Forgiving Not Ourselves

By Jeffrey Matthews

A few terrible moments on an otherwise tranquil night...

A tragic fire, ruled an accident by local authorities, destroys an antique carousel - and also claims a life.

Kevin Ahern has returned to the small Midwest city of Hayes with an interesting proposal for the city he has adopted - to build them a brand new carousel from the ground up.

But Kevin and his friends soon find themselves faced with lingering questions about the fire and its aftermath.

An insurance claim, filed by the City, not only for loss of revenue, but for the loss of priceless carousel art and history, has brought a retired arson investigator to town - and no one likes the questions he’s asking.

Was the fire really just an unfortunate accident?

If not, who started the fire?

Was it a simple case of arson,
or a calculated and planned act of hatred and vengeance?

But more importantly, who else may have been there that awful night,
and what was their involvement?

As the investigator zeros in on his suspects and their possible motives, other small town secrets begin to emerge.

And there is one person around whom everything seems to swirl: a wandering amnesiac with only one name, an unknown origin - burn scars branded into his palms and guilt seared into his soul.

If there is to be any forgiveness or redemption, it may lie buried with old secrets and hard truths that no wants to face.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664243576

Jeffrey Matthews

Jeffrey Matthews is a native of the Sunshine State. He woke up one morning in his adopted home of New Ulm, Minnesota, remembering he was meant to be a storyteller. His debut novel, Carry Us All, was honored with inclusion in the National Carousel Association’s Archives.

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Copyright © 2021 Jeffrey Matthews.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue

in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-4358-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-4359-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-4357-6 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/02/2021

Contents

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

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25

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27

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Epilogue

Acknowledgements

for Patty

The heart of this story,

of every story,

and ever the heart of mine.

Prologue

HER DAUGHTER WAS right there.

Then she wasn’t.

The panic was suffocating.

The only thing to do was to call out - to search so wildly her eyes never had time to land on a single detail.

Everything was blurred, indistinct, fluid.

Her daughter could be standing a few feet away, but her terrified eyes would work against her, blinding her.

With every frenzied call of her daughter’s name, her mother’s heart bordered on the edge of hysteria.

Minutes became long, sluggish things.

Her feet move one way, then another.

And every time her child’s name is called without response, her stomach lurches bile, her soul begins its slow descent into madness.

But there she is!

The mother judges the distance to her child in inches, not in the dozens of yards that actually exist between them.

Her heart leaps before her, silently calling her child’s name.

She is with a man.

They’re at the canal’s edge.

She seems so serene, at ease.

The mother uses this thought to calm her still panicked mind.

She dissects their movements as she nears them.

They’re feeding ducks. They’re just feeding the ducks.

She calls her daughter’s name - and at last she turns, smiles, waves.

The man crouching in front of her, turns her fully toward her mother, gently pushing her forward.

Her daughter is running to her, still smiling.

Her mother’s arms ache to embrace her.

What were you doing? You shouldn’t have left mommy like that.

I was feeding the ducks, she says. With that sad man, over there.

It sounds so sweet.

She points her small finger at the man who has turned his back to them.

You’re not supposed to talk to strangers.

He’s going to be build me a caro..., a caro..., a merry-go-round. And I told him my name. Cristina, without the ‘h’.

She hugs her daughter to herself - relieved to feel her familiar small frame, to breathe her in, to know she is safe.

Oh, Cristina. You’re not supposed to tell strangers your name.

They hold hands and start walking to the parking lot.

See! She points excitedly. That’s where he’s building it.

A construction site is underway, near the park’s edge, but it’s difficult to say what’s being built there.

That’s where my merry-go-round will be, she says, so confident, so self-assured.

I’m sure it will, sweetie. I’m sure it will.

Because nothing else matters now.

A small, sweaty hand, full of bread crumbs, is set firmly in her own.

And for now, her mother’s heart tamps down on the fresh memory of that wild, intolerable fear.

That inescapable truth.

The harsh reality that someone can be here one moment, gone the next.

1

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KEVIN KICKED AT the pile of sawdust and wood curls covering the floor.

He didn’t like the mess.

He usually swept up after every woodcarving session, but sometimes it got away from him. Often times he simply finished too late, and the next day was too eager to start again to be bothered. But now the mess had amassed to the height of his instep.

Maybe, he thought, it was time to hire some cleaning help.

