Tamarack County

CHAPTER 17

It was hard dark by the time Cork dropped Stephen at home. Jenny and Anne hustled their brother inside, worrying over him like a couple of old hens. Cork told them he’d be back as soon as he’d taken Stella Daychild to her place on the rez.

They drove south out of Aurora. When they’d left the lights of town behind them, Stella opened her purse, a small black thing, fumbled out a cigarette, and wedged it between her lips. She jammed the pack back into her purse. Without fishing, her fingers emerged holding a white Bic lighter, which she brought to the tip of her cigarette. She paused in the instant before her thumb struck a flame.

“Mind?” she said.

Normally he would have, but this wasn’t a normal circumstance. “Go ahead,” he said and opened the ashtray between them.

In the dark inside the Land Rover, the little flame seemed to explode and lit Stella’s face in harsh, wavering yellow. Cork glanced at her and saw the mascara bleeding down her left cheek, the lines of worry that fanned out from the corner of her eye like the tines on a garden rake. No one was pretty in pain.

“How’re you doing?” he asked.

“Look at me. How do you think I’m doing? Really shitty.”

She dropped the lighter into her purse and snapped it shut. Then she stared out her window, blowing smoke against the glass, clouding the inches between her and the darkness on the other side.

“She’ll be all right,” Cork said.

He felt her eyes bore into him. “Do you know who that psycho was or why he went after her?”

“Not yet.”

“Then Marlee’s not all right.” This time her lips shot the cloud of smoke in his direction.

After that, Cork didn’t feel inclined to offer any more comfort, and they drove for a long time in silence.

Stella finished her cigarette, ground out the ember in the ashtray, said more to herself than to Cork, “I still have to figure out how I’m going to tell Ray Jay about Dexter.”

“You think he hasn’t heard? He’s in the county jail, Stella, not on Mars.”

She laid her head back against the seat, and her voice grew weary. “He’s always been quiet and kept to himself. But ever since he went public a couple of years ago and confessed all that crap about Cecil LaPointe, he’s isolated himself even more. Marlee and me, we’re just about the only people he talks to, and when he does, he doesn’t really open up.” She looked out the window again and said softly, “Shit. It’ll just about kill him.”

Cork pulled off the highway and onto the ruts in the snow that led to the Daychild place. When he drew up before the house, there were no lights on inside.

“I thought someone was going to be here with you,” Cork said.

“My uncle, Shorty.”

“Where is he?”

“Hell, who knows?”

The night was clear, and the moon was up, a lopsided waxing toward half. The line of trees that edged the little clearing cast faint, ragged shadows across the snow in a way that reminded Cork of the teeth of a predator. Not just any predator, though. It made him think of the mythic cannibal ogre of Ojibwe myth, the Windigo. He thought about the majimanidoo Meloux had reported seeing in his dreams. The flimsy prefab, a BIA-built structure decades old, sat in the middle of the clearing and seemed to offer no protection at all.

“It’s not a good idea for you to be here alone,” Cork said. “Can I take you somewhere else?”

“There’s nowhere else I want to be right now.”

“I’m not going to leave you here alone.”

She didn’t bother arguing, just opened her door, got out, and started toward the house.

Cork let her walk a dozen steps, then swore softly to himself, killed the engine, unbuckled his seat belt, and slid from the Land Rover.

The sound of the car door shutting made Stella turn. She watched Cork approach, her face in the moonlight a black and white mask of shadow and skin that gave no hint of emotion.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said.

He opened his hands to the emptiness around them. “Yeah, I do.”

Stella thought about it, gave a little shake of her head, and walked up the steps. Inside she turned on the lights, shed her coat, and threw it across the nearest chair back. She tugged off her black, heeled boots, left them tumbled near the doormat, and headed toward the kitchen. Cork took off his parka and hung it on the coat tree near the door. He unlaced his boots, removed them, and set them on a mat next to the coat tree, where someone-probably Marlee-had put it for just that purpose. He heard the refrigerator door open, heard the clank of glass against glass, and half a minute later, Stella returned carrying two opened bottles of spring water.

“I don’t have any Leinenkugel’s.” It sounded like an apology, though just barely.

