Lance placed his hand on one of the thick, gray tree trunks. How strange that it was a living being. He never used to think like that. He was a forest cop. And yet, inside this hard, rough bark he was leaning against there was a life that had already existed for more than a hundred years. Because it is a life, he thought. Maybe not conscious, but still a life. And the same was true of all the other trees surrounding him. It was perfectly obvious and yet overwhelming. More than a hundred Minnesota winters. All that snow. The blizzards. The cold that made the wood split with a sharp crack, like the sound of a gunshot through the woods. Yet they were still standing here, and as long as no one cut them down, they would most likely continue to stand here for years to come. The trees belonged as much in this moment as they did in a winter night a hundred years ago. As if he were standing in the midst of an expansive now that included much more than this one gray November day.
He emerged from the old-growth forest. All around him were mostly birches and shorter spruce trees. He didn’t have far to go to reach Andy. He’d find a spot with a view and try to catch sight of the man he’d just glimpsed in the woods.
A little farther along, Lance saw a big boulder that looked like it would provide a good view. He hurried up the slope. When he reached the top, he realized he would have to put down his rifle in order to climb up onto the boulder. He wasn’t happy about that. To be out on a hunt without ready access to his gun was not a situation any hunter relished, but if Lance wanted to go up there, he had to leave his rifle behind. He set it down at the base of the boulder and then clambered up.
The view was even better than he’d expected. Of course a lot of the terrain was covered with stunted birch woods, but the trees had all lost their leaves, so he had a bare forest ahead of him. It should be possible to spot a person among those trees. He straightened his back and began surveying the terrain. He took his time, but he didn’t see anyone. Nor did he see any deer, fortunately. It would have been annoying to have a chance to put an end to the hunt while his rifle was beyond his reach.
He was just about to climb down when he suddenly had a feeling someone was watching him. A metallic taste rose up into his mouth. Without even thinking, he jumped down in one big leap. As he landed, one knee came up and slammed into his jaw, rattling his teeth. But he didn’t care as he pressed his body as close as possible against the boulder. His heart was pounding wildly. He grabbed the rifle and placed it on his lap. It felt better to be sitting in the shelter of the huge rock, having the solid stone at his back. What exactly just happened? A sudden feeling someone was looking at him. As if an ancient instinct had been triggered. A warning from deep inside him, a place with which he seldom had any contact. But a warning about what? Someone was aiming at me, he thought. The idea just dropped into his mind. He’d been standing on top of the boulder, visible from a wide area, and somebody had taken aim at him.
The boulder slanted a bit forward at the spot where he was sitting, so that he had a partial roof above him, as well as the wall behind his back. At the moment he felt very protected. His dark green clothing would be barely visible against the dark rock, so no one would be able to see him here. On the other hand, his own field of vision was very restricted, and he didn’t like that. It would be easy for someone to sneak up on him as he hid here next to the boulder.
“Your secret admirer will soon appear.”
He got up, holding the rifle in his hands, and peered around nervously, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to see. Then he started walking again. He thought he could walk the nervousness out of his system, so he strode up the slope, but it didn’t do any good. The adrenaline continued to rush through his body at an unpleasant speed. A couple of times he stopped and held his hand out in front of him. It was shaking. He told himself that he needed to focus on the hunt. If a deer appeared, he’d have only a few seconds. If his mind were elsewhere, he wouldn’t have a chance. And of course nobody was aiming at him.
It couldn’t be very far to the bend in the river where Andy was supposed to be waiting on post. Maybe he should take the opportunity to follow the riverbank the rest of the way, even though that wasn’t what he had planned. If he happened to spook a deer near the river, there was a big risk that it would flee to the left and never make it over to where Andy was waiting. At the same time, Lance had no desire to go wandering around in search of his brother, nor did he want to call him until it was necessary. If he followed the riverbank, he’d see the bend well before he came to it.
