Red Jacket

by Joseph Heywood

  “You were headed over to the Keweenaw?” Bapcat said.

  “I usually work alone—go in, gather information, and bring it out to pass on to my boss or clients. I don’t get involved in nothing else, see? But I got out here and there’s this Fisher, and he tells me, ‘You’re working the conflict lines,’ and that’s when I didn’t bother getting on the boat. I gather information, nothing else, and I don’t think everybody interested in unions is a flaming socialist. My specialty is information-gathering, not skullduggery or violence.”

  “Yet here you sit, broken leg and all,” Zakov pointed out. “My deepest sympathies. I have myself recently recovered from a similar disability.”

  “I drown my disappointments in Grondin’s fine menu.”

  “What do you live on?”

  “Promotion. Each time I get someone to order a meal, I get a percentage of the price, and I talk up Grondin’s all over town—or I will, when I heal sufficiently to get around better.”

  “Is Fisher armed?” Bapcat asked.

  “Always, and you can bet his bloody Krag is never far from hand.”

  Krag.“He talk about his background?”

  “Not to me, but I’ve heard he brags to some that he killed nineteen Spaniards at Roosevelt’s side in Cuba.”

  Frankus Fish for sure. Why is he here? “Who does he work for in Copper Country?”

  “Only J. J. Ascher. Who places the orders with Ascher, I can’t say, and since I was never out there, I can’t even venture a guess.”

  “Did he indicate where he would be in the Keweenaw?”

  “Nothing specific, only that he had special business in the north.”

  “Of which county?” Bapcat asked.

  “How many are there?” Riordan asked back.

  “You took a ship, not a train.”

  “That’s the order come down from New York, and when I saw Fisher he didn’t bother to explain. If you fellas don’t mind, the Mulligan’s not getting any hotter.”

  Deputy Barothy came down from stowing his gear and took them to a small cafe near the railroad depot where they ate a logger’s meal of fresh baked bread, beans and bacon, black tea, and vinegar pie with spice and raisins.

  Barothy was an older man, a longtime timber cruiser who had gotten a political appointment as game warden in northern Schoolcraft County and demonstrated enough mettle and competence to be shifted to civil service this year. Harju told Bapcat that Barothy knew more about deer and their habits than all but a rare few outdoorsmen in the state.

  Bapcat told Barothy about the Keweenaw and how deer seemed scarce most of the time.

  The older warden said, “You cut down all the whites for your mines, and I mean pine, spruce, and cedar, not to mention hemlock. Take them down, you remove shade, and that lets the bright sun hit evergreen shrubs like Canady yew. Now, you ask a big old buck deer what his favorite vittles might be, and sure as blue vitriol kills blue jackets, old horny head will say, ‘Apples, clover, and Canady yew.’ I seen pictures of the mines over your way, and all those trees got cut down. Was me, I’d go look down in your gorges and deep canyons for yew, anywhere they can get good shade. Find yew, find deer, and that, my boy, is a fact of white-tailed deer life, not some city sport’s fantasy.”

  “Is there yew around here?”

  “Not much, but we’ve got a small stand over by the watering hole. Can show you fellas, if you want.”

  They walked west down the main street until they reached the Fox River, where it ran south past the west edge of the village, and Barothy took them to a place just north of the railroad trestle.

  The yews were under a thick stand of white birch and ringed in by thick brakes of red willow. Bapcat remembered seeing what he now knew was yew in several places in the Keweenaw, places he and Zakov had not yet patrolled.

  “The water here have something special that makes it good to drink?” Zakov asked.

  Barothy chuckled. “Well, if it’s good enough for speckled trout, it’s surely good enough for mankind, but we don’t call this the watering hole on account the water’s particularly sweet. See, this has always been a lawless town, and for long periods there weren’t no police or judiciary, so when somebody got himself out of line, citizens had to take care of it themselves. If the man did something, for example—say, took advantage of a lady against her wishes—the committee would walk him over here, make him strip, wade the river, and keep going. Men with bullwhips flogged him the whole time he crossed the river until he was gone, and he was told that if he ever came back, there would be a bullet waiting for him.”

  “What if he resisted the whipping?” Zakov asked.

  “They shot him right here.”

  “This approach,” Zakov said, “is something a Russian can embrace.”

  83

  Marquette

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1913

  The train hissed and jerked to a stop at the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway depot in Seney, and the two game wardens clambered aboard.

  A short woman with an open face and clear voice asked, “If you gentlemen are hunters, shouldn’t your weapons be safely secured in the baggage car?” The woman had a pad of paper and pencil in hand.

  “Tools for your job?” Bapcat asked the woman.

  She smiled, “I suppose they are.”

  Bapcat showed their shared badge and put the rifle between the seats. Bapcat reminded himself that he needed to have another badge made for his Russian partner.

  “Is the weapon for dispatching wounded, sick, or wild animals?” the woman asked.

  “All of those things, two-legged and four-,” Bapcat said, sitting down beside her. The Russian had already slid into a seat by a ginger-haired beauty with far too much face paint.

