Purgatory Ridge

by William Kent Krueger

  Cork teetered at the top of the cabin stairway. In his hand, he gripped the knife Bridger had used in his fight with Lindstrom. The blade glistened with Lindstrom’s blood from tip to hilt. The bow of the Anne Marie rose and dipped, pitching Cork down the steps into the cabin. He stumbled over Lindstrom’s prone form, bounced off the berth, and fell at LePere’s feet. He’d dropped the knife. Slowly, painfully, he reached out, took it again in his grasp, and lifted it toward LePere.

  John LePere quickly turned himself around and ran the duct tape that bound his wrists along the sharp edge of the knife while Cork held it. He tore his hands free, took the blade from Cork, and cut the others loose.

  Jo sat on the floor and cradled her husband’s head in her lap. “Stay with me, Cork.”

  “Always,” he whispered.

  LePere said, “I’m going topside. I’ll take us back in.”

  He hadn’t gone a step when Grace Fitzgerald cried out, “No!” and reached toward Karl Lindstrom.

  Jo saw why. She watched in horror what none of them was able to stop. Karl Lindstrom had turned his head toward his left hand, in which he still held the detonator. Before anyone could prevent him, he squeezed his fingers around the device. A muffled explosion followed, and the Anne Marie shivered as if she’d been kicked.

  “You son of a bitch,” Grace yelled.

  “I always was a bad loser,” Lindstrom murmured.

  LePere danced around Lindstrom and hurried up to the deck. He came back a moment later, looking grim.

  “He’s blown a hole in the stern. We’re taking on water.”

  “What about the other boat?” Jo said.

  LePere shook his head. “The blast blew the tow line free. The other boat’s gone. I can’t even see it.”

  “Don’t you have life vests?” Grace asked.

  “In the deckhouse,” LePere said. “Let’s clear this cabin. I have to get into that storage compartment. I keep an inflatable raft there. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”

  “Take Stevie up, Grace. I’ll help Cork.”

  “You’re not strong enough,” LePere told her. “You get the raft. I’ll take your husband.” He lifted Cork in his arms and started up the steps behind the others.

  Jo found the rolled, yellow rubber raft and two small oars where LePere had indicated. By the time she’d grabbed the items, water ran down the companionway and lay several inches deep in the cabin.

  Lindstrom rolled to his back and said in a wet, bubbly voice, “Help me.”

  “Ask God, not me.” Jo didn’t even pause as she stepped over him and headed topside.

  Without power or guidance, the boat had turned broadside to the wind, and it tilted dangerously as it rode up the waves and rolled into the troughs. Jo struggled through the deckhouse toward the stern doorway, the shifting angle of the boat throwing her off balance at every step. LePere shouted into the radio mike at the helm station, “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is the Anne Marie. We have a damaged hull and are sinking fast.” He repeated the message several times, giving the coordinates, then abandoned the radio and helped Jo with the raft and oars. They skirted Bridger, who lay facedown in the water that sloshed in the deckhouse, two bloodstains merging across the back of his shirt.

  Outside, the cockpit was awash with water calf deep. With both hands, Scott was holding tightly to the railing of the ladder that led up to the flying bridge. He wore an orange life vest that was too big for him. Beside Scott, Grace held herself to the ladder with one hand and held to Stevie with the other. Stevie, too, wore a big life vest. One more vest was draped across the ladder. Cork sat alone, propped against the side of the boat. Jo could see damage to the stern railing, and the list of the Anne Marie was becoming more obvious by the moment.

  LePere cut the rope that held the raft in a roll, and he pulled the cord to open the air valve. The raft inflated quickly.

  Jo saw immediately it was too small. “We won’t fit,” she screamed, beginning to lose control. She’d held herself together for so long that she felt utterly exhausted, ready to give in to panic.

  “The two of you.” LePere pointed to Jo and Grace. “And the boys. You can fit.”

  “I’m not leaving Cork.”

  “He can’t help you.”

  “I’m not leaving him,” Jo shouted at LePere. She looked toward her husband. He was flopping like a rag doll as the waves pitched the Anne Marie about. Even so, it was obvious that the shake of his head was intentional. He was telling Jo no.