When he again reached the river, he saw that he was closer to the bend than he’d thought. It couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards away, but first he had to go up a slope and walk alongside a waterfall that rushed, foaming, down the hillside. It was hard to get any traction in the wet grass, even wearing hunting boots with nonskid soles. He ended up having to use his hands, so that he was crawling upward on all fours, almost like an animal. After conquering the slope, he stood up and looked around. Up here the river was flowing, calm and dark, in a big curve. Along the entire curve the riverbank was very steep, overgrown with grass and raspberry bushes. He let his gaze sweep over the edge of the woods, but he didn’t see Andy. Finally he raised one hand in the air and shouted his name. A second later he saw his brother stand up over there.
4
LANCE SPREAD OUT the ground cloth and sat down with his back resting against the rotten tree trunk. Andy sat down next to him. Each of them took out a thermos and poured coffee into a plastic cup. The aroma of coffee slowly mixed with the smell of the damp autumn forest. Both men wrapped their fingers around the cups to warm their hands.
“Oh well . . . .” Andy said, sighing.
“Uh-huh,” said Lance, his voice barely audible.
Only a few yards from their feet the Cross River ran past, on its way toward the ravines and rapids. This big bend in the river marked the end of its lengthy, calm phase. But Lance and Andy had come from the opposite direction. They had left the hillsides behind on their way up from the lake. Ahead of them loomed the enormous forests that extended far into Canada, but there was no reason for them to go there today. The deer mostly kept to the hilly areas in the south.
The two brothers sat there, leaning against the trunk of a huge tree that had apparently toppled over in a storm long ago. Three feet or so separated them. Lance could hear Andy breathing, as well as the moist sound when he occasionally inhaled especially deeply through his nose.
“So, how’s this all going to end?” asked Andy.
“What do you mean?”
“This . . .” He let his gaze sweep over the area.
“Oh, we’ll probably get one eventually.”
“You think so?”
“We always do.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” said Andy. He took a bottle of milk out of his backpack, unscrewed the cap, and poured some into his coffee. Then he put the cap back on and set the bottle on the ground. “I think I’ll have something to eat.”
“Me too,” said Lance.
Andy pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to look at his watch. “But we’ll have another snack later on, right?”
“Sure. How about when we get back to the cars?”
“It all depends,” said Andy.
Lance unwrapped one of his chicken salad sandwiches and took a bite. Andy picked up the milk bottle and took a big swig before setting it down again. Then he got out a Snickers bar.
Lance looked at the milk bottle with the beautiful Indian maiden on the label. She was kneeling in front of an artificially blue lake, holding out a package of butter, as if presenting a precious gift or making an offering. When he was a kid, he’d dreamed about being able to step inside the picture on Land O’Lakes products. Step right in, as if crossing a threshold, to join the beautiful Land O’Lakes maiden holding out the package of butter. And from there he would enter the picture on the butter package, to join the same maiden who was holding out the same butter in front of the same lake, which was more beautiful tha
n any real lake he’d ever seen. Once inside, he’d enter the next picture. And so on. Each time he would join the same Indian maiden who was kneeling and holding out the same package that had exactly the same picture on the label. As if there always existed yet another world beyond that one.
But he’d also had other dreams linked to her; he remembered that now. Romantic dreams about canoe trips and wilderness adventures. A beautiful, dark-haired girlfriend. He supposed it must have been a form of love. A child’s infatuation. Countless times he’d sat at the breakfast table, thinking secret thoughts about the Land O’Lakes maiden, with Andy sitting across from him and their father seated at the head of the table, hidden behind the Duluth News-Tribune.
What about their mother? Lance couldn’t recall ever seeing her sitting at the table and eating. She was always busy with something somewhere else in the room.
“Do you remember Dad feeding the birds?” Lance asked.
“Sure,” replied Andy, without looking at him.
“But do you remember seeing the birds eat out of his hand?”
“No . . . Who told you that?”
“Mom did. She said that’s what he used to . . .” He broke off a piece of his sandwich and held it out, in the palm of his hand. “Like this,” he added.
