The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy)

by Vidar Sundstøl

  “But he’s been preoccupied with other things over the past few years, right?”

  “Uh-huh. He started with methamphetamine. That’s a big problem for us. But I think it was a bit up and down with him. Not continuous drug use over a long period of time. Not until last year. That’s what I heard yesterday. I talked to a girl who was in the same class as Lenny. She said his drug use increased drastically about a year ago.”

  “Any special reason for that?”

  “I guess it’s just something that happens, sooner or later. They think they can control it, and then . . . ” She shook her head sadly. “He earned a living partly by making little wooden sculptures that he sold,” she went on. “Animal figurines. Little canoes. Standard Ojibwe handiwork. Apparently he’s quite skilled at that sort of thing. His work is even sold in the souvenir shop at the casino. But his classmate thought that he’d stopped making anything about a year ago. About the same time as the meth began taking over.”

  “Do you remember anything about him from school?”

  “When I got out the old class photos, I remembered what he looked like, but that’s about all. Usually when I look at pictures of former students, I can instantly recall their voices. Their voices and their laughter. In many cases I can also remember what sort of clothes they wore. But with Lenny Diver . . . The only thing I can remember is that there was a boy named Lenny Diver. He sat at a desk in the middle of the room. That’s basically all. He must not have been a troublemaker. Those are the kids who always stick in my mind. And he must not have been particularly bright, either. Or particularly slow. Then I would have remembered him. No, he was just there, without drawing special attention to himself. I wish I could tell you more.”

  “That’s all right. Thanks for trying.”

  “Do you think it’ll help you?”

  “I think so. Maybe not immediately. But eventually it will.”

  Mary smiled and nodded. This time it was a smile that he recognized. She used to smile like that whenever he decided to follow her advice on some matter. Usually after they had started out by disagreeing. He noticed that he was feeling annoyed. Did she think this was all her idea now? That was how she made it seem, at least.

  “What about his sister?” he said.

  “Bess? What about her?”

  “Well . . . how’s she doing?”

  “Come on now, I’m her teacher! How would you like it if Jimmy’s teacher starting talking about him to some stranger?”

  “Sorry.”

  The waiter brought their food. Lance breathed in the aroma of the dark, long-grained wild rice, which had originally been one of the mainstays of the Ojibwe diet. It smelled a bit like newly dried hay. The fish had been swimming around in the lake just a few hours earlier. The only way to get fresher fish was to go out fishing himself. For a short while he forgot all about why they were sitting there. He savored the food, glad that he’d come to the Angry Trout. It had been far too long since he’d eaten at this restaurant.

  “So how’s Jimmy?” he said. “Everything okay?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Is he doing well in school?”

  “He’s fine. He’s doing just fine,” she said.

  Lance thought about the fact that he was protecting his family by ensuring that Lenny Diver spent the rest of his life in prison. His whole family. If he told the truth, the abyss would open up. Also beneath Jimmy. He would be the boy who had a murderer in the family. That would always be true, but as long as Lance didn’t say anything, it would be like nothing had happened. And in that way, by protecting Jimmy, he was also protecting Mary.

  “That’s good,” he said, picking up his glass to take a sip of beer and hide the lump in his throat. This time his hand didn’t shake.

  They didn’t talk as they ate. Once, as she was busy trying to spear something in her salad with her fork, he took the opportunity to study her. Then he noticed that she had aged after all. Her beautiful face had lost some of the glow that had so attracted him in the beginning. It was as if an energy source inside her had been turned down a notch.

  When they were finished with their food, they both sat there staring out the window. Lance knew she would leave soon. He tried to think of things he ought to ask her, but his mind was blank. Finally Mary took out her wallet.

  “No, no,” said Lance. “Let me pay. Please.”

  “Why? Can’t we share the bill?”

  “But I’m the one who asked you to come here. You’ve done me a favor. So it’s only fair that I pay for the food.”

  “All right,” she said.

  Lance looked for their waiter but didn’t see him. All the tables were occupied. The waiters were shuttling between the kitchen and the dining room.

  “By the way, how’s Inga doing?” asked Mary.

  “She’s doing okay. We’re going to take a drive tomorrow. I thought we might go up to Grand Portage. See the whole North Shore. She hasn’t been up there for a long time, you know.”

  Silence again. Lance regretted mentioning Grand Portage. Because they weren’t planning on visiting Mary and Jimmy, of course. And Mary wasn’t about to invite them to stop by. They both knew that.

  “Well, it’s getting late,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got to pick up Jimmy. Dad gets easily tired these days.”

  Both of them looked around the restaurant.

  “All right. You go ahead,” said Lance. “I’ll take care of the bill.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. Say hi to Willy for me,” said Lance.

  “I’ll do that.” She picked up her handbag from the floor and got up.

  “Good luck with . . . well, you know,” she said. “And say hi to Inga.”

  Lance stood up, but before he could hold out his hand, she was heading for the exit.

  He stood there watching her. I’m protecting both of them, he thought.

