by Lia Farrell
“Please ask her once more. I want to do this for her. Tell her she can be quiet with me.”
“Give the woman some time, Wayne. She needs room to breathe. It’s a long bus ride, and she wants to look out the window and rest. She told me she feels like she hasn’t really slept in thirty-five years. However, Jocelyn does want you to come to the Potawatomi Reservation. It’s in Hannahville, in the UP. She has a cousin there named Bourcier who’ll take care of her.”
“I want you to hire a nurse to ride on the bus with her in case she needs medical attention.”
“Will do. Fingers crossed,” Enid was gone.
Wayne checked his phone for messages every hour. Driving home that evening, he finally saw Enid Lawton’s number on his screen. He pushed the button but his sweaty finger slipped off the key. He tried again and heard Enid’s triumphant voice.
“We won. We actually won! I know I sound like I just wrote the slogan for the Governor’s re-election campaign but he went against his law and order stance and agreed that Joci should be released. I’m going to read you the first paragraph of the article that yours truly will be contributing to the local newspaper.
“ ‘In a profoundly moral move that transcended race, culture, and gender, the Governor of Michigan today stunned his liberal opponents by agreeing to release a woman from prison who served over thirty-five years of a life sentence for the death of her husband who abused her and killed her son. The Native American woman, who is dying of lung cancer, thanked the Abused Women’s Commutation Project that does all its work on a shoestring budget. The legal work for the former prisoner was contributed pro bono by Attorney Enid Lawton.’ ”
“Enid, I can never thank you enough.” Wayne’s voice broke. “I’ll call you soon.”
He dropped the phone and pulled his truck over to the side of the road. Putting his head down on the steering wheel, he sobbed in relief. His shoulders shook and his body was racked with tears that poured from deep inside him. He took deep breaths, gulping at the air. His hand held the gear shift so tightly, the blood left his fingers. Then suddenly it was over. He felt a happiness so intense it seemed to radiate from deep in his chest to encompass every person who signed Jocelyn’s release papers as well as sturdy little bull-headed Enid Lawton, who just didn’t give up. It took a long time before he thought his voice would be steady enough to call Lucy. He picked up his phone and dialed the number that paged Lucy on duty at the hospital. He pulled out onto the road once more. Fifteen minutes later she called him back.
“This is Dr. Ingram.” She used her professional voice. “I got a page from this number.”
“Dr. Ingram,” Wayne drawled, “this is Detective Nichols calling to invite you to go with him on a little trip.”
“Are we going to an uninhabited island in the Caribbean where we can lie on the sand naked?” Lucy asked, rich amusement in her voice.
“No, we’re going to drive twelve hours north into the Polar Vortex.” There was a pause.
“My God, she’s free! You actually got her released.”
Wayne felt a shiver run down his spine.
“She’s asked me to come to the reservation. Can you check to see if you could get a few days off?”
“I will, on one condition, Detective.”
“Name it.”
“Next time we take a trip in one of the coldest winters on record, we go south, not north,” she laughed.
“You got it,” Wayne said, happy that Lucy was already planning another trip with him. “I hope you’ll like Jocelyn,” he said. “You may not find her easy. She’s bitter sometimes but she’s the only mother I have.”
“She has a right to be bitter. And I want to know her. She’s your mother. Any mother is better than not having one. My mother died in awful circumstances when I was just a kid.”
“We should talk about that sometime,” Wayne said, but Lucy was already gone.
Lucy didn’t finish her shift until eleven that night. They left Rosedale at midnight and reached the southern border of Michigan as the sun was rising. They found a hotel and slept a few hours. Wayne roused Lucy around eight. He was pushing hard to be sure he would be in Hannahville before Jocelyn arrived.
“What’s Jocelyn’s tribal affiliation?” Lucy asked when they were on the road.
“She’s Potawatomi. When I was young she told me a bit of their history. The tribe refused to leave Michigan during the Great Indian Removal in 1834. A brave man named Peter Marksman, a pastor of the Methodist church at the time, found some land for them and assisted the people in moving there. Peter’s young wife was named Hannah, and in gratitude the people named their village after her. Hannahville was formally designated Potawatomi land in 1870.”
