“Out of my way!” Fisher bellowed.
“Nice work,” thought Jim grimly. Then he hung by his right elbow from the outer ledge and, reaching up with his left hand, managed to pull the window closed behind him. Father Fisher was already on the staircase when Jim fell silently out of sight.
Ruth Rose was already gone. Turning, he saw her running low across the front yard. Was she crazy? Fisher would see her if he stopped to look. But Jim didn’t dare call to her, let alone follow. He took off around the house, where it was dark. Across the back lawn he raced, diving for cover as he caught a glimpse of Father in the apartment window, faintly lit from behind. He had lost his hat and his hair stood out in spikes. He looked like Frankenstein’s monster. Then he was gone from sight and Jim was up and running, slipping on the wet grass, falling, recovering. He ran through the orchard, kicking fallen apples as he raced, past the garden shed until at last he reached the fence. He hopped it in a single bound and ran until the cornfield had swallowed him up.
“Jim, what a deadly mistake you’re making,” Fisher cried out at the night in his huge pulpit-voice. “If you only knew.”
Jim ducked out of sight, but there was already an acre of corn between them. Catching his breath, he hid and listened.
“You’ll live to regret this foolhardiness, Jim Hawkins,” shouted Fisher.
Jim shuddered. The voice was as cold and threatening as the night.
There was a moon, but not so you could see its shape. Its light reached Jim through the seams of cloud cover.
He got to his feet but stood perfectly still. He was listening for a sound that wasn’t just the wind fingering its way through the dry corn. A crazy girl, heading west as he had told her to. A wounded dog. A maniacal preacher.
Nothing.
Too shivering cold to listen any longer, he started towards Billy Bones’ deserted shack. With every step, a little bit more of his fear drained away, replaced by an anger as hard as a stone. He gave himself up to visions of violent confrontation with Father Fisher — pushing him down the stairs, cracking him over the head with a two-by-four, making him hurt, the way he hurt. Seething with rage, he started to run, cursing under his breath and then out loud. He ran down a shimmering corridor of rustling corn higher than his head. He only hoped Ruth Rose was somewhere out here heading in the same direction.
17
Two towering white pines marked the western boundary of the Hawkins land. A million years ago, last November, Jim had climbed one of those trees to the top, intent on jumping to the next. It had been his last such folly.
Looking at the pines now, picked out by the bleak moonlight, it was hard to believe he had even contemplated it. They stood more than the length of three grown men apart. He never would have made it. He would have died trying.
Luckily, Billy Bones had intervened.
Down to the right of the trees, hard up against the split-rail fence that formed the property line, there appeared a dark smudge of bush, a windbreak. Behind it stood Billy Bones’ ramshackle hut. Billy had saved Jim that snowy November day. Saved him from himself.
The door was not locked. There was no electricity but Jim would not have turned on the lights in any case. Even in the dark he could tell that no one had been here for a long time. A scurrying in the corner made him start, but it was not a human sound.
Jim stumbled to the woodstove and found a coffee can full of matches. He lit one. In the glow, he saw a plaster statue of a little black boy sitting on the table, fishing. He was almost white with dust.
There were lawn ornaments everywhere: deer and fawns, flamingos and a dwarf standing in the sink holding his belly and smiling.
Jim located newspapers and kindling. Fisher would not be able to see the smoke on such an overcast night.
The thought of any more running exhausted him. He lit another match, set it to the paper.
The firewood was right where he had left it. He had visited Billy Bones a few times, tended him when he got sick. And then one day, on his way here with a pot of soup, Jim saw an ambulance driving away. And that was that. The crazy old man had saved Jim’s life but he couldn’t return the favour.
He tried to remember Billy’s face but he couldn’t — only his eyes, lost and confused. There was just this poor house, a few sticks of furniture and a zoo of abandoned lawn ornaments. And there was this wood, waiting. Almost as if Jim had been expecting one day to come back.
He left the door open on the stove. The flames lit up the squalid room. Outside, the wind had picked up again. Rain in the branches of the windbreak splattered noisily onto the steel roof.
He dragged a foul-smelling blanket from Billy Bones’ bed, wrapped himself in it and ventured out into the night as far as the road. He had hoped to see Ruth Rose, but it was difficult to see anything except the faint lights at his own place. It was too far away to tell if the van was still there.
Why had she run out front like that? What was she going to do? Puncture Fisher’s tires? Smash in his windshield? Probably. Some dumb and dangerous act of vengeance. How could anyone so smart be so reckless?
Suddenly the rain picked up and he ran for shelter back to Billy Bones’.
He fed the fire and felt its warmth melting the shards of ice in his bones. Time passed and, despite his best efforts, he drifted off.
Suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder. He jumped and spun around. His feet became tangled in his blanket and he crashed to the floor. When he freed himself, Ruth Rose was standing there. Sopping wet, white as a ghost, but smiling.
“Mind if I sit down?” she said.
Jim got to his feet, feeling like a fool.
“Where were you?” he demanded. “What took you so long?”
“I hid in the barn.”
“Why didn’t you come here like I told you?”
She glared at him. “Stop yelling at me.”
He hadn’t meant to yell. It was just nerves. He turned his attention to the fire, fed it and stoked it. Then he dragged more blankets from Billy Bones’ bed to wrap her up. He pulled another chair over to the fire, shook the mouse droppings off it and sat down beside her.
That’s when he noticed her bare feet. They were scraped and filthy with mud; one of them was smeared with blood.
“I had to wait him out,” she said.
Jim went to the sink and worked the old pump. It strained and squealed but no water came. It had lost its prime. He found a rag that may once have been a dishcloth. He banged it against the counter a couple of times to shake the dust off it. Outside the door, he dipped it into a rusty bucket filled with rainwater. It would have to do.
He returned to the stove and kneeled at Ruth Rose’s feet, dabbing at the caked mud and blood. She leaned back in her chair and tried not to flinch. He worked away as gently as he could, the fire warming his back.
When he next looked up, Ruth Rose was gazing behind her.
“There’s a dwarf in the sink,” she said.
Jim nodded. “Happy.”
“I guess so,” said Ruth Rose. “Except for my foot.”
“No, I meant the dwarf,” said Jim. “It’s Happy. You know, from Snow White.”
Ruth Rose sniggered. “Well, this place could use Snow White,” she said. Then they both broke down in a giddy giggling fit, made worse by the attempt to stifle it. The laughter subsided in the dark and was replaced by a low groan from Ruth Rose.
Jim found her a plastic lamb to rest her foot on.
“I wonder how Poochie is,” she said.