Ice-Out

by Mary Casanova

  He wiped his mouth.

  Drank the glass of water.

  The wake receded into frothy white as they motored on.

  “Owen, we haven’t really talked since I returned from school.”

  Owen studied the water, the ever-diminishing wake of roiling white.

  “There’s not much point,” he replied, not meeting her eyes. He was being a fool, he knew, not to seize this moment, but if he started talking, he might not stop.

  He’d made a deal with Vandyke, he reminded himself, and didn’t say another word.

  33

  BABE RUTH.

  It was Erling’s only topic, right up until he boarded the train one morning in late summer. “You know, Owen,” Erling said as stepped onto the train with an overnight suitcase, “Babe Ruth started out as a pitcher for the Red Sox before he was traded to the Yankees.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I hear,” Owen replied. So many nights, while Owen read books in his bedroom, the muffled sounds of baseball games played from the radio. He and Erling came from the same parents, slept under the same roof, and lived in the same border town, but their interests were wide apart. Owen wished he could go through life with one singular love, such as baseball. But his interests ran the gamut from business to history to politics to science to . . . Sadie. There was nothing wrong with baseball, but it just didn’t hold his interest the way it did his brother’s.

  “And then,” Erling continued, with a shake of his head as if he still couldn’t believe it, “he became an outfielder and shattered, by wide margins”—he stretched his arms wide and knocked the travel case against the side of the train—“shattered all the batting records. Knocked ’em out of the ballpark!”

  “So tell me,” Owen said, hand shading his eyes from the morning glare, and looking up at Erling. “How did a little town like Sleepy Eye snag someone as famous as Babe Ruth?”

  But Erling had a ready answer. “I guess the Knights of Columbus asked him to put their town on his tour.”

  Owen shrugged. “I don’t get it.”

  Erling’s eyes went wide in disbelief. “He’s Catholic, that’s why! How could he say no? I mean, he has to be more Catholic than most. His parents turned him over to the church to raise him when he was seven years old. That’s when he says he learned that ‘God is Boss.’”

  Owen nodded. “Hard to go higher than that.”

  The train whistled, and the conductor herded the last customers aboard the train. Steel on steel, it chugged away, slowly picking up speed, and rumbled down the tracks with its passenger cars, cargo cars, and yellow caboose.

  Owen turned back to the creamery. The ground stopped humming beneath his feet. Soon the rumbling was replaced by crickets pulsing in roadside weeds. Ahead, seagulls called from the pier.

  If God was Boss, then perhaps Jerry was called home so that others might learn through loss and suffering. Or maybe God needed someone like Jerry around to crack a joke and break up the monotony of eternal worship. Or maybe Jerry was called because of unconfessed sin. He’d racked up his share of trespasses—and Owen knew only half of them. That would put Jerry in purgatory, that dreaded limbo between heaven and hell. Or he was burning up in the fiery furnace itself.

  But if Darwin was Boss, maybe Jerry was culled because of his risk taking, a trait that in the end might not have helped further the evolution of mankind. If so, Owen wished he could take up that theory with Darwin, because if anyone seemed to add to the quality of life, it was Jerry.

  God, he missed him.

  That morning, after Erling left, Owen felt weighted down as he went through the creamery’s ledger. Profits were thin, but there would be enough to keep the Jensen family going another month. Enough to pay the utility bills, enough to buy a pair of new shoes for each of the boys before school started, enough to keep food on the table.

  Erling would come back with big dreams and plans. He’d eventually leave Ranier and turn his passion for baseball—and no small talent—into a career. Owen wouldn’t try to hold him back or ask him to stay.

  He startled when the creamery door opened and Sadie Rose stepped in. Everything about her was soft: her rose-colored dress and sheer overlay across her neck and shoulders, hair in soft waves, her hesitant smile. The sight of her sent a team of horses galloping through his chest, but he expected she always would have this effect on him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” she said, with equal courtesy.

  He hated the stiff politeness, when what he really wanted was to sweep her into his arms and whisper in her ear everything he’d dreamed about her. “What can I do for you?” he asked. “Aasta usually stops.”

