Iron Lake

4

CORK PULLED UP ALONGSIDE a snow-covered Quonset hut that stood next to the lake. The front of the hut had been reconstructed as a burger stand, with two sliding windows and a long, narrow counter for serving customers. Pictures of ice cream cones decorated the side of the building up front. The serving windows had been boarded over with plywood, and above that a sign painted in red letters on a white board read, “Sam’s Place.”

Cork parked near the back door and went in. The back half of the hut had been converted into a space for living—one large room that held a stove and refrigerator, a sink, a table with two chairs, a sofa, a bunk, a small desk, and a bookshelf. One corner had been partitioned for a bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and a shower stall. During World War II, the hut had been part of a complex used by the National Guard. After the war, the complex was abandoned and all but the single Quonset hut had been bulldozed. Cork wasn’t sure why the hut had been spared, but it had been purchased by Sam Winter Moon, who’d made it over into a business serving cones and shakes and burgers to the summer tourists. Sam had lived in the back during the season. Late fall after he closed up, he lived in his cabin on reservation land. In his will, Sam had left the Quonset hut to Cork.

Inside, the place was cool, much cooler than it should have been. Cork stepped down into the cellar and found that the burner on the oil furnace wasn’t running, a chronic problem. He hit the red reset button. Nothing happened. He kicked the tiny motor. The burner came on with a small roar. Mentally Cork crossed his fingers, hoping the burner would last the winter. By next fall, if Sam’s Place had a good season, he could afford to replace it.

Back upstairs, he stepped through a door into that part of the hut that was the burger stand. Boxes of nonperishable supplies sat stacked, waiting for spring. The big ice-milk freezer stood sparkling clean and idle next to the small grill. Propped against the wall near the door was a sack of dry corn with a plastic bucket and scoop inside it. Cork scooped out a quarter bucket of corn, headed back through the hut and outside again.

The lake was lost behind the snow. Cork trudged through the drifts toward a tall Cyclone fence that edged Sam’s property. My property, Cork still had to remind himself. On the other side of the fence was the Bearpaw Brewery, the buildings big and dark and indistinct through the blowing snow. He followed the fence to the edge of the lake. Although the rest of the lake had been frozen awhile, a large expanse of water near the fence stayed open year round because of the runoff from the brewery. Warning signs had been placed on the ice, and safety stations with sleds and life rings stood along the shore. Cork was surprised to see a figure in a familiar red coat hunched at the water’s edge.

“Annie?” he called. “Is that you?”

His daughter turned. She was big for her age, and freckled year round. She’d inherited the wild red hair of her Irish ancestors, but from her Anishinaabe genes came dark thoughtful eyes that regarded her father with concern.

“I was worried about Romeo and Juliet,” she said. She looked out at the lake.

The open water was choppy in the wind, and looked cold and gray. Two Canadian geese huddled together twenty yards from shore, their bodies pointed into the wind, riding out the storm. The bird Anne called Romeo had injured a wing late in the summer. When the other geese had gone south, he’d stayed, and his mate, whom Anne had named Juliet, also stayed. They never left the lake. The open water kept them there. Cork had taken to feeding them when he’d realized their plight. Anne had adopted them as well, taken them into her heart of concern.

Cork gave her the bucket. “Why don’t you feed them,” he suggested.

The geese had turned at Cork’s approach, anticipating the corn he carried in the bucket. They paddled nearer, but held off coming ashore. Cork kicked at the snow with his boots, clearing a circle all the way to the frozen ground.

“Just pour it in there, Annie,” he said.

She spread the corn around the circle, then they walked away a dozen steps. Romeo and Juliet waddled through the snow to the corn and began noisily to feed. They watched Cork and Anne carefully.

“Do you think they’d ever eat from our hands?” Anne asked hopefully.

“Most animals can be tamed, I suppose,” Cork replied. “The question is, do you really want to? Make them tame and they become easy prey for people not as kindly disposed toward them as you are.”

