Purgatory Ridge

17

FOR ALMOST AN HOUR, Jo had been sitting at her desk in her office in the Aurora Professional Building, staring at the legal pad in front of her and not seeing it at all. She’d been looking over a variance for the casino that was due to be renewed on January 1. That had got her to thinking about a New Year’s Day from her own history when she was seventeen years old, during the first year her mother-whom she and Rose between themselves always called the Captain-was assigned to Fort Hood in Texas.

The Captain had seen the old year out with heavy drinking and had begun the new year in the same way. When they sat down to the ham dinner Rose had prepared, the Captain was unsteady and her face had that hard, mean look it often got when she was drinking. The television was tuned to a football game. Jo got up to turn it off.

“Leave it on,” the Captain ordered.

Jo continued toward the television, turned the sound down to nothing, and returned to the table. She had no tolerance for the Captain anymore, and she wasn’t afraid to confront her mother. By then, confrontation was the most characteristic aspect of their relationship. But for the sake of Rose, who’d worked hard to create something special for the new year, she held her tongue.

“I think we should tell something we’ve been grateful for in the past year,” Rose suggested. “And something we’re looking forward to in the new year.”

“Fine. Lemme start,” the Captain said. She leaned her arms heavily on the table. “First of all, I’m grateful I’ve got a daughter who could cook for the angels and a daughter who could argue her way outta hell.” She raised her glass, full of Jim Beam, to both of them. “This past year-let me see… I’ve been grateful the U.S. Army has seen fit to assign me to this military base in the most godforsaken part of the world and to put me and my family up in the worst excuse for base housing I’ve ever seen. I’ve also been grateful for waking up alone every fucking day and for never having to worry about a toilet seat being all dribbled on with a man’s pee.” She drank from her glass and thought a moment. “As for next year, well, I guess I’m just looking forward to a lot more of the same. Happy New Year, girls.” She lifted her glass once more. This time, as she set her drink back down, her hand caught the edge of her plate and sent it flying. The room was quiet. The Captain stared where the broken plate and the food splattered across the floor. Rose stood to clean up the mess.

“Leave it,” the Captain snapped.

Rose sat down.

“My turn,” Jo said angrily. “You want to know what I’ve been grateful for all year?”

“The invention of condoms?” The Captain sipped from her glass and eyed her daughter over the rim.

“Like every year before, it takes me that much closer to getting away.”

“So much for the past. What, pray tell, are you looking forward to?”

“Another year of busting my butt to get straight A’s, to be the absolute best at what I do. Because when I get out of here, I’m going to the top. Which, believe you me, will take me about as far from you as possible.”

The Captain raised her glass. “Here’s to the future, kid. Godspeed.”

Across the table, their glares collided like trains meeting head-on. They both turned toward Rose.

“I’m grateful,” Rose began in the way she always did, quietly, addressing their angry gazes with unwavering calm, “that I’m never lonely, because I know a lot of people are. And even though it’s not much, I’m grateful for the roof over our heads because some people sleep in cardboard boxes. I’m grateful that the soldiers coming back hurt from Vietnam have someone as skilled as my mother to take care of them. And I’m grateful I have a sister who knows so many things and helps me with my homework and talks to me when we’re in bed at night. I’m grateful for what I remember of my father because they’re good things.” She paused a moment and a smile came to her lips. “As for this year, I’m looking forward to worrying less that I’m fat and have freckles, and worrying more about why God put me here in the first place.” She sat back. Then leaned forward once more, quickly. “And I’m looking forward to finally being finished with geometry.”

For a few moments, the only sound was the hum of the wind through the weather stripping on the front door. Then the Captain put aside her glass and reached her hands across the table to her daughters.

Later, they walked, all of them, arm in arm in flurries of snow that forever after made Jo think of white rose petals.

Her conflicts with the Captain never really ended. Her mother’s bitterness was always there, just below the surface, hauled up swiftly and easily by whiskey on the rocks. Which was why Jo seldom drank and never to excess. She was afraid her mother was inside her, just under her skin. She often felt that if she let herself, she could easily self-destruct. There had been times in her life when she’d seemed right on the edge, but always something happened to bring her back. As if the angels Rose so fiercely believed in had interceded.

She looked up from her legal pad, surprised to see that the sunlight through the window had dramatically shifted and was crawling up the eastern wall. She glanced at her watch. After five. That meant Fran had already gone. She should be heading home, too. As she started to put her pad away, there was a knock at her office door.

“Come in.”

Smooth as a big ball bearing and white as a new morgue sheet, Hell Hanover’s head thrust in, followed by his limping body. “Afternoon, Jo.”

