“You used to be sure we’d get a million bucks diving the wreck.”
“We will.” Bridger settled back and crossed his arms. “We will. But it’ll be at the end of long, drawnout litigation. Way my luck’s been lately, I can’t wait that long for a bankroll. Like I told you, we got any more heavy expense with this diving, we’re shit out of luck.”
“Maybe it’s time you stopped gambling, Wes.”
“It was gambling brought us this far,” Bridger reminded him sourly. “Look, I’m just suggesting a different game, that’s all.”
“What you’re suggesting isn’t a game. We could go to jail.”
“Like your life ain’t a fucking prison now.”
They approached a long ridge that stretched east, a dark wall rising in front of them. The ridge was crowned with evergreen and aspen, but its sides were bare rock, striated basalt cliffs that, at the eastern terminus, plunged more than two hundred feet, before touching the surface of the lake. It was Purgatory Ridge, the deep ancient lava flow in whose shadow John LePere had been born and raised. The highway cut under the ridge in a long tunnel, lit by bright lights. As LePere drove through, the tires of his old truck seemed to be singing one long note that echoed off the tunnel walls. When the highway broke into sunlight again, LePere immediately slowed the truck and turned onto a narrow lane of dirt and gravel. The lane wound a quarter mile through a thick stand of poplars until it came to a small house on a protected cove named for the ridge that towered above it. Purgatory.
The cove had a beach composed entirely of small stones rounded smooth by waves. LePere’s was the only house. The only other artificial structures were a sturdy little fish house and a long dock where a reconditioned 36-foot Grand Banks trawler christened Anne Marie was moored. LePere parked the truck near the fish house and got out. He fumbled the key into the padlock on the door.
Bridger got out, too, and stretched. With a nod toward the little house, he asked, “How come you never go in the old place?”
“I go in.”
“Just not when I’m with you.”
“I don’t like things disturbed.”
“What is it? Like some kind of shrine?”
“Get your tanks,” LePere said, and threw open the fish house door.
In LePere’s youth, the fish house had been where his father cleaned the day’s catch—ciscoes, herring, whitefish—he sold to the markets and smokehouses along the North Shore between Grand Marais and Two Harbors. Jean Charles LePere had come back from World War II and four years in the navy with a love of big, open water. With the money he might otherwise have used for college, he bought the land on Purgatory Cove from an old Norwegian named Bugge. Along with it came the dwelling, the fish house, a leaky fishing boat, and yards and yards of tangled nets. He spent nearly a year repairing the buildings, making the vessel seaworthy, mending the nets. In the winter of the repairs, he met and fell in love with a beautiful young Indian woman named Anne Marie Sebanc who worked as a waitress in a little place in Knife River. During his second year of laying nets, he married her. Although the house was small and rustic, it became their home, and within a year, they had a son. John Sailor LePere.
For a long time, John LePere’s life was wonderful. He remembered spending long days collecting agates on the shore of the cove and accompanying his father to the north shore towns where he sold the stones to souvenir shops while his father was selling fish. He remembered picnics atop Purgatory Ridge with the Sawtooth Mountains to the northwest, and to the east Lake Superior stretching flat and blue all the way to the end of the world. He remembered his father pointing out to him from that height where, under the silver surface, the fish ran and where was a good place to set a net. His father had loved fishing and loved the big lake. Yet it had been these very things that had killed him, that had plunged his wife into a dark confusion from which she never fully emerged and that had forced his sons to grow up too quickly and too hard. For much of his life, LePere had struggled to crack the truth at the heart of this mystery. What he’d finally come to accept was that the lake called Kitchigami was so vast and ancient and part of something so huge in its ultimate purpose that one human life—or two or three—mattered not at all. In that way, he’d come to think it was like God, who gave and took and offered not the slightest explanation for either.
