Cork nodded again.
“He’s a fucking redskin, man,” another voice near the door argued. “I say just waste him.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Cork finally gasped, “… hard… to… breathe…”
“You’re lucky you can breathe at all.” Potato-chip-breath leaned close to his ear. “We’re everywhere, O’Connor. We’re watching everything you do. You can’t take a shit without we don’t know about it. One more move we don’t like and you’re dead. Understand?”
“… yeah…” Cork managed.
The muzzle of the rifle dug into his skull as if drilling for oil. “I can’t hear you.”
“… understand…”
“Good. And, O’Connor. You know how to keep a secret? Keep this little conversation to yourself. You tell anyone about it, you even talk about it in your sleep, we’ll know. If it’s one thing we won’t tolerate, it’s a man who can’t keep a secret. Let’s go, boys.”
Potato-chip-breath pulled away. The weight lifted from Cork’s back. The door opened. Before it closed, Cork received a parting kick in his ribs. Then he was in darkness.
It took a minute for him to move. He heard the sound of snowmobiles in the woods where the ruins of the old foundry stood. The sound moved off like a swarm of departing insects. He rose slowly to his knees and touched his ribs. They hurt like hell. He held to the wall and painfully drew himself up. He flipped the light switch.
The sight that greeted him was almost worse than the pain. Sam’s Place was in shambles. The window over the kitchen sink was shattered. Cushions lay cut open on the floor. The mattress had been yanked off his bed, sliced apart, and the stuffing pulled out. The cabinets stood open, the contents scattered. There were Christmas presents in the closet, gifts for his children and for Jo and Rose. The wrapping had been ripped off, the gifts torn open. Through the door that led to the burger stand, Cork saw canisters and boxed goods for the summer tourist trade broken apart.
There was another problem. Cork could see his breath. The air inside the cabin felt no warmer than the air outside.
He sat on the cushionless couch for a while, shaking. First from shock, then rage. He wanted to kill someone. Blindly. But he didn’t know who.
When he was able to think straight and to move, he cut apart a cardboard box and taped it over the gaping window. The thermostat on the wall was still set for sixty-four degrees, but the room temperature was only three degrees above freezing. The radiators felt like ice. In the basement, he discovered the ancient oil burner was silent as death. He tried the reset button. Nothing happened. He kicked the burner a couple of times, then he went upstairs and called Art Winterbauer, who’d handled the old furnace in the past.
“Did you try the reset?” Winterbauer asked in a tired voice.
“I tried the reset.”
“Did you kick ’er a couple of times?”
“I kicked, for Christ sake.”
“Don’t get mad at me, Cork. I ain’t the one with the antique furnace. Look, it could be the thermostat,” Winterbauer said. “Won’t know till I have a chance to look, and I won’t have a chance till Monday at the earliest.”
“Monday?”
“Yep. Up to my eyeballs right now. I can give you the names of a couple of other guys you could try, but I doubt you’ll have much luck with them either. ’Sides, that old behemoth of yours takes some special doing. If you want to wait till Monday, use a space heater or something. Or drain your water pipes and check into a motel.”
He turned off the valve on the main water pipe, put a bucket under the drain valve, and opened it. He emptied the bucket twice in the sink before the flow slowed to an occasional drip. He flushed the toilet and drained the tank. All the while he was considering his options. He could, as Winterbauer suggested, stay in a motel. But he hated motels. Also, it was Christmas and he didn’t have that kind of money to throw away. He considered calling Molly, but his promise to the priest quickly turned him from that thought. Finally he went upstairs and dialed the number of the house on Gooseberry Lane. Rose answered.
“Of course you’ll stay here,” she told him when he explained his predicament. “I’ll get the guest room ready.”
“I think you should discuss it with Jo,” Cork cautioned her.
“If she were here, I would,” Rose replied. “But she’s not and I’d insist anyway.”
“Thanks, Rose,” Cork said. “Thanks a lot.”
