“Photos I took of moose on my trip up to Hudson Bay. People often need a glimpse of the wild before they can appreciate it. Before they think it’s worth protecting. This summer, I’m hoping for a steady flow of visitors to the island—a university in the wilderness—so they can begin to know what’s at stake, what could be lost forever, if we don’t win this battle against Ennis and his plans for development.” He looked to the east and Owen followed his gaze.
The lake stretched on forever.
They motored to Ennis’s nearby island, with its dockhands, lodge, and surrounding cabins and the two-story houseboat, Katherine, moored in the bay. Mrs. Ennis waved from its upper level, where she appeared to be having tea with a few women under the shade of the porch roof. Owen and Knut waved back, delivered a sizable order to the Ennis kitchen staff, and then set off toward Kettle Falls.
Late that day, as the sun dropped into shadows of gray, Owen tied the boat’s line to dock cleats at Johnson Boatworks. Walking home, Knut said, “Thanks, Owen. I’m not going to let you down.”
I’m not going to let you down. The words stung.
Poor Jerry hadn’t had as much as a funeral or memorial service. His fate was a mystery to everyone in the world, except Owen, the sheriff, and the deputy. Not even his family knew what had happened to him.
Knut slowed his pace, and Owen saw that he was waiting for an answer. A reprimand perhaps. A lecture. Something.
Owen swallowed hard and found a few words. He rumpled Knut’s hair. “Hey, Knut. Don’t worry. You’ll do just fine.”
Summer solstice. By the third week in June, the sun climbs so high you almost think it might decide to stay up and never come down. Working class or upper class, everyone wants to be on the water: swimming, fishing, touring, sightseeing, rowing, canoeing, or trying out the latest new boat motor and watercraft to explore bays and inlets, islands large and small.
Rainy Lake. She’s a beauty.
Towering rock ledges. Quiet lily-pad-covered inlets. Winding rock-filled narrows. A bald eagle lighting on its nest; a wolf gazing down from a craggy ledge; spring peepers in full chorus; a moose swimming across open water; a doe with twin fawns at the shore; a black bear standing on its hind legs, sniffing the air; a family of otters chasing each other down a well-worn slide into the water; dragonflies emerging in mass; loons yodeling under a painted canvas of stars . . .
You know, Victor’s right.
How can anyone from a city appreciate wilderness without first experiencing it?
31
ALL SUMMER, MOST FOLKS TALK ABOUT FISHING. THE trophy catch. The type of bait or lure they caught it on. The best fishing hole ever.
Not Erling.
He talked about nothing but baseball.
Stats. Games around the country. Going to see the Babe in August. Going professional someday. Every evening, he gathered with local boys to play sandlot baseball. He started in again as they unloaded the creamery truck and hauled milk cans inside.
“I’m going to get his signature, either on a ball or maybe my bat.”
Owen didn’t need to ask whose.
Evenings, Owen spent time at his lot of cars, waxing and polishing. He threw himself wholly into the task, until his arms ached, his fingers were stained from car wax, and his mind went numb. All there was left to think about was how beautiful these machines looked in the shadows and amber light at sunset.
When Pengler reported that a few of his Whiskey Sixes were having carburetor problems, Owen went to the library and read everything he could in national newspapers. A guy named Burt Miller of Detroit had just started up a company called Wonder with a product called “Magic Oil.” It allegedly fixed the problem of clogged jets. Owen jotted down the phone number and ordered a supply. Turned out, “Magic Oil” countered the high lead and contaminants in gasoline, but it also improved gas mileage and minimized engine wear. Owen was realizing he not only had to sell cars, but he was going to have to learn a lot more about how to keep them going, too. If Jerry were around, he’d be a whiz at repairs.
A single thought and images rushed in.
Jerry, arms deep in the engine of the Melnyks’ vehicle they called “joker,” because it was half tractor, half car and never worked. He’d toss his head to get his sandy hair out of his eyes. “This thing will never be more than a piece of crap. Every time I work on it, feels like I’m polishing a turd.”