Despite the icy conditions on the roads, they crossed the Mackinaw Bridge in early afternoon. As far as they could see looking east toward Lake Huron and west to Lake Michigan, the water was frozen hard. Only directly beneath the bridge in the cobalt blue waters of the straits did they see crashing waves. They turned west toward Escanaba, the city on the edge of the Bay de Noc, and followed the road signs to Hannahville.
Reaching the tiny reservation town, Wayne stopped the car to ask one old man wearing a heavy parka for the house where Jocelyn’s cousin lived. He pointed down the small gravel road to the right.
“Third house,” he said.
They knocked on the door of a little white ranch with sagging front steps and peeling paint. An old car stood on cement blocks in the yard. An overflowing trash bin sat beside the front door. Wayne knew that in the old days, the Potawatomi built their houses out of tree branches that were supple enough to be tied in arches and filled in the open spaces with reeds. Wayne found himself thinking the snug natural domes were far superior to how the tribe lived currently. Clearly this band didn’t have a casino; the miasma of poverty hung over the settlement.
They had reached the address of Waseta Bourcier, one of two women who had initially contacted the authorities to report Jocelyn missing. The woman’s French last name told Nichols she probably had a French father or grandfather and would be considered a metis, a half breed. A young girl answered the door, and her dark blade of hair and arrogant tilt of the head brought to mind Tiani, the stunning Native American girl who had betrayed his trust as a teenager.
“We’re looking for Waseta Bourcier,” he said.
Looking over her shoulder, the girl called out, “Koye’.”
Her voice was high and clear. Wayne wondered if the word was a woman’s name or a perhaps the word “aunt” or “elder.” Wayne hadn’t been taken into foster care until he was six. Some Potawatomi words had stayed in his memory, but he didn’t know the word koye’.
A tall woman with thin, angular cheeks and black hair streaked with silver appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were dark and shiny. She wore long, silver and turquoise earrings.
“Bozho Nikan,” he said. The words meant, hello, friend. Switching to English he said, “I am Joci Kemerovo’s foster son, Wayne Nighthawk Nichols. This is Lucy Ingram. I thank you for taking Joci in. She will arrive soon.”
The woman turned away from the door and held it open. She gestured for them to come in. They entered and she pointed to a broken-down brown couch. Despite the obvious poverty in which the women lived, Wayne felt comfortable in their home. He had few memories from the days before foster care, but this place was familiar. They had a pot-bellied stove, and a small window in the black iron door was golden red from the fire inside.
When a tiny elf of a woman stepped off the Greyhound bus in late afternoon, Wayne Nichols and Lucy Ingram were standing bundled up on the porch of a general store in Hannahville. A large group of Potawatomi well-wishers were waiting—laughing, crying, and shouting. Some held small flags; others were in full Native American dress. The sound of the Native drums rang in the frozen air. Joci looked bewildered when she exited the bus. The nurse who had ridden with her hugged her gently and wished her good luck before getting back on the bus. Wayne and Lucy came
forward and took her by the hands.
After an evening meal of baked beans, beef stew, and cornbread—served to the din of excited conversation in the crowded home of Waseta Bourcier—Jocelyn asked Wayne to help her into bed. She was white with exhaustion. He supported her into the bedroom, pulled down the coverlet and lifted her into bed. She sighed and closed her eyes. Just as Wayne was about to leave, she said, “Stay.”
Wayne pulled a chair up beside her bed and waited. Joci’s eyes were still closed. This moment wouldn’t come again. They were alone together, maybe for the last time. He needed to ask for her forgiveness. He spoke softly.
“Little mother, I feel such deep remorse for leaving you so long ago. I should have saved you. The weight of the abuse you suffered and the horror of Kurt’s death lie on my shoulders. I am so terribly sorry I left.” He waited. For a long time she didn’t speak and Wayne wondered if she was sleeping, if she had even heard his plea for forgiveness.
