Starvation Lake

thirty-one

The clang of a jail cell door woke me.

“You’re up,” Darlene said.

I looked around, blinking against the light from the caged bulbs. A little before dawn, Dingus had stuck me in a part of the jail I’d never seen before, away from Soupy and the other prisoners. In my cell there was a sink, a toilet, and, instead of a cot, a concrete slab where I had fallen asleep.

“I guess so,” I said.

“You have visitors.” She motioned down the corridor. Catledge appeared with my mother and Joanie.

“Oh,” I said. “Mom.” Her eyes were red around the rims. Joanie had an arm around my mother’s shoulders. Two days before, they hadn’t even met. Joanie was one great reporter.

“Skip, can you get a couple of chairs?” Darlene said. “Hold on, Mother Bea.” Catledge went for the chairs and Darlene stepped into the cell and handed me an envelope. “Here,” she said.

The envelope had already been sliced open. I took it and pulled out a note written on a piece of notepaper in pen.

Gus,

Very sorry to hear of your troubles. If you are in need of an attorney, don’t hesitate to have the police contact me.

Sincerely, Francis J. Dufresne

P.S. Our friend Leo will be remembered at a service this afternoon. I will pass along your regards.

I set the envelope on the edge of the sink as Catledge returned with the chairs. Mom and Joanie sat facing me.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Where were you, Gussy?” Mom said. “Why did you go away like that without telling me? Why didn’t you tell me the police were after you? Why are you keeping things from me? What’s wrong, son?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You are not fine. Dingus says they’re going to take you to jail in Detroit tonight. He says he’s trying to help you but you’re not cooperating.”

“Does he?” I said.

Dingus had persisted in his interrogation all the way back to Starvation. Whenever I dozed off, he roused me with more questions. I told him a little, though obviously not as much as he wanted to know. Hearing that Blackburn was alive didn’t seem to surprise Dingus much; he kept asking who else was involved, who was the brains behind Blackburn. It was as if he’d listened in on Blackburn telling me he couldn’t have been the only one peddling porn. I thought of my father and shut my mouth. Dingus deposited me in that jail cell.

“Gus,” Mom said. “It’s time to grow up now.”

“I’m sorry you think that,” I said. “But I’m not the only one who’s been keeping secrets, am I?”

Tears welled in my mother’s eyes. “It’s all right, Bea,” Joanie said. She looked at me. “Your mother has some things to tell you.”

“Yes.”

“Tell him about Leo.”

Mom pulled a packet of tissues from her coat pocket and used one to dab at her eyes. “I think I told you,” she said, “that on the night of Jack’s accident, Leo tried to tell me he’d done a terrible thing.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not proud of this, son. As I said, I wouldn’t let Leo tell me what the thing was. He was hysterical, one minute cursing Jack, the next near tears. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was trying to say. But I knew, I mean, I didn’t think I wanted to hear it. Then the police came. Leo must’ve gotten scared. But I’m not so dumb. I could see he wasn’t wet.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying”-she stopped to collect herself-“I’m saying I knew what Leo was trying to say. I didn’t understand until later, a lot later, when I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”

“What was it, Mother?”

“He meant he’d let Jack go.”

“And why,” Joanie said, “would Leo have thought this was so terrible, Bea?”

“I can’t be sure. But I thought something-something that wasn’t right-was going on at those little houses Jack had for the out-of-town boys. I was with him once at his own house after we’d gone to a show. I could just-” She paused. “He was a strange man. A very strange man.”

My brain had begun to throb against the inside of my skull.

“You have to believe me, son,” she said. “I didn’t know for sure what was going on there. And, yes, maybe I didn’t want to know. But at least I kept you away. I’m so glad I did that. Joanie told me about the young man in Canada.”

“Did you tell all of this to Dingus?” I said.

“I told him I wouldn’t talk until I spoke with you.”

“Anything else?”

