21
A GIDDY WARMTH carried them through the fair grounds. Tapping their feet to the musicians at the bandstand, sneaking a kiss behind the war monument. Jim trying to show off at the shooting gallery. In the movie version, he would have won a big teddy bear but as it was he was a lousy shot and blew in five dollars hitting nothing but backdrop. They elbowed into the beer garden, got a drink and squeezed to the fence where they could watch the Ferris wheel turn.
Emma touched her plastic cup to his. “This is nice. Like a date”
He slipped a hand around her waist. “Been a while.”
“Keep this up and I might just take advantage of you.”
A schoolboy’s grin. One part blush, two parts anticipation. When was the last time they got friendly anyway? Ragged busy during business hours, near exhausted by nightfall. Whole days ripping down with little to distinguish them. “Aren’t you supposed to buy me dinner first?”
An elbow jostled her, spilling her cup. The tent filling up fast. “I don’t want to be stuck in here.” Emma dodged another tippler who’d lost his sea legs. “Drink up.”
“Let’s take ‘em with us.” Jim ducked under the railing, held it up for her.
She laughed and limboed under. “Now we’re just being bad.”
They strolled past the bandstand again, the shooting gallery, looking for Travis. Jim shrugged. “Maybe somebody adopted him.”
“That’s not even funny.”
They walked on, nodding at the few people who said hello. There was still a chill, ignored by some and no more than a nod of recognition from others.
“What’s that?” Emma pointed to a crowd clustered under a chestnut tree just outside the main run of the fair. Away from the ambient patio lanterns, people backlit from two tall tiki torches.
“Wasn’t there before,” he said. “Must of just popped up.”
They came up behind the crowd, leaning over shoulders to see what the fuss was about. Emma squeezed his arm. “Oh my God.”
A body hung from a chestnut limb, twisting on a lynch rope.
Swaying in the humid breeze, its legs swinging crazily. Jim blinked until he realized it wasn’t real. A straw man on a noose, dried stalks stuffed into a mechanics coveralls. A head of packed burlap. A cardboard sign hung from a string around its neck. Emma squinted at the words.
“Oh Christ.” About all that Jim had to say.
Beneath the swinging man were two card tables, lit up under the flicker of the tiki lamps. Photographs lay on one tabletop, reprints of photos taken a century ago. Two young men in waistcoats and caps, one serious and the other flashing a sly grin. A tintype of a family, stiff posed and grim faced. Another of a familiar looking house from a bygone era.
The other table held what appeared to be tools but a card laying below it read:
Straddling both card tables was a crate of rough milled cedar, lined with yellowed burlap. Resting atop this was a long sooty bone, its porous surface carbonized black. Without its sister bones for context, it could have been anything. A leg bone from a horse or cow. Anything.
Above it all was Corrigan. Arms folded across his chest. Contempt set into the line of his mouth and blooms of red in his eyes. Drunk, belligerent.
A man in the crowd pointed to the bone. Belly tipping over his belt, his accent screaming Yank. Michigan maybe. “You telling me that’s an actual bone from your murdered family? Come on…”
“The crime scene was walked through and picked over by half the town before the constable dragged his drunken hide to the site. The locals took souvenirs.” Corrigan lifted the blackened bone from its nest. “Now their descendants are searching their attics and cellars, digging out these trinkets of their guilty past and returning them to me.”
“That’s just some old cow bone.”
Corrigan offered it up to the man. “It’s a femur. The leg bone from one of the men. James, John or maybe Thomas. Go on, touch it. See if it’s real.”
The man backed off, as if the bone was diseased. Others grumbled, calling him a liar. Scolding Corrigan to put that nastiness away, there’s children about.
Jim pushed in, face to face with Corrigan. “Give it a rest already. No one wants to see this stuff.”
“They blocked our road, Jim. A desperate attempt to shut me down and keep people away.” Corrigan raised his hands in false surrender. “I had no choice but to bring the truth to town.”
“This is just gruesome,” Jim said. “And cheap.”
“It’s our heritage, Jim. Our town, where crimes are buried and murderers prosper.”
A woman shouted him down, calling his story fiction. The bellied man accused him of desecrating human remains and another said he should be arrested for wielding a firearm in public. Corrigan just grinned, poking the hornet’s nest.
A lighter flicked and the little flame was set to the frayed edges of the swinging effigy. The straw man went up fast, flames licking up the rope to the leaves. More hollering and cursing as the thing was pulled down and stomped. The smell of burnt cloth and August wildfires.
“Somebody call the cops,” brayed the fat man but the cops were already here.
Constable Bauer pushed through the crowd, calling out a name but not Corrigan’s. “Jim! Jim Hawkshaw!”
Jim and Emma flinched, like they were guilty of some unknown offence. The police officer waved at them to come forward. One hand clutching Travis by the shirt collar, as if the boy might bolt.
The injured boy was taken to a tent and given an ice-pack to hold against his cut cheek. Francie Whitman worked at St. Mary’s Hospital in Exford but had taken the weekend off to work the first aid station for the duration of the festival. The worst she expected to encounter were skinned knees and sunstroke. The boy moaning into the ice pack would have to go to the hospital. Francie wasn’t equipped to stitch cuts in her meagre station.
Brant asked for his mom and dad but the broken tooth and swelled lip garbled his speech to a babbling mewl. Unable to decipher any of that, the nurse rubbed his back and told him to be brave.
Travis stood outside the tent with his head bowed, caught between the OPP officer and his parents. As if there was some debate as to who was taking him away. Could the cop even do that, haul him away to the paddy cell with all the drunks and brawlers? Given the absolute shitstorm he was in for when he got home, maybe the paddy was the better fate.
Emma was apoplectic, Jim red-faced. Constable Bauer provided a few details but none of it made any sense. Travis just attacked the boy out of the blue, no provocation. Assault with a weapon.
“What weapon?” Jim asked.
The constable produced a wadded paper towel, seeped damp with blood and unfolded it. The brass knuckles glinted under the patio lights.
Emma covered her mouth. Jim snatched Travis by the collar. “You used this on that kid? Where the hell did you get this?” When the boy said nothing, Jim shook him. “Where did you get this!”
“I found it.”
“Bullshit! Who did you get it from?”
“Easy.” The constable put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Let’s not make this any worse.”
Emma rubbed her temple. “How could this get any worse?”
“This wasn’t just a schoolyard fight,” Constable Bauer said. “The Coogan boy is seriously hurt. I don’t know how his parents will react but they’d be within their rights to charge your son with assault.”
“Oh god.” The blood drained out of Emma’s already paling face. She felt dizzy.
Two people rushed past them to the nurse’s station. The injured boy’s parents.
