6
Hector Menzies had been a newspaper boy at the Ladybank Expositor when his mother was a reporter. He had been a cub reporter himself when his mother took over the reins as editor. And he had become editor when she took over from her father, Salvator Menzies, as publisher. Hector was publisher now and he was a busy man. But not so busy he couldn’t spare a few minutes for Jim Hawkins.
Jim went to the Expositor office the next day after school. He hadn’t thought to phone and make an appointment but, luckily, Hec passed by the front office just as Dorothy was explaining to Jim that he would have to come by some other time.
Hec led Jim into his cubby-hole of an office. It wasn’t much for the publisher of a newspaper — a ceiling you could touch if you cared to reach up, no window, no carpet and an elephantine desk that just about filled the space and looked old enough to have been Noah’s desk on the Ark.
“We don’t have any money for frills,” Hec said to Jim. “The circulation of the Expositor has grown in direct proportion to the population of Ladybank over the last hundred years, which is to say, not at all.”
When Hub Hawkins had disappeared, there had been lots of regional press coverage of the story, even in Ottawa and Kingston. Not because Jim’s father was famous, or anything, but because it was a mystery. Besides, Hub had been a pillar of the community: a deputy reeve of North Blandford Township, a hardworking board member of the Ladybank and District Public Library, and a pretty good skip at the local curling club, which had once sent a team to the Eastern Ontario finals in Cornwall.
Hector Menzies, although old enough to be Hub’s father, had been second on that team and a friend of the Hawkins family ever since. His grandfatherly friendship had come in handy during the awful weeks of the previous fall when the farm had been under siege. Not from grasshoppers or groundhogs — things a farmer learns to cope with — but from news men and women banging on the door at any time of the day or night. They parked their cars and satellite-rigged vans all over the place — in the way of the barn so that Iris couldn’t get her cattle out to pasture, in the way of the fields so that good neighbours couldn’t get in to help with the harvest. It was hard enough for Jim and Iris, but the media hounds made it even worse.
Until Hector stepped in.
Hector Protector.
Hec set himself up as a kind of self-appointed spokesman for the family, deflecting the advances of the most obnoxious snoops and bringing some order into an otherwise chaotic situation.
He never once used his privileged insider status to benefit his own insignificant little weekly. No glimpses of the family in mourning, no scoops. He kept private what he felt deserved to remain private. Which was pretty well everything.
Jim had put Hec out of his mind once the siege was over, but he was glad to see him again, despite the memories his lined old face evoked. He squeezed into the only other chair in Hec’s office. The computer terminai looked out of place on the desk, and Hec looked out of place sitting behind it.
“What can I do for you, Jimbo?” he said.
“I want to find out about a fire that happened up near us in 1972.”
Hec’s forehead wrinkled for a moment. He looked like he was going through a file in his head that included so many fires and car crashes and hunting accidents no reasonable human could hope to keep track of them.
“A kid died in it,” Jim added hurriedly. “A kid named Francis Tufts. It was New Year’s. Don’t you have it on your computer or something?”
A light went on in Hector’s grizzled face. He smiled, raising one of his bushy eyebrows. “Oh, I can find what you’re looking for since you’ve got the date and all. But I’m still a newspaperman, Jimbo, and a newspaperman depends on a sharp memory even more than he depends on a sharp pencil.” He patted the computer monitor. “You won’t find it in here,” he said. “What you want is hard copy.”
He pushed himself up and out of his chair. “Follow me.”
Jim followed him down a long corridor with offices on one side and a wide sloped counter all along the other. Under it, row and rows of shelves buckled with the weight of bound volumes of the Expositor. Hec dragged one off the shelf and laid it down on the counter at eye leveclass="underline" 1972 was embossed in gold on the cover.
“Voilà!” he said, opening the volume to the very first page. “Easy as pie. The lead story in the first issue of the year.”
There before Jim’s eyes was a grey and grainy photograph of a log cabin kind of slumping in the middle, as if a giant had sat on it. The windows and door were boarded up, but the stoop was recognizable as the one where the Three Musketeers had been sitting in the photo at home. Above the picture was the headline: BOY DIES IN NEW YEAR’S EVE BLAZE.
Jim looked at Hec. If he was wondering what Jim wanted with the story, he didn’t show it. He just seemed proud to be able to provide the information.
Jim saw that the article continued on the following page. “Can I photocopy this?” he asked.
Hec shook his head. “Newspaper isn’t meant for the long haul. It’s meant to get read and put in the bottom of your bird cage. See how fragile the paper is?”
Fragile and fading fast, thought Jim, suddenly worried that he might not even have time to read it.
“But,” said Hec. “I can give you a pen with the Expositor logo on it and a sheet or two of yellow foolscap and you’re free to copy it out longhand.”
So Jim did. He copied the whole thing. He wrote in his best hand as if it were the good draft of a school assignment.
A New Year’s Eve blaze took the life of former North Blandford resident, nineteen-year-old Francis Tufts. The fire burned to the ground a local landmark. The log cabin, situated on the Twelfth Line, and once lived in by the Tufts family, was in the news several years ago, when it was believed to be haunted.
The fire was reported by Jock Boomhower who was attending a get-together across the road at the home of Purvis Poole. The volunteer fire brigade made good time considering the snowy conditions but was unable to save the building. Volunteer Fire Chief, August Sweeney, stated that they had no idea there was anyone inside. It was not until Ontario Provincial Police were combing the site the following morning that they discovered the charred remains of the Tufts boy. He was identified by a silver allergy bracelet. Contacting his parents now living in Brockville, the police were able to ascertain that the boy had been expected home for Christmas but had not shown up.
The house was being used by a neighbour, Wilfred Fisher, to store hay. An inquest will be held into the death, but according to Constable Lorne Braithewaite, there do not seem to be any signs of foul play. Among the remains around the boy were found several beer bottles and a 40 ounce rye bottle, all empty.
Heavy snowfall through the night obliterated any footsteps leading to the building so it was not clear from which direction the boy might have journeyed. Constable Braithewaite noted the next morning that even the tracks of the fire truck and the sizeable area the fire fighters had disturbed in their efforts were completely blanketed by the new snowfall.
Francis’s presence back in the Ladybank area was a surprise. The house had been the last dwelling place of the deceased and his family before leaving the area five years ago.
Jim stopped to rest his fingers. He stared at the photograph, tried to imagine stepping inside a house that had once been your home, at night, with the windows boarded up, and finding it filled to the rafters with hay. It would be like a nightmare, he thought.