Boundary waters

3

Cork was breathing hard and feeling great. He’d been running for an hour and he was nearing home. Each stride landed on a mat of fallen leaves and each breath filled him with the dusty smell of a long, dry autumn. He kept to a gravel road that paralleled the Burlington Northern tracks. The tracks ran through the town of Aurora, Minnesota, and in doing so, shadowed Iron Lake. In the late afternoon of that mid-October day, the lake was dead calm, a perfect mirror of a perfect sky, blue and piercing. The trees along the shoreline were ablaze, bursts of orange and russet that exploded again on the still surface of the water. In boats here and there, solitary fishermen cast their lines, shattering the mirror in brief silver splashes.

Cork cleared a small stand of gold-leafed birch and aspen that surrounded the ruins of an old foundry, and Sam’s Place came into view. It was a Quonset hut, second world war vintage, that had been turned into a burger stand by an old friend of Cork’s named Sam Winter Moon. The front of the hut was decorated with pictures of burgers-Sam’s Super Deluxe, especially-and fries and ice cream cones. Cork lived in the back part of the long hut. He’d inherited the place a couple of years earlier after his old friend was killed by a scared little man with a big rifle.

As he crossed the tracks, he heard a scream come from Sam’s Place. He kicked into a sprint and ran.

Behind the sliding screen of the serving window, his twelve-year-old daughter, Annie, jumped up and down wildly.

“What is it?” Cork called.

Annie ripped the headphones of her Walkman from her ears. “Notre Dame just scored! Yes!”

She was tall, athletic, and very freckled. She had red hair kept austerely short. At the moment she wore blue-jean cutoffs and a T-shirt with colorful block letters that spelled out LOVE KNOWS NO COLOR. Her enthusiasm for Notre Dame was long-standing and legendary. Annie was more Catholic than the pope. There were times when Cork envied her profound and simplistic faith because it was not a thing he shared anymore. On that afternoon, however, the perfection of the day had given him a sense of spiritual peace as profound as anything that came of Christian prayer.

Straight is my path.

Straight is my mind.

Straight is my heart.

Straight is my speech.

Kind will I be to my brothers and sisters.

Kind will I be to beast and bird.

He remembered the words of the drum song old Henry Meloux sang. That seemed to just about cover it all as far as Cork was concerned.

“Where’s Jenny?” Cork asked. He’d left his two daughters in charge while he went for his daily run. Annie had stayed at her post. Jenny was nowhere to be seen.

“She said it was too slow and she went for a walk.”

Cork could tell his daughter disapproved. To Annie, authority was important, rules existed for good reason, and any breach in protocol was always to be viewed with a disapproving eye. She was a wonderful Catholic.

“Has it been slow?”

“Dead,” Annie admitted.

“Good for you, though,” Cork observed. “You’ve been able to listen to the game without being bothered.”

Annie grinned and put her headphones back on.

“I’m going to shower,” Cork said. The salt in his sweat was crystallizing and he felt gritty.

Before he could move, a delivery truck bounced over the railroad tracks, kicked up dust along the unpaved road to Sam’s Place, and pulled to a stop a half-dozen yards from where Cork stood. The truck was painted gold and bore a big green shamrock and green lettering that read CLOVER LEAF POTATO CHIPS. Charlie Aalto, a large, potbellied Finn, stepped out, wearing a gold shirt and gold cap, both of which bore the same green shamrock logo as the truck.

“What d’ya say dere, O’Connor? Training for another marathon, looks like.”

“One a year is enough, Charlie,” Cork said. He’d run in the Twin Cities marathon only a week before. His first. He hadn’t broken four hours, but he’d finished and that had been just fine. “What’re you doing out here? Monday’s your usual drop-by.”

“On my way in from Tower. Figured I might as well save myself a trip. How’s business?”

“Been good. Slow at the moment, but the best fall I’ve ever seen.”