He gathered up a change of clothes and a few toilet articles and put them in a gym bag. He put the gifts into a big box, thinking he would wrap them again at Gooseberry Lane. He took one last item, a rolled bearskin, from a trunk in the cellar behind the old heater. He locked the door, got in the Bronco, and headed…
Home.
Rose opened the kitchen door. She wore an apron, and the aroma of baking cookies floated out around her. There were traces of flour in her dustcolored hair.
“Christmas baking?” Cork hung his coat on a peg by the door.
“My favorite time of year. I can bake to my heart’s content. Would you like some milk and cookies?”
Rose took a half gallon carton of Meadow Gold from the refrigerator. Cork set his gym bag and the box of gifts and the rolled bearskin on the floor and went to the cookie jar on the counter by the sink. The cookie jar was shaped like Ernie from Sesame Street. Cork had bought it years before when Sesame Street was Jenny’s favorite program. Now his daughter admired the darker visions of Sylvia Plath and was considering piercing her nose.
Rose put a glass of milk on the table.
Cork sat down. “So where is everyone?”
Rose bent and peeked through the oven window. “Jo’s working late with Sandy Parrant. They’re trying to straighten out things with Great North in light of the judge’s suicide. Apparently everything’s pretty complicated.”
“I’ll bet,” Cork agreed.
“Jenny’s on a date.”
“Date?” Cork nearly choked. “She’s only fourteen.”
“They’ve just gone to a movie.”
“Who’d she go with?”
“Chuck Kubiak.”
“Don’t know him,” Cork said with a note of disapproval.
“He’s nice, Cork. Really. He’ll have her home by eleven-thirty.”
The buzzer on the stove went off, and Rose took out a sheet of sugar cookies shaped like Christmas trees.
“Anne’s in her room,” she went on. “Asleep or reading. And Stevie’s been down for hours.”
Cork watched his sister-in-law as she tapped colored sprinkles on the cookies. “How did we ever do without you, Rose?”
“You didn’t.” She laughed.
Which was almost true. She’d come just after Jenny was born, come to help for a few weeks while Jo finished law school. She never left. Although she was heavy then, she was heavier now, and at thirty-five was completely without the prospect of marriage in her own life. There were times when Cork felt sorry for Rose and guilty because all the care she could have given to a family of her own was lavished on his instead.
“I put the guest room in order for you,” Rose said as she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That’s my last batch tonight. I’m going to bed.”
“Any idea when Jo-” Cork began.
The back door opened before he finished speaking, and Jo stepped in. She took in the sight of Cork at the table and his things on the floor.
“A little late for a visit, isn’t it, Cork?”
“It’s not a visit, Jo.”
“What is it, then?” She eyed his gym bag again and the box and bearskin.
“I’d like to stay for a day or two.”
“I invited him,” Rose jumped in. “His furnace is broken and he has no heat.”
Jo went to the cookie jar, lifted Ernie’s head, and took out a cookie. She leaned against the counter and considered the situation as she nibbled.
“A day or two?” she said.
“Until Monday,” Cork tol
d her. “Art Winterbauer can’t come out until Monday at the earliest.”
She didn’t appear pleased by the prospect.
“It’s his house,” Rose argued with a note of anger. “For goodness sake, Jo, what harm will a couple of days do?”
Jo sighed and seemed to go a little limp, looking suddenly very tired. “All right,” she said.
“I have the guest room ready for him.” Rose began to undo her apron.
“I’m tired,” Jo said. “It’s been a long day. I’m going to bed.”
“Shouldn’t somebody wait up for Jenny?” Cork asked.
“She’s been on dates before.” Jo headed toward the living room. “She’ll be fine.”
Cork picked up his things. “Guess I’m tired, too.”
“Go on,” Rose said, shooing him with her hands. “I’ll lock up.”
