Iron Lake

by William Kent Krueger

  Wanda walked to a cane rocker, sat down, and began to rock the squirming baby. “How is the burger business?” she asked.

  “In winter, closed,” Cork said. “It smells good in here. Bear.”

  “Yes.”

  The baby began to whimper.

  “Where’d you get bear meat?”

  She looked at him as if the question were stupid. “I shot a bear.”

  “I didn’t know you hunted.”

  “There are lots of things about me you don’t know. Why should you? You never lived on the reservation.”

  The girl who’d held the baby peeked through the doorway. Wanda Manydeeds glanced at her. “Susan, go watch television for a little while.”

  The girl frowned, but did as she was told.

  “Her mother’s in the rehab center on the Red Lake rez,” Wanda explained. “Susan wants a baby. Someone to love her. She’ll make a good mother if I can get her to wait until she’s twenty and married.” She shifted the fussing baby to her shoulder and patted his back. “You didn’t come here to talk about hunting bears. You want to know the same thing the sheriff’s man wanted to know. You want to know where Joe John is.”

  “Yes,” Cork said.

  “And I’m supposed to tell you? Because you have a little of The People’s blood flowing through you? Why do you even care? You’re not the sheriff anymore.”

  “Joe John’s my friend.”

  “Then leave him be.”

  The baby began to cry in earnest again. Wanda Manydeeds undid the top buttons of her denim blouse, unsnapped her feeding bra. The upper slope of her breast bore an elaborate tattoo that Cork easily recognized as the Wisdom Tree. The Wisdom Tree was an ancient, isolated white cedar—normally a swamp tree—that grew on the very tip of a point of rocky land jutting into Lake Superior. The whites called it the Witch Tree because it grew out of solid rock and had no visible means of sustenance. It was said to be as old as The People themselves and was sacred. Like Henry Meloux, Wanda Manydeeds was of the Cormorant clan, the clan of teachers and the Midewiwin. The baby’s mouth clasped Wanda’s nipple greedily just below the roots of the tree and the baby settled into quiet sucking.

  “Have you seen Joe John?” Cork asked.

  “No.”

  “Is he back?”

  “He’s around.”

  “Here on the reservation?”

  “In Tamarack County.”

  “Do you know where?”

  Wanda’s nipple slipped from the baby’s lips. The baby whimpered and she guided the searching mouth back.

  “He has Paul?”

  She considered a moment before answering. “Paul’s safe.”

  “Why are they hiding?”

  “Why does anyone hide?”

  “What’s Darla afraid of?” Cork pressed. “What’s everybody so afraid of? Why won’t anyone talk?”

  She looked at him, and her almond eyes were hard with contempt. “You look at my silence and Darla’s with a man’s perception. You believe silence comes only from fear. Silence often comes from strength and from wisdom.” She looked down at the baby. “That’s all I have to say to you.”

  The priest, who until that moment had been silent himself, said respectfully, “Thank you, Wanda.”

  “You’re welcome, Tom,” she replied without looking up.

  The priest turned to leave. Cork stood still and asked, “Did Joe John have anything to do with the judge’s murder?”

  Wanda stopped rocking. She glanced up from the baby. Wisdom may have been the reason for her silence, but Cork knew fear was certainly the cause of the look on her face.

  “Get out,” she said.

  “Come on, Cork.” The priest put his hand on Cork’s shoulder.

  Cork said to the woman, “I only want to help.”

  “Stay out of this, then,” she said. “The best thing you can do is just to stay the hell out of this.”

  The baby began to cry, a rolling wail. Wanda closed up her blouse and stood up, cradling the baby against her. “Shhh, Makwa, shhh.”

  Tilly Favre appeared and two other women and the girl. They all shared the same hostile look as they stared at Cork.

  “Migwech, Wanda,” he said. Thanks. He turned and left.

  Outside, Cork took one last look at the torn forest next to the lodge. The uprooted trees made him anxious in an inexplicable way. The money from the casino was changing everything, changing it fast and changing it forever. And who could say what change was for the best and what was not?

  In the Bronco, the priest said, “What the hell was that about the judge being murdered?”

  “I think he may have been,” Cork said.

  Night had set in fully, and as Cork negotiated the winding road back to the mission, the high beam of his headlights blasted the woods with glare and shadow.

  “Murder,” the priest said quietly.

  “And somehow that boy and his father are involved.”

  “Do you think Wanda is telling the truth?”

  “Yes,” Cork said as the mission clearing came into sight. “But she’s not telling everything she knows.”

  * * *

  Rose was at the kitchen table wrapping presents. She seemed startled when Cork shoved open the back door and stepped in.

  “Sorry, Rose,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He hung up his coat. “Where is everybody?”

  “They went Christmas shopping.”

  Cork headed to the cookie jar on the counter, lifted Ernie’s head, and took out two chocolate chip cookies. He watched Rose, who was intent on making a bow out of a length of gold ribbon. She glanced up at him, seemed about to speak, then looked back down at her ribbon.

  “What is it?” Cork asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s probably just my imagination.”

  “What?”

  She put the ribbon down. “I think someone’s been in the house.”

