Frozen

by Mary Casanova

  Tink, tank, tank,

  Tank, tunk, tunk.

  I sat down again. “And so you carried me in your arms and went back inside the building. And you shouted for help, right?”

  He leaned back against the slats of his chair. “That’s right, but how do you—”

  “Mr. Worthington,” I lied, “has told the story many times. Of how you saved me. How otherwise I would have died in the snow, if it hadn’t been for you finding me there.”

  Beneath his beak-like nose, his whisker-flecked chin wobbled, and I worried he was going to start crying. “Why, I guess that’s so, ain’t it? I guess I never really thought . . .”

  I placed my hand on the quilt between us. “But this quilt. It was hers. And now it’s at your place here. That still doesn’t add up to me. Why do you have it? You didn’t mention it when you told about finding her body.”

  Lightning illuminated the sky outside the window.

  “You see, that’s another weird thing. I found it behind the town hall in the burn barrel. Someone stashed it there. Way too nice to burn. Hate to see good things go to waste, if you know—” He studied his rosary. The beads were flying through his fingers, and I knew he wasn’t saying a “Hail Mary” or “Our Father” with each bead. “So I took it home.” He exhaled. “And now you—of all people—find it. That’s the strangest. Almost like she meant for you to find it.”

  He stretched toward the table and buried his forehead in his crossed arms.

  I pulled the quilt back into my lap. Rain pummeled the rooftop, and beyond the window, water fell in sheets of gray.

  With everything in me, I wanted to avenge my mother’s death. To salvage something from her life. But she’d been gone so long. I couldn’t change what had happened to her any more than I could prove that someone had silenced my father. I couldn’t prove anything in a court of law as to what happened between Ennis and my mother that night in the upstairs bedroom. I couldn’t change the choices she made that led to her pitiful end.

  I’d been frozen ever since . . . like Rainy Lake through the long, dark months of winter when ice grips its shores. Rock-hard, thick, and impenetrable. Until a southerly wind loosens its edges, melts the top layers of snow, and sends trickles of water along foot-deep cracks and fissures, breaking the massive lake into tiny icebergs, setting them adrift. The beginning of the thaw . . .

  It had started, I realized now, with finding the photographs.

  With facing the past—a past I could not change.

  But I could change.

  I would not allow others to direct my life, to dam it up like a flowing river, directing it to fit their needs.

  Chapter 24

  Bigby lifted his head from the table and started talking again. “The Mayor, well, after that, he promised to clean things up in Ranier. Used that tragedy to advantage, if you get my meaning. Me? I left my job within the year, just couldn’t stand to look at that empty space in the building by the flag. I’d always see her, and it tore at me, ’specially when I knew she had a child. Came out here. Started runnin’ a trapline. I get by.”

  My eyes grew hot, and I blinked back my tears.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “Wait. You’re goddamn thankin’ me?”

  “For telling me.” I paused. “For finding me.”

  He rested both hands on the table—ragged fingernails, white hairs curling above tan and spotted skin. “Never figured I’d see this day.”

  “No,” I agreed. “Me neither.”

  I studied the large four-legged pelt on the wall. It was silvery-black with a tail as long as a yardstick. Such a beautiful animal once, no doubt, but all I knew of it now was a dried leather hide and holes, from which eyes once peered.

  “Timber wolf,” Bigby said, following my gaze.

  Then, from his trouser pocket, Bigby pulled out a gray and rumpled sheet of paper. “Had a real good season right up through May when I sold off pelts,” he said, as a new wave of raindrops struck the roof.

  He read from his list: “Two otter, twenty-seven muskrat, nineteen wolves, fourteen fox, two lynx, seven pine marten . . .” As Bigby talked about his trapping techniques and knowledge of each animal, I studied him.

  This man. This man who had stood my mother’s poor lifeless body up as a joke. I should be raging inside, and yet he was the same man who had found me. I wouldn’t be alive now if he hadn’t brought me in from the snowbank. Life was so completely unpredictable. This man, Bigby, was intertwined with my past, both prankster and rescuer. And yet here I sat with him, as if he were Hans.