From a sweater pocket Mom produced a folded sheet of paper. She set it on her lap. “Your father,” she said. “I know you’ve been looking for answers. By now”-she glanced at Joanie-“maybe you know some things.”

I looked at Joanie.

“The delivery isn’t in yet,” she said. “Snowstorms.”

Shit, I thought. I turned back to my mother. “I know Dad made some sort of investment in something that had something to do with Blackburn.”

“No,” Mom said. “Not with Jack.”

“Mother, he made an investment. I knew it even back then.”

“Whatever he did, he did for us. For you.”

“Can we please stop this bullshit? Dad’s gone. If you have something to tell me, just tell me. What was this second job he had on Saturday nights? What was the damn investment?”

“Settle down,” Joanie said.

Mom continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “On Friday nights, he went to those poker parties, and-”

“At Blackburn’s?”

“Some. Remember, Jack was only here a year or two before your father passed. They were playing poker long before that.”

“All right.”

“Those nights, after a while your father started sneaking that old movie projector out of the house. The same one you were sneaking out the other day. He thought I didn’t know. I wanted to think it was just some harmless boys’ fun. But Rudy wasn’t the sneaking kind.”

“So what?”

“It wasn’t like your father.”

“What about Saturday nights, Mother? The job?”

“He just wanted some extra money. We were starting to save for your college. And there was that Cadillac he had to have. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“You didn’t mind him working at a titty bar?”

“Watch your mouth,” she said. I glanced at Darlene standing outside the cell and she looked away. “I didn’t know that, at least not right away. He was in his funny period after Cousin Eddie died. Anyway, the money was very good. And he didn’t work there long.”

“Long enough to get mixed up with the wrong people?”

She ignored me and unfolded the piece of paper. “Your father wanted that Cadillac. After the doctors told him about his illness, I wanted him to have it. But he insisted on buying that other car and putting a thousand dollars into this business opportunity. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know your father.”

“What opportunity?”

“You’re not going to like this, son.”

“What?”

“Rudy never told me. He never told me anything about our money. That’s the way things were then. He just said it would pay off. He wouldn’t do anything that would harm anyone. Your father was a good man.”

“You said he didn’t give it to Blackburn, though.”

“No. He gave it to Francis.”

I felt suddenly dumb. “Francis? Dufresne? What’s he got to do with Blackburn?”

“Didn’t they work on a lot of real-estate things?”

“Yeah, years after Dad died. Was Dad investing in real estate?”

“I told you I don’t know. All I know is, after your father died, when I was having trouble making tax payments on the house, Francis came to the rescue.” She handed me the paper. “This is from last year.”

“You never said anything about problems paying taxes.”

“You weren’t around, Gus. You were in Detroit.”

The paper was a photocopy of a receipt from the Pine County Treasurer’s Office and a canceled check drawn on First Detroit Bank. The receipt confirmed a payment of $542.61 in taxes on property owned by Beatrice Carpenter on December 5, 1997. The check in the same amount was signed by Francis J. Dufresne. So my father had given Francis that thousand dollars for who knows what, and years later, Francis returned the favor by helping my mother with her taxes? Was that how the investment paid off?

“By the way,” Joanie said. “I was trying to tell you something when we got cut off the other day. I noticed something in my Bigfoot notes I missed before. Dufresne chaired some little state committee that gave Perlmutter a bunch of the money he used for his Sasquatch stuff.”

I was staring at Dufresne’s signature. There was something strangely familiar about it. I grabbed the envelope off the sink and looked again at Francis’s handwritten note.

“Joanie,” I said. “Did you write that bank story?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mom said.

“Why?” Joanie said.

“Did you?”

“Yeah. Six inches.”

“Which bank bought which?”

“Why?”

“Which, please?”

“Chill out. City-something from New York bought First Detroit. So what?”

“And First Detroit owned what or used to own what? Didn’t Kerasopoulos have a buddy who’s a big shot at one of the banks that got bought?”