Andy looked at him in disbelief. “Do you really think Dad had the patience for something like that?”
“Maybe not.”
“I’ll be damned if he had the patience for—”
“No,” said Lance. “No, you’re right. That’s what I thought too.”
“I can just picture it,” said Andy. He held out his hand as Lance had done. “Come on and eat, and be quick about it, you fucking ungrateful little birds!”
In his mind Lance saw the two figures, one small and one big, holding each other’s hands. The moon over the lake. Everything around them dark. Only the immense surface of the water gleaming like metal beneath the moon, as if it were the only thing in existence.
“You should show some respect for the dead,” he said.
“Isn’t it more important to respect the living?”
“Andy, I’m talking about our father.”
“No, you mean your father. I’m talking about mine.”
They sat in silence for a while, sitting next to each other, leaning against the toppled tree trunk. The minutes passed and neither of them said a word. The river continued to flow past them, on its way to the lake. Occasionally there was a rustling sound from their rain gear if one of them moved. A little bird flew over the river and into the woods on the other side. Lance was feeling uncomfortable. They usually never sat like this. Or rather, they did, but only when they were out hunting. Even more time might go by before either of them spoke. But there had never before been such a sense of something enormous and unpredictable between them, like now. It was almost tangible. Normally they didn’t talk much when they were together simply because they had nothing to say. But now it was because neither of them dared speak. Who knew what might happen once they got into what lay between them? Who could predict where they’d end up then?
Andy must be wondering why Lance hadn’t called on his cell phone before he arrived. Maybe he realized it was because his brother had come walking along the river, in clear view. But why didn’t he ask? Lance again tried to picture the stranger he’d seen, but it had happened so fast, and he’d seen only the man’s shoulders and back. His dark green clothing. Andy was wearing dark green rain gear. Lance was too. Probably most everybody else was, too, if they were walking around in the woods today. He thought about the story Willy Dupree had told him last night. About the man who found a knife and became so attached to it that he chased away his own wife so that he could keep the knife at his side. When he went to get it from its hiding place, he saw the back of a man who disappeared among the trees. But it was stupid to draw an old story into what was happening here and now. Or was it? Lance had never believed in ghosts, but during the past few months he’d had several strange experiences. As if someone were walking past on the other side of a thin curtain. And it was always the same man: Swamper Caribou. Lance didn’t understand it, but he would still never believe in ghosts.
Andy was staring straight ahead, his face impassive. He seems worn out, thought Lance. Really, really worn out. Does he dream about it? he wondered. Was that why he looked so tired? Because he kept waking up from the same nightmare? How many times did he raise the baseball bat to strike a blow? What had driven him to do it? Lance himself had stood there only a few hours later, staring at the shattered head of the Norwegian canoeist Georg Lofthus. Somehow Andy had managed to get Lenny Diver’s fingerprints on the bat and then he hid it in the Indian’s car. Maybe he’d found Lenny in a drunken stupor. Diver claimed he’d been so drunk that he couldn’t remember anything about that night except for the fact that he’d ended up in a Grand Marais motel room with a woman whom he could neither describe nor name. None of the employees at any of the motels in Grand Marais had seen Lenny Diver, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there.
“Do you still have your old baseball bat?” asked Lance.
“Yeah.”
“How about a game someday?”
Andy raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“I thought it’d be fun for Jimmy. Play a little ball with his dad and Uncle Andy.”
“In November?”
“It’d be good for him. The boy needs to toughen up. He’s growing up with only his mother, you know.”
“But don’t you have your own baseball bat?”
“Can’t find it,” replied Lance. “But I figured you’d still have that good old bat of yours.”
“Actually, I’m not exactly sure where it is,” said Andy.
“Maybe you . . . left it somewhere?” Lance gave him a cold look.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Andy, as if a light had come on in his brain. “I left it at the cabin. Those kids who broke in must have taken it.”