  Cork had been leaning against the kitchen counter. He stood up straight. “Why do you think that?”

  Rose looked a little uncertain. “It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s the little things. Like this afternoon. I went to the linen closet for a clean towel. I always put the towels and washcloths in order. Dark blue on the bottom, light blue in the middle, white on top. They were out of order.”

  “One of the kids,” Cork suggested. “Probably looking for hidden Christmas presents.”

  “Maybe,” Rose said.

  “Anything else?”

  “I took some clothes into Jo’s room. Her bed was neatly made but the corner of the spread was up as if it had been lifted so that someone could look under.”

  “Maybe she just did a lousy job of making her bed this morning.”

  “You know how neat Jo is.”

  “Again, it could be kids looking for Christmas presents.”

  Rose looked unconvinced. “There are other things, all small like that. But it gives me the strangest feeling, and I can’t shake it.”

  “Has anything been taken?”

  “Not that I can tell. And I’ve looked pretty thoroughly.”

  “When would someone have come in?”

  “The only time I can think of is when we were out shopping for the tree.”

  “Did you lock the door?”

  “This is Aurora, Cork. I never lock the door except at night.”

  The house was dead still. The refrigerator motor clicked on with a deep, startling hum. Rose jerked in her chair.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing, Rose,” Cork said. “But let’s start locking the doors just to be sure.” He locked the back door. “I’m going upstairs to clean up a little. You okay?”

  “Yes.” Rose smiled. “I’m sure, like you say, it’s nothing.” She went back to work on her bow.

  Cork locked the front door on his way upstairs. He checked the guest room, Anne’s and Jenny’s and Stevie’s rooms, and finally Jo’s. He stood in his wife’s bedroom, where on the surface
everything looked fine. When he’d lived in the house, he’d had an intimate knowledge of how things should feel, but he’d been gone for months, and he’d lost that feel. Now he stood there a stranger.

  Still, he trusted Rose.

  First Sam’s Place had been violated. Then the house on Gooseberry Lane. Were they looking for something here, too? Or was this just another warning, a subtle indication that his family wasn’t safe either? If they were looking for something, what the hell could it be and why did they think he had it?

  He went to the basement, took the rolled bearskin from a locked black trunk near the furnace, and brought it to his room. The skin had been left to him by Sam Winter Moon in his will. It had come from the biggest black bear Cork had ever seen, the one he’d hunted with Sam when he was fourteen. Cork undid the ropes. As he rolled out the skin, he uncovered the box he’d put there over a year ago. It was the size of a large dictionary and nearly as heavy. He lifted the lid. Inside was a Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special, a belt and holster, and a box of cartridges. He’d put them away after he’d killed Arnold Stanley. He’d believed he would never use them again. But like so much about his life, it appeared he might be wrong.

  He was tired, so tired he could barely lift his feet to keep walking. The pack on his back felt so heavy he could hardly carry it. Sam Winter Moon moved ahead of him silently, the Winchester held ready in his hands.

  They were in an unfamiliar part of the forest, an area torn and desolate. The trees had been razed, the stumps ripped from the ground. Their roots had become claws thrust toward the evening sky. The sun was low and red, and everything in the forest was tinted with an angry hue.

  Sam Winter Moon had said the bear was near. Very near. They had to be careful now. Sam moved lightly on the balls of his feet and made no sound. Every step for Cork was labored and broke the silence with a terrible crunching of dry autumn leaves.

  They came to the middle of the desolate ground, to a place where stumps and logs and branches had been piled in a heap, the way loggers would leave a mess for burning. The area was full of thistle grown chest high and autumn sumac with leaves gone bloodred along the branches. Sam looked the pile over carefully. In the evening light, it looked like something humped and dying.

  Sam Winter Moon chambered a round. He lifted his hand in a sign for Cork to wait, then began to circle the huge pile of debris. In a moment he was lost among the tall thistle and sumac. Cork’s heart beat so hard and fast it shook his whole body. The sound of it got louder and louder, so that Cork was sure the noise would startle the bear. He tried to breathe out the fear. He wanted to call to Sam, call him back from the danger, but Sam Winter Moon was already gone, already lost to him.

  Then the pile began to stir. The jagged stumps and timber rose up, forming themselves into the great bear standing on its hind legs. It rose above Cork and splayed its claws, long and sharp and white, against the red of the sky. The bear lifted its black muzzle and a deafening roar exploded from its maw. As Cork watched terrified, it came for him.

  He gripped the bow in his hands, a bow that had not been there before, and he reached toward his back, toward the quiver that hung where the pack had been. His hands trembled as he drew out an arrow and tried to think where best to shoot for a kill. He glanced at the bowstring and quickly fitted the arrow. When he looked up, the bear had changed. It wasn’t the great black animal anymore, but a huge ogre, the Windigo, man-shaped with its skin bloodied and its teeth stained from feeding. Cork raised the bow and sighted on the creature’s chest where the heart would be if the Windigo had a heart. But the bow was no longer a bow. It was a .38 Police Special. And as he pulled the trigger, the Windigo was no longer an ogre but was little Arnold Stanley with wet hair and a hopeless look on his face as his chest exploded with splashes of red.