Bridger pulled his equipment from the back of the pickup. He brought his tanks into the shed, where LePere filled them, and his own, from a compressor. They loaded everything onto the boat. Bridger loosed the moorings and LePere backed the Anne Marie away from the dock. The entrance to the cove was protected on either side by great slabs of igneous rock sliced from Purgatory Ridge by eons of weathering. Even in the harshest storm, the power of the waves was broken before reaching the cove. LePere headed the boat away from the cabin and out onto the great lake, slicing through water deceptively calm, water that had taken from him his father, his mother, his brother, everything that he’d ever loved, water so cold it could punch the heart right out of your chest and so unforgiving it absolutely refused to yield up its dead.
9
NEAR FOUR A.M. he’d become aware of Jo moving in the room.
“You okay?” he’d asked.
She paused in a slash of moonlight that made her feet glow but left the rest of her in darkness. She took a long time to answer. “Just going for some Tylenol.” And she’d slipped out the door.
He’d meant to stay awake, waiting for her return, but the next thing he knew the room was bright with morning light and Jo was still not beside him in their bed. He glanced at the radio alarm: seven-fifteen.
“Have you seen your sister?” he asked Rose, who was in the kitchen in her robe.
Rose yawned and pointed to the refrigerator. “She left a note.”
Cork pulled the slip of paper off the refrigerator door.
Couldn’t sleep. Gone to the office. Jo
“Did you hear her leave?” he asked.
“No.” Rose held a white mug with THE WORLD’S BEST AUNT in red on the side, and she was watching closely the last few drips as the coffeemaker finished its business.
Cork heard the television come on in the living room. He glanced through the kitchen doorway and saw that Stevie was up and settling himself to watch cartoons. Cork stepped to the wall phone and dialed Jo’s office number. After four rings, her voice message system kicked in. He hung up.
“Coffee?” Rose sipped from her big mug and already looked more awake.
“Thanks, I’ll get it myself.”
She watched him a moment, then asked, “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said.
It was a lie. For he was remembering a time, not that long ago, when Jo had been restless and gone at odd hours and the reason for it was that she’d been in love with another man and had stolen time to slip into his bed. Cork looked out the kitchen window. Jo had left the garage door open. He stared at the empty place where her old Toyota usually sat, gripped his coffee cup tightly, and chided himself. He hadn’t been guiltless. He’d been in love with someone else, too, and regularly visited her bed. That was all in the past now. Surely they’d put the hurt and the distrust behind them. Hadn’t they?
He sipped his coffee and burned his lip. “Shit.”
Rose had opened a cupboard to get some Bisquick. She paused, the box halfway between cupboard and counter. “You seem upset, Cork.”
“I told you,” he replied, so harshly that he surprised even himself, “everything’s fine.”
He left the kitchen. In the living room, Stevie sat on the sofa. He had his thumb in his mouth, an old habit that, even at six, still sometimes surfaced when he was very tired or very scared.
“Hey, buddy.”
Cork had tried to put some lightness in his tone, but Stevie didn’t look up from the television. Cork didn’t push it. He headed upstairs to dress for his morning run.
He’d run his first marathon the previous fall in the Twin Cities and his second, the famous Grand
ma’s Marathon in Duluth, the following summer. He’d taken to running at the same time he gave up cigarettes, and he’d done both these things because of a promise he’d made to a woman he’d loved who was not Jo. In those days, he’d lived alone at Sam’s Place.
During the long months of separation from his family, what he’d wanted most was to bring them all back together somehow. He’d believed—foolishly, he thought now—that once he was back in the house on Gooseberry Lane, they could simply pick up where the good part of their lives had left off. But every day, life changed people, and when it hurt them, especially, it changed them a lot and forever. He and Jo never talked about that part of their past, when he’d loved a waitress and Jo had loved a rich man. Both lovers were dead now, yet it was as if their ghosts remained, haunting the silences that often slipped between Cork and Jo. He longed to talk about these things, but always in the back of his mind was the image of his marriage as a wounded, limping thing. What was the use of touching the old hurts? Wasn’t it better simply to let time heal them?