He pulled the locking pin from the turntable, slowly rotating it, inspecting the progress of the wooden horse’s head. It was mostly roughed in lines and grooves running from the base of its neck to the tip of its nose. Only the area around the eye sockets was complete.

He always started with the eyes - with the rounded out craters where the glass eyeballs would later rest, etching out from there the dozens of minor lines and details that gave form and movement to the eyelids and brow.

This was where the soul of the animal resided, and whatever was to be carved there - the animal’s expression, the life breath of this creation - was his alone to give. It was slowly revealed to him, splinter by splinter, until something told him to stop and to go no farther.

From there he worked on the nostrils. Often times these were deep, flaring, savage things. The dormant energy that lay innately there guided his hand over the fine muscles, tendons, and sinews that slept beneath the raw wood.

Next was the mouth and teeth, even the tongue - they all explained themselves to him as he repeatedly stared into those eyes, or gently rubbed his hand over the snout. Each flick and cut of his knives and gouges sometimes felt as though they were already there, waiting for him to expose them.

After these were complete, the rest of the horse’s head would be painstakingly detailed with puffed out veins and straining facial muscles.

But not on this one.

This one was to be an armored horse.

The head would be shielded beneath a heavy helmet, the neck under a heavy collar of chain mail. The challenge: to patiently carve each fish-like scale of metal, each rivet, every strap and buckle required by the heavy armor.

Before reaching for the broom, he stepped back to imagine his charger complete. He looked over the top of the horse’s head at the four framed photographs on the wall beyond. He had taken the pictures himself - an armored horse he had once admired. It had stood fearlessly on a C.W. Parker carousel he once visited on the East coast, a place where most of the fully restored major carousels in America were still operating.

From the photographs, he had made his own plans and drawings, using the photos as templates - customizing the horse’s armor to his own design, re-tilting the head, shaping the ears to something he felt looked more dramatic.

He had drawn page after page of eyes, even though he knew when the time came to finally tackle his project, he would let those eyes shape themselves beneath his carving blade.

Even the color of those eyes had chosen themselves.

He unconsciously picked up the broom while still looking at the framed photos, but now, thinking about those eyes, he leaned the broom against the bench and went to a bookshelf that held several large, flat boxes. He pulled one down and brought it back to the workbench.

Opening the lid, the light rippled across three dozen sets of glass eyes. This box held the brown eyes, but the ones that had chosen themselves were more like deep, red wine. He lifted one of the glass orbs from the case and gently inserted it into the hollow of the eye socket. The eye burned hot and furious against the bare wood. He imagined that once Alison had painted the armor in steel blues and burnished grays, the eyes would smolder even more - fierce and certain.

He reached again for the broom, but his gaze was still fixed on the horse’s head. He blindly swept at the floor, the wood shavings light and obedient before the push of the broom, until a pile mounded up and the weight of it became heavy against the broom’s handle. He scanned around for the dust pan - it seemed to move about on its own.

His phone went off - and now he had to find that.

He followed the sound to the workbench, pushing aside the small saws and gouges, finally locating it. As he picked it up, brushing the sawdust from it, he considered getting a bright orange case for it.

It was Jen.

Hey, he said brightly, but wincing as his eyes automatically went to the large clock hanging over the workbench.

She had bought him that clock - even hung it there herself.

She told him the one odd thing she had noticed most about him was his skewed sense of time. That she didn’t know if she could ever get used to it and hoped to re-train him.

He saw himself as having an honest sense of time.

He had always felt that calendars and watches were such poor indicators of passing time. That neither were capable of truly capturing or pinning down all of life’s shuttle and bewilderment. They might bring a certain sense of order and framing to time, but still gave no true meaning to time’s value.

Pragmatic Jen, he thought to himself. She would probably tell him that the excuse he had just given himself was merely over-thought. That it was just like him - to over think everything.

But he knew time was finite and he warred against it with all he hoped to do and accomplish within its confines. If he gave time any notice or thought at all, it was only to see how little of it there seemed to be left.

I guess I should have gotten you a bigger clock, she said. One with a ridiculously loud chime, or maybe a really annoying cuckoo clock. I’ll bet you’re looking at it right now.

I am, he smiled to himself.

Then you know it’s suppertime. Aunt Mae’s made you your favorite. Although I don’t know why, when you’re always late for it.

He heard the older woman’s voice in the background.

She says it’ll keep, so don’t rush, said Jen. And drive careful, she added.

I’m already out the door, he said. Love you.