“Yeah. It’s just called First Detroit now, but it used to be called-”

“First Fisherman’s Bank of Charlevoix.”

“Yeah. So?”

I had to clutch at the slab to keep from doubling over. The paper fluttered to the floor. “Gus,” Mom said. “You’re pale.”

The cell door creaked open. “Time’s up,” Darlene said.

My mother swung around. “Darlene Bontrager,” she said, using her maiden name.

“Two minutes,” Darlene said.

Mom got up and sat down next to me and put an arm around me.

“Gussy,” she said. “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me these things? I asked you about Leo. Why didn’t you tell me about Dad and his job and his movie projector and his investment?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. I do.”

“All right.” She gave me a look I hadn’t seen since the day she told me Dad was gone. “It’s simple, actually. You really didn’t need to know, but even if you did-even when you were asking me-you weren’t ready to know. You were too young.”

“Too young at thirty-four?”

“Thirty-four, twenty-five, fourteen. What difference does it make? You boys, you and Soupy and the all the rest, you got out of high school and you had your chance to grow up but you chose to stay boys forever, playing your little games as if they really matter.”

I fixed my eyes on the floor. “I know they don’t matter, Mother.”

“No, you don’t. You’re still acting like a boy. Running here and there instead of settling down and facing the facts of your life. You left this place, a place you loved, because of a stupid little mistake you made in a stupid little game. Instead of the people you loved”-she didn’t have to look back at Darlene-“you put your trust in silly prizes and sillier superstitions, in, in, I’m sorry, whatever that foolish glove is you wear, as if those things could somehow make you more than what you are.” She put the tissues back in her pocket. “I love you, son. But I was afraid that telling you what I knew would only drive you farther away. You were already far enough away for me.”

I let her words sit there for a minute.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I came here for you.”

“Give me a fucking break.”

“Gus,” Joanie said.

“It was my fault that you kept secrets? Bullshit. I’ll bet you still know more than Joanie’s been able to wheedle out of you. And you’ve known it for years and years but old Spardell told you not to talk so you didn’t talk, not even to your own son. Was that the right thing to do? Just keep your mouth shut and keep cashing the checks? Why don’t you go see Francis? He paid your damn taxes.”

Joanie stood and reached for my mother. “That’s enough,” she said.

My nerves felt as if they might poke through my skin. What could I tell them that would make them all happy? What did I really know that they didn’t know already? Nothing had changed since Dingus marched me into that cell. Except, perhaps, this thing about Dufresne. I couldn’t get that signature-Francis J. Dufresne-out of my mind.

“You’re wasting your time,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Stop being sorry,” Mom said. “Everyone is sick of it.”

Darlene held the door for Mom. Joanie stayed.

“Remember that priest at my high school?” she said.

“What priest? What about him?”

“Here.” She pulled a piece of paper from her jacket pocket and set it on her chair. “Not that any of this matters anymore,” she said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said, but Darlene took Joanie by the sleeve and ushered her and Mom away.

I lay back on the slab and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. Soon Joanie and Tawny Jane would be opening those FedEx deliveries. I wondered if Tawny Jane would come to the jail looking to interview me. Maybe I’d be gone to Detroit by then.

I sat up and grabbed the paper Joanie had left. It was a photocopy of a story that had run in the Daily Press of Escanaba, Michigan, three months earlier:

“No way,” I said.

“What?” Darlene said. She was still standing outside.

“Nothing.”

I understood that the suspect was the very same Jeff Champagne who had played for the River Rats. I did not want to believe that the cop was Billy Hooper. There had to be a lot of William Hoopers in Michigan.

Darlene opened the cell door and stepped inside. “Come on, Gus,” she said. “You don’t really want to go back to Detroit.”

“Call off the state boys.”

“It’s not up to us, it’s up to you.”

“I’ve done what I can. You’ll see. What time is it anyway?”