He looked pleased as he poured himself some more coffee, splashing a little milk into his cup. Lance felt as if his brother was always one step ahead of him. He always seemed to have another card up his sleeve.
“I saw Chrissy in the summer,” said Lance. “In Duluth. I’ve got to say she’s changed a lot since the last time I saw her. That black hair and . . . Well, just in general.”
“It’s that age,” said Andy.
“I saw her in Enger Park. She was with two other girls, and they were talking to somebody who was sitting in a car.”
“Oh, really?”
“Well . . . I guess she never goes out to the cabin, does she?”
“No.”
Now Andy seemed to be on guard. Lance sensed that he was standing right on the brink of something. He thought about the music magazine he’d found in Andy’s cabin when he broke in. He couldn’t imagine anyone except Chrissy taking the magazine there. Truth be told, he thought both father and daughter had been there together on the night of the murder, when Chrissy was supposedly staying overnight with a girlfriend in Duluth.
“Hey, Lance,” said Andy.
“Yeah?”
“Lay off Chrissy, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just lay off.”
I’m standing on the big blue surface. The moon is shining. I’m frozen in place. Around me I can hear the whole bay creaking and singing. There’s no way back. No way forward either. If I move, the ice will instantly shatter. I’m sure of that. Soon the darkness will open up beneath me. I don’t dare move except to turn my head a little and look across the lake. It was stupid to try walking across the bay. Straight ahead I can see black water and a band of moonlight. At the very head of the bay a river is emptying into the water. So I can’t trust the ice. But I did trust it. Up until it was too late. The ice is starting to crack, I felt it give a little and heard water burbling across it someplace, but I couldn’t see where.
I don’t want to die here! I’m supposed to look for work in the woods. Do s
ome logging. And make some money so that I can buy my own boat. The ax! It’s in my knapsack. Can I get it out without breaking through the ice? Cautiously I wriggle out of the straps of my knapsack that still has the snowshoes hanging from it. The knapsack my father gave me before I left. The handle of the ax is sticking out of it. I untie the cords as fast as I can with my stiff, cold fingers, and grip the handle as if it were my salvation. I set down the knapsack and the snowshoes. I need to hold tight to the ax when I fall through. Maybe I can use it to get back up onto the ice. Up ahead I see a spit of land with a tree standing at the very tip. Just one. I need to look for that tree if I manage to get back up onto the ice. That’s where I need to go. But I now see that it doesn’t look like a tree.
It looks like a cross. Maybe a grave. As if somebody has been buried there.
Suddenly the ice sinks beneath me. I keep screaming even when it stops. I’m still standing here, but water is pouring across the ice. It rises up around my boots. It’s going to happen now. I’m going to fall through. Into the deep. Into the darkness. I hold the ax tight. Oh, good Lord! Oh, Jesus! Mother! I’m falling in. I flail my arms, but the water is so heavy that it won’t let me go. There’s no light down here. I can’t tell which way is up or down. My ears hurt. I’m kicking and thrashing. Everything inside me wants out, but there is no out. Everything is black inside. I kick hard. At least I think I’m kicking hard, but I’m not sure. I’m kicking hard in the painful darkness. The dark lets go. I slip through a crack as if I’ve been inside the big eye of someone who was asleep and now wakes up and opens his eyes. I slide out through a half-open eye. A bright crack. A blue light. I’m still holding the ax in my right hand. And a star is shining above the blue iceberg. Shining cold and clear. It’s not so bad here. I could stay here, couldn’t I? I’m rising up so nicely toward the sky above the icebergs. Rising toward the star up there. It’s shining so white. That’s where I’m going. But now I bang my head against the star, which shatters into a thousand pieces. They clink all around me. Water is running out of the vault of the sky. Is that the moon I see? I see a man far away. He’s wearing a black hat. I see a cross. Then I fall into the depths, into the deep sky above me. I see nothing, feel only this falling sensation, and I hear a voice saying, “everything that’s needed for sustenance in life, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, shelter, home, fields, cattle, money.”
Only the Dead Page 6