A Rhinestone Button (29 page)

Carlson walked over to them. “Looks like you’ve got a case of arson,” he said. “There wasn’t the V-pattern burn on the wall you usually get from an electrical fire, no single point where the fire started. There’s a big burn area like you get if diesel or gas was thrown on the wall, and it doesn’t look like the building had been wired yet, in any case. And we found this.” He handed Jacob the coffee can, with the skim of diesel at the bottom. “You should know I saw your boy lurking around back there, watching. Can you say for sure he was in bed when the fire started?”

“Do you have to report this?” said Jacob.

Carlson took off his hat and scratched his head. “Well, in situations like this, where the building is on the parents’ property, we usually leave it up to the discretion of the parents. But you’ve got to know, this likely won’t be the last fire he starts. Is it the first?”

“I’ll handle it,” said Jacob. He marched into the dark, past the fire, and came back some minutes later, dragging Ben by the elbow. Job watched as he pulled Ben across Correction Line Road and over to the house. Jacob was yanking off his belt as, together, they stumbled up the steps of the house. Lilith walked in after them.

The halfway house had been reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. A few charred boards stuck out of the ashes. The heads of nails melted off. All that was left was the concrete foundation. Job was watching the firemen roll up their
hoses and put away their gear when he spotted a glow over the trees around the barnyard. The hired hand’s cabin. He called to Carlson and pointed, before heading to the cabin himself as the men drove the pumper truck over. Fire licked up the wall. Smoke drifted up from the roof and from between the shingles. Fire in the tiny attic. Jacob came out and watched with Job as Carlson quickly climbed a ladder and, with the pick on his axe, chopped a hole about two foot square in the roof. The other men manoeuvred the hose up to him, and he sent a spray into the hole. In moments the fire was out.

Light had crept into the sky. Across the yard, leaning against the barn, Ben watched the firemen check over the building to make sure the fire was doused. Likely he’d been there watching all along.

Carlson came over to Jacob and Job, taking off his hat. “I think we better get the RCMP over here.”

“What would they do?” said Jacob. “Do they lay charges?”

“It depends on the situation. They usually take the child away for questioning. Later they talk to the parents, to see what’s behind the fire setting.”

“Can’t you let me handle this?”

“I don’t know, Jacob. Looks like you got a real problem on your hands.” He waved a hand at Ben. Ben slid back out of sight around the corner of the barn.

“I can deal with it.” Jacob lowered his voice. “Please let me deal with it.”

Carlson held his hands up. “All right. But he sets any more fires, I’m calling the RCMP”

“It won’t happen again.”

Job followed his brother to the barn, fearing he might
hurt the boy. The rage on his face. A look Job remembered on his father, before Abe yanked the tail of an unruly cow, breaking it. “Do you really have to strap him again?” said Job.

“His will has got to be broken. If he stays wilful, prideful, he’ll be no use to anyone. He’s thumbing his nose at my authority. What are Jack Divine and everyone in his church going to think of me now? Ben’s ruined me.”

Ben was squatting against the wall of the barn, hugging himself, when they came on him. He didn’t try to run away Jacob yelled, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you punishing me? Is that what you’re doing? Just what is it you think I’ve done?”

A vacant look on Ben’s face as if he were stunned. Job remembered this. He had never been sure what he was doing when he lit fires, but had been propelled to act, to light the fires, almost as if he were possessed by some outside force.

Jacob grabbed hold of Ben’s arm, pulled him up and dragged him across the road and into the house. Job followed a few yards behind, watching as the pumper truck headed down the road.

Lilith was making coffee when Job walked in the house behind his brother. Sausage sizzled on the grill. On the counter a bowl of pancake batter. A Sunday breakfast. She was trying to make things all right. Emma had done this, thrown together an elaborate breakfast during harvest or calving seasons when Abe worked to exhaustion and his rage was quick to ignite.