  “What’s your work?” Bapcat asked the young woman beside him.

  She had a small, fat leather briefcase under her legs and a lot of pencil graphite on her left hand. “I could say I hunt jobs,” she said with a smile. “I work for Northern State Normal School in Marquette, officially the secretary for placement, which means I travel around the Upper Peninsula trying to arrange jobs for our teaching graduates. So far, every single one of them has been placed. Knock on wood,” she added.

  Bapcat liked her.

  Zakov and ginger-hair were conversing with an overabundance of dramatic hand gestures. “Sounds like you’re pretty good at your work,” Bapcat said.

  “I like to think so. Axelinavellimina Aho, but people call me Lina,” she said, holding out her small hand.

  Bapcat grinned. He knew only one Finnish phrase, which equated roughly to “How are you today?” “Kuinka voit tanaan?”

  The Aho woman smiled. “Hauska tavata. How long have you been a game warden?”

  “Six months.” The words were out before they sank in. It seemed sometimes like he had always done this job. He could hardly remember working his traplines.

  “Before that?”

  “Beaver trapper.”

  “Schooling?”

  “Grade seven, more or less.” Mostly less.

  She had a quiet, thoughtful manner. “Did you leave school for work?”

  “No—to become a cowboy.”

  She chuckled. “Ah, a romantic’s choice. How did that turn out?”

  “Some of the time I was a big-game hunting guide out west, and later I was a soldier.”

  “Where?”

  “Cuba.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Rough Riders?”

  He nodded.

  “Surely that’s something to be proud of,” she said.

  “Everything I’ve done seems like an accident,” he confessed. “Just happens.”

  “And you think this is unusual? Do you have regrets?”

  He whispered, “Sometimes
I wish I had finished school.”

  “Why don’t you?” she asked.

  “I’m too old.”

  “Nonsense. How old are you—if I may be so bold as to inquire?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “There’s no age barrier to finishing school.”

  It was his turn to smile. “Can’t see me sitting in a classroom full of tykes.”

  “Neither can I,” she said, “and that’s not what I’m talking about. There are tests to help determine what level you’re at.”

  “Then what?”

  “A place like Northern State Normal would evaluate you on your tests, interviews, life experiences—of which yours seem numerous—and then we’d decide what level you should enter.”

  “Is this what you do, evaluate?”

  “No, but there’s a secretary who does that, and she’s very good. She picks the students and when they graduate, I help them obtain positions.”

  “I have a position,” he said.

  “You anticipate never changing?”

  “No, ma’am, probably not.”

  “Doesn’t matter. More education and knowledge will help you do your job better. It always does.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. School seemed an unclimbable mountain, and after a while he tuned out the helpful woman, and thought about when he’d see Jaquelle and the boy again.

  Upon their arrival in Marquette, Zakov and his traveling companion arose, and Bapcat realized that the two had made a connection. Zakov looked back at him and mouthed, Brunswick Hotel?

  Bapcat nodded.

  No stopover had been intended here, but it wouldn’t hurt to see Harju again. Zakov went off with ginger-hair and Bapcat walked up the steep hills to Harju’s green house on Rock Street.

  “Didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Where’s our Russian?” Harju asked.

  •••

  Two hours later Bapcat was smoking with Harju in the green house, helping the shaved-head Finn to clean and oil weapons.

  “I don’t feel like I’m making headway,” Bapcat confessed.

  “It takes time, and the stakes are high, Lute. If this thing doesn’t work and the system reverts to the old political patronage, we might as well fold the whole bloody thing as unworkable. We can’t have statewide protection of natural resources run on pinhead county-by-county rules. The people of this state deserve better.”

  •••

  Zakov was seated on the second-floor porch overlooking the street when Bapcat got back to the Brunswick Hotel.

  “Where’s your lady friend?” Bapcat asked.

  “She is neither a friend, nor a lady, and our business has been successfully transacted.”

  “Did you even get her name?”

  “To what end?” the Russian countered. “It was just business—pleasant and satisfying, but just business. Did you see Harju?”

  “Briefly.”

  “There’s a night train west,” Zakov said.

  “Let’s stay the night and eat a good meal.”

  “No argument. All that disagreeable strike business seems a million miles away from here.”

  “I guess we’ll be back in it soon enough.”

  “Don’t remind me, gospodin.”

  “You’ve used that word before. What does it mean?”

  “Gospodin means citizen. It’s an honorific.”

  Good—explain the meaning of one word I don’t know with another word I don’t know.

  84

  Champion, Marquette County

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1913

  The DSS&A train made the long, slow climb past Negaunee and Ishpeming, culminating in the long Superior Grade to Champion, where Bapcat saw two loggers get off the train and no passengers get on.

  Zakov stepped outside and came back to report a wagonload of wooden boxes being loaded into the baggage car. “Caskets, it would appear,” the Russian said, sitting down.

  “How many?”

  “I didn’t make a precise count. Ten or twelve. What does it matter?”

  “I don’t know, but the Champion mine closed three years ago, and there aren’t many people living around here anymore, so it seems odd to think of that many people dying suddenly.”