Charlie opened the back of his truck, where boxes of potato chips were stacked. “Gonna pay for it,” Charlie said. “Snow by Halloween, betcha. Bunch of it. And one tough bastard of a winter after that.” He pulled down two boxes, one regular, one barbecue.

“What makes you think so, Charlie?”

“I was just shootin’ the breeze with old Adolphe Penske. Over to Two Corners, you know. Runs a trapline up on Rust Creek. Says he ain’t seen coats on the muskrats in years like what they’re gettin’ now.”

“Means good ice fishing,” Cork considered.

“Yah,” the Finn said, nodding. With a look of envy, he eyed the nearest fisherman on the lake. “Been a busy year. Ain’t had near enough time in my boat. Like to be on the lake right now, fishin’ like dat son of a gun out dere.” He watched a few moments more. “Well,” he decided, “maybe not like him.”

Cork glanced at the fisherman on Iron Lake. “Why not?”

“Hell, look at ’im. Don’t know squat about fishin’. Usin’ a surface lure, looks like. You know, a topwater plug. Supposed to hop the dang thing across the surface, fool them Northerns into believin’ it’s a frog or somethin’. Dat guy’s lettin’ it sink like it was live bait. Ain’t no fish dumb enough to hit on that.” He shook his head in misery. “God save us from city folk.”

“Come to think of it,” Cork said, “he’s been out there the whole day and I’ll be damned if I’ve seen him pull anything in.”

Charlie handed Cork a pen and a receipt to sign for the chips. “Now you tell me why any fisherman, even a goddamn dumb one, would stay in the same place the whole day if the fish ain’t bitin’.”

Another scream burst from Sam’s Place.

“Dat Annie?” Charlie asked.

“She’s listening to the Notre Dame game. They must’ve scored again.”

“Still plannin’ on bein’ a nun?”

“Either that,” Cork said, signing for the boxes of chips before Charlie took off, “or the first female quarterback for the Fighting Irish.”

Sam’s Place stood on the outskirts of Aurora, hard on the shore of Iron Lake. Sam Winter Moon had built a simple, sturdy dock where the pleasure boats that supplied most of his business tied up. Directly north was the Bearpaw Brewery, separated from Cork’s property by a tall chain-link fence. Cork didn’t much like the brewery, but, in fact, it had been there longer than Sam’s Place, and in the hard economic times before the Iron Lake Ojibwe built the Chippewa Grand Casino, it had sustained lots of households in Aurora. So what could he say?

Cork eyed the nearly empty lake as he passed the chip boxes through the window to Annie. “What do you say we call it a day,” he suggested.

“What about Jenny?”

“She knows the way home.”

“We’re supposed to stay open another hour,” she reminded him. “What if someone comes expecting to eat and we’re not here?”

“What’s the use of being the boss if you can’t break the rules once in a while?” Cork told her. “Let’s shut ’er down.”

Annie didn’t move. She nodded toward a car pulling into the place vacated by Charlie Aalto’s chip truck. “See? A customer.”

The car was a rental, a black Lexus. The man who got out pulled off his sunglasses and walked their way.

“Corcoran O’Connor?”

He was a big man, late fifties, with thin hair going gray and a thin, graying mustache. He had a long, jowled face, not especially handsome, that reminded Cork a little of a bloodhound.

“I’m O’Connor.”

The man was dressed in an expensive leather jacket, light brown suede like doe hide, with a rust-colored turtleneck underneath. His clothes were the color and weight for a normal fall day. Too warm for that day, but the long, hot autumn had them all surprised. Despite the quality of his clothing, he seemed-maybe because of his easy, lumbering gait-like a man who’d be at home staring at the rump of a mule all day while he wrestled a plow through red clay.

“My name’s William Raye.” He offered Cork his hand.

“I know,” Cork said. “Arkansas Willie.”

“You remember me.” The man sounded pleased.