  She knelt beside him. “I can’t go without you.”

  She had to lean very near to hear his answer.

  “You have to,” he said.

  “How can I leave you, Cork?”

  “We’ll never leave each other.” He nodded toward where Stevie stood, held steady by Grace Fitzgerald. “Get our son home safely. Do that for me. Promise.”

  Although rain ran in rivers down her face, it wasn’t the rain that made her eyes blur. “Cork—”

  “No time. Promise,” he insisted.

  She yielded. “I promise.”

  “I love you,” he whispered against her cheek.

  “I love you,” she whispered back. She couldn’t say good-bye, couldn’t manage any more words at all. She kissed him, kissed him just that once, then she turned away.

  LePere held the third vest out to Grace and Jo. “It’s the last one I have. Who wears it?”

  “You,” Grace said to him.

  “It won’t do me any good. In this lake, I’d just freeze to death.”

  “Then could you put it on my husband?” Jo asked LePere. “I don’t want to lose him forever.”

  She looked to Grace, who seemed to understand her purpose. Bodies without life vests did not float in Lake Superior. The lake didn’t give up its dead. Grace nodded her assent.

  “Into the raft,” LePere shouted. Then, “Wait.” He went into the deckhouse and came back with a small compass that he gave to Jo. “Hold a northwest heading, into the wind.”

  Jo put her arms briefly around the man. “Thank you.”

  “God be with you,” he said and pushed her toward the raft.

  The stern, riding low in the water, was the easiest place from which to launch. LePere held the raft as steady as he could while Jo and the others got in. The rough seas made it difficult, but finally Grace was settled in back with one of the oars and Jo in front with the other. The two boys huddled in the middle, Scott with his arms around Stevie. LePere shoved them off.

  They headed into a wind that threw the lake at them. Jo dug at the water with all her strength. They rode several feet up a swell, then dropped into the trough behind it. The black water broke over them with numbing cold, and it was clear to Jo that they were not much better off in the little yellow raft than they’d been on the foundering Anne Marie. Holding the compass near her face, she checked direction. She allowed herself one look back. She could barely see the lights of the boat. The mouth of darkness was already open, ready to swallow Cork forever. She turned her mind and her will to keeping her final promise to her husband.

  For a long time, they battled the lake, using the squat oars as paddles. Jo’s arms had never hurt so much. Moving into the wind was tiring, but it was good in a way. They held their course more easily. Jo couldn’t tell at all if they were making distance. She didn’t speak to Grace, but she could feel the push of the other oar behind her as steady as her own. After three quarters of an hour, the wind slackened and the rain began to let up. In a few minutes, the storm passed. The lake grew calmer. As if a curtain had been pulled away, the moon and stars emerged, turning the water in front of them silver. At the end of the silver, Jo saw the black rise of land several hundred yards away, with lights scattered along the shoreline.

  “We made it!” Grace shouted triumphantly at her back.

  Not all of us, Jo thought, staring at the dark land ahead. And not all of me.

  49

  JOHN LEPERE WAS ALMOST HOME. He stood at the stern of the foundering Anne
Marie and stared down into the black water of a lake he’d known his whole life, whose vast existence suffused every aspect of his being but whose true spirit had eluded all his attempts at understanding. LePere finally let go of trying to understand and accepted the only thing he knew for sure. Below the raging surface, along the rocky bottom hundreds of feet down, the water was still and silent, and he would soon lie there, where he’d always been meant to come to rest.

  After the yellow raft was swallowed by the night and the storm, LePere turned back and appraised the situation. Bridger lay dead in the deckhouse. In the forward cabin below, Lindstrom was dead—or dying. These things were as they should be. But there was one element that had no place in this final drama. Cork O’Connor should never have been a part of it. The man had done nothing to deserve the end that awaited him.

  LePere slogged across the cockpit that was swamped with icy water. He sat next to O’Connor and helped brace him against the pitch of the boat. He offered the only bit of comfort he could. “They got away.”

  O’Connor lifted his head. “They’ll make it?”