“We are blood,” she whispered, so quietly that Wayne hardly heard.
“No, we are not. I was only your foster child.” Wayne heard the self-pity in his voice and blinked away tears.
“You are the son of my brother, Wabaunsee. There was a half-white, half-Odawa girl, her last name was Nichols. He got her pregnant. She left to follow the Jesus road and brought you to your father. When you were six, he enlisted in the army and asked me to keep you. He died long ago, fighting in a white man’s war. You remind me of him.”
“You waited a long time to tell me this,” Wayne murmured. It was a gift, knowing his origins.
“Wanted to be sure you deserved to know,” she said, with a little quirk of her mouth. “One more thing, son of my brother. Bury Kurt in the cemetery of our people. Put a headstone on his grave. I would not have him forgotten.”
Wayne and Lucy left Hannahville the next morning. He had lain awake all night thinking about how to honor his aunt’s wish. When the old bedsprings creaked as Lucy slipped out of bed, he knew what he could do. It wasn’t everything he wanted to do, but it would suffice. Wayne and Lucy kissed Jocelyn goodbye, thanked Waseta for her hospitality, and said they would come again in the spring. Then they drove to the town’s grave office. It was a small stone building across the street from a large cemetery. They walked in and rang a bell at the front desk.
“Can I help you?” a cheerful, heavyset woman with ringlet curls asked when she emerged from the back. Her name tag read Constance.
“I want to order a gravestone,” Wayne said.
“Is the stone for an adult or a child?” she asked. She was smiling. Wayne found her cheerfulness disconcerting, out of place.
“A boy,” he said. “He was fourteen when he died.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. Her eyes were kind. “Take a look at this book. There are a lot of designs to choose from.” She handed him a three-ring binder with laminated pages showing the available headstones, designs artfully carved in their granite surfaces.
Wayne took his time, at last settling on one of a cluster of pine trees near a stream. He glanced at Lucy, who nodded. “I’ll take this one,” he said.
“That will be seven hundred and fifty dollars,” Constance said. “It’ll take about six weeks to carve. Make the check out to Heather Moon. She does the carvings for the stones. Write down the boy’s full name and his date of birth and death on the form. Where do you want the stone sent?”
“Is there a cemetery for the Potawatomi tribe?” he asked.
“Certainly. It’s on Maple Street, just behind the school. If you want the boy buried there, you’ll need to buy a cemetery plot. That will be five hundred dollars. That check needs to be made out to Citizen Potawatomi Bank. ”
Wayne pulled his checkbook out of his coat and wrote out the two amounts. He gazed at the woman who had managed to find pleasure in her grisly job. She looked at him questioningly as if to ask him something else, but he was almost done here. Already he felt distanced from this place. Something about the final steps in this process felt inevitable, as if he walked in footprints made by ancestors many decades earlier.
“Where’s the body now?” Constance asked.
“It’s not really a body anymore. He’s been dead for thirty-plus years. There’s only bones.” Wayne cleared his throat and looked away. “I don’t know if any of his remains can be located, but I want to do this anyway. If any trace of him can be recovered, I will have the remains sent here.”
“That’s fine. Do you want him cremated?”
“No,” Wayne said, stirred by a fierce insistence. His little brother had been violated enough. He would not consign what little was left of him to the fires.
“Besides his name and dates, what message do you want to have carved on his stone?”
Wayne thought for a moment, remembering his shame at his own cowardice in abandoning his brother.
“His was the valor of the lion,” Wayne said. He looked down at the floor, afraid Constance or Lucy might see his eyes watering. His dauntless little brother had stayed to face Aarne Outinen and had paid the ultimate price.
“That’s lovely,” Constance said and held out her hand, but Wayne didn’t take it. He wanted no more contact with attendants of the dead. She withdrew her hand and said with a pleasant smile, “Will you be here for a funeral?”