“Even without the biballs and the banjo, I’d recognize you anywhere. Annie.” Cork turned. “Let me introduce William Raye, better known as Arkansas Willie. Mr. Raye, my daughter Annie.”

“Well, hey there, little darlin’. How y’all doin’?”

His voice was slow, like his gait, and all his words seemed to be gifted with an extra syllable. It was a voice Cork remembered well. Twenty years ago, every Saturday night, Cork had managed to clear his schedule to be in front of the television for Skunk Holler Hoedown. The program was syndicated, a country music review full of guitars and fiddles and banjos and enough corn to feed a hungry herd of cattle, broadcast from the Grand Ol’ Opry in Nashville and hosted by Arkansas Willie Raye and his wife, a woman named Marais Grand.

“Sugar, I wonder if you’d pour me a little water there,” Raye asked Annie. “My throat’s dry as a Skunk Holler hooch jug come Sunday mornin’.”

“Still entertaining, Mr. Raye?” Cork asked.

“Might as well call me Willie. Most folks do. Nope, don’t even do charities anymore. I put away my biballs and banjo after Marais died.” The hurt was old, but the man’s voice carried a fresh sadness. He put his hands in his pockets and explored the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “I have a recording company now,” he said, brightening. “Ozark Records. Biggest country label in the business. The Blacklock Brothers, Felicity Green, Rhett Taylor. They’re all on Ozark.”

“Here you are, Mr. Raye.” Annie passed a big Sweetheart cup full of water and ice through the window.

“I thank you kindly, honeybunch.”

“Up here for the color? Annie asked.”

“No, actually I’m up here to see your daddy.” He turned to Cork. “Is there a place we can talk for a few minutes? In private.”

“Mr. Raye and I are going to walk a bit, Annie. Hold down the fort?”

“Sure, Dad.”

They strolled to the end of the dock, where sunnies swam in the shallows. The water was rust colored from the heavy concentration of iron ore in the earth. Raye looked out over the lake, smiling appreciatively.

“I only made it up here once. When Grandview was being built. It’s every bit as beautiful as I remember it. Easy to see why Marais loved it like she did.” He set his water cup down on the bleached planking of the old dock and pulled a compact disc from the pocket of his leather jacket. He handed the disc to Cork. “Know who that is?”

“Shiloh,” Cork said, remarking on the woman whose picture filled the cover. She was a slight woman, young, very pretty, with smooth black hair like a waterfall down her back all the way to her butt. “One of Annie’s favorites.”

“My daughter,” Raye said. “And Marais’s.”

“I know.”

Raye regarded him earnestly out of that long, hounddog face. “Do you know where she is?”

Cork was caught off guard. “I beg your pardon.”

“If you do,” Raye rushed on, “I only need to know she’s all right. That’s all.”

“Willie, I’m afraid I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

Raye’s big shoulders dropped. His face glistened with sweat. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on one of the posts that anchored the dock. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’ve got to sit down.”

Cork hooked his foot around the leg of a small stool he sometimes used when fishing from the dock and nudged it toward Raye, who sat down heavily. The man picked up a golden leaf that had blown onto the dock and idly tore it into little bits as he spoke.

“Marais sometimes talked about the people back here, the people she grew up with. When she talked about you she called you Nishiime.”

“Means ’little brother,’” Cork said.

“I guess she thought a lot of you.”

“I’m flattered, but I don’t understand what that has to do with Shiloh.”

“The deal is this: My daughter’s been missing for a while. Several weeks ago, she canceled all her engagements and dropped from sight. The tabloids are having a field day.”

“I know. I’ve seen them.”

“She’s been writing me. A letter every week. All the letters have been postmarked from Aurora. Two weeks ago, the letters stopped.”

“Maybe she just got tired of writing.”

“If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here.”

“She didn’t say in her letters where she is?”

“Nothing specific. She didn’t want anyone to know. She was here for something she called… I don’t remember exactly. It sounded like misery.”

