A cave.
Jim looked up. The walls rose around him, pale as flesh but veined with shining green stones. The same green as Father’s crucifix. But he wasn’t wearing it now.
And the other man. He was nearer the light and his hair gleamed white — white as corn silk. It was long, tied back in a ponytail. He was looking at Jim, the light glinting off pale blue eyes.
“Tuffy?” said Jim. The man looked pained and that’s when Jim noticed that he was tied up as well.
Fisher’s hand came towards Jim’s face. Jim flinched, but the huge hand only touched his forehead. It felt cool and Jim closed his eyes and leaned against it. With his eyes shut it could almost have been his own father’s hand.
“You’re all right,” said Fisher soothingly. “You had a bad fall.”
Jim opened his eyes and squinted at the light that lit the cave. It was a hurricane lamp, kerosene, hanging from a bracket on the wall, a spike jammed into a cleft in the rock. It lit up the top of a large wooden spool, the kind they rolled telephone cable onto. But now it was on its side like a low table.
There was other makeshift furniture: a crate, a shelf made of boards and piled stones, the car seat where the man who was not Tuffy sat.
Jim stared at his fellow captive. He had a ratty sleeping bag draped around his shoulders. His face was cut and bruised. And it came to Jim who it must be. Stanley.
But now Fisher turned Jim’s face towards him. “I didn’t want it to be like this,” he said. “It would all have worked out just fine.” The sincerity in his voice seemed so real. He was apologizing. “You shouldn’t have come here, Jim,” he said. And, unlike the threats of the night before, there was real sadness in his voice. Jim dared to speak.
“What are you going to do?”
Fisher lowered his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know anymore.” Then there was silence.
Jim heard water dripping a long way off. It was impossible to tell how big the cavern was, for the lantern only lit up one small corner. Jim looked at the makeshift shelf beside him. There was an old peanut tin filled with odds and ends: a yo-yo, a chrome lighter. Beside the tin, a pile of soggy dime comics, a coiled length of string, a cigar box, a black phone with a dial.
It was a clubhouse. His father, Eldon Fisher and Tuffy had come here, made this place their own. And, looking at Fisher now — still kneeling on the cold floor, his head still bent — Jim knew that it was to this underground room that Fisher had fled the night of the fire that killed Francis Tufts. It was here that God spoke to him, just like in the Sunday school picture. Except that Fisher had got it wrong. This far underground, it wasn’t likely God who had spoken to him.
The parson sighed, took a deep breath and climbed slowly to his feet. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, the better to look Jim in the eye. “I have to go up top again,” he said. “There’s a call I’m waiting for.”
Jim’s eyes skittered to the black telephone, but it wasn’t connected to anywhere. He watched Fisher check on Stanley, check the ropes that bound him to his car seat.
“You okay?” Fisher asked.
“Oh, I’m just hunky dory,” said Stanley. “Thank you so much for asking.” His accent was southern, his tone dry. With one last aggrieved backward glance, Fisher headed off into the gloom beyond the lantern’s light. Jim heard his footsteps retreat, following the smaller beam of a pocket flashlight that finally disappeared around some bend in the deeper darkness of the cavern.
“You’re Stanley,” said Jim.
The man managed a painful smile. “At your service,” he said. “Well, truth to tell, not at your service.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Up top,” said Stanley. “The four-by-four has a cell phone in it. He borrowed it from some parishioner. Wonder if she has any idea what he wanted it for.” Stanley shook his head sadly. “He’s waiting for a call from the warden of the church to say a certain package has arrived. In it are some letters from my mother. When he’s got them in his hot little hands, then I get released. That’s the plan, anyway.” He glanced with some exasperation at Jim, but his voice was ironic. “Who are you, anyhow? What you want to do getting yourself in this mess?”
“I’m Jim Hawkins. Hub’s son.” The good-natured frown on Stanley’s face tightened. “I’m sorry for what my father did,” said Jim, squaring his chin. “But he couldn’t have known he was doing it. My father would have never hurt someone on purpose.” His voice was shaking, but there was a kind of cracked pride in it.
Stanley nodded slowly. “I know it,” he said. “Fisher tricked him.”
“You know what happened?”
Stanley sighed. “Well, according to our talkative captor, Francis came around to Wilf Fisher’s house on that New Year’s Eve back in ’72, wanting money, wanting revenge, even. I don’t doubt it. He’d been in that reform school. I suppose he figured it was time he collected. Fisher senior was out. Our holy friend here took my brother in, fed him Christmas leftovers, gave him his father’s finest rye — Francis was always partial to drink. Fisher promised him his reward and, when he was good and sleepy, he found him sleeping gear and led him down to our old homestead in the low field. Made sure he was warm and cosy.”
He paused to make sure Jim was following.
“Then I guess he went and roused Hub. There was a New Year’s gathering at your place as well. Hub snuck out without anyone knowing it. And that’s when Fisher tricked him. He complained about his old man, how Wilf, with all his money, kept him on a short chain, what a crab he was, etcetera, etcetera. He kinda threw Hub a bone, you see, and Hub, he gnawed on it. He hated Wilf Fisher and Fisher encouraged him to a white-hot hatred.”
Stanley stared off into space for a moment. Jim didn’t need to hear the rest. “So he convinced my dad it would be a cool prank to burn down the old house.”
Stanley nodded. He turned to Jim. “He lit his fuse, you might say.” He paused again in silent reverie. “Dry hay goes up real good,” he added. “It must have been quite a blaze.”
Jim felt a calmness come over him. This was the whole of the sad truth. His own father was neither guiltless nor entirely guilty. He was the victim of a terrible trick, but also the victim of his own anger. There was no denying it.
Stanley suddenly interrupted his thoughts. “You know what that devil Fisher believes, Jim Hawkins? He believes God sent that mighty snowstorm to cover their tracks. He truly believes the Lord loves him.” Stanley stretched the word love, made it two syllables long, a white snowstorm of Love. “I’m not a religious man myself, but that strikes me as the worst kind of blasphemy.”
It was perverted. What there was left of faith in Jim was filled with revulsion.
Stanley looked at Jim, and his battered face was a snarl of emotions: anger, remorse, bewilderment. “My mother and I — we kinda blew it, big time.” He appealed to Jim with his eyes. “I never wanted to do it at all. Not that I’m pleading innocence here. It was Mother’s plan. She had this wicked bee and it wasn’t in her bonnet, no, sir, but in her very soul. She had lost her son. She demanded justice. Can you see that?”
“I think so,” said Jim. More hate, he was thinking. Hatred begat hatred. “But why so many years after it happened?”
Stanley looked up. “It started with a letter. About two years ago. From an old-timer by the name of Jock Boomhower, a former neighbour of yours, I guess.” Jim nodded. “He wrote a kind of death-bed confession. He went out of his way to track us down, even hired a detective. Then he wrote to us. Told us he’d seen Fisher and your father at the old house the night of the fire. He didn’t say nothing at the inquiry. He was mad as hell at Francis. Glad to see him go. So he kept his mouth shut. But I guess he didn’t want St. Peter to bring it up when he was standing at the heavenly gates, if you catch my meaning.”