Copper River

13

Cork lived in an old, well-kept two-story clapboard house. The front porch had a swing. A huge elm that was older than Cork shaded the front yard. The house was on Gooseberry Lane in Aurora, Minnesota. He’d grown up in that town and had chosen it as the place to raise his family. Its rhythms were as natural to him as the pulse of his own blood.

Aurora was hundreds of miles away. At the moment it seemed even farther, on the other side of a barrier that was more than just miles. It was a barrier of experience, the result of monstrous events that could not be undone or forgotten.

He lay on the bunk in his cabin, helpless against despair.

His wife had been drugged by Lou Jacoby’s grandson, an angry young man who then raped her. Cork pictured Jo with her ice-blond hair all wild as it had been the morning after that terrible night. He saw again her dazed face, her eyes blinking like fireflies as she stared at the gun in his hand, then at the water of a swimming pool turned red with a dead man’s blood.

In Cork’s anguished thinking, the whole earth was a vast hunting ground, and you were either predator or prey. Killing was the answer. Killing the man who’d spilled his rage into Jo. Killing the men who’d put a bullet through his leg. Killing Lou Jacoby, the son of a bitch who’d set it all in motion.

“Damn!” He realized that the Beretta that Dina had given him in Evanston was still in the glove box of his car. If the men who’d attacked him in Kenosha showed up now, he had no way to protect himself.

He pulled the sheet away and swung his legs off the bunk. He gathered himself, stood, and took a step.

“Oh, shit,” he groaned, then took another.

His shoes sat beside the door. They were brown Rockports, the left one stained dark with blood. He gritted his teeth, knelt, and scooped them up. Outside, he plopped down on the cabin steps and tugged them onto his sockless feet. He looked toward the end of the lane where his car was parked behind the big shed. It seemed like a long way.

In addition to Thor’s Lodge, the resort had six rental cabins staggered along either side of a central dirt access with enough room between each cabin to allow a vehicle to park. They were all the same design, one large square central room that functioned as a sitting area, kitchen, and sleeping quarters. Each cabin also had a small bathroom with a shower stall. The cabins had bunks and were typically rented by hikers or hunters or snowmobilers. Summers when Cork had visited with his mother, the cabins had been well maintained by Jewell’s father. Now there were signs of neglect. Spiderwebs in the window wells. Fallen branches and evergreen cones littering the ground. Brittle weeds creeping around the cabin steps. In such an environment, the wild things-coons and squirrels and snakes-would eventually make their homes.

So much had been left undone because Jewell didn’t care, and because Ren, for all his fine qualities, was yet a boy. The work had been his father’s, and his father was gone for good.

Cork picked up a long, thick branch that had fallen to the ground next to his cabin. Although a little crooked, it seemed sturdy enough for a walking stick. He started for the shed.

The sky was a flawless blue, the air dead still, the late morning only just now crawling out from under the chill of the night before. The hardwoods were in full autumn glory and the Huron Mountains were like a stormy sea caught fire.

Getting to the shed took a toll. The makeshift walking stick helped a little, but the torture of his leg sucked at Cork’s strength, gobbled his energy. Twice he stopped to rest on the steps of other cabins.

During the second rest he heard a scream break from the woods south of the cabins. He scanned the tree line but saw nothing unusual. The scream came again, farther west. This time Cork realized exactly what it was. The cry of a big cat. Ren’s cougar. Circling.

Cork had lived in the Northwoods most of his life. He understood the behavior of many of the animals of that habitat. Although he knew very little about cougars specifically, he was pretty certain of one thing: Like most wild animals, they were loath to approach humans or the dwellings of humans. Yet, here was a cat, a fierce hunter, deep in the territory of men.

“So what are you doing here?” he whispered toward the woods.

He put his weight on the walking stick and pushed himself up. Keeping an eye to the trees, he gimped his way to the shot-up Dart and reached for the door handle. He was startled to see recent scratches on the finish, four lines that ran from the driver’s side window down the door, spaced just right to have been put there by the claws of a big wild cat. He opened the door, and the smell of the blood poured out: his blood. He clicked the glove box latch and snatched the Beretta Tomcat. As he popped the clip to check the cartridges, the cougar screamed again.

With the rosewood grip of the pistol solidly in his palm, he felt less vulnerable. That didn’t mean safe. Was it the smell of the blood that had attracted the wild cat? What did it take to stop a hungry cougar? He wasn’t just concerned about his own safety. He was also thinking what a tragedy it would be if he were, in fact, forced to shoot the animal.

He started back to his cabin. As he neared Thor’s Lodge he heard the phone ring inside, and he thought maybe Jewell had finally got the message to call. He limped up the stairs, found the door unlocked, and went in. By the time he reached the phone, the ringing had stopped. Caller ID informed him that it had, in fact, been Jewell calling from her cell phone. He punched in her number.

“Ren?” she answered.

“It’s Cork.”

“Where’s Ren? I got a message there was an emergency of some kind.” Her voice came to him across a sea of static.

“He’s all right, Jewell. It’s Charlie. Or rather her father. He’s dead.”

“Max dead? How?”

“According to Ren, he was beat to death.”

“How would Ren know that?”

Cork explained. Every so often, because of the poor reception, he had to repeat himself. While he spoke, he gradually became aware of a sound from the rear of the cabin. A scratching.

“I’m on my way now,” Jewell said. “I’m heading to Max Miller’s place.”

“If they show up back here, I’ll call you.”

He set the phone in the cradle and listened carefully. The sound had stopped. Quietly he hobbled toward the back rooms. He hadn’t been inside Thor’s Lodge in decades. It seemed more modern than he remembered-new appliances, fixtures-but it held the same feel of a place built with careful hands, an eye to the beauty of small detail, and a respect for the spirit of each rock in the foundation and every log in the walls and rafters. The two bedrooms in back were separated by a bathroom. To the right was Ren’s room, easy to tell from the Spider-Man poster on the wall. The room on the left had been the guest room where Cork’s mother stayed. Upstairs was a master bedroom and a large loft area where Cork, when he visited all those years ago, had slept on a cot.

Standing in the narrow hallway, he heard it again, the scratching. It came from the back wall of Ren’s room. Cork had left his walking stick on the porch. Using the bureau, the desk, and finally the post of Ren’s bed to support himself, he laboriously made his way to the window where the curtains were closed. As he’d started across the room, he’d stepped on a board that gave a sharp creak, announcing his presence, and the scratching abruptly died. Now he stood at the window, the Beretta tight in his grasp, his ear cocked toward the wall as he listened intently for a sound that didn’t return. He reached out with his empty hand and slowly parted the curtains.

A red squirrel clinging to the screen glared at him belligerently. After the bravado of a Mexican standoff, the little creature broke his stare, leaped to the ground, scampered to the nearest tree, and scrambled up the trunk.