Starvation Lake

seventeen

The Pine County Clerk’s Office was exactly as I remembered it. Behind the frosted-glass windows set on the lacquered oak counter now stood twelve rows of filing cabinets instead of eight, a testament to the growth and prosperity the county had enjoyed when Jack Blackburn and Francis Dufresne, and later Teddy Boynton, were stumping for progress. All that was missing, for the moment, was County Clerk Verna Clark. Instead I was greeted by Deputy Clerk Vicky Clark, Verna’s daughter.

As a teenager, Vicky Clark had played the piano well enough to win a scholarship to a prestigious out-of-state music academy. But she’d gotten pregnant with triplets, no less, and enjoyed a brief moment of triplet celebrity before sinking back into anonymity in Starvation Lake. She never went to the academy. Now she was a heavyset woman who dyed her blond hair black, streaked it purple and scarlet, and drew it back into a spiky leather catch. She wore a black T-shirt, black jeans, black lipstick, black stud earrings, and black mascara on her eyes, which were pinched nearly shut by her fat cheeks. A plaster cast painted black encased her right arm from the wrist to just above the elbow. Spackle, I thought. I couldn’t help it. When we were kids, Soupy had dubbed her Spackle for all the makeup she plastered on her face.

“What happened to your arm?” I said.

She held it out, bracing it with her left arm. “Fell off a ladder at my boyfriend’s house. Taking down Christmas lights.”

“Your boyfriend puts up Christmas lights?”

“His kids like them. Mine could give a crap. But here I’m trying to help him out, and he’s in the house watching hockey. I’m laying out there in the snow for like an hour before Sully comes out and says, ‘What happened to you?’ I broke my damn arm is what. He ain’t my boyfriend anymore. I’m going to sue him. Know any good lawyers?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I might get one if it doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg-I mean my other arm and a leg. Dad said I could probably get some money out of Sully’s homeowner’s. Fine with me. Help me get the hell out of here.”

I wasn’t sure whether she meant the clerk’s office or Starvation Lake, but I would’ve bet she’d never leave either. Despite what she said, she was probably back with Sully, or would be soon. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear he’d put her up to suing so they could split the insurance money.

“I hope your arm gets better,” I said. I told her I needed to see the minutes for all the town council meetings from March through August of 1988. Just as her mother had fifteen years before, Vicky handed me a public-information request form.

“Boy, Vicky, do I really have to do this?” I said. “I’m in kind of a hurry.”

“Sorry. It’s policy. My moth-my boss would kill me.”

She folded her hands on the counter while I filled it out. She looked bored. I’d almost finished when she leaned across and said, “Can I ask you something?”

I looked up from the form. “Sure.”

“Why’d you come back?”

“Come back?”

“Here. Why’d you come back here? I heard you had it made downstate, then you got fired.”

What the hell happened to you, Spackle? I thought. Didn’t you have it made? Then I immediately felt bad for thinking it.

“Fired?” I said. “Not really. I just wasn’t seeing eye to eye with my bosses, and I thought it’d be good to come back here and regroup before I get out in the real world again.”

She knew I was lying. She gave me a little smile, seeming comforted to know that she had a kindred spirit, someone else who appreciated the dull pain of being stuck forever in Starvation Lake. “Give me that,” she said, taking the form. She looked around the room. “Hang on.”

Fifteen minutes passed as she went through drawer after drawer of filing cabinets in the back of the room. She came back to the counter empty-handed. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “They aren’t hard to find, everything’s filed by year, but there’s a whole big folder missing from 1988. Maybe somebody from Town Hall came over and-uh-oh.” She was looking past my shoulder. I turned around to see Verna Clark, lips pursed, hands on her hips. She didn’t look pleased, but then I wouldn’t have known what she looked like when she was pleased.

“What’s going on here?” she said.

Vicky said, “Gus was asking for some-”

“If a customer wants some archival files,” her mother said, “we have them prepare a public-information request, don’t we?”

Vicky waved the sheet of paper. “He did.”

Verna stepped forward and grabbed the form without the slightest glance at me. She skimmed it and, for the slimmest sliver of a second, I thought I saw Verna Clark smile. “Unfortunately,” she said, “these particular files are unavailable at this moment.” She gave me a look that felt like a slap. “I haven’t forgotten you, Mr. Carpenter.”