Normally on his morning run, he followed one of the roads that edged Iron Lake. That morning, however, his feet followed a different route, one that took him to the Aurora Professional Building where Jo had her law office. He went in, dripping sweat. Fran Cooper, Jo’s secretary, looked up from her desk. Cork had known Fran his whole life. She’d been secretary of his senior class, got pregnant (rumor had it) the night of senior prom, and married Andy Cooper the following summer. They were still married and, from all appearances, still happy. The child that had been born to them was a Valentine’s Day baby and was now in her second year of medical school at the University of Minnesota. Fran looked Cork over and smiled.
“I think you took a wrong turn in the home stretch, Cork.”
“Looking for Jo,” he replied, a little out of breath.
“Not here. She’d already come and gone when I got in this morning. She left a note asking me to reschedule her appointments for today. She’s out at the reservation.”
“Any idea why?”
“Her note didn’t say. But dollars to doughnuts it’s got something to do with Charlie Warren.” She glanced down where drops of Cork’s perspiration were turning the beige carpet gray. “You want some water or something?”
“No thanks.”
“I keep telling Jo to get a cell phone, Cork.” Fran shrugged as if she’d done her best.
Cork cut across Knudsen Park, heading for the lake. He turned and followed Center Street to the edge of town. He jogged along the Burlington Northern tracks to the access to Sam’s Place and headed in to shower.
He kept a change of clothes at the Quonset hut, kept the refrigerator plugged in and defrosted, kept fresh linen for the bunk. He’d done these things without thinking about them, but as he showered that morning and put on clean clothes, he wondered if unconsciously he’d been keeping himself prepared in case things on Gooseberry Lane didn’t work out. He was angry when he thought this. He stared at his face in the bathroom mirror.
“What is it you want, O’Connor? Make up your damn mind.”
He called home, told Rose to have the girls drive the Bronco out when they came to work. Rose reminded him that she was helping the women’s guild at St. Agnes most of the day and wouldn’t be able to watch Stevie.
“Have the girls bring him,” he said. “Tell him we’ll catch another mess of sunnies.”
By the time the children arrived, Cork had the grill fired up, the ice milk machine filled, and the oil in the deep fryer hot.
“There’s plenty of change in the register,” he told them.
“You sound like you’re leaving,” Jenny said.
“I am. Sorry.”
“Don’t forget,” she cautioned him. “Mom and I are going to the library tonight.”
“The library?”
“To hear Grace Fitzgerald read from Superior Blue. I won’t be able to close.”
Annie jumped in. “Me either. I’ve got softball practice.”
“Stevie and I will close up.” He ran his hand through his son’s hair. “We’ll have a guy’s night out. What do you say, buddy?”
Stevie shrugged. “Okay. When can I fish?”
Cork looked to his daughters.
“Go on, Dad,” Jenny said. “We’ll take care of everything here.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
Cork drove to the Iron Lake Reservation. He tried not to think. There was only one reason he wanted to go, and he knew if he thought about it too much, he’d have hated himself. Not enough time had passed since the days when Jo had lied to him about the places she was going and who she would be with and what they would do. He’d believed her then. Against all evidence. Now he had to see. He had to see her on the reservation. He hoped she was following up on Charlie
Warren. But God help him, he had to know absolutely.
He pulled into Alouette a little before noon and stopped at LeDuc’s store. Inside, he found George LeDuc standing beside the magazine rack at the broad front window, staring down the street.
“Anin, George,” Cork said, using the traditional Anishinaabe greeting.
“Anin, Cork.” The darkness in LeDuc’s face came from more than just the genetic coloring of his skin. “You’re the first person to walk through that door today who wasn’t a reporter.”
“Bad, huh?”
LeDuc shook his head. “I don’t have any answers for them, except that Charlie Warren wasn’t the kind of man to make bombs.”
“What was he doing out there?”