“People would hurt them?” she asked, appalled at the idea.

“Some would. Just for the pleasure of it. Come on. They’ll be fine now.” He started back to the hut.

Inside, Cork took a moment to listen to his answering machine. He frowned at Annie after he heard the worried voice of his sister-in-law.

“You didn’t tell your aunt Rose you were coming?”

“I did,” Anne insisted. “She was reading a recipe, so maybe she didn’t hear.”

It was possible. Rose would be oblivious to a nuclear attack if she were deeply involved in the intricacies of a new recipe. But it was also possible that Anne had used her inattention to sneak away. It wasn’t that Rose would have minded her coming, but, given Rose’s ability to see disaster at every turn, she probably wouldn’t have allowed her niece to come so far from home in the storm.

Cork called and explained to his sister-in-law, who sounded so relieved she forgot to be angry. Cork said he’d bring Anne right home.

As they stepped outside to the Bronco, Annie looked through the blowing snow toward the open water of the lake.

“Will they be all right?” she asked.

“I expect so. As long as the water doesn’t freeze and we give them plenty of grain.”

“I worry about them. I pray for them. Do you think it’s all right to pray for geese?”

“It’s all right to pray for just about anything, I suppose.”

She looked at him, her face red from the wind and the cold. “You don’t.”

“I let you do the praying for both of us these days, sweetheart. You do a better job of it than I ever could.”

They got into the Bronco. Cork pulled out across the tracks toward Center Street.

“Know what I pray for most?” Anne said, staring through her window at the snow as it swirled around them.

“What?”

“That you and Mom get back together.”

Cork was quiet. Then he said, “It never hurts to pray.”

The house on Gooseberry Lane was big, two stories, white with dark gray shutters and a wraparound porch. Out front stood a huge American elm, and in the backyard, a red maple nearly as large. Lilac bushes formed a tall hedge on the north side, and south was a grape arbor. The house had been the home of his mother’s parents, then had belonged to his own parents. When Cork’s father was killed, his mother had turned it into a boardinghouse. It was never a luxurious life, and Cork always worked to help bring in income, but they managed to keep the house and to hold together and, as Cork remembered it, to be happy.

All the houses on the block were similar—old, shaded in summer, quiet. There wasn’t a single fence to be seen, and Cork had always taken issue with the assertion that fences made good neighbors. Until Jo had asked him to leave, Cork had been quite happy to call Gooseberry Lane his home, and the people who lived there his neighbors.

He used his garage door opener and parked next to Jo’s blue Toyota Cressida. Her car had two bumper stickers. One said, “Sandy Parrant for U.S. Senate” and the other, in true political jingoism, said, “Just look at the candidates. The difference is aParrant.” The election was long over. Parrant had won. Cork thought it was high time Jo got rid of the bumper stickers.

He made his way to the back door with Annie. Stepping into the kitchen, he was greeted by the aroma of baking ham.

“Smells delicious, Rose,” Cork said. He hung his parka and cap on wall hooks beside the door.

He could tell his sister-in-law was trying to be upset with him. She nodded in response to his complimentary greeting, then went to the oven, opened the door, and bent to check inside. She was wearing floral stretch pants that didn’t at all flatter her wide hips and thighs. She had on a baggy red sweater and old blue canvas slip-ons. Her hair was dull brown like road dust, and her fleshy arms were covered with freckles. She was nothing like her sister, Jo, in appearance or temperament, and if Cork hadn’t known better he’d have guessed that one of them had been adopted.

“Sure miss your cooking.” Cork grinned.

Rose smiled despite herself. But she set stern eyes on Annie, who was trying to slip through the kitchen unnoticed. “I was worried sick, Anne.”

“I told you where I was going, Aunt Rose,” Anne argued politely. “But I guess you didn’t hear. You were reading that recipe for Christmas pudding.”

“I was?” Rose glanced at a cookbook open on the kitchen table. “Still, you should have called when it got to be so late.”