She was still as thin as a hockey stick, still wearing a gray dress and glasses that dangled at her neck. “Nice to see you again,” I said.

She turned to Vicky. “As a matter of procedure, we don’t go digging around in files until we’ve completed the proper processing of the form.” She turned back to me. “That normally takes three to five days.”

“Gus works for the newspaper, though, Mother, and he-”

“I thought we’d spoken about how you should address your superiors in the workplace. And I’m well aware of where Mr. Carpenter works. In fact he worked there once before, many years ago, and now that he has decided to come back, he’ll find that our procedures have remained consistent.”

“Yes, they have,” I said.

“In any event, the files you’re requesting were needed elsewhere this morning. I would’ve had them make copies, but our copier has been malfunctioning and we haven’t been able to get it serviced yet, what with the budget cuts.”

I thought it strange that someone from Town Hall would want to see ten-year-old minutes at the very moment that I wanted them. It had to be Dingus, working through channels.

“Can I ask who took them?” I said.

“You can ask, but I’m unable to furnish a reply,” Verna Clark said. I looked at Vicky. She obviously didn’t know. Her mother said, “If Town Hall follows procedures, we should have the documents back and ready for you to view in approximately seventy-two hours, no earlier.”

Back at the Pilot, Tillie’s little television showed frosty wisps of breath rippling around the perfectly round face of TV reporter Tawny Jane Reese. Her shiny mahogany hair framed a look of near constant surprise, accentuated by her slightly upturned nose. “Dumber than a bag of hockey pucks,” Soupy liked to say about Tawny Jane. “But who cares?”

She was talking into a Channel Eight microphone in front of the sheriff’s department. “Within minutes,” she said, “Sheriff Dingus Aho is expected to talk about the discovery of a snowmobile at nearby Walled Lake. As exclusively reported by Channel Eight, police have determined the snowmobile belonged to legendary youth hockey coach Jack Blackburn, who drowned in an accident…”

Though she screwed up facts like Walleye Lake and took credit for “exclusive” stories she’d actually read in the Pilot, I had a soft spot for Tawny Jane Reese. Sometimes I just turned the sound down and watched her practice those TV moves: The punctuated nodding of the head. The furrowed brow of concern. The everything’s-going-to-be-OK flash of smile. Tawny Jane had them down. Sometimes I tried to picture her having dinner with me. Would she chat with the same furrowing and nodding? I supposed she wouldn’t. Other times I wondered if she was still young and perky enough to land a job in a big city. I supposed she wasn’t.

Now she knitted her penciled-in eyebrows as the camera dollied in. “Local news reports have pointed to the discovery of a bullet hole in Blackburn’s snowmobile as evidence that the coach has been murdered. However, sheriff’s department sources are telling Channel Eight this may be premature. In fact…”

“Bullshit,” I said. “We didn’t say he was murdered. Read the story.”

Tillie stubbed out one cigarette and lit another. “You and your little friend may have gotten a little ahead of yourselves this time, huh?” she said.

Where’s that coming from? I thought. “No,” I said. “Joanie nailed the story and Dingus knows it, but it drives him crazy so he gets Tawny Jane No-brain to piss on us.”

“You have no idea what Dingus knows.”

“Do tell. Is there something else we should be reporting?”

“Maybe. Maybe this isn’t quite as horrid a place as you’d like to imagine.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Look around, young man. When Jack Blackburn died, this whole town went into mourning. While you were downstate chasing your little dreams, this place was falling apart. So now we’re finally getting ourselves together, and you come back here with your little friend and dig up this cockamamie story about Jack getting murdered.”

“The cops found the snowmobile, Tillie, I didn’t.”

She expelled a cloud of smoke. “Oh, please, save the ‘don’t-shoot-the-messenger’ claptrap. The police find plenty of things we just plain ignore. The cops go out to Tazwell’s damn near every weekend when Lloyd’s whacking Ellie around, but do we write about that? And how about the Barbie heads?”

I was still working in Detroit when town council member J. Rupert “Woody” Woodhams had to have his stomach pumped one night and doctors found eleven shaved Barbie-doll heads he’d apparently bitten off. Neither the cops nor the hospital would confirm the story. The Pilot never wrote it. Everybody knew anyway.

“So,” I said, “we should’ve ignored the snowmobile?”

