware of seeing only the visitors. At times he was aware of seeing only one of them. Their questions faded in and out, too. He was proud that his hearing had not deteriorated much. But his comprehension of the words was unstable.

  He knew, however, that his initial polite and even interested questions about what Orion had been like as a young man were being quickly overcome by questions of their own. They had come to extract information, not to offer it.

  Well then, yes, he would admit that Devereaux had been his son. He thought he had conceded that before to Jackson and to the ill-mannered young lawyer.

  That seemed safe enough. But now they were asking more pointed questions. Was he sure that he was Orion Devereaux’s father?

  “Yes, I’m sure. I have taken responsibility. She was highly attracted to me. What are you implying? Are you saying that his mother was a tramp?”

  “You weren’t married to her,” the woman gently said.

  “That is correct. It was youthful folly. Perhaps on both our parts. But I take full responsibility.”

  She asked how that squared with his commitment to a moral life. He conceded it did not. But a life without sin was neither possible nor a necessary qualification for entry to eternal grace. One had only to look at St. Paul. Those of the Catholic persuasion might look equally to St. Augustine.

  She kept asking questions. Jackson occasionally interjected one of his own. How could he have recorded thousands of Bible minutes for radio use over the years if he had not publicly acknowledged his own failings to his listeners? How could he have abandoned his own child? He began to feel lightheaded. Visions from the past of a young woman with wavy dark hair intruded on the present reality. They asked more questions, and he tried to answer.

  “Where is Orion Devereaux’s mother? Where is his mother? What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “What did Tractor Tom think of what had happened?”

  “He was disappointed, of course, but he understood that the flesh is weak.”

  “Was Tom attracted to the young woman himself ?”

  “Tom Farber was a man, but a principled man.”

  “But was he a man first?”

  “Yes, but I was more attractive to women.”

  “What about this one woman? Was Tom Farber really Orion Devereaux’s father? We’ve seen written evidence. Was Tom Farber Orion Devereaux’s father? Was it possible? Was it real? You have little time left to clear your conscience and to prevent the province’s history from being founded on a lie.”

  “Most history is a lie. It’s a collection of fairytales for the instruction of the weak and gullible. My conscience is my conscience.”

  The questions kept coming and he was losing track. He answered others despite no longer feeling in control, and then he answered still more.

  “Was Tom Farber the boy’s father? We can see you’re lying. Why are you lying? What happened to Orion Devereaux’s mother? We know her name was Mary Simmons. Where is she?”

  “I’m the boy’s father. I took responsibility.”

  “What does that mean? Everything you say, you say in the sight of God.”

  “I am Orion Devereaux’s father. His father in the sight of history.”

  He tried to explain, reconciling two truths that could not both be true. He answered more questions. He knew they were right about having to tell. He had to explain to someone, to real living persons, while he was still on this earth. It was the only way he could explain himself soon to God.

  His head collapsed to one side, its weight suddenly insupportable. He leaked urine and tears. They called for Isabel.

  * * *

  They left shaken, Sandra because of the ordeal, Jackson because he had seen the living remains of a man— not of a great man but of the best available in his time — reduced to a decayed husk.

  They drove back to the firm and walked to Asher’s office. He welcomed them and quickly decided to give them both a brandy from the store he kept on hand for the better-paying and thirstier clients who appreciated minor luxuries. Jackson was subdued. Sandra needed to pour out her emotions in words.

  “It was horrible,” she said. “He was horrible. He was practically falling apart but you could still see he was trying to ogle me. And the way he implied that he was Devereaux’s father because he was so attractive the woman couldn’t keep her hands off him. It was disgusting and pitiful. And then he finally broke down and told us what may or may not be the real story, and then he sagged into a heap and peed his pants and cried.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Sandra. Thank you. I should apologize too, but there’s no point. I would have asked you to go even if I’d known how it was going to be. It must have been painful for you too, Morley.”

  “It was,” Jackson said. “As painful as when the bones were rubbing together in my knees before the transplants. We wrung him dry like a sponge. When we finished, there wasn’t much more left of him than that. I suppose I knew he would end like that if he lived many more months. I never thought I would be the agent.”

  “People mostly end up where they’re been headed all their lives,” Asher said. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “No. But I’ve pushed him farther and faster toward that end than he would have gone on his own. I can only hope he recovers soon and has a handful of better days. He may even have lifted a burden off his own conscience — assuming he will remember talking to us and remember what he said. Or that he even understands anymore what really happened. Let’s move on.”

  “Okay. If you’re ready.”