Lilith took Job’s arm as he started to follow Jacob and Ben into the boy’s bedroom. “What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m afraid he might hurt Ben.”

“God knows he deserves a strapping,” said Lilith. “We can’t let this go unpunished.”

Job pulled his arm away and headed to Ben’s bedroom, but stopped in the hallway before the door. Jacob had pulled his own pants down, and had knelt and lain over the edge of Ben’s bed. Job was embarrassed to see his brother’s bare behind. Ben stood a few steps behind Jacob, his father’s belt like a heavy snake in his hands. The scene hardly seemed likely to Job, more like something he’d dreamed and then forgotten and was just now reminded of. But familiar. All those times he’d exposed his own behind at his father’s bidding. The strap in his father’s hands.

“All right, hit me!” Jacob said.

“I don’t want to,” said Ben.

“I said, hit me!”

Ben didn’t argue, but he didn’t move either. Jacob peered at his son over his shoulder, his face tilted nearly upside down, giving him a peculiar, disorienting appearance, like the drawings that depicted a bald man whether held right side up or upside down. “Hit me!” he said. “Or so help me God, I’ll whip you like you never been whipped.”

Ben hit his father once with the strap. He coughed, as if he might throw up.

“Again!” Jacob shouted.

Ben slapped the strap weakly against skin.

“Can’t you do anything right?”

Job watched as Ben brought the belt up, sliced it through air and whacked his father’s skin. And again. And again. Ben’s face twisted into an angry mask.

Job’s heart skipped a beat and raced along. He felt the mix of embarrassment and fascination at seeing something he shouldn’t. He knew he should look away, or act, but he couldn’t think what to do. He remembered a winter when he’d gone with his father to pick out and butcher a pig at a farm owned by Earl Chamberlain near Leduc. Job and his father, Earl and his two brothers and a hired hand had walked the pig out into the open and used their bodies as a fence. A circle of men in the snow, a pig in the centre, trying to keep a distance from them. Earl stuck the pig, stepping deftly, stealthily, into the circle and giving a quick jab with his knife to the throat. The pig’s squeal was a pink burst of light. The men suddenly went into action as the pig tried to escape, lunging this way and that. Then, in resignation, it stood back in the centre of the circle of men with the blood forming a red pool in the snow at its feet. It was not stunned with a blow or shot in the head, a merciful killing, because his father wanted the brains for head cheese; he didn’t want the meat bruised or shot through with lead.

Then, like now, Job felt sick to his stomach, but couldn’t take his eyes from the dying beast. The pig, weakening, stumbled to its knees, then finally collapsed, the last of its lifeblood pumping from its neck as the men, seemingly oblivious to the pig’s suffering, scuffed the snow with their feet and talked of the planting season to come, their hopes for the weather.

Job had thought his father and the other men were indifferent to the animal’s suffering, that they possessed a kind of manly strength that Job couldn’t summon. He’d been overtaken by a wave of nausea, stumbled away from
the circle of men and leaned against the wall of a wooden granary to cough and spit into snow.

Now Job realized why his father and the men had talked of crops and of the weather as the pig bled at their feet. It was embarrassment. The violence of the pig’s death was too intimate a thing to witness, so they had turned away from the horror and distracted themselves with small talk.

Job took a step back and hesitated in the hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom door. He watched as Jacob struggled to get up. “That’s enough,” Jacob yelled. But Ben went on hitting. “I said that’s enough!” Jacob yanked the belt from Ben’s hands and threw it to the floor. He pulled up his pants, his hands shaking. “You see what I did there?” he said. “I took on your sins. I took the pain of it, just like Jesus took the suffering of all our sins. He cleansed us with his blood, so we could have a relationship with God. You understand? I can’t change you. No amount of whipping is ever going to change you. You can’t change yourself, even if you wanted to. Only God can do that. The only way you’re ever going to be saved is if you give yourself over to Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for you.”

