Muriel Gray - Furnace

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 of the car, 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 back.

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 expectantly 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 make-up, 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.

‘If this is what I saw, how could I have known the suit was pink? This picture is black and white.’

John Pace looked across at his deputy and then back at Josh, who was breathing more quickly now. The deputy’s mouth remained slightly open, as though he wished to continue his reading aloud. Pace spoke slowly.

‘Well now, that’s a fair point. A fair point.’

He turned to the deputy, his voice casual and light.

‘Archie. Any of these posters around town in colour?’

The man with his mouth still open closed it, and scanned Pace’s face carefully before speaking.

‘Eh, I can’t rightly say.’

Pace rubbed his chin. ‘I guess the only explanation is that there must be.’

Josh’s heart raced. ‘But it’s something you can find out.’

‘For sure.’

‘And if there aren’t any in colour then where does that leave our theory about how I’d seen her before?’

There was a pause. A long pause, and then Sheriff John Pace clasped his hands together in front of him and looked Josh straight in the eye.

‘Up shit creek, Josh.’

Josh sat back in the chair and almost smiled. But there was very little to smile about.

‘Then I stick by my statement. Until you find out about the poster.’

Pace paused again for an awkward length of time, then unclasped his hands and wagged a finger like he was scolding an invisible dog.

‘Okay. We’re gonna get right on that. But after you’ve paid your fine for that dumb stunt with your log book, there ain’t no reason to keep you here any more. You feel up to drivin’?’

Josh nodded, unsure how the atmosphere in the room had changed, but certain it had.

‘Sure. I kinda feel better already knowing I might not be crazy.’

This time, Pace snorted. ‘Yeah? You saw Nelly. Even if a decent woman like that could have slipped in and out of town in broad daylight to do the deed unseen by anyone but you, what motive would she have for doin’ somethin’ as wicked as happened?’

‘How should I know? Jesus freaks are always missin’ a few floorboards upstairs.’

As soon as he’d said it, Josh knew he shouldn’t have. Archie made a blowing motion with his mouth and Pace’s voice dropped an octave and darkened to the same degree as his face.

‘Now I reckon you ought to keep that smartass truckin’ talk to yourself. Specially when you’re referrin’ to good folks who choose to follow the Lord’s path.’

Archie said a quiet ‘Amen’ and they both looked at Josh with matching contempt. Josh ran his hand over the stubble of his hair and looked from one man’s face to the other.