She looked at her watch. “Time to go.”

“Go where?”

“Leo’s funeral.”

“Right. Tell everyone I said hello. And to watch for the Pilot tomorrow.”

“You can tell them yourself. Let’s go.”

She was serious.

“Come on, we’re going to be late.”

“Dingus said I could go?”

She came over and seized me by the elbow. “The hell with Dingus,” she said.

She steered the sheriff’s cruiser along Route 816 away from town and turned north on Ladensack Road. I sat in the backseat and gazed out the window. Darlene had squirreled me out of the jail and grabbed a sheriff’s parka for me out of another car. As we passed Jungle of the North, I remembered turning there to go to Perlmutter’s place and asked where we were going. Darlene didn’t so much as look at me. Another mile ahead, she pulled onto the shoulder, stopped, and shut off the ignition. Seven or eight other cars and trucks were parked there, including my mother’s Jeep.

Darlene got out and came around and opened my door.

“You’re going to get me in trouble,” I said.

“Not if you do the right thing.”

She yanked me out and told me to wait on the shoulder. “Darlene,” I said, “what’s going on?” But she ignored me again and got back into the driver’s seat and snatched up her radio transmitter. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but there was something urgent in the way she shook and nodded her head. She hung up and got out and came around to me with a key in her hand.

“I’m going to take the cuffs off for now,” she said. “Don’t blow it.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Maybe I’m giving you one last chance.”

We crossed the road and followed a path of freshly trod footsteps that wound through the woods. We emerged in a clearing where a dozen people stood in a circle around a patch of frozen brown earth from which the snow had been dug away. At the center of the patch lay a crude red-and-white container that I would later learn had been fashioned from a scrap of steel cut from the bumper of Ethel, Leo’s Zamboni. It was filled with Leo’s cremated remains.

In their search of Leo’s home, the police had found another, typewritten note in which he had requested that his ashes be scattered on the spot where he and Blackburn had built their midnight bonfires. Leo wasn’t an ironic man, and I couldn’t imagine now that his nostalgia for those nights had been anything but bittersweet. But Blackburn had been his best friend, after all. So there we were: Wilf; Zilchy; Tatch; Elvis Bontrager and Floyd Kepsel and their wives; Francis Dufresne; Judge Gallagher; and my mother, leaning against Joanie. Darlene steered me to the side of the circle facing Elvis and Dufresne. Every one of them looked me over.

“Sorry,” Darlene said. “Please continue.”

“No trouble, darling,” Elvis said. He scowled at me while producing a Bible from under his arm. “We were just getting started.”

If Leo had claimed a denomination, it would have resided in the church of the recovering addicted. He had insisted that no clergy officiate at his funeral and that the service be limited to the reading of a single Biblical passage.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven…”

The reading finished, Elvis made a few remarks. He called Leo a “pillar of the community” for the many services he had rendered and said his death marked the “passing of an era,” Starvation’s “last days of glory.” Floyd Kepsel talked of how Leo’s gentle nature had complemented Jack Blackburn’s competitive intensity and praised Blackburn for recognizing that Leo could “bring something more to our boys than just the desire to win.” Neither Elvis nor Kepsel alluded to the circumstances of Leo’s death, how he had put a pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. It was as if Leo had died in his sleep.

Francis Dufresne stepped forward. He clasped his hands atop his gut as he spoke in his hand-me-down brogue.

“This is another terrible day in our great town,” he said. “A good friend-a good man-has fallen. Now I say ‘fallen’ because of course we all know the unfortunate details of Leo’s death, how it shocked us all, how it grieved us to the very core. In a town like this, everyone knows the Zamboni driver, am I right?” A few heads slowly nodded. “But apparently, folks, none of us knew Leo Redpath well enough. And for that we have no one to blame but ourselves. I know I blame myself.”

