The Wind Knot

by John Galligan

  “Danny—”

  Tervo unlatched the bookmobile’s front door and swung it open—and Belcher grabbed him by the shirt the instant before ten feet of flame erupted from the gun barrel and a blast of shot ripped the door off.

  Tervo’s hand was hit.

  “My hand’s gone, Belch!”

  Belch began to moan and shake.

  No, no, no—the hand was there.

  Tervo showed Belcher through the whirl of smoke and rain and debris. His hand was nicked and bleeding, but it was still there. “Don’t cry, Belch. I was kidding. It’s still there.”

  “You bastard, Danny. You sick bastard.”

  Tervo raised up for a peek out the windshield. Granny Tiina had already reloaded. She was lining up his very head.

  They were done like ducks, Tervo thought. Unless. Yeah. No, actually, they were fine. That down there, that blue pickup down there with the stickered black topper, easing along the drive by the flooding, that was the sheriff. On the ball for once.

  Bruce the Moose, Tervo informed Belcher as he dropped, was on his way up to make a save.

  23

  It tore the skin of Dog’s back to work the paddle. The sky broke and rain drove down, stinging every wound.

  A long stroke to clear a deadfall pine made him think of ripping the skin off a bullhead … with pliers … with Eamon … out in Concord … on Walden Pond … a million miles away … and when Dog cleared that deadfall hazard there was another, another, again, the river replicating its corners, its complications, until he was delirious and stroking blindly as the kayak surged downriver.

  Now that his innocence project had failed, and he would miss Eamon’s birthday, confirming his reputation with M.J., where was he going? What was his purpose?

  A shoal of gravel caught the kayak’s bow. The hull slung broadside to the current. Then nose and tail realigned backwards and he was riding fast into a deep corner packed with flotsam that glinted black in the rain.

  Dog slashed with the paddle.

  He back-thrust, throwing water.

  He snatched at a wind-whipped cedar bough overhead, caught it, tried to yank the kayak three-sixty. His grip held him long enough to see the wreckage of stumps and limbs ahead, the torsos of full-grown trees, sharp branches jittering over dark cavities of swirl and foam, behind it all the vast black cauldron of a northwoods swamp.

  Then the bough stripped through his fingers.

  Dog plunged away helplessly, full speed and stern-first—twisting, seeing it all before it happened—slamming into clubs of deadfall that cracked against his head—raking over clawed and bladed branches that tore him open—the current shoving and dragging—jamming him deeper—pinning him against a root ball that lashed its rotting tendrils across his face.

  For some time Dog remained numbly defeated in that place. The rain stung him everywhere now. Blood ran down his arms and down the paddle. He turned feebly and watched it curl, then catch the current and stream away into the swamp behind him.

  Faintly through the mashing rain and water he heard the bear hounds baying—and Dog thought, I was wrong. This is where the fishing has brought me. This is the healing. If he sat here, stopped struggling, let the river hold him here, they would catch him soon. They would shoot him. He could let them. He could pay for a life he had not taken, to account for the one he had. One little backward push of the paddle and he could slide into that swamp, out of the flow, and await his perfect tragic end.

  He could do that if he wanted.

  On that thought, Dog’s head jerked up.

  He peered upriver into wet forest. He scanned the towering sand banks. Or instead was this the point of the story? It was. It had to be.

  Hemingway wrote about choice. Not fishing, not healing: choice. Choice was the stump at the edge of the Big Two Hearted River where Hemingway sat his boy Nick Adams down—injured, remorseful, at the edge of despair and full of the impulse to vanish. If he chose to.

  Dog raised his head on a shiver of guilty thrill.

  And the boy said no. He said no more tragedy.

  Luce County Attorney Fritz Shunk put the bar phone down. He chewed at his mustache and limped out between empty tables to the window. Surging, swirling, pounding rain. The Luce-Schoolcraft shared dispatcher could not raise Sheriff Lodge. Deputy DuCharme had made an EMT call, but was not answering. The Newberry Correctional K-9 team had lost the scent north of town and called it off because of the rain.