  When Bigby finished, he hobbled two steps to the cookstove, started a fire in the chamber, then set an iron teakettle on top. “Who knows when this storm will pass?” he said. “Better make yourself comfortable. Got some black tea and a little sugar. Would that suit you, Sadie Rose?”

  “Yes, I’d like that.”

  We drank tea out of stained and cracked cups.

  When Bigby staggered to his bed, flopped back as if dead, and filled the shack with snoring that rivaled a braying donkey, I stepped outside.

  At last, the storm had moved on. Trees straightened their backs, the sky lightened to a soft gray, and waves sloshed softly in the rock-lined bay. Long grass and weeds lay bent. Under a faint drizzle and pervasive gray, a pair of loons popped up in the bay, their star-studded backs beading water. They looked at me with their unusual red eyes, then dove underwater and disappeared.

  Just as I began to fret that Owen had forgotten me, his boat appeared, its slim bow cutting through the dark water. He waved, but something about his face looked wrong.

  When he pulled up to the short dock, he motioned me in, swinging his arms frantically like a baseball player cheering a teammate to steal home.

  But his face was all wrong.

  Beneath his wavy hair, his right eye was a thin slit, almost swollen shut and sporting a grayish-purple plum. Remnants of blood smeared his upper lip, and he’d clearly wiped away whatever blood had been there with the sleeve of his denim shirt.

  I looked from his face and torn knee of his trousers to the condition of his boat. It looked as if someone had taken an ax to it. The wooden compartments where he stored his dairy products had been smashed apart. Cracked boards and splinters crisscrossed the base of the boat. “Good Lord. What happened, Owen?”

  “I, uh—” He shook his head. “Just get in.”

  Careful not to slip on the algae-slick boards of Bigby’s dock, I tossed my satchel into Owen’s boat, followed by the quilt.

  “What’s that?” He nodded at the quilt, glaringly filthy in the daylight. Many of its quilted pieces—once so carefully stitched together—were ripped and curling away from the pattern of large interlinking rings.

  How could I answer in a word or two? My encounter with Bigby was inexplicable as stars, as if our meeting was somehow orchestrated. I shrugged and sat down near him as he motored out of the bay. “I’ll explain—sometime.”

  He pushed the throttle down and sped through the channel toward the open lake.

  I looked back at the tiny shack as it dissolved into a palette of greens. How strange that in one man I would discover the one who had made a joke of my mother’s death and yet pulled my body from the snow . . . like a calf, he’d said. Yet there it was. I wanted to be enraged at Bigby, and instead I promised myself I’d return someday to see how he was getting along.

  Owen steered us through the tight, curving channel, then between shorelines toward open water. Islands and shores of clear-cut timber with their scatterings of broken limbs and stubby trunks appeared tinder-dry and brown, despite the heavy rain. And then in contrast, some stands of timber had been missed—or spared. In the towering branches of one pine, an eagle perched atop its massive nest.

  The storm left giant swells on the big lake, and Owen m
aneuvered his boat to ride up a crest and down again, without crashing up and down. I studied him. The bruising around his mouth was deepening in color, and his upper lip was puffed up. He either had a collision with his boat, or someone had beaten him up good.

  “Did you get in a fight?” I shouted.

  He stared straight ahead.

  “Did someone steal your goods?”

  He reached up and scratched the back of his neck, ran his tongue over his upper lip, and winced. He shook his head slowly left, then right, as if moving quickly was too much of a strain.

  “Do you have any ice somewhere—for your face?” I shouted.

  Owen shook his head, glancing halfheartedly around at the destroyed coolers. “That’s the last of my worries.”

  I let it go. I had enough to worry about for the moment. No destination. No place to call home. Barely five dollars to my name. But I had gained some things in the past weeks.

  My voice. I couldn’t imagine life now without it.

  A sense of the pieces of my life. I knew my real father had cared about the changing wilderness, capturing its beauty and devastation in photographs. His name was Frank Ladovitch. Possibly murdered. Silenced. His first name was stitched on the quilt.