  Sandra spoke first. “He said he was Devereaux’s father. In the end, he admitted Tom Farber was the biological father. He, the Parson, was Devereaux’s father as a matter of being responsible and in the sight of history.”

  “How does that work? Did he throw Farber and the girl together?”

  “He felt he could have done more to keep them apart, prevent it from happening. But he also took responsibility in the sense of being ready to take the full blame if anything ever came out. He wanted to keep Farber’s reputation unsullied. I think. It was anything but a coherent story.”

  “Is that how you understood it, Morley?”

  Jackson nodded. “He was under great emotional stress. He related the events episodically. You could describe it as a series of impressions gained through translucent, not transparent, windows on the past. I think the main points are plausible nonetheless, even believable. Farber fell in love with Mary Simmons. Probably it was reciprocated. She may or may not have been a willing partner. She became pregnant. That could have been an accident. George harboured suspicions that she may have tried to become pregnant to force Farber into a marriage so that she could become a premier’s wife. George saw the way they had looked comfortable together in private moments, and saw them both
suddenly agitated. He quickly put two and two together and confirmed it with Farber.

  “There was a considerable row between them. George told Farber the province’s future, both material and moral, depended on him. He could not marry a girl in his office who would have a baby five or six months later. He could not announce that he had fathered a child out of wedlock and leave the premier’s office.

  “They apparently argued for days. The upshot was that George convinced Farber that the Simmons girl had to be sent home. And that George would take responsibility for being the father if word should ever leak out.

  “There may have been jealousy involved. George may have been attracted to her, too. Perhaps very attracted, to the point where seeing the other two together was a torture for him.

  “He certainly wanted to avoid a terrible scandal. But it may also be that he was taking revenge or salving his own hurt by persuading Farber to send the woman away. And remember that he had already met Irma — poor, plain Irma. George has had a lot weighing on him over the years. Perhaps that’s why he seems to have persuaded himself that things were different than they really were. His story was fragmentary and sometimes inconsistent.

  “Part of the incoherence was a suggestion that Farber could well have forced himself on the girl. Or perhaps seduced her. He could as easily have been a partner in a love affair of equals. George sounded like he never wanted to admit that possibility to himself, given his own attraction to the girl. He seems to have ended up thinking of Devereaux as really being his own biological son.

  “Farber sent the young woman away, but apparently regretted it immediately. He and George quarrelled harshly. It was too late to turn back.

  “The darkest aspect of the story was that Farber disappeared for a few days in the weeks before he died. George suspected he had gone to see the girl and that something terrible had happened. He wouldn’t or couldn’t say what.”

  Asher listened, weighing the parts of the story as they emerged. He thought they made sense. The parts mostly fit with everything else he knew. He did not say that Apson had written about Farber killing the girl. Instead he asked, “What happened to Mary Simmons? Did he say anything?”

  “Only that she left the province and returned home,” Jackson said. “And that he is sure she is no longer alive, that in fact she died young.”

  “And how about Devereaux?”

  “He said he wanted the girl to give up the boy to a foster family. He broke down before we could get more out of him.”

  Asher sighed. “Too many things that could use more explanation for my liking. Still, it doesn’t sound like something a man sliding into senility could dream up, even as a cover for his own past.”

  Sandra asked what he was going to do with the information. He said he would have to take things one step at a time. Making it all public seemed pointless. The first thing was to make sure that Gordon Finley was not in any danger. The second was to see that justice was done, if at all possible.

  “Very pragmatic of you to put it in that order,” Sandra said. Jackson said nothing. Then she made a leap of the kind that had astonished him when they had been married. “Mary Simmons disappearing is odd but not improbable. Ordinary people do not always leave a trace. Orion Devereaux dying the way he did at the time he did seems like a big coincidence. Is he part of seeing justice done?”

  Asher put his elbows on his chair arms and put his hands together with his thumbs on his lower lip. He looked at her, lifted his lips from his hands, and said, “I don’t know. I know I can’t leave it there.”

  “Why not? Who made you responsible?”

  “Maybe it was growing up playing on teams,” he said. “You don’t shirk. You give it everything you’ve got. Teammates are depending on you.”

  “Your teammates don’t want to see you trying beyond your capabilities,” Jackson said. “You can make a mistake that way, or get hurt.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes you get hurt anyway. I used to think you could find certainty. Somewhere. Sometimes. I used to think you could know about people once they were in their graves. It was one thing you could be sure of. Maybe that’s not so. I’m tired of looking at graves.”

