When she shared her symptoms with Dr. Wallace, Susan told her whatever she was doing, keep doing it, because all her vital signs were excellent. “You must have inherited some very good genes.”
Diane started laughing. Longevity ran on both sides of her family. But so did tipplers. “It’s good to know eating like a chipmunk and this exercise regimen is having a positive effect. Now all I need is a loaner.”
“Loner?”
“A man.”
“You want a man who’s a loner?”
“L-O-A-N-E-R,” she spelled it out. “A borrow boy. Someone I can spend date night with. The whole night. He can leave in the morning.”
Dr. Wallace smiled. “I don’t know any loaners. But like I said, whatever you’re doing, keep it up. You look great. And your blood work is perfect.”
“I feel pretty good, too.”
“So you just have to be aware of the symptoms and know what to expect and that they’re normal.”
And that’s the way they left it.
So last night, when the skies around her small cabin were howling and the snow was shrieking like a banshee, she had to pee, regular as clockwork. Afterward, she had a hard time returning to sleep. But the inside of her small bedroom was like a cocoon and she enjoyed just lying in the dark, listening to the storm and thinking.
Finally, she’d drifted off. And now, with the light filling her windows, she had returned to deep sleep. That was sometimes the way it happened. Up for more than an hour in the middle of the night, just thinking. And then drifting off before dawn into peaceful oblivion, so deep she did not stir until well past her 6:30 a.m. wakeup. And that’s where she was right now, like a black bear curled up in a den. Finally she warily cracked open her eyes.
She rolled out of bed still groggy and managed to get herself robed and in the kitchen. She flipped on her scanners and started filling a coffee pot, checking grounds, listening. The two scanners were a recent addition to her professional life. After speaking with a colleague in the Cities, she’d acquired two of the devices. One she kept tuned into the local law enforcement frequencies. The other she used to rove on CB band. The police scanner alerted her to Winthrop’s accident, so it had already paid for itself. She was also enjoying the periodic conversation she overheard on the CB band, one of which started as she readied her coffee.
“Woods Weasel to the Defiance Star. Come in, Star. Is anyone out there? Anyone listening? Come in. Over?”
Who the hell was Woods Weasel and Defiance Star? She couldn’t transmit, only receive. The law enforcement channel was silent.
When she looked outside she was startled by the snowfall. It was warm in the cabin but she could see orange sunlight rising on a frozen world of snow and ice. Her outside thermometer was set up so she could see it from the kitchen window. Minus seven degrees Fahrenheit.
“That was one hell of a storm,” she said.
She waited for the coffee to brew. She doubled its strength, because she still felt the effects of deep sleep, almost like she had drunk too much wine the night before. Deep languor settled into her bones. But there was something else. An old desire: The need to stare into a blank screen and fill it with words. Coffee, she thought. I need coffee.
She kept on the scanners, heard Woods Weasel make one more unanswered entreaty, and then both scanners fell silent.
That’s the other thing she believed about staying young, given her age. Diet and exercise helped. But there was nothing like having a purpose and rising to it every morning, anxious to begin anew.
She drank her first cup of coffee. She let the caffeine work. Today, she decided, she would begin by finishing her article. Then dig herself out. Today was one of those surprises given to you when you were both thankful and knew what to do with it. It was like being a kid on a snow day.
After high school Diane attended the University of Minnesota down in the Cities. She had the feeling she would like to write, but she was a poor hand at it. She tried one writing class and then another, but only managed average work. Then in her sophomore year she took an Introduction to Literature class. The TA, at 6’ 2” with a full beard and looking more like a lumberjack than a budding English professor, assigned them an Ernest Hemingway short story called Big Two-Hearted River. It broke her open like an egg. It was about Nick Adams returning from the war and using the wild country of Northern Michigan to reclaim himself and heal. None of that was in the story, but the TA, over coffee, then drinks, and eventually pillow talk, explained it to her.
Diane was an attractive young woman, but without much experience with men. She had enough sense to know the TA was scratching an itch and their sex reflected his selfishness. But she was appreciative for what he’d explained about Hemingway. The encounter was short lived, but her interest in literature, writing and men remained.
Nothing else moved her like writing. And at the University she was exposed to everything, finally settling on Journalism as a more practical degree than creative writing or literature. She also began to enjoy the occasional party with friends, the periodic surfeit of wine, the pleasant afterglow of a good joint. And that’s when she moved back to the Range.