“No, I’m finished here.” He turned around, reached for Lucy’s hand and walked back to his truck. In his mind he was already miles away. It began to snow, and the pure white wind of the North Country stirred his soul. They drove east and then turned south toward the Mackinaw Bridge. Holding Lucy’s hand in the warm truck, driving in snow so fine it was almost mist, Wayne felt absolved, innocent and free.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
February 14th
Mae December
Snow was once more falling in Rosedale, Tennessee, on the afternoon of Valentine’s Day. Tammy was fretting, worried that the roads would be too bad and her wedding guests wouldn’t show.
“Don’t worry,” Mae reassured her best friend again. “Everything’s going to be perfect. And think how amazing your pictures will be in the snow!”
“If your dad can even get up your driveway to take them,” Tammy muttered.
“He’ll be here any minute. Mama called me and said they were done with the photos of the guys and they’d be here with Olivia by three to do our pictures. I hope Mrs. West gets here soon. Where’s your mom?”
“Upstairs fussing with her hair, I’d guess,” Tammy smiled. She looked around at Mae’s transformed house. “At least they took your cast off in time, and they got the tent set up before the snow started.”
Mae and Tammy had decided that Renee would perform the ceremony in the living room, where rows of silver folding chairs formed an aisle. Ben and Patrick had moved the living room furniture out to the barn yesterday. This morning at eight the party rental company had set up the chairs for the ceremony as well as the huge white reception tent in Mae’s front yard—complete with a stage for the band, a dance floor surrounded by small tables with red and pink linens, and more silver chairs. They’d also brought several large space heaters for the tent, as well as dishes and glassware for the caterer to use.
“I think Rhonda’s outdone herself,” Mae looked around at the abundant displays of flowers in shades of red, pink, and white. Tall branches spray-painted in white and silver formed a breathtaking tableau at the front of the room where Tammy and Patrick would take their vows.
“Yeah, she really came through for us. She said Valentine’s Day is like the Super Bowl for florists, so I guess it’s lucky she and my mom are such good friends. I think Rhonda must have been up all night working on this.”
“She was here by eight-thirty this morning. As soon as the party rental guys were done setting up, she told me to get out of her way.” Mae laughed. “She had a team of assistants and they decked this place out in no time. I love all the twinkly white lights they put up, too.” Mae heard her parents and Olivia coming in the fro
nt door. “Go find your mom, Tammy. I’ll get our bouquets and we can get these pictures done.”
At ten o’clock Mae and Ben were sitting at one of the little tables close to the dance floor. Ben had carried Matthew upstairs and put him to bed a few minutes ago, and July and Fred had taken their three kids home, but other than that the party was in full swing. Mae watched Tammy, radiant in her red gown, dancing with her new husband. Mae thought the vows, which they had written themselves, had been beautiful in their simplicity. The naked emotion on Patrick’s face when he said “for now and forever, as long as I live, I’m yours,” had been the ruination of Mae’s mascara. And Tammy’s reply of “Patrick, you may not be perfect, but you’re perfect for me,” had brought out the smiles and tears of everyone in the room.
“She looks so beautiful, doesn’t she?” Mae turned toward Ben, who had removed his tuxedo jacket and bowtie and was leaning back in his chair.
“She does,” Ben smiled. “It’s too bad her flower girl and ring bearer stole the show.”
Mae’s niece, Olivia, had looked enchanting in her red dress with tiny white hearts embroidered around the neckline and a white silk sash. With her blonde hair in a French braid and huge blue eyes shining with excitement, she had indeed stolen the show. When she and Matthew, solemn as only a four-year-old could be in his tux, walked down the aisle, they were as adorable as anything Mae had ever seen.
“They did,” Mae agreed. “July said they looked like a miniature version of us.”
“You’re wonderful.” Ben’s blue eyes darkened to navy as he stared at her. “I can’t believe you did all this for Patrick and Tammy. You fostered those puppies and helped me solve another case while you planned this wedding. Not to mention busting a dog-fighting ring, an illegal still, and a marijuana farm … all with a broken wrist. And you’re the most beautiful woman here, by the way.” He stood up and waved at Jill Chapman, who nodded and turned to say something to her band members. They played the opening strains of “Miss December,” the song Noah West had written right after he and Mae first met, but quickly segued into Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.”