  “They’ll make it.” LePere didn’t just say this. He believed it, believed it because he’d seen firsthand what the two women and their boys were capable of. “They’re strong, O’Connor. In all the important ways.”

  O’Connor had lowered his head again. John LePere didn’t know if he’d heard, if it made any difference.

  “Here.” LePere took the life vest in both hands. “I’m going to put this on you.”

  O’Connor looked up and shook his head. LePere moved closer to hear his words. “You wear it. Wasted on me.”

  “I promised your wife,” LePere told him. “It’s a promise I’m going to keep.”

  O’Connor cried out in pain as LePere maneuvered him into the vest, but he didn’t fight it. LePere didn’t know if the man understood the true reason for his wife’s request. Did it matter?

  “There. That’ll keep your head above water. Now if I could just keep you dry, you’d be fine until the Coast Guard comes.”

  He kept his words light, but when O’Connor raised his tired eyes, John LePere could see that he understood perfectly the truth of his predicament.

  “I’m sorry,” LePere said, because he felt responsible.

  O’Connor shook his head slightly. Was it a pardon? John LePere wondered.

  The two men sat together as the waves washed over the gunwales, filling the cockpit. LePere could feel the Anne Marie growing heavy and sluggish as she took on water. There was nothing now but to wait for the end. Lightning made the lake stand out in moments of stark black and white. LePere closed his eyes and remembered things that were alive with color. The blue of the summer sky over Superior and the deep aching blue of the lake below. The charcoal cliffs of Purgatory Ridge and the green tufts of grass that grew out of even the most solid rock. His father’s eyes, golden as the sun when he looked down from the height of the ridge, pointing where the fish would run. His mother’s cheeks, flushed with happiness as she stood beside her husband. And Billy. Billy most of all. Tanned from the summer sun, strong from swimming in a lake cold as ice, a tawny baseball mitt on his right hand, his eyes an earthy green-brown and shining.

  Far out of place among all that memory, a thought came to John LePere—the dry suit he kept stowed in the compartment in the cabin of the Anne Marie.

  His eyes snapped open. “Jesus,” he said. “Of course.”

  He leaped up and fought his way through the deckhouse. The Anne Marie was listing severely, her stern ready to disappear beneath the swells. As he reached the companionway down to the forward cabin, the lights flickered, but they didn’t die. Lindstrom no longer lay on the floor. He’d managed to crawl partway up the steps to the deckhouse. He looked dead and LePere simply stepped over him. In the forward cabin, LePere threw open the storage compartment door. The diving suit lay folded on a shelf, wet from the deep water in the cabin. As LePere made his way back to the companionway, he saw that Lindstrom wasn’t, in fact, dead. The man was watching him.

  “They got away,” LePere said with satisfaction. “Your wife and boy and O’Connor’s family. They all got away. All this for nothing.”

  “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” Lindstrom mumbled. He looked at the dry suit.

  “For O’Connor,” LePere explained. “I think he’s got a chance.”

  “No chance.”

  “We’ll see.”

  LePere didn’t waste any more time on Lindstrom. Up top, O’Connor had flopped over with the tilt of the boat. He was struggling to keep his head above water. LePere grasped him under his arms and began to pull him toward the bow, as far as possible from where the lake spilled over the stern.

  “Listen to me, O’Connor,” LePere shouted. “You have a chance. I’m going to put this dry suit on you. It will keep the lake off you. The Coast Guard will come, I promise. This will probably hurt. I’m sorry.”

  O’Connor stared at him and LePere didn’t know if he understood at all. He undid the life vest and removed it. He took off O’Connor’s shoes. Then he began the arduous task of pulling the tight vulcanized rubber over Cork O’Connor’s body and zipping it in place. He could feel the bow rising, the boat slipping deeper as he worked. He tugged the hood over O’Connor’s head, then began to work the life vest back on. At first, O’Connor had moaned in pain, but by the time the dry suit and vest were in place, he was limp and silent.

  Christ, LePere thought, I’ve killed him.

  At that same moment, the lights of the Anne Marie died.