Jacob knelt again and pulled Ben down beside him. “Now you pray with me, pray for acceptance from Jesus Christ our Lord. Pray that he comes into your heart and changes you.”

At once it was clear to Job. He had once broken his 4-H steers, taught them to follow along on a rope. He got a steer used to the idea when it was still a calf, by tying it to a post with a short rope, so the calf would figure out it couldn’t get away—once the calf was broke to the post, it had to be broke to lead. Job would pull the calf around using his own
body weight. The trick was to convince the calf that he was stronger than it was. There was a magical point where submission happened, when the animal gave in. Like Abe before him, Jacob was doing exactly that. He was trying to break Ben’s will, to master him, to bring Ben to submission, but not before God as he claimed. Jacob was trying to bring Ben to submission before himself. And it was working. Ben, sobbing, repeated what his father said and asked Jesus Christ into his heart. He asked to be born again. “I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

The Out-to-Lunch Café was empty when Job arrived. The breakfast rush was over and the morning coffee rush hadn’t begun. Crystal was sitting at the counter drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette that she stubbed out as Job walked through the door. She wore a pair of green capri pants and a green blouse. Her blonde hair was piled on her head in an elaborate coiffure. Job guessed it was a wig.

“Job!” she said. “Long time no see!”

He glanced back into the kitchen, hoping to see Liv at work.

“She’s not on today. What can I get ya?”

“Breakfast, I guess.”

“Come talk to me while I make it. Want the usual?” The usual was The Big Man’s Breakfast: three eggs, hash browns, sausage, bacon and a stack of pancakes. She led him into the kitchen and offered him a stool by the prep table.

The space looked like the kitchen in the community hall. Oversized sinks and a gas stove with eight burners, a walk-in freezer and a fridge wide enough to store big boxes of cauliflower and bags of carrots. A rack of pots hung from the ceiling over a large library table that served as the food-preparation area. With a fork she pulled a couple of boiled
sausages from a large covered plastic tray and tossed them on the grill before putting the tray back in the fridge. “So, what’re you up to? Still working on that halfway-house thing?”

“No. The building burned down last night.”

“Lord love a duck, Job. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well. It was Jacob’s thing. I guess I never really wanted any part of it. The cabin burned too, though.” The sound of his voice, as if he were talking of someone else’s fire. Job felt the urge to snuggle into Crystal, to bury his face in her bosom, like a toddler hiding in his mother’s chest in a strange crowd.

“How the hell did that happen?” When Job didn’t answer, she said, “Never mind. I can guess. Liv was right when she said that boy was heading for trouble.”

“Don’t say anything,” said Job. “It would kill Jacob.”

“My lips are sealed,” said Crystal. “Not that it’ll make much difference. The news will make the rounds in no time. Who took the call at the firehouse? Carlson?”

“Yeah.”

Crystal pulled a handful of cooked and sliced potatoes from a plastic tub and threw them in a frying pan. “So where you going to stay? Is there room in the house?”

Job shook his head. He could sleep on the couch, or on the living-room floor, or in the attic with the mice and bats. But he didn’t want to witness the family disputes that were sure to follow this day. “I guess I’ll have to fix up the cabin.”

“Is it salvageable?”

“I don’t know. There’s a hole in the roof. I didn’t really give it a good look. I just left.” He’d backed away from Ben’s
bedroom and his brother kneeling with his son, bringing him to the Lord. Jacob’s belt on the floor beside them. Lilith had asked if he wanted breakfast, as if everything were all right, as if Ben hadn’t burned two buildings in the night. Job had said no, and got in his truck and drove to town.

“You going to rebuild that halfway house?”

“I doubt Jacob could get the support for it now.” He stared up at a clock made out of an old fry pan that hung on the wall, and listened to his breakfast sizzle.

“Liv’s been wondering where you got to,” said Crystal. “I told her she should just go ahead and give you a call, but I guess she never did.”