  Sadie Rose shrugged, and there was something in her shoulders, her uncertain smile, that made him wince. It was as if she felt sorry for him.

  “Oh, I wanted to come by today. I had to get out of the house. She needs a pound of butter, a quart of buttermilk, and—oh no. I forgot. She insisted I write it down. I insisted I would remember. But suddenly . . .”

  Owen knew Aasta’s routines by heart. “Bet she needs two kinds of cheese, a dozen eggs, a quart of buttermilk, a—”

  “That’s exactly it. How did you know?”

  “It’s what I do,” he answered with a shrug. He marked the ledger under “Worthington,” then filled a bag and set it between them. “Thanks. Nice to see you.”

  “You too,” she replied, balancing the bag on the counter. “Before long, I’ll finish my degree.” Then she went on to talk about her summer of tutoring. How needy families had opened her eyes, that Koochiching County was still a frontier, and it was hard to attract teachers to the area. “I intend to teach here,” she said, “when I finish my degree. We need good teachers.”

  “True.” He nodded.

  “And cars, too,” she added. “How’s your Studebaker business going? You know, Aasta and Hans love the car you sold them. Whenever they have a free moment, they take it out for a spin.”

  “I sold one a few days back.”

  “You did? To whom?”

  “A tourist and his wife. They’d arrived by train, spent some time out at Kettle Falls, and when they returned, they decided to take a romantic drive back to Chicago in a new Studebaker.”

  “That’s sweet,” Sadie Rose said, her eyes closing slightly with a soft smile. “Makes me miss—”

  With a dismissive wave of his hand, he cut her off before she could go any further. He picked up her bag and opened the door with his shoulder. She followed, and he placed the bag in her arms.

  “If I don’t see you before you leave, have a great year at school,” he said. “You deserve it, you know.”

  She chewed on the nail of her middle finger, then shook her head, as if there was so much more she wanted to say. “You’re the one who deserves to go to school. You’re taking care of your family, doing all this for others. I admire that, but I know you’ve always wanted to go to school. You love learning! If there was a way that I could change that, I—”

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  He didn’t need sympathy. He needed to move on. All summer he’d worked on letting go of her. And now, he almost had. Then, before she could protest, he turned around and went back to work.

  For the next hour, he tried to concentrate on the ledger, but he couldn’t. He closed the book with a loud snap, told his mother he was stepping out for a moment, and walked to the end of the village pier.

  Some things weren’t meant to be.

  Water surged around the pier. A warm breeze brushed his face. Shrieks of laughter carried from kids swimming at the sand beach. Beyond the dock, playing follow the leader, a dozen juvenile mallards cruised, heads high and alert, now that they’d outgrown the need for a mother’s watchful eye. But still, there were risks. Northern pike lurked beneath the surface, with rows of razor teeth, ready to grab a young duck and pull it below.

  There wasn’t a damn thing he could do to change what was.

  He couldn’t change that he’d su
rvived and Jerry had not.

  He swallowed past the knot of guilt.

  He sucked in a deep breath, filling his lungs until they hurt, until he could feel the limits of his rib cage, the utter limits of a single breath, as if it were his last, as if it were Jerry’s last breath.

  And when he could hold his breath not a second longer, he exhaled hard, gasping for oxygen.

  His heart pounded.

  He was here.

  Alive.

  Alive, but good as dead.

  He was sick and tired of feeling miserable, sick, and no more human than Frankenstein’s monster.

  Jerry wouldn’t want him sulking around. He’d slap him and say, C’mon, pull it together!

  He owed it to Jerry . . . to live.

  Then and there, he made a vow. He swore to the air on his skin, the water swooshing and flowing around him, and the earth that kept him tethered . . .

  He swore to everything above, below, and between . . .

  He swore to the past, present, and future . . .

  Going forward, he’d make each day count.