Jerry, in sixth grade, racing around at recess with pretty little Annie Dorner on his shoulders, while Owen carried another girl, not quite as cute, and definitely not as light. Owen ran behind Jerry, until his buddy rounded the corner of the schoolhouse and hit a mud slick. His legs went out from under him; Annie flew into the building, skirts and petticoats to her waist, and broke her arm. For the rest of the year, Jerry and Owen were banned from recess. Fortunately, it happened in April, not September.
Jerry, vanishing.
Trinity’s plans for a picnic kept getting postponed. Rained out. Company her family said she must help entertain. But eventually, the first week of July, the day arrived. Clear skies and a breeze light enough not to stop them from getting to Kettle Falls; breezy enough to keep black flies away.
Owen had crossed paths a few times with Sadie Rose, but they hadn’t been forced to talk. For him, the day promised pain.
“Mom, I’ll help out here today, instead,” he said.
Hands on her hips, chin high, apron strings gathered around her small waist and tied in front, she almost made Owen laugh. “You have done nothing but work for as long as . . . ever since—”
He nodded. True enough.
“Look at you. Dark circles under your eyes. You don’t look well, Owen. Go. I’ll be fine.”
Owen gave her a hug. “Okay, okay. I’ll go.”
Then she buried her head in Owen’s shoulder and cried. Owen didn’t pull away. He let her sob. And when she finished, Owen pulled a clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket and handed it to her. “You always say, we may not have much money, but you’ll always keep us in clean handkerchiefs.”
Tears streaked her face and her eyes were puffy, but she smiled. “I didn’t mean to start crying, for Pete’s sake!”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
At two minutes before ten thirty that morning, sleek as a seagull, the fifty-foot white yacht Trinity appeared around the point in the east. Tipper waited beside Owen on the pier.
After the porcupine, Tipper’s head had swelled—even his tongue—but eventually, the wounds healed and he was back to his old self. Having him along on the picnic, Owen figured, would be a good distraction. Tipper’s head swung toward the other end of the dock. Owen followed his gaze.
Sadie Rose strolled past Erickson’s Grocery, where Mr. Erickson was busy tossing meat scraps from a box to a flurry of seagulls. She continued to the pier.
“Owen!” she exclaimed, walking straight for Tipper and kneeling beside him. “Hey, Tipper. Have you been hiding?” she asked, stroking him under his neck. She glanced at Owen. “Have you?”
“No,” he said, lying.
She walked to Owen, her head high, and grabbed him above the elbow with both hands, as if to emphasize their friendship. “We haven’t had a chance to talk.”
“Oh, there’s not much to talk about. But we’ll have the whole day.”
“What I mean is—”
“Ahoy, landlubbers!” Trinity called out.
“Catch the line, will you?” Victor added.
And with that, the white rope uncoiled from Victor’s hands into Owen’s. He pulled the boat close enough for Sadie to hop on. With line in hand, he pushed off and stepped on. A touch-and-go landing.
Under the captain’s roof, someone new was standing at the wheel. About the same height as Owen, and roughly the same age as Victor, with a sculpted chin, no-nonsense eyes, and cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he lifted one finger. “Hello!”
“Sadie, Owen, meet Henry Densch. His family is building a small castle—”
“Not a castle,” Henry said, the cigarette bobbing up and down. He pulled it out and put it in the ashtray. “Nice to meet you. Hope you don’t mind an extra!”
“Not at all,” Victor said. “We’re all friends.”
Sadie glanced at Owen. He once felt he could read her gray eyes, see to the depths of her. But not now. As the boat swung around, pointing east, Sadie sat with Trinity on the bow. Barefoot.
The day was underway.
At the stern, Owen and Victor chatted at a small table with red-cushioned wicker chairs.
“Margaret will be delighted,” Victor said, and nodded toward the blueberries. “She makes the most delectable blueberry pies.” At their feet lay five buckets, full of blueberries they’d picked along the way, stopping at islands where the water was deep enough to tie up the yacht.