After finishing her degree in Journalism she worked odd jobs, mostly with newspapers doing photography and layout, occasionally penning a story. There was a time she spent two or three years in a party blur, working just enough to scrape by, familiarizing herself with most of the region’s northwoods bars. And people liked her, particularly men. She was almost five foot nine inches with curves in the right places and an engaging smile. And after a couple of sloe gin fizzes her laugh was, according to one of her friends at the time, “as seductive as a leopard’s.” She got on well with the Range men, careful about her occasional companions. In spite of her reputation, taking a partner happened less frequently than the bar men believed. But the last time one of those occasions took, at least biologically. Her partner had been a fun, capable lover. But to Diane it was clear as a deepwater lake that he would never be a father. Her miscarriage was painful, but fortunate. She lost the baby and was never forced to decide between a loveless marriage and the rest of her life. The stark choice made her reconsider her participation in the Range bar scene and occasionally what happened after they closed.
Not long after Diane’s miscarriage, her aunt died. She’d owned a cabin outside Defiance, which she left to the struggling writer. Diane was ready to put her former Range life behind her. For six months she did nothing but write, coveting her savings like a miser. She dispensed it a few crumbs at a time, making it last. She read, heavily, which is where she first met Miriam Winthrop. Over 20 years ago Miriam befriended her and introduced her to a local women’s book group, every one of them rabid readers.
The group gave her a social outlet. And the reading improved her writing. She finally took a job reporting with the Vermilion Falls Gazette.
When she peered out her kitchen window she realized it would be a while before she dug herself out. She phoned her boss. It was still early. The office would be empty.
“I’m working from home today,” she said. “I’m finishing up that long obit on Winthrop, and if I’m reading your mind properly, I bet you want seven column inches about this storm, which you’ll have by this afternoon.”
She hung up. She’d wait for the thermometer to climb to zero before breaking out her snowblower. Meanwhile, she needed to finish that obit. She’d barely known Williston Winthrop. But her research had turned up plenty. Jeff Dunlap, the assistant DA, alluded to an investigation, but she couldn’t get corroboration or any sense of what it was about. And regardless, the Gazette wouldn’t have run it in an obit. The Gazette believed you should never speak ill of the dead—even though Williston Winthrop deserved every ill word she could conjure. The only people she could get to go on record with a positive remark were the members of that Club. And they were the beneficiaries of the man’s estate, something that
prick Hank Gunderson was quick to point out, when she’d spoken with him at the farm. He was coming into some money. Diane still couldn’t believe how the son of a bitch stared straight at her breasts the night of Williston’s accident. There had been times he’d more or less propositioned her, but so had a score of men across the Range.
She needed a few more details to finish her obit. She’d try Hal Young first. If Hal couldn’t help, she could always turn to Hank, who was clearly willing. She didn’t like the idea of calling Hank Gunderson, but her other alternatives—Bill Grebs and Angus Moon—made her skin crawl. At least she had been able to joke with Hank, because Hank was a player. Hank was a ‘good ol‘ boy.’ She was hoping she’d have better luck with Hal.
She finished her coffee and poured herself another cup. Then she went into her bedroom where her computer sat on a small corner desk. She turned on her PC, brought up the obit, and started working. When she glanced over the piece she realized it would be afternoon or later before she finished. She just hoped she got lucky, and Hal came through with the information she needed.
Chapter Eleven
January 30th—Defiance, Minnesota
By 8:00 a.m. Sam was returning to Defiance from the east side of town. He had driven all the way south to Brainerd and made sure he bought gas and had something to eat at a local restaurant, keeping the dated receipts in his car, just in case. He’d come in behind the storm, not in the middle of it. The receipt would support his alibi.
The steeple of the Lutheran Church rose above frozen birch and pine, its pinnacled cross encrusted with a thick layer of ice. Sam imagined the view from the cross. He remembered a handful of stores, the lumberyard, the school, Gunderson’s Ford, the Winthrop Building, the Naked Loon Bar, Opel Grady’s Cafe, and more churches than God had any right to expect in a town with these dimensions.
Defiance was settled when northern Minnesota was the Northwest Territory and people came here in search of timber, fur, gold and the absence of any laws but their own. They cut down the original pine forest, and the fur lasted as long as the animals slaughtered to provide them. Instead of gold they discovered iron, much more costly and laborious to extract. But as long as anyone could remember, iron sustained the string of northern Minnesota mining towns across the Range. Until recent history.
For the last two decades Sam had read about the decline of the iron mines. Chinese and foreign imports had gutted the American steel industry, drying up the need for local ore. In the wake of foreign competition the old pit mines were abandoned, replaced by an effort to eke out a living in the tourist trade during the warmer months, at least for those who stayed. The winters charted the coldest temperatures in the continental U.S.
More recently some of the mining companies had begun to restart their iron mining efforts, while others had begun to develop non-ferrous metal deposits. The region was starting to come back, but slowly, and not here in Defiance.
He didn’t need gas, but he did need information. At the edge of town Peterson’s Standard had been transformed into a Holiday. He pulled into the station and topped off his tank. The clear sky wasn’t helping with the cold; the station thermometer read -7. He’d blown in with a cold front.