  28

  IT WASN’T YET TEN O’CLOCK when Lance turned the key in the ignition and started the Jeep in the parking lot behind Lakeview Nursing Home. Inga was sitting next to him, holding her purse on her lap. She’d dabbed on some perfume.

  “All right, let’s go,” he said. “What do you think about this weather?”

  It was a fine, dry day with high clouds, but on the other side of the lake, a big gray bank of clouds was hovering over Wisconsin, threatening rain.

  “You brought the umbrellas, didn’t you?” said Inga.

  “Sure did. They’re on the backseat.”

  “So there’s no need to worry about the weather.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  They entered Highway 61 and began heading north.

  Lance was glad his mother didn’t know about everything that was now tormenting him, from the moment he woke up each morning until he fell asleep at night. The only thing she knew was that a Norwegian tourist had been killed near Baraga’s Cross more than three weeks ago. And that Lance, her older son, had found the victim. Later a young man had been arrested for the murder. She probably wasn’t thinking about it anymore. It had nothing to do with her.

  “All weather is nice weather,” she said.

  “Sure. You’re right.”

  He cast a quick glance at the spry old woman in the passenger seat. He thought he’d begun to notice something vulnerable about her in the past few years. Was it because Oscar was no longer here? In a sense she had been left all alone when he died.

  “What is it?” said Inga. She had caught him looking at her. “Nothing. Just wondering how you’re doing. That’s all.”

  “I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

  It would kill her if Andy was arrested and charged with murder, he thought. It’s that simple. I can’t kill my own mother. Then he remembered that Lenny Diver also had a mother. So Lenny was not the only one who was going to pay for Andy’s crime. His mother would be subjected to th
e pain that Inga would be spared. She was living with that pain right now. Every second of the day. And it was Lance who had decided on this. He was the only one who knew, so he was also the only one who could put an end to it. After Lenny was arrested, it no longer mattered that Andy and the two Norwegians had been seen together at Our Place. Nobody was asking anymore, who killed Georg Lofthus? This applied both to Ben Harvey and to any customers who might have recognized Andy on that evening. Our Place was no longer a blind spot for Lance. There were no blind spots. The situation was simple and clear. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut.

  “What about you, my boy? How are you doing?” asked Inga. “Great,” he said.

  They passed the big white fiberglass rooster with the bright red comb and shiny yellow feet. Then the giant frontiersman who was leaning on a canoe paddle.

  “Well, it certainly has been a long time,” said Inga, as if she were greeting someone she hadn’t seen in ages. “Two Harbors . . . turn right here.”

  He turned right onto Waterfront Drive, headed across Skunk Creek, and drove up onto the small hill with a view all the way down to the harbor, with its big, rusty shipping docks for taconite. On the right was the Lutheran church, built of dark, unhewn stone with a big gray cross on the roof. A seagull was perched on top of the cross.

  “I think that seagull has been sitting there for almost fifty years,” said Inga, pointing. “There was always a gull up there when we lived here.”

  Lance slowly drove along Waterfront Drive, past the library and the resplendent courthouse with its striking dome.

  “That’s where a concert was held every Thursday evening in the summer.” His mother pointed at the little music pavilion in the park. “Everyone went to it. There wasn’t much entertainment available back then, you know. I remember we’d sit there on little folding chairs we brought along, enjoying the summer evening.”

  There was also a cannon in the park. A small, fat piece of artillery from the First World War that soldiers from Minnesota had captured from the Germans. One time Jimmy tried to climb on it, but Lance wouldn’t let him. Not because it was dangerous but because he thought it would be disrespectful.

  “Go left here,” said Inga after they passed the park.

  Lance turned onto Second Avenue. The sidewalks were full of cracks. Grass and weeds were pushing their way through. A lot of the houses looked empty. A few had signs out front with the name and phone number of a real estate agent. All of these small wooden houses had once been painted in bright, optimistic colors. Greens, blues, reds, yellows. Now they were in disrepair. The paint had flaked off. Tall grass was growing in front of the doorsteps. Here and there they saw an old flag, now so faded from the sun and rain that the stars and stripes were barely visible.

  “Now take a right.”

  Lance turned onto a narrow side street.

  “Stop here,” said Inga. She began fidgeting with her seatbelt. “I need to get out and take a little walk.”

  Lance parked the car halfway up on the sidewalk. He turned off the engine and helped his mother release the seatbelt. Then he got out and went around to her side of the vehicle to help her out.

  He looked around. There were no cars here. Only his parked Jeep. Insects were buzzing loudly in an overgrown yard on the other side of a rusty chain link fence. He saw a small, yellow house. Empty, with the windows boarded up.

  “Willow Street,” said Inga.

  “Was that where you lived?” He nodded toward the yellow house.

  “No, come on and I’ll show you.”

  They headed slowly along the sidewalk. She stopped at the next house.

  “Here,” she said. “This was where we lived that first year.”

  And suddenly he remembered that he’d been here once before. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. It was just him and his father that time. They had walked slowly past. He remembered that it looked different back then. And there was a dog.