Winding through the craggy channel toward the dam linking Namakan and Rainy Lake, the roar of rushing water turned deafening. Only two summers back, Owen had met up with Sadie Rose behind the hotel here in the cedar-scented icehouse. In the near darkness, he’d drawn her close and kissed her, nearly as surprised by his own actions as she was. From that moment on—he’d found what mattered most in life.
Owen pulled himself back to the conversation. “And if he gets his way,” Victor continued, “Ennis would like to hear the roar of dams—at least a dozen more—through the North Country. Forever change these lakes as we know them. That’s why the fight has to go beyond local to national, why we must advocate for legislation that will protect this region for future generations.”
He nodded toward Henry at the steering wheel. “Someone like Henry, he’s educated. Connected. Adding his voice to the cause will help.”
So far, Owen had learned that Henry was from a family who made their money in manufacturing. Like Victor and his mother, as well as the Bairds, Henry’s family had ties to Davenport, Iowa.
As the boat rounded the next point, the dam came into full view. And with it, Owen couldn’t help but admire Sadie, on the bow with Trinity, soaking up sun—all bare legs and arms—in her skirted wool swimsuit. He’d love to roll up his trousers, take off his shirt, and sit beside her in the sun.
Instead, he hopped up, jumped off as the boat approached the dock, and caught the line. He tied off bow and stern to steel rings, offered Trinity and Sadie Rose a hand down, and then followed up the long boardwalk. The white two-story hotel with its red-and-white striped awning rose against a backdrop of sparse pines.
32
WHEN OWEN STEPPED INSIDE THE HOTEL LOBBY—WITH its stairs leading to rooms upstairs where certain ladies plied their trade, and its restaurant to the right of the counter and display cases filled with trinkets, cigars, and cigarettes—he was startled to see Harvey behind the counter, shoulder to shoulder, with Darla, who ran the hotel.
Harvey beamed when he looked up and a smile spread across his freshly shaved face; a dot of shaving cream remained on his earlobe. “Owen! What brings you here today? And such lovely ladies!” he said, extending his hand toward Trinity and Sadie Rose.
“Hi, Darla,” Sadie said, casually, though Owen knew their past ran deep. Before running Kettle Falls Hotel, Darla ran a boardinghouse in Ranier where Sadie spent the first five years of her life.
“Why, Miss Sadie, I haven’t seen you since last summer with the Worthingtons.”
Sadie leaned toward Darla. “Yes, and I want to tell you, I’m sorry for your loss. My parents told me last winter. Pneumonia?”
Darla put her palm to her ample cleavage, barely contained by her old-style corseted dress, and nodded. “Yes, poor man.” Folks said Darla’s husband spent most of his time in Chicago, but no one had ever seen him. Owen guessed the husband didn’t exist, that he was more likely a ruse for a shrewd businesswoman like Darla to operate more freely.
Pengler reached across the counter and shook hands with Victor and Henry. “Gentlemen, welcome to Kettle Falls Hotel. What’s your pleasure today?”
Trinity answered. “We’ve been out picking berries. Hoping for dinner in the restaurant before heading back. And after, perhaps something cool and refreshing at your soda fountain!”
“You’ve come to the right place!”
While they ate in the restaurant, Pengler leaned down by Owen and whispered in a hushed voice, “Heard from Jerry?”
It’s one thing to keep a secret to yourself, to use all your mental energy to tiptoe around locked doors in your mind. They’d come east by boat, and he’d managed to focus in hard on the conversations, rather than think about the channel and its deep water between specific islands and the mainland. When there’s something you dread thinking about, you can manage, unless someone else suddenly dredges it up.
“Can’t say I have.” Perspiration rose on his forehead and around each follicle on his head. A droplet formed and ran down his spine.
“Hoped by now he’d have dropped you a line—something.”
Sadie sat across from him. If anyone could tell he was lying, it would be her. He purposefully pushed his chair back from the table, and as if to continue the conversation in private, he motioned for Pengler to follow him so they could talk elsewhere. They went out to the screened veranda, serenaded by a soft hum of black flies, mosquitoes, and deer flies.
“He owes me a vehicle,” Pengler said, his expression turning serious. “Not that he’s your responsibility, but it’s not right—taking off like that without squaring up with a guy.”