Cork followed Jo upstairs. He looked in on Stevie, who lay twisted in his blankets. He carefully straightened out the bedding. The door to Anne’s room was slightly ajar and he peeked in. The reading lamp was on beside her bed. The Diary of Anne Frank lay open at her side, but she was sleeping soundly. Cork put the book on the stand and switched off the light.
Jo watched from the door of her bedroom. She leaned against the doorjamb with her arms folded. Behind her on the bed, her briefcase lay open, files laid out on the side of the bed that used to be Cork’s.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I told you. My furnace is on the blink.”
Jo looked skeptical. “I mean really. What’s this all about?”
“Circumstances beyond my control.” He shrugged.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek a moment, a long-standing habit when she was considering saying something against her better judgment. This time she only said, “Don’t hope for too much.”
“I’m not hoping for anything.” He moved past her toward the guest room. Her door closed at his back.
He spent a while in the bathroom tending his ribs, which had turned a sick-looking yellow. He swallowed three ibuprofen tablets, went to the guest room, stripped to his boxers and T-shirt, and crawled under the covers. He could hear Rose moving around in the attic room above him. That room was cozy, with a brass bed, mahogany dresser and vanity, flowered curtains, and a rocker where Rose sat at night for a long time reading. She read mysteries and romance novels and, although she wouldn’t admit it, kept a drawer full of National Enquirers. Cork lay in his bed listening to the squeak of her rocker as she read in the warm light of her lamp.
He was tired but couldn’t sleep. He was puzzled. Too many strange things had happened that didn’t seem to make sense. In the way his thinking had been conditioned to work, he was looking for connections.
The judge was dead. Paul LeBeau had vanished-onto the reservation, Cork would bet-with his father. The Windigo had called Lytton’s name. And someone had broken into Sam’s Place. On the surface, there was nothing, really, to connect any of these things. Still, they were extraordinary in a place like Aurora, and they’d happened within an extraordinarily short time. From what he’d seen examining the judge’s body, he believed it was very possible the judge hadn’t committed suicide. Whether Paul’s disappearance was connected with the judge’s death, he couldn’t say. It was probably mere coincidence that Joe John had chosen that particular time to spirit his son away. However, coincidence was not something Cork was trained to believe in. The ransacking of his cabin-how did that fit in? And over it all loomed the presence of the Windigo. How much stock should be put in the words of an old Anishinaabe medicine man?
He thought some more about Lytton, wondering why the Windigo would call the man’s name. He was a loner, a mean son of a bitch. Even so, Cork found himself feeling sorry for Harlan Lytton. The picture of the man on his knees beside his dog and the terrible sound of his grieving still twisted Cork’s insides. Everyone was capable of loving something. Even a man like Lytton, who loved his dog. Now the thing Lytton loved had been taken from him and he was utterly alone. That was something Cork understood.
He couldn’t help turning his thinking to Molly. What was she doing now? Knitting? Reading maybe? She was a big reader. Novels, self-discovery, things that when she talked about them seemed interesting and enlightening. She often took classes at Aurora Community College, not with any goal in mind except to learn. She was a woman curious in many ways.
Cork looked out at the darkness beyond the window of the guest room. Sometimes Molly used the sauna at night, then stood outside in the cold and studied the stars while the steam rose off her skin and the chill clamped shut her pores. Was she there now? Like a beautiful white ghost, naked and vaporous?
Whatever she was doing, it would end with her alone in bed. Like Cork. Like Rose. Like Jo.
Finally drowsy, Cork closed his eyes thinking that there was something wrong with a world in which so many people slept alone.
16
“Daddy!”
They came before Cork was really awake. He heard them scamper across the floor of the guest room, then was jolted wide awake as they leaped onto the bed, driving their knees into his kidneys. He rolled over, felt them warm and wiggly all around him.
“Hey, Anne, Stevie.” He grinned.
