A Healing Fire

A Healing Fire

By William T.Lowe. Excerpt

The Higbee barrens is roughly rectangular in shape, bounded on two sides by county roads, a stream on the east, and the pastures of a big dairy farm to the north. These are pitch pines, taller and a harder wood than the common jack pines. Pine trees in the Adirondacks have not yet been damaged by acid rain as our maples have been.

Three families live on the edge of the barrens, and I was asked to visit them and reassure them that they wouldn’t have to vacate their homes and that there would be special insurance protection on the remote chance of any damage.

I set out the morning after the meeting. It was an early spring day, bright and fresh. There was still a trace of snow on Whiteface; trees were starting to bud. I passed a stand of willows showing that shade of mustard that would soon turn to a light green. Soon I was driving along the age of the barrens, a dense stockade of trees opened here and there by a Jeep trail or a footpath. The air was rich with pine.

My first stop was Clyde Spenser’s place. He lived on the east side of the barrens near Foxtail Creek. He came into town alone once a weel to play the lottery and do the family grocery shopping.

For a couple of years I’ve suspected Clyde of growing … somewhere near his place, but I’ve never been able to prove it. As a deputy I’ve found pot patches hidden on the banks of a stream, in the middle of a cornfield, on the back side of a hill. It’s easy to grow; all you need is sun, soil, water, and privacy.

A healing fire. Photo by Elena

Clyde wouldn’t invite me into his house. “My wife is ailing,” he said. He was disturbed by the idea of strangers setting fires in the barrens next door. “I won’t leave my house,” he told me over and over. “No matter what.”

I assured him he would have nothing to worry about. As I turned my car around, I saw a woman I took to be Mrs. Spenser in the back yard feeding some chickens.

Did Clyde have something hidden in the house? Being suspicious is part of being a peace officer; it goes with the territory. I would be back to see Clyde again.

My next visit was to the Walter Doyle place on the southbound country road. His small frame house needed paint; the yard needed raking.

A lean-to sheltered an ancient pickup. Some distance away from the house but near the road was a large old barn, its roof swaybacked, the wooden shingles warped and moss-covered. High weeds around the door showed that the barn was seldom if ever used.

Inside the fence and in front of the house a big fishing boat sat on its trailer. A fitted cover was stretched over the cockpit; a chrome bow rail glistened in the sun.

Walter assured everyone that he was a carpenter but that a long-ago accident had gifted him with a permanently sore back and subsequent disability compensation payments.

Published in September 2000, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery magazine