A sob tried to push up from deep in my belly, but I forced it down and stared hard at Leo’s makeshift urn. I wasn’t thinking about Leo, though. I was thinking about Jeff Champagne, sitting in a jail. I was thinking about that twelve-year-old boy in Escanaba. I was wondering if he played hockey, as Champy did when he was a skinny winger in Starvation Lake trying to land the last spot on the River Rats roster. I was imagining whether that boy looked up to his phys-ed teacher the way Champy once had looked up to Jack Blackburn.

But of course he did.

“It was ten years ago, almost to this very day,” Dufresne was saying, “that we lost our dear friend Jack Blackburn-another good, good man-in a different but equally tragic situation. With due respect to all of you and to the deceased, I would argue, dear friends, that we would not be here today if we had taken better care of our friend Leo in the wake of Jack’s passing.” He paused to look around at the gathering. “In the past week, we have heard much theory and speculation about what happened to Jack and Leo all those many years ago-spurious theory and speculation, if you ask me. Now, I’ve gone back and forth on this, as Augustus here can tell you, and while I appreciate that he has a job to do, and that you, Darlene, and your boss have a job to do, I simply cannot for the life of me see what good any of this prodding and poking of the past has done. Indeed, I’d say it has brought us nothing but grief. I’d venture that we would not be standing here today, with Leo reduced to ashes and Augustus like that and the Campbell boy in jail and Theodore in the hospital if we’d all just left well enough alone.”

“Amen,” Elvis said.

What did Elvis know? Nothing. What did anyone in Starvation Lake really know? I couldn’t blame the people of my hometown anymore than I could blame myself. Most of them were guilty of nothing more than ignorance. They wanted to go on with their lives and hope for the best. Did my father know where his thousand dollars would wind up? Maybe. Maybe not. But I couldn’t save him anymore.

Dufresne unclasped his hands and raised them in front of him. “So now, my friends, I’m imploring you, and everyone in the good town of Starvation Lake, to honor the memory of Jack Blackburn and Leo Redpath by letting them rest in peace. They lived their lives, they were good men-not perfect men, mind you, but good men-and now they are dead and gone.” He looked, in turn, at Judge Gallagher, at Darlene, and at me. “Wherever they are, I am sure they would ask the same simple favor. Let us bury them once and for all today.”

I took a step forward.

Wherever they are, he’d said. I knew where Leo was. At this moment, I had no idea what had become of Blackburn. There was a truth I had been selfishly trying to deny: Blackburn was still out there, he would not be deterred because he was powerless to deter himself, there were many who would help him carry out his missions, and the terrors he wreaked would be repeated again and again and create more and more ruined boys like Champy and Teddy and Soupy.

“No,” I said.

“Excuse me?” Elvis said. “Deputy, can you control your prisoner?”

“Sometimes,” Darlene said.

“No, by all means, let the boy speak,” Dufresne said. “Augustus knew these men well. Please. Son?”

He held his hand out to me, throwing a shadow across Leo’s urn. I did not take it. He knew where Blackburn was. He had known for ten years.

I looked directly at Dufresne. “What happened to Leo was not our fault,” I said. “It was not the town’s fault. You know that.”

“Well, son, I suppose we can agree to disagree.”

“No. It’s not a matter of opinion. You know.”

“What is it that I know?”

“You know Jack Blackburn was not a good man.”

“What the hell is this?” Elvis interrupted.

“Quiet, Uncle El,” Darlene said.

“Gus Carpenter has had it in for Jack ever since-”

“Shut your fat mouth, Elvis Bontrager,” Mom said. “Do you hear me?”

“Augustus,” Dufresne said. “I thought we were friends. I tried to help you as best I could, didn’t I?”

“Sure. Like you told me to look at the minutes of the meeting where the town council decided not to dredge for Coach’s body. Then you had your bartender-Loob, for Christ’s sake-go take the minutes so I couldn’t see them. I guess you think I’m pretty stupid, huh?”

“Not at all, Augustus.”