“What makes you think I like Leinie’s?”

“I’ve served you a few times at the casino. It’s the kind of thing you remember when you tend bar.”

A mirror hung on the wall behind Cork, and Stella caught sight of herself in the glass. “Oh, Jesus, that can’t be me.” She put her bottle of water down on the end table next to the sofa. “Back in a minute.”

It was actually ten, and in that time, Cork drank half his water. He also took a good look around him and thought about a couple of things. One was a feature in Stella’s home that surprised him. There were bookshelves, lots of them, all jammed with texts across a wide range of subjects-history, philosophy, psychology, literature. He knew Marlee was a smart kid, but this level and breadth of interest amazed him. He found himself considering the possibility that it wasn’t only Marlee who read, and he remembered Stella’s comment to him the night before, that men who stared at her weren’t interested in the fact that there was more to her than met the eye.

He also studied the house itself and was concerned at how flimsy a structure it really was and about all the ways someone could break into it. He puzzled over why they might want to do that and wondered, for the umpteenth time, if there was something that Stella or Marlee knew but wasn’t telling. When Stella returned, she’d cleaned all the makeup from her face and brushed her hair. Although she was clearly tired, she looked collected and focused. And, he couldn’t help noticing, attractive in a very natural way.

“I think you should call someone,” he suggested.

“I’ll be all right.” She dropped onto the sofa. “I still have to figure how to get my car out of that damn lake.”

“Leonard Kingbird. He winches two or three vehicles out every year, ice fishermen with more enthusiasm than sense.”

He watched Stella sip her water. She’d changed out of the clothes she’d worn to work, the tight black top that hugged her breasts, the black slacks that showed off the nice curves below her waist. She had on a soft green turtleneck, faded jeans, and white socks.

“Got a way to get to work in the meantime?” he asked.

“I’ll figure it out,” she said. And he knew she would. She’d been figuring her way around adversity all her life.

“Stella, you’re right,” he said.

She looked at him, her brown eyes large with question. “About what?”

“That Marlee isn’t safe until we know who was driving that truck. You’re not safe either. We need to decide what to do about that.”

“We?”

“You asked me to help, remember? I’m not backing out. I have a personal stake in this now, too.”

“Stephen,” she said with a little nod. “He’s like you, you know.” She smiled, glanced down, almost shyly. “He wouldn’t leave Marlee.”

Cork was sitting in an easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. He set his bottle of water on the table and leaned toward her. “If I’m going to help you, you have to trust me, Stella.”

She seemed puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Someone killed Dexter to send you a pretty brutal message. And then they went after Marlee. This kind of thing doesn’t happen out of the blue.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

He thought about Charles Devine and knew she was right. But Devine was an isolated case, a crime of opportunity. Someone had planned to kill Dexter, and someone had followed and harassed Marlee. There was motive in what might seem like madness.

“You’re absolutely certain that you don’t know any reason someone would be targeting you?” he asked.

“I told you I don’t. Look, Cork, this trust thing has to go both ways.”

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. What about Marlee?”

“What about her?”

“Could she be keeping something from you?”

“She could be, but I don’t think she is. She’s got a little wild in her, but not like me. Or at least not like I did at her age. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. Especially after today, if there was something I should know, she’d tell me. And she hasn’t.”

Cork finished his bottled water, thinking. “There’s something we’re not considering. I just don’t know what it is.”

“Hungry?” Stella asked suddenly.

He was. He hadn’t eaten in forever, and he was famished. “Yeah, I am.”

“Let me see what I can offer.”

She got up and disappeared into the kitchen. He heard her open the refrigerator, and a couple of moments later, she called, “How about an omelet?”

“Works for me.”

He brought her bottle of spring water, still half full, and his own, empty, to the kitchen.

“Another?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Anything I can do to help?”

“You can chop this up.” She handed him an onion.

They worked together. Stella talked about Marlee, and he talked about Stephen, and it felt oddly comfortable, all this domesticity. They ate at the dinette, then Stella stacked the dishes.

“Be glad to dry while you wash,” Cork offered.