  “Cork, are you all right?” It was Jo in the doorway. “You cried out.”

  Cork sat up in bed, his heart still racing.

  “Yes,” he said. He breathed deeply, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Just a dream.”

  He pulled off the covers and swung his feet off the bed. He reached to the nightstand for a cigarette. A bit of light came through his window, the reflection of the streetlamp off the snow outside, but his room was mostly dark.

  Jo came in, not far. She wore a flannel night-gown and held her arms across her chest as if she were cold. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.” He struck a match, lit his cigarette, sighed out a cloud of smoke. “It was just a dream and it’s over.”

  He could smell her, the scent of the Oil of Olay she used at night to soften her skin.

  “Putting up the tree today was nice,” he said after a while.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “I’m amazed the blue bulbs have lasted this long,” he said.

  “We’ve been careful. About the bulbs at least.” She might have smiled. It was hard to see her face clearly. “I’m going back to bed.”

  “You’re cold?” he asked to keep her there.

  “Freezing.”

  “You were always too cold and I was always too warm. You used to pull the blankets off me, remember?”

  Her heard her take a deep breath. “Good night, Cork.” She turned and left.

  He finished his cigarette. And then he tried to sleep.

  19

  THE NEXT MORNING, after Jo and Rose had taken the children to church, Cork drove to Molly’s place. She didn’t answer his knock. He checked the shed where she kept her old Saab and found the car still there. He glanced at the sauna by the lake. No smoke from the stovepipe. Ski tracks headed down to the lake, but he couldn’t tell how recently they’d been made. He went back to the house and let himself in with the key she hung on a nail under the back steps. She usually kept her skis on a rack on the back porch, but the rack was empty. Cork stepped into the kitchen, took off his hat and gloves and coat, and began to make himself coffee from the can of Hills Brothers Molly kept on hand just for him.

  He loved Molly’s kitchen. There was always a certain disorder to it that made it feel comfortable. She wasn’t slovenly, but she often left a book open on the table, a few dishes sitting by the sink, or her knitting bag sagged on the floor next to a chair. Molly lived in her kitchen and her spirit filled it, so that just standing there, Cork breathed her in.

  If he’d believed in prayer, he would have prayed at that moment for a way around what was ahead.

  He bent over the sink, feeling weak and sick to his stomach, shaking as if he had a fever.

  At least he hadn’t told Molly he loved her. Maybe that was a small blessing, something spared them both. The only woman he’d ever been sure he loved and had told so was Jo, and that hadn’t exactly turned out well. Was it always that way with love?

  He poured himself a cup of coffee, and as he took his first sip, Molly came off the lake and removed her skis. He watched her disappear into the sauna. Smoke began to rise from the stovepipe. She reappeared with a long metal bar with a chiseled end, an ice spud, went ten feet out onto the ice, and began vigorously thrusting the bar downward. It looked as if the heavy metal was going right through the thick ice. But Cork knew there was a hole there Molly would use to plunge into after her sauna. She was simply clearing the thin layer of surface ice that had formed since she’d last taken a dip. When she and Cork did the sauna together, she usually consented to a brief roll in the snow or to just standing in the cold for a time while the icy air cooled them. She did this for Cork, who thought a plunge into the lake in the middle of winter was taking an experience a step too far. She put the ice spud away, took her skis and poles in hand, and started toward the house. When she saw Cork’s Bronco, a big smile spread across her pretty face.

  “There is a God,” she said, sweeping into the kitchen, her cheeks flushed, her clothes carrying the cold that Cork could feel across the room. She pulled off her down jacket and hung it on a wall peg next to Cork’s coat. She wore a red sweater that she also pulled off, and un
der it a white thermal top that hugged her breasts and her flat belly. Her cheeks were deep pink and her eyes full of excitement. “I was out on that gorgeous lake thinking what a treat it would be to come back and sauna with you.” She crossed to him exuberantly and kissed him. She stepped back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s not true.” She studied him so carefully that Cork had to look away.

  He cupped his coffee tightly with both hands. “We’ve got to talk.”

  “You never talk. It must be bad.”

  “Let’s sit down.”

  “I’m okay.” She stared at him, and a cold, knowing look seemed to come into her eyes.

  “Molly, I’ve been doing a lot a thinking. About us.”

  “What about us?”

  Cork looked at his coffee. He could see his eyes reflected on the dark surface. They looked worried.

  “You’ve been wonderful, Molly. You’ve been better than I deserved.”

  “Don’t feed me a lot of crap, Cork. What is it? What’s going on?”

  “I want to try to put my marriage back together.”

  “So that’s it.” She turned away and went to the stove. She took the tea kettle, filled it with water, set it on a burner, and turned on the gas flame. “She asked you back?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “This is your idea, then?”

  He stepped nearer. “Molly, it’s not about you. You’ve been wonderful.”

  “Right.”

  “The truth is, it’s the children. I don’t want my kids to hurt anymore. Can you understand? I have a history in that house on Gooseberry Lane. Maybe it’s already too late, but I don’t want to let go if there’s a chance of saving it.”

  She touched her forehead a moment, as if thinking deeply. “So you’ll be moving back in?”