  Sandra broke the silence that followed. “I’m glad, Harry. I’m sorry you’ve lost something but I’m glad you’re getting free of that.”

  “You do realize,” Jackson said, “that freedom is not an invitation to take foolhardy risks?”

  “It is an invitation to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.”

  34

  THE LEE ENFIELD CRACKED SHARPLY. A CRASH OF GLASS FOLLOWED. It was faint at this distance. The rifle cracked again. Another crash of glass, this time with a little tinkling sound as a coda, almost like a bird’s song.

  Finley guessed the range at about one hundred metres. He wanted to give the windows a sporting chance and test his marksmanship at the same time. Ordinarily, firing at that range would have been too simple to bother with. Balancing most of his weight on one leg as he leaned across the roof of his car made the shots somewhat more challenging than they would have been before last winter.

  He took his time. He had already checked and found no signs of anyone at home. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Rat Brothers had been at home. Having them watch would have been better. And if they had interfered… he preferred not to think about that although he knew he would not have backed off. He wondered if he was losing his grip.

  He had always felt well grounded. Growing up with his sister seemed to have helped him that way. Her influence had probably helped him survive Afghanistan and come home without his brains scrambled. Now here he was, enjoying the feel of the wooden stock and the precision of the round sight over the breech lining up exactly between the twin metal posts at the front of the barrel.

  He fired again, at a basement window. The bullet hit tempered glass this time. It shattered into a satisfying shower of clear nuggets. They didn’t blow apart so much as drop like a sudden waterfall.

  The bullets were doubtless going through the first interior walls they hit. Finley was glad the shell of the house was old. That meant it probably had thick plaster laid over an early form of drywall that was in turn laid over inch-thick wood. He didn’t have to worry much about penetrating too far through the other side, but a small woodlot thick with trees stood over there anyway.

  The Carswell boys probably had enemies. Some probably liked to show off with guns. Finley was sure they would understand who had driven onto their property and delivered retribution. Not a warning. There was no point in warning devious and nasty animals. The only option was a straight jump from forbearance to action. Like pulling a trigger. One second, life was safe. The next, there was an explosive sound and a hurtling slug of metal.

  He finished all the windows he could see facing the driveway. The damage was not equivalent but the message was.

  After a last look, he hopped around to the trunk, opened it, placed the rifle inside, and closed it while looking around again. Then he hopped back to the driver’s door, got inside, and started the engine. His crutches were propped on the passenger seat. A good place for them, he thought. Constant companions.

  He drove back to Barnsdale, thankful once again that Kenny had taken out his left leg and not his right. He had felt angry at losing the leg, but was never tempted toward revenge. The brothers weren’t like normal people. They hurt and damaged and destroyed without thinking. You had to stay out of their reach and not bother them. If you didn’t, you took your chances and didn’t complain about whatever happened.

  Back at his house, he parked in the garage, put the rifle into his duffel bag, slung that over a shoulder, and used his crutches to walk to the door, past the
blackened patch that had spread over the side of his house like mould.

  He took his time stowing the rifle in his downstairs locker. Then he worked his way back upstairs, dropped into his armchair, and called Asher’s private line.

  Asher answered and they exchanged greetings. Finley said he was coming along fine and looking forward to the day he could get back to his shop. He was already visiting it a few times a week.

  “Thought I should let you know someone tried to firebomb my house last night,” Finley said.

  “Tried?”

  “They threw some kind of Molotov cocktail against the side. It didn’t start anything bigger. I’m lucky not to have vinyl siding. I slept through the whole thing, but someone saw the flames and the firefighters got here pretty quickly. Insurance will cover it. I’ll have to replace some of the soffit and fascia under the eaves. The stucco and the wood siding held up well but it was all getting old. Maybe it was time to look at doing something with it anyway.”

  “Just another day in the country, then?”

  “No, I’m pissed off. The local kids wouldn’t do anything like that. Spraying graffiti and breaking the odd sign or store window keeps them happy. It had to be the Carswells. I went to their house and left them a message to please be considerate and think before they do anything like that again. They usually listen to reason if you’re polite about it.”

  Asher listened and decided not to ask for more information about the message.

  Finley said, “What has me worried is why they would do something like this now. I thought everything was settled with them.”

  “It was. I can guess, though. I had an unsatisfactory talk the other day with the guy I’m sure was behind everything they were up to in the winter. He wasn’t cooperative. I didn’t get the impression he would change his mind. It’s possible that he got hold of them and told them if he got into a shitstorm, a lot of it would splatter onto them.”