“I’ll tackle them tomorrow,” she said. “I’m bushed.” She leaned back against the counter and eyed him enigmatically. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“You said you weren’t going to leave me here alone. How’re you going to do that?”

“You’re sure Shorty’s not coming?”

“He’d be here by now,” she said. “He had the best of intentions, I’m sure. Uncle Shorty always does. But he probably started in on his Jack Daniel’s a lot earlier than he intended, and he’s lying on his bed, shitfaced.”

“How about I sleep on your couch?”

“All right with me, but what about your girlfriend?”

“It won’t be that kind of sleepover.”

“Try telling that to Rainy when she hears about it.”

“It’ll be fine.”

She shook her head in a way that suggested he was hopelessly naive and said, “Your funeral.”

He called home, explained, and said he’d be back in the morning. By the time he ended the call, Stella had some folded sheets, an old quilt, and a pillow sitting on the sofa.

“I don’t have a toothbrush to offer,” she said.

“I’ll survive.”

“All right.”

He expected her to leave then, but she didn’t. Instead, she studied him in the lamplight, as if trying to come to some decision. Finally she said, “I almost lost my kids. Down in Minneapolis, before I got sober. But I met some elders in the Little Earth community there, and they hooked me up with good people at the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center. They saved my life. One of the things they all helped me believe was that I could make something of myself. They encouraged me to get my GED, and I did. For the last five years, I’ve been taking classes at Aurora Community College, a few credits at a time. Last summer I graduated. An Associate Arts degree. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“I’ve applied to St. Scholastica down in Duluth, their online program, to go for my bachelor’s degree.” Her eyes became dark and fierce. “Everyone on the rez still thinks of me like they did back when there was nothing to me but wild. Hell, tending bar hasn’t done a lot to change their opinion. But I’m not going to be a bartender for the rest of my life. I don’t want that to be how my kids or anyone else thinks of me. Just a bartender. I want Hector and Marlee to be proud of me.”

“I’d guess they already are.” And then Cork, who had a pretty good idea of the difficulty of the road she’d traveled, said, “I hope you are, too, Stella. I think whatever it is you want to do with your life, you’ll get there.”

“You really think so?”

“I wouldn’t have said if I didn’t believe it.”

She said, quietly, “I want to be a teacher.”

“Of what?”

“I’m not sure yet. Maybe history. I like the idea of teaching the past so that we have a better chance of not repeating our mistakes. Believe me, mistakes are something I know about.” She offered him a wisp of a smile, then looked down. “I’ve never told anyone all of this. Not even Marlee.” She gave a little laugh, a small sound, mostly air. “That trust thing you talked about? Maybe we’re there.”

“I’d like to think so,” Cork said.

Stella opened her mouth, about to speak again, but seemed to think better of it, gave her head a slight shake as if to clear her mind, and finally turned away. “Well, good night,” she said as she left him.

Cork checked the doors and windows, turned out the kitchen light, and made up the sofa. Before he lay down, he scanned the room, found nothing to his liking, returned to the kitchen, and brought back a heavy rolling pin-terribly cliche, he knew, but that’s all there was-and tucked it in beside him when he lay down. He listened to the sounds of the house, heard Stella in the bathroom, heard her walk to her bedroom, heard the door close, and after that, heard only the sound of the winter wind outside, sliding across the clearing and into the trees.

* * *

He woke in the night, woke completely alert, with the jolting knowledge that he wasn’t alone. He didn’t move except to wrap his fingers around the handle of the rolling pin. He lay very still, listening, watching, attempting with all his senses to locate the presence in the room. He was surprised by a fragrance, a wonderful scent that carried within it the suggestion of cinnamon and a flower he knew but couldn’t name. He heard the very soft rustle of what he thought must be satin, and finally discerned a slender figure standing in the dark a few feet in front of the sofa.

“Cork?”

A whisper, if even that.

He considered the possibility that she might be wanting to tell him she’d heard something and she was afraid. But he knew better. He was tempted-very tempted-to answer. Instead he lay perfectly still, pretending sleep. She stood awhile longer, then turned away, the soft satin rustle retreating, the moment gone. And Cork lay there alone, trying to understand why he felt as lost as that moment.