“Helm. What can I do for you?”

“Just hoping you might be able to verify or put to rest a couple of rumors floating around town.” Without being asked, he sat in the chair on the far side of her desk. In his hand he held a large brown envelope.

Jo folded her hands on her desk and said, “Run them by me and I’ll see what I can do.”

He smiled. A crack in an egg. “I understand Cork’s been instrumental in the investigation of the bombing at Lindstrom’s mill. Is that true?”

“Any question you have about the investigation should be addressed to Sheriff Schanno, don’t you think?”

Hanover laughed, sounding genuinely amused. “Lawyers,” he said, and shook his head. “Let me ask you another question, then. I understand Cork’s thinking of running for sheriff in the November election.”

Jo waited. “That’s not a question.”

“Is it true?”

“You know about rumors. Seldom any substance. But if you really wanted to know Cork’s intentions, you’d just ask him, Helm. So what is it you’re really here for?”

The look of amusement abandoned Hanover’s face. “I want your help.”

“My help? For what?”

“I want you to convince your husband of two things.”

Jo sat back. “I can’t imagine where this is leading.”

“First, I want him to butt out of the investigation into the incident at Lindstrom’s mill. And second, I want you to make him understand that running for sheriff again would be the worst decision he ever made.”

For her own reasons, Jo agreed with Hanover’s sentiments, but she disliked the man immensely, and it was only years of practiced self-restraint in the courtroom that kept her from telling Helmuth Hanover to go fuck himself.

“What difference could any of this possibly make to you?” she asked.

“That doesn’t matter. I’d just suggest you do it.”

Jo smiled now. “You’re not still sore that he broke up your little Boy Scout troop? The Minnesota Civilian Brigade.” She looked him over carefully. “Or is it that you’re afraid he might have another go at it? You know, he never believed for an instant you all just dropped your dreams of glory.”

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter why. Just do it.”

“Helm, what makes you think you can slither in here and dictate terms to me?”

She saw his cold blue eyes slide down to the envelope in his hand. Another thin smile broke across his face. Without a word, he handed her the envelope.

When she saw the photograph inside, she felt gutted, like some animal Hanover had stealthily tracked and finally brought down. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. In the silence of that moment, she heard Hanover give a little snort of victory.

“You just finished ridiculing my dreams of glory, Jo. What about your own?”

The photograph was black and white, taken at night with a camera using a starlight lens. It was a bit grainy because the image had been enlarged several times. Despite the poor quality, the composition of the photo was brutally clear. A hot tub lit by candlelight. A woman, naked, holding to the edge of the tub and bent slightly forward, her mouth opened in a little circle of ecstasy as a naked man entered her from behind. The woman was Jo. The man was not Cork.

“Where did you get this?” she asked when she could breathe again.

“I’ve had it for some time. I got it from his father”-he pointed toward the man in the photograph-“before the old goat croaked. This was exactly his kind of weapon. Me, I prefer military hardware. But a weapon is a weapon.” He leaned forward. “The bottom line is this. Unless you convince Cork to stop sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and to refrain forever from being a candidate for sheriff, he gets a copy of that photo. A big eight-by-ten in a gold frame.”

Jo stared at Hanover. “He’s seen this.”

“He knows?” Hanover shook his head in bewilderment. “I guess he’s not nearly the man I thought he was. Doesn’t matter. The conditions still hold, but the consequence is this. All of Tamarack County will see that photo. I’ll make sure it’s not possible for you or Cork to walk down a street here without someone whispering at your back. And I wonder what those children of yours would think of their mother, especially when they start hearing the word slut and your name in the same sentence.”

“Get out.”

“Look at it this way, Jo. Cork’s a great fry boy. All you have to do is convince him to keep flipping those burgers.”

“I said get out.” Jo stood and flung the photograph at him. It simply fluttered to the floor where Hanover let it lie.

“That’s all right. You can keep it. I have the negative.” He turned and limped to the door, but he paused with his hand on the knob. “You know, Jo, I’ve stood by and watched you twist the law every which way to get what you want around here. In this, there is no law. There’s only justice. At last.”

“Hell,” she spit out, using for the first time the epithet so many others had applied to him, “bite me.”

Hanover exited, and she heard him laughing as he closed the door.

She found she was shaking with rage. She walked unsteadily around the desk and stood looking down at herself on the floor. The camera had captured her as she bent to the pleasure of a man she would never forget but whose memory she hated. She’d believed that part of her life was over forever and that she’d escaped. But history, she understood as she knelt and took the photograph into her hands, could never be undone. And in a place like Aurora especially, it was as inescapable as her own shadow.