“My fault, Rose,” Cork said. “She was helping me with some chores.”

“Well.” Rose considered Anne a moment more. “Go clean up. Dinner will be ready shortly. And you—” She turned to Cork with a scowl, then smiled. “Would you like to stay? There’s plenty of food.”

“Where’s Jo?”

“Down the hall in her office. She’d like to talk with you.”

“I might not be welcome for dinner after.”

“You know that’s not true,” Rose said. “Just let me know and I’ll have Jenny set another place.” She turned back to the stove, picked up a wooden spoon, and began stirring something in the saucepan.

In the living room, Cork found his five-year-old son, Stevie, on his belly playing with Legos. The television was on, tuned to cartoons. Stevie rolled over at his father’s approach and shouted, “Daddy!”

Cork knelt down. “What’s up, buddy?”

Stevie held out a Lego creation, something like a house. “Jail,” he said.

“Good one, too,” Cork told him. “Who’s it for?”

Stevie’s eyes turned devilish. “You.”

“Hmmmm. Am I the sheriff of this jail?”

Stevie shook his head.

“I’m the crook? Well then, let me show you what they put me in for.”

He wrestled with his son awhile. “You’re getting too tough for an old man like me,” he finally said.

“Feel.” Stevie flexed his skinny arm. Cork felt mostly bone but made a face full of admiration. Stevie turned his attention back to cartoons.

Jenny, Cork’s fourteen-year-old daughter, came into the room from the hallway. She gave her father only a glance before she curled up on the sofa with a book in her lap. He could tell by the way she looked at him that she was reflecting some of her mother’s mood. The whole house seemed suffused with the quiet cold of Jo’s anger.

“Hi, kiddo. Where’s your mother?”

“In her office, working. She’s waiting to talk with you.”

He looked at the book in her lap. “What’s that?”

“Mrs. Cavanaugh asked me to do a reading for the Christmas program next week.”

“What reading?”

“Whatever I want. A poem, I think. I’m going to read something by Sylvia Plath.”

“Didn’t she kill herself?”

“She was a very intelligent woman.”

“What poem?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Cork sat down beside his daughter. She edged away. “Have you discussed this with Mrs. Cavanaugh?”

“She said the choice was mine.”

“Sylvia Plath. That doesn’t sound very Christmasy. Maybe we should talk about it,” Cork suggested.

“The choice is mine,” his daughter said emphatically.

Jenny was becoming more like Jo all the time. Even at fourteen her face already had the same tooserious shadowing. She was small, precocious, and full of radical energy. Her eyes were like her mother’s, too. A cold blue-white. But there were many things Jenny had done to make sure she was not like her mother. Jo had marvelous taste in her dress, yet Jenny chose to wear clothing bought at secondhand stores—old dresses and combat boots and ratty sweaters. With the help of a friend, she’d pierced each of her ears in two places, and she kept discussing the possibility of putting at least one hole in her nose. She streaked her hair with purple and sometimes wore it in short spikes that looked as if she’d grabbed hold of a live power line. She had given up smiling in favor of an attitude of disgust or sometimes simply ennui that was exaggerated by the sleepy look from her full-lidded eyes, part of the genetic Ojibwe legacy of her father.

“Guess I’d better see what your mother wants, huh?”

“Guess you’d better,” Jenny agreed.

“Wish me luck,” he said.

“Luck,” she offered him dourly.

He found Jo at her desk in her office bent over papers. The room was walled with law books and smelled of leather bindings. Jo looked up as he came in. Her eyes seemed big and startled, but as soon as she took off her thick glasses, they resumed their usual deceptively languid calm.

“We were worried about Anne.”

“My fault,” Cork said. “She was helping me with some things.”

“What things?”

“Am I under oath, counselor?”

“I’m just wondering if this was a mutual plan or one of Annie’s spur-of-the-moment inspirations.”

“Why don’t you ask Annie? She’ll tell you the truth.”

