Johanna Moran - The Wives of Henry Oades

The fire was giving off the last of its heat. He entered where the door had been this morning. “Meg!” He stood stock still and listened for his family. “Meg, sweetheart.” He said it softly now, taking in the blackened wreckage, his eyes adjusting. In the same moment he saw a few cookpots, John’s lucky horseshoe, Meg’s mother’s ginger jar, and a human body. “Oh, Jesus, please.” He approached disbelieving, falling to one knee. The body was hairless, faceless, and long-limbed, not a child. “Oh God.” He removed his coat and laid it over her, then drew it away again and touched her head. An ashy wet bit of her came away on his fingers.

He stood in a stupor and called to his children. “John. Pheeny, darling. Dad’s here.”

He took careful steps, using his hat to gently rake the ashes. He paced off the length, and then the width. Here was something. He bent over, sweat pouring, soaking his beard. He rubbed the shard between his fingers—glass, not bone, a trembling joyous discovery. He started over. Inch by cautious inch he combed the floor for his children’s remains. He went outside and did the same without finding a trace. They were alive then. A fire will always leave something behind. “Kids!” he shouted. They were lurking in the woods above, having fled the fire in time. They’d be freezing, frightened out of their wits. He ran uphill without a lamp, bellowing their names.

The forest floor was damp and slippery. Henry searched along the quiet periphery, entering the bush from the south. He’d been up here during the day with John often enough, gathering kindling, debating which dogs were best. At night the black trees loomed the same in every direction. Henry ran north; he ran west, climbing deep into the interior. It was after midnight when he quit, exhausted and hoarse. He started down, still calling to them, spotting Mim Bell’s empty rig in the road then, a surge of love and relief rushing through him. The body inside had to be Mim’s.

Henry untied Mim’s skittish mare from the post and turned her and the buggy around. Meg and the children had somehow managed to escape. They would have found their way to the Bells’, their closest neighbor. Henry rode south a grateful man, a man redeemed. He could not fathom a life without them. He would take them home to England now. They’d endured enough. He planned to tell Meg first thing, the moment he saw her.

FEAR AND CONFUSION were fully restored by the time Henry reached the Bells’. Meg would not have set out in the cold and hiked the twenty miles with four children in tow, not with Bell’s horse and buggy at her disposal. He pounded Bell’s front door, hearing footsteps after an eternity, muffled cursing.

Cyril Bell appeared in his nightshirt, holding a lamp. He reached behind the door and brought out a crude cudgel. “Who the devil is it at this hour?”

Henry stepped into the wreath of light, listening for sounds in the house. “Oades. Henry Oades. We’ve met, sir.” He spoke fast, wheezing like a hound. “I’m Margaret’s husband. Your wife’s friend. My wife and children have gone missing.”

Bell frowned, scratching his privates with the club.

Henry demanded, “Are they here?”

“What’s this all about?”

“Are you bloody hard of hearing? I’m looking for my family.”

Bell craned, sniffing the air. “You’re about three sheets to it, aren’t you?” He lifted the club. “Go on home before I give you the beating of your life.”

Henry shoved him aside, shouting into the interior. “Meg!”

Bell recovered from the surprise, raising the club higher. Henry had the advantage of thirty more pounds and at least ten fewer years. He grabbed Bell’s wrist, locking the man against the doorjamb. “Where’s your wife?”

Bell struggled. “What do you want with her?”

“Where is she?”

“She’s not here, you buggering idiot. There’s nobody here but me and the dog. She’s a mean one, too. She’ll bite. One word from me and—”

Henry wrenched the club from Bell’s flaccid grip and sent it sailing into the dark yard. Bell ducked back inside. Henry put himself between door and jamb. “Help me, please.”

“Why should—”

“Your wife visited mine last evening?”

Bell swiped his nose on a sleeve. “If you say so. Walked out with a bee in her bonnet. Not for the first time. She and the boy. Pig-headed woman. Didn’t bother to say where they were headed.”

“I found your rig on my property.” Henry pointed vaguely. “I’ve returned it.”

“I owe you then. I thought…”

Henry ran a hand through his dry hair, still scanning the interior, half expecting Meg and the children to suddenly show themselves.

“My house burned to the ground last night.”

“That’s terrible news.”

Henry stood shivering, the dread rising in his chest, constricting his breathing. “My children are nowhere to be found.”

“Ah, for the love of—”

There had to be a rational answer. They couldn’t simply disappear.

“I came upon a body.”

“Oh, no, was—”

“My wife, I thought at first.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Or your wife, sir. I’m sorry.” Henry was anxious to leave. He’d given up the search too soon. There were miles still to cover. John would have constructed a shelter of some sort, far away from the smoke and fire.

Bell began to weep. “Jesus, Mary, and—”

“There’s no way of knowing,” said Henry. “I couldn’t tell.”

“My boy?” Bell’s tears streamed. “Oscar?”

Henry shook his head. “I’m sorry. No sign of him either.”

“Oh, sweet sacred heart. We’ll want to inform the authorities.”

“They can wait.” On the way over Henry had considered and rejected the idea. No good would come of rousing the governor at this hour. He was a useless indecisive man; his sycophantic underlings were no better. Meg and the children were his family, his concern. He’d have the benefit of daylight soon. He’d start over looking. “Will you make a loan of a horse, Mr. Bell?”

“Have your choice of the two in the stable,” said Bell. “I’ll take the other.”

They made good time, arriving by first light to a smoky quiet. Bell tied up the horses. Henry stood in the road making quarter turns, calling to his wife and children. The men tramped up to the bush and began searching, giving up after three hours, making their way down to the charred cottage. “Tucked away,” Meg had called it. “A perfect place.”

Bell had thought to bring a shovel and a bedsheet. The men labored with the delicate corpse. It collapsed in their hands, making red and yellow stains on the sheet. Daylight was no help, as Henry had hoped. “Can you tell anything?”

“Might be anyone,” muttered Bell.

“Anyone.”

“Mine wore a little gold locket on occasion,” said Bell.

“Mine wore her ring,” said Henry.

“With my likeness and Oscar’s inside,” said Bell.

Henry, the middle brother, had been the first in his family to present a wife with a wedding ring. His parents had disapproved, as had Meg’s parents. The older set still regarded the ring an ostentatious pagan practice. “Unseemly,” his mother had said. “Unchristian.” She may have reconsidered had she seen the thrill in Meg’s lovely eyes.

The men poked around and beneath the body for as long as they could bear it, finding nothing to prove who it was or wasn’t. The lack of evidence meant little to Henry. Meg often took off the ring. She feared losing it in the wash, she’d said.

They took turns with the shovel, burying the body out back, where the hydrangea once bloomed. They fashioned a cross of scorched stones and walked away, both quaking with uncertainty.