He pocketed the phone and went back to the carved head, plucking out the eyeball and placing it back in the case with the others. He gave the turntable a final spin. It glided smoothly on its bearings as he went to the stairs.

Before turning out the lights, he looked back. The turntable had come to rest - the eyeless horse facing away from him, as though shunning his leaving it.

It was just a block of wood from this direction.

Only he could see its magnificence.

2

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ARLON BRUSHED THE toe of his boot over the tops of the blades of grass.

He’d give the new growth here another few days before mowing. He felt the sun at his back - knew it was sitting low on the horizon, growing cold.

It was time for his walk.

He started to go back to his cabin for a jacket - but now, looking at how far away he was from it, he decided to go with what he was wearing.

It was late spring in the Midwest - and although the weather could be counted on to be wildly unpredictable, it was an agreeable time for most. Anything was better after a harsh winter, which this last one had been.

At first it felt like spring might never start - not with all the unexpected fits of snow showers, ice accumulations, and howling windstorms. But the earth’s gradual wobble faced them more and more toward the sun, toward the inevitable warmth of summer.

And once the grass started to green up, it wouldn’t be long. The grass always knew.

The days were longer - the night time hours pushed back. But even with the extra daylight, it could still get downright chilly - and quickly.

He rolled his sleeves down, confident he could tough it out for the duration of his evening walk.

He liked to go at least as far as the river.

The river’s banks arched around the north end of the park, and the path to his favorite spot had a smooth, easy grade to it.

He knew it well.

But when he had his walking stick with him, and felt more prepared, he liked to take a detour on the way back, tramping through a bit of the deeper forest on a narrow path he had forged for himself.

His walk to the trailhead took him past the center of the park, where the carousel pavilion had once stood. He slanted his route toward it, stepping onto the cement pad of the pavilion’s foundation - the only thing remaining after the fire.

An irreplaceable piece of history, a work of art, had been destroyed here.

And a man had died here.

Arlon stood where he had last seen that man. A man who had once been a boy that Arlon had watched playing in this very park. A boy who could have been his son, if his own history had only played out a bit differently.

He gave a wide berth to the spot of ground where that man had died, pointing himself toward the trailhead.

Feeling a slight chill fall around him, he took up a brisker pace than usual.

He hoped to reach the river before the sunlight gave out.

He didn’t mind a walk back in the dark.

3

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HE SAT AT his desk, bent over, rubbing the toe of his Italian loafer with a Kleenex.

Step in something? she asked, dropping a slim, manila folder on his desk, along with a much larger expandable file jacket.

Harris raised up, glancing at the two files. One was marked "Merry-Go-Round" the other read City Park.

No, I didn’t step in anything, he said. It’s this dust. It’s everywhere. As soon as the snow melts, there’s dust and grit on everything. You can’t keep your shoes looking decent for more than a few minutes.

Yeah, she said snidely. It wouldn’t do for the mayor to be seen walking around town with a smudge on his shiny shoes.

They’re Italian, Ann, he said, opening the slim file first. You can’t let the dirt abrade the leather.

He searched over the few pieces of paper in the file, but could feel Ann’s smirk. He looked up to see he was right.

Have you been through all of these? he asked, tapping the larger file.

She dropped the smirk, reaching across for the expandable file, pulling out a four inch section that was clipped together. She set this in front of him.

This is as far as I got, she said, folding her arms to indicate she didn’t plan on looking any further. It’s your turn to read through it awhile. It’s got to be in there somewhere.

Harris turned the section to face him and leafed through it.

Okay, okay, he said. I’ll look through the rest myself. Can you get Jerry on the phone?

Are you kidding me? she huffed. What? Did you see that on TV or something? Dial him yourself.

Harris looked up, but Ann was already at the door.

Could you at least close the door on your way out? he asked.

Yes, your majesty, she said, without turning around, grasping the doorknob and pulling the door shut behind her.

He expected a tiny slam, but she closed the door gently.

He shook his head at it.

He tapped his cell phone, leaning back in his chair, the thick stack of papers on his lap.

Call Jerry, he said.

Calling Jerry, his phone repeated.

He flipped through the papers, scouring the paragraphs for one word: merry-go-round.

Hey there, buddy, answered Jerry.

Jerry. What’s up?

Nothing partner. How about you?

Right now, I’m holding the insurance files for the park, said Harris. Want to stop over and have a look with me?

Sure. You want to grab a beer afterwards? asked Jerry.