  34

  READING THE Creamery and Milk Plant Monthly WASN’T Owen’s idea of entertainment, but if he was going to run this operation, he needed to stay informed. He thumbed through it as he stood at the customer counter. Studies showed that milk helped with intestinal disorders. (Dad hadn’t been far off with his buttermilk-to-drunks program, after all.) Studies in Wisconsin showed that malnourished schoolkids benefited from a midafternoon snack of a glass of milk and crackers. There were ideas on how to make European cheese, right here in the States, from Brie to Roquefort. And there were always ads for the “Buflovak,” a newer and better milk evaporation machine for making powdered milk. Maybe they’d purchase one . . . someday.

  With a wide grin and ruddy cheeks, Erling lumbered into the creamery, dropped everything—traveling case, signed baseball cap, bat, and ball, and half a bag of popcorn—rushed over to Mom behind the counter, lifted her up as if she were a porcelain doll, and spun her around. “What a time!”

  “Oh my!” Mom exclaimed, before her sturdy shoes touched the floor again. “Don’t tell me you went off and got married or something foolish.”

  Erling raised his arms to the ceiling. “I have seen the Babe in action! I shook hands with the legend himself. I don’t need to go anywhere again for my life to be complete!”

  At first Owen was sure the last statement was an exaggeration, but over the course of the day, Erling seemed as happy as a clam. He settled into his routines, mopped the backroom while whistling baseball songs, and showed his signed souvenirs to every customer.

  Owen envied Erling’s contentment with what seemed so little.

  The same afternoon, Mr. Boshelink came into the creamery. Dad had been easy on the wiry small man, a relatively new immigrant with a thick accent. Now he ran his tongue across his dry lips. “My ship, how you say, came in. You good to me. I want to settle up.” Then he plunked down a blank check, asked how much he owed, and paid off his bill in full.

  When Owen went to deposit the check later that day at the teller cage, the clerk—with a birthmark beet-red on his forehead—held up the check, then pointed his forefinger in the air, as if he had an epiphany. “I’ll be right back.”

  When he returned, he adjusted his spectacles and announced, with all the gravity of an undertaker, “I’m sorry, sir. But the check is no good. Whoever signed it forged the name. A few checks got by us before we realized what was going on.”

  “The man’s name is Boshelink,” Owen said. “Same name as on the check.”

  The clerk nodded. “Yes, but the real Boshelink works at a lumber camp. Someone stole his checks and is passing them off as his own.” Then the clerk produced another piece of paper with a signature at the bottom. “This is the real signature. See? They’re not even close.”

  “You’re telling me it’s no good. That the creamery is stuck for it?”

  “You might take it up with the sheriff.”

  Outside, Owen gripped the medal at his neck and let off a stream of swear words under his breath. He’d been taken. Hook, line, and sinker. He’d fallen for Boshelink—or whatever the man’s name was—his whole story about the anemic wife and firstborn and how he didn’t have any money. Owen had felt pity for him. Now he felt cheated.

  Owen waited for a Chrysler touring car to pass on its way across the tracks, then crossed the street to the White Turtle and took the entrance steps in two strides.

  Izzy was busy blowing smoke rings from her stool behind the counter.

  “Izzy, have you had trouble cashing checks lately?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. Just yesterday.”

  “Boshelink?”

  She crossed and uncrossed her stockinged legs, then shook her head of curls back and forth. “That’s who he claimed to be anyway. Oh, he got you, too? He had false identification to go along with it.”

  “Right.” Owen let out a bitter, short laugh. “I’m not going to let him steal from me!”

  Pengler stepped out of the restaurant and stopped beneath the moose head. “Owen, I’ve been doing some asking around.” He motioned behind toward the restaurant and blind pig. “Just found out where he might be holed up, that little weasel. Folks work hard for their money around here.”

  “I’m going to talk to the sheriff,” Owen said. “See if there’s any way to get money out of him.”

  “Well, if you do, here’s directions to where the guy might be.” He handed Owen a scrap of paper with writing on it. “Give this to the sheriff. He and I aren’t exactly cozy, so it’s better you don’t say where this came from.”