“I’m asking you. Because if it was something you knew about, I wish you’d have checked with me first.”

“There’s no court order dictating I have to do that.”

“Maybe there should be.”

She pushed away from the desk, stood, and turned her back to Cork. She stared out the window at the backyard, where the snow flew around the trunk of the maple tree and piled up against the lilac hedge. Her hands were clasped tightly behind her.

“I think it’s time we began discussing a divorce.”

“Annie was just telling me how she prays for us to get back together.”

“Cork, we have to help them see things as they are.”

“If I always knew how things are, I suppose I’d do that.”

She turned back. “You know, it’s funny. Last year I could have sworn a divorce was exactly what you wanted.”

“I never said that.”

“No,” she agreed. “But you also didn’t object when I asked you to leave the house.” She faced the window again, studying the storm outside.

“It was what you wanted, wasn’t it?” When she didn’t reply, he walked slowly to her desk, then carefully came around and stood beside her. “Maybe it’s time you and I stopped thinking so much about what we want and thought a little more about the kids.”

She swung around angrily and threw her glasses on the desk. “You think I don’t worry about them? I work long hours to make sure the bills are paid and Annie gets her braces and Jenny might not have to work her way through college. I don’t get any help from you on that.”

“I wasn’t talking about finances,” he countered coldly. He walked away and stood staring at the rows of legal books, tomes that attempted to spell out justice, something he no longer believed in. He fought against the hopeless, cornered feeling they gave him.

“Look, we can’t go on the way we’ve been going,” Jo said. “It’s not good for anybody, especially the children.”

“And a divorce would be better?”

“Cleaner.”

“Like antiseptic.”

“It’s what’s best for everybody. I think deep down you know that, Cork.”

They were both quiet. The wind rattled the window, and from beyond the door came the sound of the television in the living room.

Cork put his hands deep in his pockets and balled them uselessly into fists. “Fine.”

“When?” Jo pressed him.

“Whenever you want.”

She put her glasses back on and looked down at the papers on her desk. “After Christmas will be fine. You’ll want to get yourself an attorney. I can give you some recommendations if you’d like.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” he replied.

There was a knock at the door. Rose peaked in. “Dinner’s ready,” she said, looking them both over tentatively.

“I’ve been invited,” Cork told Jo.

“All right,” Jo agreed, not happily.

Near the end of dinner, the telephone rang. Rose answered it. She held the phone against her ample bosom and said, “It’s for you, Cork. It’s Darla LeBeau.”

“Darla?” Cork got up from the table and took the phone. “Hi, Darla. What’s up?” He listened and his face grew serious. “I’m sure it’s nothing. He’s a responsible boy.” He listened again. “Look, how about if I come over? No, it’s no trouble.”

“What’s no trouble?” Rose asked as soon as he hung up.

“Paul LeBeau went off this afternoon to deliver his newspapers and hasn’t come back. He’s been gone almost five hours.”

“You don’t think he’s still out there in the snow somewhere?” Rose asked.

“I don’t think so,” Cork said. “Even if he was struggling, he could easily knock on a door. Anybody in Aurora would let him in. Darla’s afraid Joe John’s come back and taken him.”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t think Joe John would do something like that. Do you, Cork?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“He’d kidnap his own son?” Rose looked astonished.

“Jesus, Aunt Rose, it happens all the time,” Jenny said.

“Don’t swear,” Anne told her sister.

“Jesus Christ.” Jenny smiled cruelly.

“Jenny!” Rose said.

“Jenny’s right,” Cork broke in. “Most common form of kidnapping. The truth is, if a kid’s going to be taken, I’d rather he was grabbed by someone who’s doing it out of love.”

“That’s not love, Cork,” Jo said.

“It might be to Joe John.” Cork started for the kitchen.

“You don’t mind going?” Rose asked.

“No,” he said over his shoulder. And it was absolutely true. It had been a long time since anyone needed him this way, and if felt pretty damn good.