  And memories. Memories of Mama, of hovering outside my body—all were true. I hadn’t imagined it. Bigby had found me. Haunted by the shame of standing Mama’s frozen body in the corner, he’d spent his life regretting.

  Owen and I traveled on for nearly two hours, straight west toward Ranier, following the waters that carved a portion of the international border. There was so much I had thought I’d known and understood.

  Suddenly, a few pieces fell into order.

  I smacked my skirt-covered thigh with my hand. “Owen! You weren’t delivering dairy, were you?”

  He glanced at me, his face ashen, his usual lighthearted expression absent. He turned his gaze back at the water.

  “I’ll bet anything you were bootlegging, weren’t you?” I’d heard the Worthingtons talk about it. How Koochiching County had already been dry for a few years, so that when Prohibition went into effect last January, area bootleggers were ahead of the game, in full swing, operating stills and selling booze. “They’re tickled pink to welcome Prohibition,” Mr. Worthington had said. He’d explained that now bootleggers could charge more for their goods and sell them clear across the country. Supply and demand. The border opened up opportunities for locals, as well as growing crime from influences as far away as St. Paul and Chicago. Last fall, it had seemed far-fetched.

  But now, seeing Owen’s beautiful wood coolers smashed, his face swollen and raw from someone’s rage—he must have gotten himself into more than he bargained for.

  “Promise not to tell a soul?” He glanced at me, keeping his hands on the boat’s wheel.

  “Promise.”

  “Yeah, bootlegging. Just a little. First, just to local folks with homemade brew that I’d pick up from blind piggers around the lake. But last March, I came across someone’s dumped cargo. I was driving the new delivery truck when I noticed wheel tracks going down into the ditch. Thought maybe an automobile had gone off the road and somebody needed help. All I found was a caved-in root cellar and cases of scotch whiskey. Somebody’s stash. Not a soul in sight, so I hauled it out, one case at a time. Figured if I didn’t haul it off, someone else would. I managed to hide the cases in our warehouse.”

  “How many?”

  “Seven.”

  “And how much is a case worth?”

  “Fifty bucks.”

  “Owen! Then why haven’t you left Ranier? You gotta have enough money by now.”

  “I was saving it, but I have to return the money I made—along with the unsold cases. The message was real clear. I have to leave the creamery door unlocked and an envelope with the cash. Then they’ll forget all about it.”

  “I hope so.”

  I was stunned, though I shouldn’t have been too surprised. Passing laws doesn’t change people’s behavior. The Eighteenth Amendment had pushed the making, selling, and consuming of liquor underground, that’s all. The customers hadn’t gone away. Even someone like Owen Jensen had been drawn to the quick and easy cash.

  He pointed to his face. “This—just a warning. Next time, they said they’ll make an anchor out of me. One of my customers must have talked.”

  “Oh, Owen. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, don’t be. I’m lucky I’m not dead.”

  As the sun neared the horizon, I recognized our surroundings. Off to the right, King Ed’s Red Stone Island appeared. Straight ahead, in the distance beyond a small reef, Victor Guttenberg’s cabin graced the eastern point of Falcon Island.

  Owen veered wide around the bay’s central reef, where a great blue heron stood one-legged on a rocky shoal. As we drew closer, it jumped to the air, glided, then rose to the sky on long wings, its stick legs trailing behind. “So you’re taking me—to Victor’s?”

  “Too obvious. Besides, Ennis pays Victor visits—they sip tea—just like good fellows.”

  “Tea? They do?” I smiled at having tea with Bigby.

  “Yup. Once a year, Ennis and Victor sit down for a gentlemanly tea.”

  I couldn’t quite picture it. Victor seemed so staunchly against Ennis in every way. Why would he want to waste an ounce of time on his enemy?

  “Hey, don’t look so surprised. They may seem different as night and day, but Sadie, don’t you get it? They come from the same world. Money. Upper crust.”