  “Have you been here before?” asked Inga.

  “I think so. With Dad.”

  “Really?”

  “A long time ago, if I remember right. Did the people who lived here have a dog?”

  “I have no idea,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sure lots of different people lived here after we did. It’s a typical rental property. Not the sort of place where anyone would spend a whole lifetime.”

  It was a small, one-story wooden house painted green. The front porch was partially enclosed with a torn screen. Even though the lawn in the little yard had been mowed fairly recently, the place had a slightly abandoned air about it. Maybe because of the lack of curtains.

  “Shall we?” he said, fumbling with the rickety wooden gate. “Do you think it’s all right?”

  “Sure,” he said, pushing open the gate. He noticed that it almost fell off its hinges when he touched it.

  They slowly crossed the yard, which had three old apple trees. Daisies grew along the fence separating the lot from the neighbor’s property. An empty umbrella clothesline stood near the back of the house. He grabbed one of the spokes and gave it a shove. The clothesline did a half turn. It hadn’t been oiled in a long time, judging by the sound it made.

  “You don’t think that could be the same clothesline, do you? The one that was here almost fifty years ago?” said Inga, looking up at her son. “It stood in this very same spot.”

  “It’s an old one, that’s for sure,” said Lance.

  “You know what? I think it is the same one.”

  He thought to himself that the clothesline couldn’t possibly be fifty years old.

  “One morning I was standing in the kitchen watching Oscar,” she said. “It was snowing. There was snow on the trees and the fence. He was standing right here . . . ”

  Again Lance noticed the perfume she was wearing. There was something familiar about it. Did Mary use the same scent? No, this was different. But he was sure he’d smelled it before.

  “I could hardly believe my eyes,” she went on. “He was feeding the birds, just as he always did in the winter. I’d seen him do that before. But then a little bird landed on his hand.” She raised her arm, holding her hand palm up, as if testing for the first drops of rain. “It was eating out of Oscar’s hand . . . a tiny bird . . . can you imagine that? I was completely . . . completely . . . ” She laughed. She sounded surprised, as if she were once again standing at the window, watching her husband do something astonishing.

  “Did the bird really eat from his hand?” said Lance in amazement.

  “Yes. And soon there were more. They swarmed all around him. After that I saw it happen many more times. Do you remember?”

  “I remember that he fed the birds. But did he always get them to eat out of his hand?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Didn’t you ever see that? He did it often. But the first time I saw it was here.”

  Lance paused to think, but he couldn’t recall ever seeing little birds eating out of his father’s hand.

  “No, I never saw him do that. Did he keep doing it even after I was grown up?”

  “I think he did.”

  “Well, I don’t remember. And I’m sure I’d have a memory of it if I’d seen it.”

  “Yes . . . well, I don’t really know, but . . . ”

  “I must have forgotten,” he hurried to say. He was afraid it would sound like he didn’t believe her. And he wasn’t sure that he did. Maybe she had seen something like that during the winter they lived here. It wasn’t impossible to get little birds, especially chickadees, to eat from your hand. He knew that. Maybe Oscar, young and in love, had done it to impress her.

  “What did you think when you saw Dad feeding those birds?” he asked.

  “Oh, you know, I . . . It was . . . My heart was . . . ” She put a hand to her heart. Then she shook her head and smiled. “It was special,” she said. “He was special, your father.”

 
Lance gently placed his hand on her thin shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m okay.” She sounded a bit annoyed. And then, in a milder tone, she said, “Let’s walk around the house and then go back to the car.”

  They went around the corner to the side of the house. Only five or six feet separated it from the neighbor’s fence. On the other side of the fence a man about Lance’s age was fiddling with an outboard motor that was propped up on a workbench. When he caught sight of Lance and Inga, the man grabbed an oil-stained cloth to wipe his hands. Lance nodded at him.

  “Are you considering buying it?” asked the man.

  “What?” said Lance.

  “The house.”

  “So it’s for sale?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t see a For Sale sign.”

  The man came over to the fence. He was still wiping his hands on the filthy cloth. The cap he was wearing said “Big Dog Fishing.”

  “They never last long around here. Lots of vandals, you know.”

  “That right? Well, we’re not interested in buying. We’re just taking a look at old properties.”

  “Oh, so you used to live here?”

  “I did,” said Inga.

  “Were you the one who lived here before MacGuire?”

  “MacGuire?” she said, bewildered.

  “That’s right.”

  “I lived here a long time ago.”

  “Before ninety-five?”

  “A long, long time before that,” said Inga.

  “Okay, well, then I don’t know.” The man seemed to lose interest in them. “Well, well,” he said, stuffing the dirty cloth in his pants pocket.

  “We’d better head out,” said Lance, giving him a nod.

  They walked around the corner and found themselves back at the dilapidated gate.

  “Who in the world is MacGuire?” said Lance’s mother.

  “I guess it’s just somebody who used to live here. Shall we keep driving?”

  Lance peered through the rip in the screen into the enclosed porch. There were two small benches set against the wall inside. He thought his parents must have sat there.