Behind the counter a high school kid looked up from his textbook, waiting for Sam to pay. He had green eyes, a compact frame and square shoulders. Under the boy’s insulated shirt Sam noticed broad shoulders and plenty of muscle. His hands were deft and capable, and his face could have graced a box of Wheaties.
Sam imagined the kid gliding over ice, smashing a hockey puck in northern Minnesota’s greatest pastime. It was the eyes that suggested he might be a Peterson, one of the progeny of the clan he worked for as a kid.
“Your name Peterson?”
The boy looked friendly enough. “Yeah.”
“That your dad who owns the spread outside of town?”
“My Uncle Paul,” he said. He took Sam’s card and sliced it through the register’s reader.
“Do you know a Diane Talbott?”
The boy placed Sam’s receipt on the table, waiting for his signature. Sam watched him glance at the cardholder’s name.
“Sam Rivers,” he said, referencing the name on the card. “My mother was a friend of Diane’s.”
“Uh-huh,” the boy nodded.
“Sometimes Diane would take my mom and me fishing.”
The kid nodded again, guarded.
“If I remember right, Diane loved catching snakes, just for the fun of it.” Snakes was the local term for the long, aggressive northern pike, one of Minnesota’s hardest-fighting fish, but also slimy and difficult to fillet.
“Sounds like Diane,” the boy smiled. “She likes a good fight. Lives outside of town, on the Old Road.”
The boy gave him directions while Sam returned the card to his wallet. When he looked out the window he saw that the Ben Franklin had closed. The old painted ads were peeling from its windows. The sidewalks in front of the store were choked with snow. Further down the street he saw a tavern closed and a church with its windows boarded up. The doors to the old Defiance Library were chained. Beyond it, peaking from around the corner, he caught the edge of the Winthrop Building.
“Defiance Hotel still open?”
The boy nodded.
“It’s a wonder anybody’s still here.”
“I’m gettin‘ out. Soon as I’m done with school.”
Sam noticed the kid’s sincerity. He thought about telling him a story, about growing up and getting out. But Sam wasn’t ready. Not yet.
He thanked the boy and left.
On the edge of town the Hotel Defiance stood like a sturdy brick fort before the abandoned Iron Rail depot and the woods that went on forever beyond it. The depot had been used to haul timber and ore when Defiance was still a boomtown. Now its windows stood broken and empty. The old depot door was padlocked. The ground around the dilapidated structure was thigh high with new snow. Until Defiance High School had closed down and consolidated with Vermilion Falls, its graduating classes had tagged the depot’s brick sides with graffiti.
The hotel was still there. Its sign was faded and almost unintelligible, but its walks were plowed clean. A faded yellow VACANCY was taped to the window. Sam pushed through the door.
Behind the desk a television blared from a back room. Sam slapped the old-fashioned desk bell. He heard a chair creak, and in a moment an old man stood in the door’s threshold.
“Yeah?” he said, eyeing Sam with suspicion.
“Have you got a room?”
The old man’s head looked like a cue ball, its most prominent feature a pair of antiquated black plastic rimmed glasses. He wore a work shirt and gray khaki work pants with black suspenders. His clothes were threadbare, but clean and well pressed. His belly pushed over his belt like a distended watermelon, bulging his shirt buttons and parting the suspenders. Judging from the hotel’s quietude, he had plenty of time for meals.
“Got 16 of them,” the man finally answered.
“Good.”
“I taped that VACANCY sign up over ten years ago. The only times I come close to bringing it down are hunting season and fishing opener.”
Sam smiled. “I’m looking for something with a view,” he said.
“You can have whatever room you want, but don’t expect a view.”
“How about a room that overlooks those train tracks, facing the woods?”
“That’ll be seven. Right over my place.”
Sam signed his name and completed the registration form with his Yellow Rock address and phone while the proprietor reached down and pulled a key off an inside cupboard. From the keys on the inside of the cupboard Sam could see he was the only guest.
“Business slow?”
“Depends on how you look at it.” The old man considered Sam with a wry gaze. “This ain’t Fitger’s in Duluth, but you’
re my second person this week, and that’s two more than last week.” He glanced down at Sam’s name. “Rivers?” he squinted.
“Sam Rivers.”
“Elwyn Baxter,” the man said, reaching over and shaking Sam’s hand. “From around here?”
“A long time ago,” he said. “It’s been a while. I left quite a few years back.”
“Any kin?”
“All dead.”
“Seems like all the young ones leave,” the proprietor mused. “Can’t say I blame them. Nothing for them around here. Everything closing up. I don’t remember any Rivers.”
“None of them live here anymore.”
“Figures.”
“Does seem like a ghost town.”
The old man laughed. “It’s a ghost town alright. Plenty of old ghosts like me still hanging around.” The old man leaned on the counter, settling in, and added, “If you don’t want much it’s a nice place to live. A person couldn’t want for better fishing or hunting, or more beautiful scenery than our lakes and rivers.”
Sam nodded.
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