  In a flash of lightning, LePere saw O’Connor’s eyes spring open, and he felt a hard tug on O’Connor’s body, as if an invisible power were trying to pull him under the water that had followed them up the deck. LePere was confused. The water should have lifted O’Connor’s life vest and O’Connor with it. Instead, he was being dragged down. In the unfathomable black of the stormy night, LePere felt along the man’s body, down his legs, searching for what had snagged him. His hand touched a cold hand, touched icy fingers gripped hard around O’Connor’s ankle. In the next explosion of lightning, he saw Karl Lindstrom climbing from the lake, using Cork O’Connor to save himself.

  “No you don’t, you son of a bitch,” LePere cried. He pried loose the fingers, and he grasped Lindstrom in his own strong arms. He worked his way to the port side of the bow well away from O’Connor, then undid his belt and buckled himself to the brass railing of the Anne Marie. “When she goes,” he shouted to Lindstrom, “you and me go with her.” Lindstrom struggled weakly, but LePere held him fast.

  In little more than a minute, the boat went under and began its own long journey to the bottom of the lake. LePere held his breath as he was dragged deep into the black water. Lindstrom fought briefly, then was still. LePere maintained his grip on the man’s body a while longer, just to be certain, then let go.

  Alone, John Sailor LePere continued down. As the boat swiftly descended, he felt his chest tighten, as if he were now in the grip of something enormous and overpowering, something that had always been waiting to embrace him. His lungs seemed ready to explode, and he became afraid, suddenly desperate not to release his hold on life. He reached down, fumbled with the buckle on his belt, but it was much too late. As the water pressure crushed his ribs, he opened his mouth to cry out. In that instant, Kitchigami filled him and took him into itself.

  Cork was inside something thick, something that dulled his thinking, something he could not crawl out of. Even so, he knew what John LePere had done. He understood the sacrifice.

  And he understood that now he was alone.

  He felt the boat slip from under him. For a moment, the suck of it as it went under tried to pull him down, but the vest lifted him. His hands and his feet were cold. His face was cold. Sometimes when he tried to breathe, he swallowed water and coughed. The coughing hurt. He kept his eyes closed against the surge of the waves. That was easy. He had no strength to open them.

  He sank into darkn
ess often, and for long periods he was aware of nothing. Then he was suddenly staring up at a sky full of stars and a moon. The lake didn’t feel angry anymore. He was tired. It was night. He wanted to sleep.

  He dreamed. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he went someplace where he could always have gone if he’d known the way; then he came back.

  He opened his eyes and stared into the brightest light he’d ever seen, so bright it blinded him, yet he could not look away. Somewhere in the thick of his thinking, he remembered death came as a bright light, and he wondered, Am I dead?

  A dark shape eclipsed the light. Cork saw that it was Jo’s face. She was so beautiful with the light behind her like a halo. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her, but he could not speak. So he smiled. The smallest of smiles. All he could muster before he felt himself begin to yield to darkness, to the sweet pull of oblivion, thinking his wife’s face was a good last vision, a good final gift to take with him into forever.

  50

  JO O’CONNOR STOOD in ash that covered the ground like snow. Around her as far as she could see, the bare, blackened trunks of pine trees rose up and scraped against an empty sky.

  The rain had helped firefighters control and eventually extinguish the multitude of blazes that, for weeks, had been burning large areas of the North Woods. The old-growth white pines known as Our Grandfathers, sacred to the Ojibwe Anishinaabeg of the Iron Lake Reservation, had not been spared. With every breath, Jo took in the smell of char, of senseless destruction. She felt, as she had so often lately, a deep sense of loss and grieving.

  “What a tragedy,” she said, then sighed.

  Henry Meloux, who was among those who’d accompanied her to view the devastation, looked where she looked. His old face was soft and wrinkled. His brown eyes seemed amazingly calm. “Who can say what Kitchimanidoo is all about? We see little and understand less.”

  Grace Fitzgerald had walked ahead of them with Scott and Stevie. Stevie looked back often to make certain his mother was still there. At a fallen pine, he stopped and bent down. Scott stooped beside him, and they peered intently at something on the ground.