“Got me.” LeDuc walked to the counter where the cash register sat, reached into a tall glass jar, and drew out a stick of beef jerky. He offered it to Cork, who waved it off. LeDuc tore off a bit and worked the tough meat around in his mouth. “It was always Charlie Warren’s voice advising us to be patient, be reasonable, be strong. This just doesn’t make sense.”
“Have you talked to your guests?”
Cork was speaking of the scores of tents that had been erected in the new park just north of town. The tribal council had voted to open the site to those who’d come to Aurora to join them in the battle to save Our Grandfathers. They represented a variety of interests and were almost entirely white.
“They didn’t know Charlie Warren. When I speak with them, they nod, but I see distrust in their eyes.” He swallowed jerky and took a deep breath.
Cork saw something in LeDuc’s own dark almond eyes. “You don’t trust them, either.”
“We fight a different cause, Cork. They want all logging halted. We’re just interested in protecting Our Grandfathers. They don’t seem to care that if all logging is prohibited, we suffer, too.”
Cork knew he was speaking of the mill in Brandywine, the other community on the rez. The mill was operated by the Iron Lake Ojibwe and was supplied with timber cut by Ojibwe loggers.
“Like always, they have their own agenda. It’s not really about helping us Shinnobs.” He stepped back to the front window again and stared down the street. “Another thing. They don’t often shower.”
“George,” Cork asked finally, “have you seen Jo?”
“Not today. I called her office and left a message. She out here?”
His stomach gave a little twist. “I thought so.”
“Tell her we need to talk. If you see her.”
“I’ll do that.”
Cork walked through Alouette. The distance from one end of town to the other was just over half a mile. A few years earlier, most of the three or four dozen houses and trailers in town were in desperate need of renovation or bulldozing. Now the influence of the casino could be seen in new siding and shingles and paint. Old cars still sat on blocks in the backyards, but there were new vehicles in the drives. And money didn’t mean that a man who didn’t cut his grass before would cut it now. Still, on the whole, Alouette wore a new look. Within the last two years, a big community center had been built, as well as a clinic run by the People and staffed by a doctor, a physician’s
assistant, and two nurses, all Ojibwe Anishinaabe. The businesses—LeDuc’s store, Medina’s Mobile station, and the Makwa Café—were all doing well and looked it.
The heat was oppressive. As much as possible, Cork stayed in the shade of the huge oaks that lined the street. When he didn’t see Jo’s car at the community center, he simply kept walking, moving numbly. At the northern edge of town, he paused and studied the gathering of tents that filled the new park. Among the old vans and Saabs and the four-by-fours parked in the lot were several vehicles with broadcasting logos across their sides. Cork saw a number of tent people speaking with reporters and posing for photos. The kid who’d nearly been pulverized by Erskine Ellroy was facing the lens of a television camera and pronouncing boldly, “If war is what they want, hell, we’ll give it to them.”
Cork shook his head. They could use a good lawyer.
As if the thought had conjured her, Jo pulled up in her Toyota and stopped.
“Cork, what are you doing out here?”
He didn’t have a good answer for that one.
“Playing sheriff,” she said finally, unhappily.
“Playing?”
“You know what I mean.” She got out and stood beside him under the shade of an oak. The heat rose from the hood of her car in shimmering sheets, evidence that she’d been driving quite a bit. Her eyes shifted toward what Cork was watching, the kid talking to the television reporter. “Someone ought to be advising these people,” she said. “If they’re not careful, they’ll end up doing more harm than good.”
“Where have you been?” Cork asked.
“I wanted to talk with Charlie Warren’s daughter, try to get some idea what possible reason there could have been for him to be at the mill.”
Cork felt relieved. And ashamed. “How’s she doing?”
“Holding up.”
“Was she able to tell you anything?”
“Apparently, Charlie had become pretty secretive of late. Gone nights. Back around daybreak. No explanation. He was a little old for it to have been a woman, I think.”
Cork leaned back against the rough bark of the oak. “It’s hard to believe Charlie would be involved in the kind of thing that happened at the mill.”
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