We’ll have us a nip here.

Wow. On City property? You’re bold.

I’m the mayor. And look, Ann will probably be gone by the time you get here, so bring your keys. I don’t want to have to get up to get the door for you.

Gotcha, said Jerry. See you in fifteen.

Harris hung up, a thought floating into his mind - a voice in his head saying: It’s not a merry-go-round. It’s a carousel.

He shifted his word search of the documents to carousel, scanning over them again, his eye readily hitting on the word as he fanned the papers. He doubled back and forth several times, finally finding the page.

"So it was insured," he said aloud to himself.

He dropped the bundle of papers to his desk, pulled his laptop closer, and typed in the word carousel and appraisals.

Dozens of sites popped up.

He shut the laptop, instantly frustrated. He wanted some hard figures - real estimates - and he wanted them now.

He knew someone, he remembered, brightening up again. And this someone was in this very town, right now. Someone quite knowledgeable on the subject.

Someone who was easily..., manipulated?

No. Managed. That was a more agreeable word for it.

He went to the window, staring down at the parking lot, seeing Jerry getting out of his car.

Yeah, he thought. He could probably get this guy to play ball with him. Help pin down some solid figures on the merry-go-round’s worth. And then they’d have a reliable in-house expert to back things up for them if they got challenged.

But the whole thing needed to stay as confidential as possible, for as long as possible.

At least until he felt - or rather, until the City felt - they were ready to re-file a claim.

Yeah, he knew a guy.

But could he manage this guy again?

4

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REECE USED HIS boot to spread around the handful of cat litter he had dropped on the spot of spilled oil.

The concrete floor of his auto repair shop was never swept, never cleaned in any way, but he usually kept up after any spills that might be a slipping hazard.

He’d fallen once. Cracked his hip. Laid himself up pretty good - and for a long while.

He was bound and determined not to repeat that little incident.

The injury had left him with a limp - an odd gait that, truth be told, embarrassed him. He felt he now sashayed, like a woman. He tried hard to take smaller, firmer steps. But it made him slow, although he hoped the slowness made him seem deliberate. He could even imagine it made him seem menacing - which would be just fine with him, too.

He looked out toward the street from the open bank of garage doors, recognizing the sound of the engine approaching.

It was the City Attorney’s BMW. The only one in town.

Jerry, he recalled - the name popping into his head. Yeah, that’s the guy.

He watched the shiny, black sedan glide past his garage. He couldn’t see the driver past the tinted windows.

He’d worked on that car. He’d worked on most of the cars in town. And he remembered them all.

He wasn’t the only mechanic in town, but everyone knew he was the best, the fastest.

They also knew he was often surly to work with.

But his prices kept them coming back - especially those customers willing not to be too inquisitive about where some of the parts came from. That got you an even better price.

It was closing time.

He pulled the garage door down, locked it.

He went to the next bay and started to pull the door down, but it hung up in the track. He shoved it hard, backing it up, then pulling at it again.

It was stuck even more.

He cursed it.

Cursed his son, too.

The boy was supposed to have fixed that.

His boy...

His boy was dead.

He limped to the rear of the shop and pulled out a ladder. Lugging it to the bay’s opening, he set it up, then went back for a mallet and a screwdriver.

He knew Lloyd had probably fixed it when he’d asked. He’d always been a mindful boy. He just would’ve figured the boy had fixed it better than this.

Reece climbed the ladder, using the mallet to bang the tip of the screwdriver under the snagged gear wheel. One solid whack and the gear slipped back into the track. He ran his hand along the track until he came to the kink that was causing all the problem, giving it a few useless whacks with the mallet, hoping to smooth it out.

As he descended the ladder he thought: that was probably all the boy had done about it, too. That boy had spent way too much time working out at the park on the motor of that kiddie ride.

But Reece knew what his son had really been thinking about that whole time. It had been more about the girl.

She was nothing but trouble. Cheap. All women were.

He reached up for the cord, pulling slow and even this time. The door glided shut.

Reece went back to his tool area, put the screwdriver through its slot, but held onto the mallet, turning it slowly in his hand.

The boy had probably been the last to touch it.

He twirled it again in his hand, feeling its heft.

His boy had died for no reason.

He hoped the boy hadn’t suffered. Died quick.

The cops told him the coroner’s report had said so. He couldn’t read it for himself.

That was his one consolation - that his boy had not had a second to even know what had happened