  Typhoid sometimes devastated mining communities, and TB was always lurking, as Big Louie’s untimely death had proven. Even something called “fall influenza” sometimes swept through a town. But he had heard nothing of any outbreaks, and there had been no mention in the Soo papers. Such an outbreak was always covered by the news, because it could spread fast by ship or rail.

  “Could be disease,” the Russian suggested. “An epidemic.”

  Bapcat shrugged. “We would have heard.” He put his head back and tried to sleep.

  Zakov woke him, caught him in a groggy state.

  “Where are we?”

  “Chassell, taking on passengers. There are twelve boxes.”

  “You went back there?”

  “The baggage man is Davidov, alleged son of aristocratic Russians. The boxes are labeled ‘Ore Samples.’ ”

  Bapcat rubbed his eyes and saw they were stopped again. “Ore ain’t our business.”

  “Perhaps. But why not humor me? Let us visit Gospodin Davidov.”

  The train lurched out of Chassell moving north as they made their way through swaying passenger carriages, having difficulty maintaining their balance until they went into the fifth car in line, the one just ahead of the caboose. It was decorated outside with white ribbons. Zakov had pointed this out in Marquette, explaining that railroad men always marked the deaths of other railroaders with white ribbons on cabooses, a practice he had no explanation for.

  Mines blow horns, trains decorate their cabooses, soldiers lower flags to half-mast. Why is it the start of life gets so little public celebration, only death? Perhaps finishing school would help me to understand. Do the decorations relate to the coffins? And if so, why do the boxes indicate they have ore in them?

  Bapcat saw that the boxes were made of Norway pine, a poor choice for weight-bearing storage containers. They were stacked in four rows of three. Zakov introduced Davidov, who claimed Russian descent, but had been born and raised in America, spoke with no accent, and evinced little interest in Zakov’s proclaimed genuine Russianness.

  Zakov held out a plug of Spear Head and Davidov pinched off a jot and put it between his front lip and lower gum. “Spasibo.”

  Zakov and Davidov made small talk, and Bapcat thought about going back to his seat, but his partner clearly wanted him to see something, so he began to look around, careful to move his eyes more than his head so as not to be too obvious. Along the seam of a wooden box he saw hair, grayish-red, tinged with white, and he made eye contact with Zakov, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Mr. Davidov, do you know the people who shipped these boxes?” Bapcat asked. Each box tag says the weight is one thousand, five hundred pounds. It took eight of us to carry Louis Moilanen’s coffin, which weighed seven hundred pounds at most, and we had a helluva time with it.

  “Not personally. They belong to a company called Nesmith in Houghton.”

  “Regular shipments?”

  “First one I seen.”

  “Ore, right?”

  “That’s what the bills of lading declare.”

  “Does the railroad unload them?”

  “No, Nesmith’s people meet the train in Houghton.”

  “Are there Nesmith people in Champion, too?”

  “I suppose so, but it was our depot men who put this load on board.”

  “So the traffic is one way, Champion to Houghton?”

  “How many men does it take to load these?” Zakov interrupted.

  “Three,” the
trainman said. “Now, why are you fellows asking all these questions?”

  Three men to move fifteen hundred pounds? No chance.

  “Occupational curiosity,” Zakov said.

  The conductor said, “I’ve heard it said such a thing causes poor health in cats.”

  “Not to worry,” Zakov said brightly. “We are people, not feline misanthropes.”

  The game wardens went into the nearest passenger car. It was practically empty. “Deer hair?” Bapcat asked.

  Zakov reached into a pocket and pulled out tufts of hair. “In the box seams, just as you saw. Further, the boxes are extremely cold. I felt them. Iced, I’m guessing.”

  “Ore doesn’t need cooling,” Bapcat said.

  “You Americans have peculiar habits and customs. Do you wish to challenge the shipment and Mr. Davidov now, or when it is picked up in Houghton?”

  “I doubt we can get a search warrant that fast. Let’s follow the boxes, see where they take us.”

  “It would be a small tragedy if a full box fell from the train and spilled its contents.”

  “I don’t mind pushing rules,” Bapcat admitted, “but it’s a federal crime to disturb US Mail, and I don’t know if a railroad shipment qualifies as US Mail.” Yet another example of my own ignorance—another reason to go back to school. Why are we even bothering with this?

  “All of this insistence on following the law seems to me to sometimes get in the way of enforcing the law. In Russia we open mail if that is what is needed. The czar’s orders support such direct intervention. Power is what makes the police effective, not fair play and frivolous legal requirements.”

  85

  Houghton

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1913

  Three men wearing gray overalls came to the station with a tall wagon and four hulking mules.

  “That should bear the load,” Zakov said with grudging admiration. “But it now seems far too much wagon for too little weight.”

  Three men to load, three to unload. “You don’t use Norway pine on heavily loaded boxes,” Bapcat said, thinking the same thing. “This is for show.” It was the contradiction between wood type and weight that made him look more closely at the boxes in the baggage car. They had gotten off the train, taken their gear, and set up to watch the baggage operation.