In the bar someone started up the nickelodeon player, then a man sturdy as a bull ambled out along the porch. “Harvey, Harvey! Come on. When are you going to join us for a drink?”
“Owen, meet Mr. Clayton Vittorio.”
Owen stretched out his hand, and the man grabbed it in his beefy paw and squeezed hard. “Friend of Harvey’s? Then you’re my friend, too.”
Pengler continued, “Mr. Vittorio is visiting from Chicago. He and a friend of his. We have some business to attend to, so if you’ll excuse us.” He motioned back to the bar, but before they took a step, Owen blurted, “Ever meet Al Capone?”
The two men looked at each other. Pengler shrugged. “Don’t worry. He’s good. He’s not a fed.”
“You can never tell.” Then Mr. Vittorio tilted his head back and laughed, his mouth wide as a rain gutter. “Capone. Sure I know him. But don’t believe everything you read in the papers. They don’t tell half the story.” He laughed again. “Things are probably much worse! Not like here where it’s real peaceful.” Then he fake-punched Pengler in the shoulder. “A guy could get used to doing business up here. Heck, it could be Little Chicago.”
On the boat ride back to Ranier, Owen managed to catch bits and snatches of conversation.
“It’s what comes through the eyes that’s the hardest to capture,” Trinity was saying. For a moment, as he sat with her on the bench seat behind the captain’s wheel, he couldn’t piece together what she meant, if she was talking about him and his lying.
“The iris,” she said. “When you really look at it, you’ll see whole worlds in its tones and hues. Then you realize, no matter how hard you try, you can never fully capture it. Eyes. Like trying to paint the universe.”
They were approaching the channel. Jerry—at the bottom of the lake. By now, fish and crayfish would have nibbled away at him. His flesh. His eyes.
Owen moved back to the table at the stern, and Tipper followed, settling at his feet. He was glad for a little time alone, until Sadie sat down in the opposite chair. In the past, just being near her would make everything in him smile.
“I wanted to tell you that my work tutoring in the county is going well,” she said, meeting his eyes for a brief moment, before he had to look away.
A familiar rock ledge rose up on the mainland. The islands were off to the right. They were getting closer to the spot on the channel. His stomach seized up, but he had to say something. “That’s good.”
“There’s a family visiting on the lake for the summer with two children. They’re bright enough, but
the parents don’t want them to fall behind in the summer, though my guess is that they’re just looking for a dignified excuse to get a babysitter a few days each week. Truth is, they seem more interested in the butler and what he’s serving up for their next round of cocktails.”
Owen nodded, but not even Sadie Rose could hold his mind in the moment. She talked on about how she tried to bring music into each student’s world, even if she was asked to tutor only general subjects. “Then, on the other extreme,” Sadie continued, leaning forward on her elbows, as if she truly wanted to engage him, “I’ve worked with a few families that can barely clothe their kids or feed them. Farmers, who are spending morning ’til night tilling clay until their oxen or horses break, or their plows, or both. One family asked me to take their two youngest children. Not for a spell, mind you, but to ‘take’ them home with me. Adopt them. Of course, that wasn’t going to happen, but on my next visit, I brought food and clothing for the little ones. I mean, how can anyone possibly try to concentrate or learn something if they’re starving? They can’t possibly focus in such a state . . . Owen, have you heard a word I’ve said?”
“Sure, I’m listening . . . your tutoring . . .”
“You don’t look like you’re feeling well.”
He tried to laugh, but it came out more as a huff of bitterness.
She flinched and backed away, as if rebuffed.
“Sorry,” Owen said. “I didn’t mean . . . I’m not feeling quite right. Seasick, maybe.”
“That never bothered you before. You boated everywhere.”
They were closer now, approaching the spot. His mouth turned chalky sour with remembering. The surface water glistened in the late-day shadows, black as oil. “Things change.”
Sadie smoothed her sundress to her knees. “Let me get you a glass of cold water. Maybe that will help.”
But when she returned, he was leaning over the stern railing, emptying his stomach. Hand on his back, Sadie waited.
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