“Hey, you’re the big-city reporter here, I’m just a stenographer. But let’s face facts. You hate this place. Stop taking it out on the rest of us who don’t mind it so much.”

She turned away. She was obviously upset, and it was obviously about more than just Pilot coverage. Maybe, I thought, it was just the whole spooky reemergence of Blackburn. She had dated him way back when. I’d seen her around the rink, her black leather jacket cinched tight beneath her bosom, watching from the uppermost row of the bleachers with an enormous Coke that all the Rats knew was laced with whiskey.

“Till,” I said. “I don’t mean-”

She pointed at the TV. “Listen.”

Now Tawny Jane was standing inside the sheriff’s department cafeteria. The lunch tables had been folded up and stacked against a pop machine in a corner behind her. Folding chairs were set up in three semicircular rows in front of a lectern surrounded by TV microphones. I counted eight reporters sitting in the chairs, a pretty strong turnout. I couldn’t see Joanie.

“We’re live at the Pine County sheriff’s Department,” Tawny Jane said. “Let’s join Sheriff Aho.”

The screen framed Dingus in his brown-and-mustard uniform. An accordion folder bulged under his left arm. He’d waxed his handlebar mustache. Deputies Frank D’Alessio and Skip Catledge stood behind him with their hands behind their backs. Dingus set his folder down, removed a sheet of paper, and nodded at the reporters and TV cameras. “Good morning,” he said. “I have a brief statement to read and then I’ll be glad to take your questions.”

He cleared his throat. “On Friday, February twenty-seventh, at approximately twelve fifty-eight a.m., the Pine County sheriff’s Department was notified that a number of unidentified objects had appeared on the shore of Walleye Lake. sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the scene, arriving at approximately one-eleven a.m. Upon further inspection, it was determined that these objects were components of a snowmobile. This snowmobile had possibly been submerged in the lake for a lengthy period of time. The objects were classified as evidence and removed to-”

“Excuse me, Sheriff?”

I cringed. The camera stayed on Dingus, but the voice was unmistakably Joanie’s. “Didn’t you go out to Walleye yourself that night?” she said. “Can you tell us what prompted that unusual step?”

“Joanie, no,” I said. Tillie was shaking her head.

Dingus’s eyebrows and mustache rose as one in surprise. “Pardon me, young lady,” he said. “I’ll be taking questions after I’ve finished my statement.” He glared at Joanie briefly before continuing.

“After further investigation and testing, it was determined that the snowmobile had once been registered to John David Blackburn, a former resident of Pine County who drowned in an accident on Starvation Lake early the morning of March 13, 1988. Our investigation-”

“Excuse me, Sheriff, but everybody already knows it was Blackburn’s snowmobile.” It was Joanie again. I couldn’t believe it. “What we don’t know is why you personally went out there, and why you would send the snowmobile for forensics.”

“Forensics are-hold on-excuse me, Miss McCarthy, I will get to your questions at the proper time. But I-”

“Your deputies this morning have been telling TV”-here she turned and looked directly into the camera-“that my paper prematurely reported that Blackburn was murdered. We said nothing about murder, Sheriff. But since it’s apparently on the table now”-Clever, I thought-“would you confirm that Blackburn was not murdered? Some people are saying this whole thing has been ginned up to help you get reelected. Could you respond, please?”

“Joanie!”

The camera zoomed in on Dingus’s face, which was florid with disbelief and anger, as animated as I’d ever seen it on TV. The camera turned to the right, and there was Joanie. I wanted her to just shut up, but seeing her there with her legs primly crossed, her notebook propped on her right knee, I couldn’t help but feel a little rush of admiration for her sheer disregard of Dingus’s authority.

“Miss McCarthy,” he said. “I’m going to ask you one last time to allow me to finish. Or you can leave.”

Joanie, unfazed, scribbled in her notebook and continued as if she were conducting an interview. “Sheriff, haven’t you questioned an acquaintance of Blackburn about the very possibility that he was murdered?”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Kick her little ass out, Dingus,” Tillie said.

The camera swung wildly back to Dingus. He blinked once, hard, and said, “This briefing is over. Deputies, clear the premises.”

I grabbed my jacket and ran out the back door. I thought I knew who Joanie’s last question was about. I had to get to the rink, fast.

I was too late.