  “Pal, I’m telling ya. Guess the date on this—”

  Shunk turned to watch as Rush Smithback slapped his driver’s license on the bar. “Says I was born on January 2, 1958, that’s what it says. And you know when the ‘real Rush’ was born?”

  On the stool beside him, the lovely Daryline hung onto the bar with her armpits, smoking a cigarette and staring into the big mirror, where Wheel of Fortune clues ran backwards. “Gimme a K,” she slurred.

  Rush yakked at a young guy reading a map while he ate a burger two stools over. This kid had asked Shunk about fly fishing guides. They had chatted a bit over the bar. Earnest kid. Bit of a Hemingway pilgrim. But Heimo Kock was dead. So the field was open. Shunk told the kid, try Uncle Ducky’s in Marquette.

  “Daryline, tell my friend when Limbaugh was born.”

  Shunk’s phone rang. He hustled down and grabbed it. Consolidated dispatch said a Schoolcraft County deputy had found Lodge’s cruiser at his house on Widgeon Creek. No sign of the sheriff. As for Deputy DuCharme, Rainbow Lodge EMT had gone to a cottage up on the Two Hearted, near the Reed and Green Campground. An elderly gentleman had been fatally shot and his body transported to Munising. Deputy DuCharme was at the Reed and Green, apparently, but not answering. Shunk, getting worried, said thank you.

  Daryline Smithback droned, “Limbaugh was born in ‘51. Cape Girardeau, Missouri. How’d he supposed ta copy the name of a seven-year-old a thousand miles away? Think about it. Such bullshit. Let’s go home, Rushy. Or else we gotta call Caroline.”

  Her husband had squared up on the fly fisherman. He loomed until the kid looked up from his map.

  “You telling me my momma got my name from a seven-year-old fat kid in Missouri? I mean, I love the man, but screw that. Rush is my name. I ain’t copied nobody. Lady, call the daughter, damn it. I ain’t going nowhere.” Shunk watched Smithback find himself suddenly amused. “I came in town to drag her home, now I’m the one.” He glanced at Shunk. “Lord, what a team. Frizty! Coupla beers!”

  Shunk came down, twisting a rag in his fists. “Who’s driving?”

  Rush Smithback turned to his wife. “Bend over, hon, I’ll drive ya home.” He roared with laughter.

  “Promises, promises.” Daryline got off her stool. “God, it’s coming down out there. Makes me gotta pee.”

  She couldn’t straighten up, Shunk observed. She struggled like a sick little duck toward the restrooms.

  “You’re both driving? Is that it?”

  “I believe that is the case,” Rush Smithback said. “I also believe that I will have another brewski.”

  Smithback pushed his empty to the rail. Shunk shook the drips out, tossed it in the recycle barrel. He set up another MGD long neck but left the cap on. Smithback searched his pockets for money.

  “Where’d you two stop before this?” Shunk asked.

  “White Pines Hotel. See, I came down from the Blind Sucker to get Daryline but she wouldn’t leave. So I hadda spend about three hours—”

  “Yeah,” Shunk said. “I heard that.”

  “Don’t ya got an opener?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Shunk had figured out what to do. Bad drunks on wet roads. No law enforcement available. There were murders you could prevent.

  “Girls piss fast,” Smithback commented as his wife returned. “You ever notice that, Fritzy?”

  He eased off his stool like a ninety-year-old man. He helped Daryline onto hers. He winced and cussed himself back into position.

  “We both got bad backs,” h
e advised Shunk.

  “I’m calling Caroline,” Daryline said.

  “You do that, lady. Tell her put in a couple Tombstones. Hey, Fritzy, I gotta bite the cap off this brewski or what?”

  Shunk set up a second unopened bottle, this one in front of Daryline. She grabbed it like Shunk had seen people grab poles on a downtown Detroit bus. He was thinking: Louise could cover the bar. All this rain, they shouldn’t be too busy. Up to the Blind Sucker and back shouldn’t take him more than an hour.

  “Those beers are on the house,” he told the Smithbacks, “but only if you let me drive you home.”

  No more tragedy.