He wrapped them in his arms and hugged them tightly to him. He felt a stab at his ribs where the blows had hammered him the night before. But the good feel of his children helped him ignore the pain. The kids were still in their rumpled pajamas, their teeth unbrushed, their hair stale and disheveled. Even so, they seemed like heaven to Cork.
“Aunt Rose said you were here.” His daughter buried her face against his T-shirt. “Are you staying?”
“For a while,” he said.
“Quithmath tree!” Stevie said.
“What?”
“We’re going to get our Christmas tree today,” Anne explained. “Are you coming?”
Cork rubbed Stevie’s hair. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Jenny stepped into the open doorway looking tired and grumpy. “What’s all the noise?”
Cork lifted his head so that Jenny saw him.
“Oh,” she said. “What happened? Break your leg or something?”
“Only my furnace.”
She scratched at her purple hair. “Sort of a one-night stand here?”
“Sort of,” Cork admitted.
She shrugged and turned to leave.
“We’re buying a Christmas tree today,” he called after her.
“Ho, ho, ho,” she said, her voice trailing dismally down the hall.
Rose had oatmeal ready for them. On top of the steaming cereal in their bowls, Cork and Stevie and Anne made funny faces with raisins. Jo had gone to work long before Cork or the others were up. Jenny finally came down near the end of breakfast.
“Oatmeal, Jen?” Rose offered.
“I’ll just make toast,” Jenny replied sullenly. “I’m not very hungry.” She took a couple of pieces of whole wheat from the bread drawer and dropped them into the toaster. She crossed her arms and waited.
“After breakfast, would you be willing to take a short drive with me?” Cork asked.
“Where?”
“I’m going to visit a couple of hungry friends.”
“Some kind of Samaritan visit in keeping with the season? I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Just for a little while. I’d appreciate it.”
“You could order me to go. You’re still my father.” She was watching the toaster carefully.
“I don’t want to do that.”
Rose quietly wiped dishes at the sink. Stevie and Anne had gone to the living room to watch cartoons. The toast popped up. Jenny stared at it a moment.
“I suppose,” she finally agreed.
The drive was painfully silent. Cork tried to think exactly what it was he’d meant to say to her, but all the words seemed weak and self-pitying. Jenny stared out the window and sniffed.
“A cold?” Cork finally asked.
“How’d your date go last night?”
She shrugged.
“What’s his name? Kubiak?”
She didn’t seem to think that deserved a response of any kind.
“Go out with him much?”
She waited a few moments, then said, “A couple of times.”
“Movies, huh?”
She swung her gaze toward him and gave him a look that made him feel as if a door had just been slammed in his face.
“Just interested,” he apologized.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.” She looked away again, as if the all too familiar landscape of Aurora were far more interesting than anything her father could possibly say.
But Cork kept trying. “Still planning on reading Sylvia Plath at the Christmas program?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d talked it over with your teacher. Maybe she’d changed your mind.”
“She respects my judgment,” Jenny said.
“Good.” Cork nodded, trying to generate a show of enthusiasm. “That’s great.”
He pulled the Bronco up beside Sam’s Place.
“What are we doing here?” She gave the Quonset hut a look of disgust.
“Wait and see.”
The morning was bright and cold, the sunlight startling. Cork went inside and half-filled the bucket with dried corn.
“Going to try farming now?” Jenny asked when he came back out.
“Follow me.”
He led the way down to the open water. The geese glided across the surface, riding their reflections in the still, blue water, leaving gentle creases where they’d moved.
Jenny watched them, unimpressed. “Annie’s told me about these two. Dumb if you ask me. Just asking for trouble.”
“Spread the grain on the ground for them.” Cork pointed to the circle he’d cleared in the snow.
She frowned but did as he’d instructed, then stood expectantly watching the geese on the water.
“Why don’t they come? Aren’t they hungry?”
“They’re wild. They’re still more afraid of us than they are hungry. Let’s step over this way.”
Iron Lake co-1 Page 11