By the time I crept in, the Zamboni shed had been cleared of nearly everything that belonged to Leo. The police scanner. The little fridge. The old River Rats cap hanging from a nail. The addiction aphorisms. Only his cot remained.

“Leo,” I sighed.

I glanced out at the rink through the little hexagonal window over the workbench. Young girls in short pastel skirts and white skates were cutting backward figure eights while their skating coach, a woman named Roberta, shouted instructions. My watch said 12:37. I figured Leo had resurfaced the ice for the noon session, then bolted. No one would notice he was gone until he was next scheduled to run the Zamboni at 1:00 or 1:30.

I had a few minutes to look around. I didn’t want to be seen if Leo really had left town. I wondered, was I obliged to alert the police to his parting? No, I quickly concluded. If they thought Leo had murdered Blackburn, they could’ve arrested him. I knew this was a rationalization, but I still wasn’t ready to believe that Leo had killed his best friend, regardless of what the cops thought.

I rifled the drawers and cubbyholes around Leo’s work area. Greasy parts, tools, and containers of lubricant and paint littered the bench. Leo had taken the jar of disinfectant that held his stitching utensils. I touched the sutures still in my jaw. I’d planned to have Leo remove them before the game that night.

Next to Leo’s cot stood a wooden filing cabinet. I tried a drawer and it gave. I pulled the drawers out one by one and peered inside, finding nothing. The last one, on the bottom, stuck when I tried to push it back in. I kept trying and it kept sticking. I pulled it back out, set it on the floor, and knelt to look inside the cabinet. The smell of mildew filled my nose. I couldn’t see for the dark inside. I found a flashlight on the bench and shined it inside the cabinet on the side where the drawer seemed to be catching. Taped on the inner wall was a torn piece of paper. I reached in and peeled it away. Another piece of paper was taped beneath it and, beneath that, two more. I peeled them all away and replaced the drawer.

I laid the yellowed, palm-sized pieces of paper out on the bench. They looked like they’d been scissored out of looseleaf pages. Each was inscribed in red ballpoint ink with short lists of similarly arranged letters and numbers: F/1280/SL/R4. F/1280/SL/R5. F/1280/SL/R6. They made absolutely no sense to me. I stuffed them inside my jacket and hustled out to my truck.

Leo’s mobile home sat in a clearing encircled by pines off Route 816 three miles west of town. When two sheriff’s cruisers blasted past me headed in that direction, I veered off the main road and looped behind Leo’s place on DiRosa Drive. I parked on the shoulder and trudged up a snow-covered hill. At the crest I crouched behind an oak tree with a view down to Leo’s. Dingus stood in front of the trailer directing D’Alessio, Catledge, and Darlene. They were carrying out boxes of things and stacking them in the back of a sheriff’s van. I was too far away to hear much of what they were saying, but I did catch two words-“fucking disgusting”-uttered by D’Alessio as he moved past Dingus lugging a computer monitor. They had filled up most of the back of the van before they locked Leo’s door and pulled away.

Driving back to town, I tried to imagine Leo on the lam. It was ludicrous. Leo hadn’t left Starvation Lake for more than a weekend in thirty years. He hated driving cars because he had to sit. Leo drove a Zamboni; he liked to stand. He used to joke about cutting a hole in the roof of his car so he could stand while he drove. As I eased to a stop in front of the high school, I remembered how, when Leo was resurfacing the ice, we’d be perched at the rink’s edge, Soupy and Teddy and me and the other Rats, dying to jump on, and Leo would be making slow circles like an old lady in a church parking lot. Just before he pulled off, he’d yell at us, “Not one skate out here until I say, or I’ll do it all over again.” And we’d wait while the fresh water hardened. Leo said that’s what it took to put down a great sheet, and Leo put down a great sheet. It stayed hard and smooth and slick even after we’d chewed it up for an hour.

“Fucking disgusting,” D’Alessio had said. And a computer? I had no idea that Leo, who wouldn’t even get himself a new police radio, was interested in computers. If he really had fled, I hoped it was just irrational panic and not guilt that drove him. But even if he was just afraid, even if he really wasn’t Blackburn’s murderer, he evidently knew something no one else knew, or why would he have run? Again I thought of the Rats waiting to jump onto the ice, Leo on the Zamboni, Coach behind the bench. I remembered peering out at that little world through the eyeholes of my goalie mask. What had I failed to see?