“Misery.” Cork pondered that a moment. “ Miziweyaa, maybe? It means ’all of something. The whole shebang.’ Does that make sense to you?”

“Not to me.” Raye shrugged. “Anyway, she talked about a cabin way out in the Boundary Waters. And she said she’d been guided there by an old friend of her mother, someone with Indian blood. That’s why I thought it might be you.”

“I don’t know anything about your daughter, Willie. What’s your worry exactly?”

“See, Shiloh’s been under the care of a psychiatrist for a while. Drug abuse, depression. She’s tried suicide before. When the letters stopped…” He looked up at Cork like a man staring out of a deep well hoping to be thrown a rope. “All I want is to know for sure my daughter’s alive and okay. Will you help me?”

“How?”

“You could start by helping me find the man who guided her in. That’s all.”

Out on the lake, a motor kicked in. A couple of hundred yards from shore, a boat began to troll, gently wrinkling the perfect surface, leaving a wake that rolled away from it like a blue silk flag on a listless breeze.

Cork shook his head. “A man with Indian blood? That could be a pretty tall order. Half this county has some Anishinaabe blood in them. I’m not the sheriff around here anymore. I just run a hamburger stand. I think you should go to the proper authorities on this one.”

“I can’t take a chance on publicity,” Raye said, looking stricken. “If word got out that Shiloh was somewhere up in the woods here, those tabloid reporters would be on this place like dogs on a ham bone. No telling who’d be out there looking for her. Shiloh gets more than her share of letters from psychotic fans. My God, it would be like open season.” He threw away the remains of the leaf he’d torn apart. The broken pieces drifted away, shuddering as the sunnies nibbled at them, fooled by their size and color and sudden appearance, which mimicked insects lighting on the water. “Look, I know you don’t really know me. But I’m not just asking this for me. If Marais were still alive, she’d be the one doing the asking.”

Cork rubbed his arms to generate some heat. He could feel in his legs and shoulders the stiffness from his run. “I have a business, Will. And I don’t do police work anymore.”

Raye stood up and desperately took hold of Cork’s shoulder. “Help me find her and I’ll pay you enough to retire tomorrow.”

“I don’t know if I could help you find her.”

“Will you try? Please?”

Behind the serving window, Annie screamed. Cork looked her way. The scream had been one of excitement, not terror, but it made him think. What if Annie were the one out there? Or Jenny? One of his own. He’d be desperate, too. Circumstance alone had saddled Willie Raye with this burden. It wasn’t Cork’s business or responsibility, but he said, “You say you got a letter every week. And all were postmarked Aurora?”

“Yes. There wasn’t much in them that I could see would be any help. But maybe there’s something y’all would pick up on. You’re welcome to look at them. They’re back at my cabin.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Grandview.”

“Grandview? Been a long time.”

“I know. Told myself lots of times to get shut of the place. It’s the past. But Marais, she loved it so. I just couldn’t bring myself to let it go.”

Cork said, “I’ll stop by this evening. I want to shower and eat first. Say, seven o’clock?”

“Thanks.” Raye grabbed his hand and pumped it hard. “Thank you kindly.”

After Arkansas Willie had driven away, Cork returned to the serving window. “How’s the game going?”

“Over. Notre Dame won.” Annie gave a big victory grin.

“What do you say? Think we can shut ’er down?”

Annie started about the business of closing. “What did Mr. Raye want?”

“A little help finding something. I’ll take care of it.”

“He talks like a hillbilly. Is he?”

“Don’t let him fool you, Annie. I’m sure he’s made a fortune sounding like a hayseed.”

Cork cleaned up outside, pulling the big trash bag from the barrel by the picnic table and hauling it to the Dumpster near the road. As he headed back toward Sam’s Place, he noticed that the fisherman also appeared to be packing up his gear and calling it a day. Cork considered him a moment. Charlie Aalto’s question had been a good one. Why would a fisherman, even a goddamn dumb one, spend the whole day in a place where the fish weren’t biting?