  Then Pengler motioned Owen closer. “Look at this,” he said. He closed his fist and extended his arm right to Owen’s eyes. Had he learned about Jerry? About their night on the lake and trying to make quick cash on their own? Owen closed his eyes, drew a deep long breath, bracing himself.

  “C’mon, Owen! The ring.”

  Owen opened his eyes. A gold band circled Pengler’s ring finger.

  “You got married?”

  Pengler nodded, a grin on his face. “Yup. And I have you to thank! You told me I needed to get married, and it was just what I needed to hear. Didn’t have to look farther than Darla. We’ve always gotten on, and well, she said, ‘Sure. Why not?’”

  “Good for you,” Owen said. “Now you’ll be able to get Jimmy back.”

  “Gotta go to court first,” he said, “but how can they keep him from me now?”

  Owen didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, but to a court, there were the not-so-tiny matters of bootlegging, brothels, and gambling.

  “Thanks again for this,” he said, tucking the slip of paper with directions in his shirt pocket. The sheriff was a family man with a wife and kids. He would have headed home for the day. Owen decided it could wait until morning. He’d stop by the sheriff’s office after his rounds.

  35

  TIPPER GROANED AND PRESSED HIS HEAD AGAINST OWEN’S leg.

  “I know, boy,” Owen said, gazing through the filmy windshield. “One last stop, I promise. Then we head home.”

  “Forging checks,” Owen said, scratching Tipper behind his floppy ears. “Same as stealing. How’d you feel if someone stole a bone from you—right out from under your paws?”

  Tipper moaned in reply.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Milk cans clanked as the creamery truck rumbled. Flannel shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, arm out the window, one hand on the wheel, Owen glanced at his side mirror.

  In clouds of roiling dust, the sheriff’s Model T Ford trailed behind.

  After his last morning delivery, he’d dropped by the sheriff’s office to report being swindled and to share a tip on the culprit’s location. Vandyke listened, mug of coffee between his hands. “If this fellow broke the law, ” the sheriff replied, “then he’ll pay. There’s always a price to pay.”

  Owen met Vandyke’s eyes. An unwelcome understandin
g sat there between them, as prickly as a porcupine. Owen’s gut churned. He couldn’t change what happened that god-awful night. He couldn’t change a thing. He stuffed down his feelings. There was plenty he could say to the sheriff, but this was about the here and now. He held his tongue and handed over the directions on a slip of paper.

  But Vandyke took one glance and waved the paper away. “Heck, Owen. It’s on your way home to Ranier, isn’t it? Just lead us out there and you can confirm the guy’s identity.”

  Truth was, Owen had never been to Boshelink’s shack, but he’d gotten directions from a reliable source. All he wanted was to see the swindler arrested, to turn out the man’s pockets and return what was owed to the creamery.

  Again, Owen checked his mirror.

  As he drove alongside Rainy River, a tugboat pulled a boom of logs. On the south side of the road loomed stockpiles of pine, cedar, and spruce, all destined for the paper mill or to be shipped south by train. He drew a breath of air, earthy with fresh-cut lumber and the decay of summer.

  He glanced at the small photo on the dashboard, which always sent a zigzag of lightning through him. He’d hoped the summer might have drawn him and Sadie closer, but there were too many ghosts between them now, too much left unsaid. Any day, she’d board the train south and return to college in St. Peter. Time to move on.

  After he crossed the tracks, he looked for the crooked white pine with a doughnut hole in its middle—following the directions Pengler had scribbled down—and took a right turn, hand over hand.

  At a slab-wood barn and pasture, Owen took a right. Two gray draft horses grazed, resting from pulling logs from the woods, hauling ice blocks from the frozen lake, and plowing fields. At the next turn, the gravel road snaked through a dark grove of cedars. Branches scraped along the sides of the creamery truck. Moose antlers topped a wooden post, and several yards beyond, he took a left. Long grasses swished along the truck’s underbelly as it made its way along muddy ruts. At a clearing, Owen slowed and pulled off to the side. He wanted to give himself plenty of room to turn around. He waved the sheriff and deputy ahead toward the small log shack with a front porch.