“How about that old calendar in your office?”

“A calendar? My God, what of it?”

“You got it from your bank, First Fisherman’s of Charlevoix. Then they got bought by First Detroit. And you stayed with them, right?”

“What in the world? We’re at a memorial service. This is no place for business.”

Judge Gallagher spoke up. “Why don’t you answer the question, Francis?”

Dufresne turned to him, unable to hide his surprise. “Ah,” he said. “Well, all right. Sure, I stayed with the bank, why wouldn’t I?”

“You wrote a check on that account in April of 1988, just a few weeks after Coach’s”-I hesitated-“incident. April twelfth, to be exact. For twenty-five thousand dollars. To Angus Campbell.”

“I’ve written a lot of checks to a lot of people.”

“Not for twenty-five thousand dollars in hush money.”

Dufresne folded his arms. “Excuse me?”

In the distance a siren wailed.

“I’ll show you,” I said. “Joanie, somewhere in that backpack I’ll bet you have a copy of that marina receipt we talked about.”

“Sure,” she said. It took her a minute, but she dug it out and handed it to me.

I held the receipt up for Dufresne. “See?” I said. “It says, paid in full, check 5261, written on First Detroit Bank. It’s your handwriting, Francis, not Angus’s. I guess you didn’t trust him.”

He chuckled again. “If that’s my signature, I’ll eat the receipt.”

“The signature’s smudged,” I said. “But look here.” I moved closer to Dufresne and pointed. “I’ll bet you didn’t think a word like ‘Jerryboat’ could give you away.”

It had come to me in the jail when my mother showed me the copy of the check signed by Francis J. Dufresne. The J on Dufresne’s signature looked like an F. It had a little tail on it like a fishhook.

“I’m sorry,” Dufresne said. “I don’t follow.”

“Yes, you do.” The siren was upon us now, just beyond the trees ringing the clearing. “How about your buddy Clayton Perlmutter? You helped get him a bunch of state money to stay quiet, too, didn’t you, Francis? You paid a lot of people to keep quiet.”

“Clayton Perlmutter? I haven’t spent more than five minutes with that old hermit in my life.” He looked at Darlene. “I think this foolishness has gone-”

“You were there, I mean here ”-I pointed at the ground-“you were here that night at the bonfire.” Some of the onlookers gasped. “There was Blackburn and Leo and Soupy and you. You were here the night Jack Blackburn supposedly died.”

“Supposedly?” Elvis said.

“You waited in the woods until Soupy ran away. Then you made Jack Blackburn leave Starvation Lake forever. You told him he’d gone too far, Francis. He’s not in any lake. He didn’t commit suicide. You kept him alive. And he kept you in the porn business.”

“Oh, my God,” my mother said.

“This is insanity,” Dufresne said.

“Sure as hell is,” Elvis said. “But it’s over now. Looks like you’re going back to jail, Gus.”

Everyone turned to see Dingus emerge from the snow-laden trees, trailed by Catledge and D’Alessio. The circle parted and the sheriff stepped into the middle. He gave Darlene a look, then addressed me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Thank God, Dingus,” Dufresne interrupted. “Augustus must have gone stir crazy in jail and now he’s dishonoring a good man-two good men-with a lot of crazy talk.”

“I see,” Dingus said. He plucked a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “Like what?”

“Francis,” I said, “who owns the controlling interest in Richard Limited? Why has that company been paying the taxes on the old Blackburn estate?”

“Dingus,” Dufresne said. Now I heard fear in his voice. It felt good.

“Where’s Blackburn, Francis?”

“Get him out of here, Sheriff, so we can finish paying our respects.”

“Where is Jack Blackburn?”

Dufresne took a step toward me. His eyes went cold.

“I don’t know where he is. And neither do you. You don’t know a damned thing, do you, Augustus?” He turned to Dingus. “Sheriff?”

Dingus moved between us and slapped on the cuffs.