  He stowed the paddle and levered his body out of the kayak. He stretched and splashed and crawled fast across a sinking mat of flotsam, pulling the boat after him. Slick branches gave the handhold he needed to worm up into the tangle. There he rested. Then he dropped the kayak into the mess of sticks and held onto its bow rope, dragging the plastic shell, jerking it after himself, tightroping a shivering log along the swamp edge until the tip was too small to hold him.

  He tied off the rope and pulled the kayak toward him … then up onto the log with him … next out in front of him. Then he flung it toward the river. The current caught the kayak. The rope shot tight. The tip of the log disappeared from under Dog’s feet and down he crashed into the snarl of water and wood.

  But he was hollering. Cussing and hollering cusses and laughing. Hanging on and bleeding. Hauling himself back up. Stumbling and thrashing to a spot where he could jump clear of deadly timber. He splashed and rolled and snagged the kayak by its seat hole as he coursed past it.

  Hell, just choose. Nobody else was in this. He was alone and the choice was his.

  Enough pain, struggle, tragedy. Enough.

  Because it was enough.

  He hauled in. He worked the paddle up between his legs. He untied the bow rope and—Go, Dog, go.

  Stay in the river was how he figured to do it. Stay in the river and the next idea would come—and then a plan came in the dark shape of a Coho salmon slipping upstream over rippled sand.

  Dog paused to watch the fish disappear. In its place arrived another. As he floated into the next deep corner, Dog adjusted his eyes. The river’s sand depths were spotted with shifting black shapes. The Coho were running. From the lake. The big wide lake. That was it. The lake. He could go all the way. He could paddle out far from shore and travel freely back to the Blind Sucker.

  Dog trimmed his stroke and focused. The Coho showed him lines. He saw the river in layers. The way snags split the current triggered directional decisions twenty strokes ahead. Cut left. Fade right. Dig forward. He was moving, keeping the kayak on a fast, high skim.

  In a mile or so, the Coho massed more densely in the deep holes. Ahead, a fat hen left the depths and shot a gravel spit through shallow water. Dog watched. He could dart the kayak the same way, keep his speed. At the next quiet water he paused his stroke and listened. He could not hear hounds anymore. Only rain and wind.

  Soon he heard surf over a high, pale dune. Against a river now sluggish with counter-current, Dog paddled harder. For a half mile, the river ran east, parallel, not reaching the lake. Dog was tempted: bail, ditch now, hike over the dune—but if the dogs came this far, that is how they would catch him. They would smell him on land again. They would know where he went.

  Around a bend appeared a sodden orange tent. Then pop-up trailers, massive new RVs, and more tents and screened canopies. Campers huddled against the storm. A few hollered greetings at Dog. He kept his fugitive head down. This was the Mouth of the Two Hearted. Now he dug against a full lake wind. Ahead, beyond a timbered foot bridge, the river narrowed. The current surged across a bed of small round stones. A gush of speed and here, finally, was the lake itself, huge and wild and lovely.

  But his trackers were out there already—a large skiff about a hundred yards off shore and maybe a quarter mile east, patrolling the beach.

  Dog rolled out of the kayak into fast, waist-deep water. He went to his knees and let the kayak go. He couldn’t watch it. The current shoved him forward, pushed his face under. He tried to brake with the paddle and had it ripped from his hands. Then the river roared over shallow gravel, spinning him into water so cold his lungs stopped.

  When he recovered, Dog was waist-deep again. He crouched lower, forcing his shoulders under, fighting to hold steady and breathe in the clash of currents. He kept his eyes and nose above the surface and looked east, waiting, measuring, shivering—they were coming his way.

  The kayak had to be visible from their distance. But it was empty. The red boat twirled out on the warmer river current until a swarm of milling Coho broke its drift and lake waves began to push it back toward shore. The search skiff was coming fast, seeing the kayak now, but they would have to guess. He could have bailed a mile upstream for all they knew. He could have drowned somewhere. They would have to guess—and he would have to gamble.

  In slow motion, Dog breaststroked toward the scrum of Coho. Don’t spook—come on, stay together. I’m not a threat. Don’t spook.

