Muriel Gray - Furnace

‘Sorry. No offence.’

Pace’s face told him that offence had indeed been taken. He stood, pulled Josh’s licence from his pocket, dropped it on the table and waved a hand at the paper in front of Archie.

‘Sign your original statement, take a copy. When you’ve paid your fine, Deputy’ll give you back the truck keys.’

Josh opened his mouth to speak and was silenced by a fat finger held up and pointed rather too directly at his face.

‘We’ll be in touch if we got anythin’ to tell you.’

Pace turned to leave the room, speaking as he went with his back to Josh.

‘Drive careful.’

The two men were left in the room, facing each other over the table. Archie Cameron turned the statement towards Josh. It had been neatly typed, presumably when they were out on their less than social visit. He read it through then held out his hand for Archie’s pen. It was given with bad grace, and retrieved with the same.

‘You wait here. I’ll have this photocopied and you get to keep one.’

The deputy left the room. Josh rocked back on the legs of his chair and exhaled deeply. His mind was racing with more than his embarrassing error. The sheriff had almost convinced him he’d seen McFarlane’s poster and subconsciously dropped her into his mad and confused recollection. Now he didn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed that the theory wouldn’t wash. His mind was working like an abacus, clicking possibilities, fantasy and realities together like wooden balls on a wire. Except nothing was adding up.

The baby’s mother slid uncomfortably back into those thoughts. Why would she, the most important and relevant witness of all, say it was an accident? He let the chair bump forward again and ended up with his head in his hands, elbows on the table. Josh looked miserably through his wrists at the papers in front of him, a pile of official-looking forms, mostly handwritten. He glanced up at the door, then put a hesitant hand out and rotated the papers towards him. The top sheet was a scrawl of notes and observations on the position of the truck and the time of the incident, but the next two pages had a hastily-written list of witnesses’ names and addresses. He scanned it quickly, found Alice Nevin, and before understanding why he was doing it memorized the address and turned the papers back to face the empty chair in front of him.

The deputy’s return was abrupt, but he was formal to the point of a lawyer serving a summons in making sure Josh took his copy of the statement. ‘This here is yours. You take that now.’ He held out a brown business envelope with the neatly folded paper protruding slightly from the open end.

Josh took it from the deputy’s hand and was observed carefully as he pressed it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

‘And you get these back.’

From another larger brown envelope the man brought out a plastic bag of Josh’s personal belongings that had been removed from his pockets when they put him in the cell.

He watched Josh as he removed the items and started putting them back in his jacket. When it came to the wallet the deputy smiled unkindly.

‘Guess you’re gonna need that all right. I’ll get Deputy Busby to bring in the paperwork for your ticket.’

He walked to the door, opened it and called down the corridor. As Josh suspected, the man who answered the call was the angry policeman who had led him from the cell. He was holding a pad of tickets, a credit card swipe machine, and he was grinning.

Archie Cameron left the room with a long look at Josh and Deputy Busby took a chair.

‘You take a copy of your statement to keep?’

Josh nodded numbly, trying hard not to think of the horror contained in the words that were tucked so neatly inside his jacket.

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah? Well here’s another souvenir from Furnace, Virginia.’ He slid the square of paper towards Josh.

‘One thousand bucks.’

Josh stared at him, his eyes narrowing. ‘The maximum? Even though my stopover checked out?’

‘Mister, if I were you I’d be pretty thankful for walkin’ outta here at all after what you done. Looked in your wallet and I guess those hundred and forty-five dollars ain’t goin’ to cover it. Pleased to tell you we take Master Card.’

Josh was about to protest further, but the policeman’s face told him it was useless. Part of Josh wanted to pay a fine. A huge fine. But no amount of money would undo his deed.

The transaction was performed in an uncomfortable silence until the deputy folded up the credit card receipt and a copy of the ticket into an envelope and handed it to Josh. He watched Josh’s face as he took it.

‘You keep hold of that now.’

Josh looked at him suspiciously, since the man’s tone was of a dishonest merchant who has successfully swindled a fool. The deputy read his face and added with a glare of indignation, ‘In case anyone needs to check up on you. Believe me. I’m goin’ to make damned sure they do.’

Only when the envelope was safely away, did Deputy Busby hand Josh the keys to Jezebel and the licence that he’d scooped up from the table.

‘You need a ride back to the truck? I’m supposed to ask.’

Josh shook his head. ‘It’s only a few blocks. I need the walk.’

‘Good. Cause you ain’t gettin’ a ride.’

Josh stood up and pocketed his keys. He looked long and hard at the man’s face, but any aggression he might have been able to muster before today was dissipated by the knowledge of his own inner guilt. He broke the stare first, turned and left the room.

John Pace was gone from the main office and Josh was oddly disappointed he hadn’t stayed to say goodbye. He’d heard enough horror stories from other drivers about the consequences of committing a violation in backwater towns, to know that by the sheriff, at least, he’d been treated fairly and with respect. But even though the law had decided he’d done nothing wrong, as he walked down the concrete steps to the clean sidewalk, he felt like a man being released from prison.

The air smelled sweetly of catkins and sap, and a gentle breeze moved the young chestnuts that lined the street. Josh walked slowly at first, then picked up speed as the fresh air revived and invigorated him.

Alice Nevin. The woman who started today with two children and ended up with one. Thanks to him. He knew she wouldn’t be home. He could almost see her now, lying on a hospital bed somewhere, her pupils dilated with tranquillizers and her thin arms lying immobile by her sides. But maybe something … anything …

Josh had no idea what he was going to do. He just wanted to go to her house. There was a drugstore at the end of the block. He pushed open its glass door and walked to the empty counter. A pretty but dull-eyed girl stopped stacking packets of sanitary towels, walked slowly over and filled the space behind the cash register.

‘Yeah?’

‘You know where Strachan Boulevard is from here?’

She looked at him. He knew she’d be weighing up the hair, the clothes, the earring. But he moulded his face into contours of friendly expectation and she broke into a half smile as she decided to co-operate.

‘Okay. You want to make a right here, then take a left into Frobisher Place and then two blocks down you’re there.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

As he turned to go Josh’s gaze swept past a telephone on the wall. His heart lurched. Elizabeth. He should phone Elizabeth. He felt in his pocket for his wallet and found his phone card. He could feel the girl’s eyes burning into his back and knew that although this call, of all the calls in the history of time, should be made in private, he couldn’t wait any more.

He punched in the complex code, waited for that monotonous and irritating voice to tell him how much time he had and then at last heard the long ring of his own phone. There was a click then the heart-sinking hiss that meant the answering machine had kicked in. His own voice.