  I shook my head. “Victor’s not the same.”

  “Sadie, Victor’s not from here. He’s from a big city. He went to Harvard. Think he’s just like the rest of us? C’mon. Open your eyes.”

  All I could see was poor Owen’s puffy and injured face. I looked away toward Victor’s island. “Owen, he’s not like Ennis at all. He’s canoed way up north. He’s gone on expeditions.”

  “Yeah? Did you know his Ojibwa guide, Billy Bright, got him up to Hudson Bay and back alive? On the way home, ice was forming, and Victor was in the belly of the canoe, straw stuffed in his boots and pants to keep him from freezing to death. Billy saved his life.

  But who gets the credit for the expedition? I mean, who goes and speaks in London and shows photographs of moose? Billy Bright? You think he speaks to high society? Victor gets all the credit. And oh, he talks about being accepted into some Explorers Club, to be finally recognized along with the likes of Amundsen and Shackleton. There’s lots of locals who have done courageous things, who know the wilderness—they don’t go around looking for honors.”

  “Owen.” I felt the need to defend Victor, especially when he’d stood up for me. “Victor stands up to Ennis! That’s big.”

  “Well, sure, but with all his standing up, he’s still around, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t get what you mean.”

  “He’s not dead or beat up, is he?”

  I gazed out at two seagulls, dipping toward something on the water. I imagined seeing the lake from a high point in the sky, looking down at a body, floating facedown, a speck in a giant body of water. Frank Ladovitch. What Owen was saying . . . was it true? If Victor had been another local spouting off and causing trouble, would he have been silenced by now?

  “Listen, Sadie, if you want to steer clear of Worthington and Ennis—then I’m taking you to Baird’s. Trinity’ll hide you, I’m pretty sure, at least for a few days ’til we figure out what’s next. You just need to lie low for a few days while they’re watching for you to catch a train.”

  “But—” I started to protest but realized I didn’t have a better idea. I had to come up with some other plan for leaving the area. And I could learn from Trinity. She knew something about how to maneuver in the world.

  “Now slip down in the bow. There are more cabins this way, an
d you don’t want to be spotted.”

  I ducked down and crawled into the bow, amid fragments of wood coolers and a few life jackets. “I’m working on trusting you, but you’ve tossed me a few surprises, Owen Jensen.”

  He kept glancing at me, where I sat hunched in a ball with my arms around the quilt. “Look who’s talkin’.” A slow smile eased into his eyes, but then he winced and looked back to the water.

  I studied his Adam’s apple riding up and down as he swallowed. Despite the bruising and swelling, despite the lesson someone had tried to teach him, my mind replayed meeting up with him in the darkness of the icehouse, the air sweetened with the smell of fresh wood chips. The way he’d leaned down to meet my lips, his mouth confidently on mine, and the way he’d assumed I’d wanted to kiss him.

  I hadn’t then.

  Now I wasn’t as sure. But Owen had been all goggle-eyed over Trinity. Maybe he was willing to smooch with anyone he thought was willing. Still, I was drawn to his waves of thick auburn hair—the way he seemed to take charge of his own life. Of course he could be independent. He was a man. When I tried to think of women who had found a way to claim their own lives, I came up short. Mrs. Worthington had grown up with money, but everything she’d inherited was funneled through Mr. Worthington, despite the fact that she’d come from St. Paul’s Kresler family. She waited on Mr. Worthington’s every decision, as if she didn’t have a voice of her own. She couldn’t stand up for me and yielded instead to him.

  And there was Darla. She ran her own business, hired out her own fancy ladies. She was a businesswoman, yes. But the price of such independence was high for her girls. Meg’s tragic stories had helped make that abundantly clear to me. I wondered if Darla slept well at night.

  “What are you staring at?” he asked, glancing at me. “Do I look that bad?”

  “No, I mean . . . yes.”

  In reply, he reached down and tousled my hair, and I went soft inside.

  “Owen,” I said, “you could have gotten killed.”

  He reached down for my hand and held it in his own for several moments. “You care, even a little?”