  A few fish bolted at Dog’s approach. These startled others, who startled a few more. But it was spawning time. Instinct was strong and they were not a school, not coordinated. Dog slipped in among them. When he became still, they massed and slapped as if he hadn’t joined them at all.

  In this heavy chop of storm and fish, Dog hung hidden. The cold water stunned his thinking and stung his skin. Tails dragged and snapped across his face. Flanks and noses bumped and shoved. Underneath, his legs worked hard. He couldn’t tread water forever. He wouldn’t last ten minutes.

  But here came the skiff. Dog heard it accelerating. He bobbed slowly, stealing mouthfuls of air, nervous salmon squirting across the top of his head.

  The boat was straight out now, slowing. But they couldn’t know which way he went—or whether he was somewhere upstream with the hounds after him. They couldn’t know. Their eyes were off the water, searching inland. Their brains said man running. The last place they would expect him was right beneath them, among the Coho, in the mouth of the river.

  He kept his face turned away. He bobbed deep and slow. Lecherous salmon brawled over him, swatting water down his throat. Then the skiff was accelerating along the west beach, three men in camo gear with scoped rifles and beer cans, no one looking back.

  Dog waited. Waited. Then he sloshed onto the pebbled beach and stumped on numb legs in the direction the skiff had come from, away from the Blind Sucker. His gait was only functional, but his back pain had eased in the frigid water. He followed the beach until the mouth of the Two Hearted River was out of sight.

  About there, a tea-colored creek flowed from a brushy bog. The bottom looked solid. Pines grew a short distance in, suggesting high ground nearby. The creek ran full with rain but clean.

  Dog took it.

  Inland he would find a way to move. He would steal something, he decided after a half hour slogging against current and brush—something such as the yellow Hummer parked beyond a bridge ahead.

  He looked for the Hummer’s fisherman. He whistled and called. He pushed through the deep water beneath the bridge. He passed a freshly dead Coho in the rocks. He waded on until brush closed the upstream passage.

  Something was wrong. He could feel it.

  No fisherman. Only Coho, spooking around his clumsy legs.

  As he staggered back to the bridge, Dog’s exhausted heart accelerated one last time. Could this be one of his hunters? He stopped. He eased his feet around on the stream bottom, eased his hips and shoulders around, brought his head around. Looked one way. The other. He took an audible inhale, expecting his bullet to the back.

  But no. Only tiny thuds of rain.

  He climbed over the dead Coho, through the riprap up to the bridge.

  Keys hung from the Hummer’s ignition, and on the driver’s side, where Dog arrived in cautious strides, he found a long rut, puddled with rain and blood—

 
Sprawled across the puddle near the tailpipe was a large old man with the back of his head blown off.

  24

  Margarite watched Esofea grip the steering wheel, going nowhere.

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “Oglivie didn’t?”

  “Right.”

  Rain battered in a deafening rhythm against the roof of the Blind Sucker pickup. The truck’s wipers slapped frantically. Esofea raised her voice. She was confessing. It looked so painful, like she was yanking loose a main thread in her own existence.

  “As far as I know, he never even met Danny.”

  She put her head against the wheel. As if she smelled something there, someone’s hands, she jerked back, looking repulsed and then losing herself to hard, choking tears. “Oh, God. I don’t know why I—”

  A jammed wing window on the passenger side dripped onto Margarite’s knee until the gray fabric of her uniform turned black. She had been quiet long enough. Any more silence became her own deception.

  “The one they took away in the bag? That wasn’t Oglivie.” Esofea seemed to hear this with her whole body. She raised a flushed and tear-stained face.

  “Not him? Not—?”

  “That was Dolf Cook. He didn’t do it either. But he shot himself.”

  “Why?” blurted Esofea, and she cried while Margarite numbly watched the drip strike her knee. Because the old man had wanted to be loved? By his brother? By Julia? By himself? Probably after a lifetime of trying to be appreciated by the wrong people, the poor fool had given up.

  “Whenever somebody does that to themselves,” Margarite admitted at last, “a part of me always knows why. I feel right where it comes from, inside myself. Don’t you?”