Tamarack County

CHAPTER 8

Stephen borrowed Jenny’s Subaru Forester for the evening. He drove to the reservation of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, where Marlee Daychild lived with her mother in an old prefab home set in a grove of birch trees on the eastern shore of the lake. The gravel lane up to Marlee’s place was marked only by a gap in the snow piled along the shoulder of the plowed road. Stephen turned there and followed wheel ruts that had been left in the new snowfall, ruts made, he knew, by the big all-terrain tires on the Toyota 4Runner that Marlee’s mother drove. She was employed by the Chippewa Grand Casino south of Aurora, working nights tending bar. The 4Runner, though a decade old, provided decent assurance that she could get to the casino even in the bad weather that often characterized winter in the Arrowhead of Minnesota.

A big yard light illuminated the clearing around the home. Stephen parked Jenny’s Forester near the front porch, an add-on built of cedar. He killed the engine, stepped from the car, and followed a shoveled path to the porch. As he climbed the steps, the boards, stiff from the cold, gave aching cries, which were answered from inside by a deep, raucous woofing-Dexter, the big mutt that belonged to Marlee’s uncle and that Marlee cared for these days. Stephen knocked at the door and waited. Dexter was going crazy on the other side, but no one answered, and he knocked again.

“Marlee!” he called toward the nearest window. A Christmas garland hung across the inside of the glass. The shades were drawn, but he knew it was a living room window. “Marlee, it’s me, Stephen!”

The inner door opened suddenly, and Marlee stood behind the storm door, wearing a bathrobe and with a yellow towel wrapped turban-like about her head. She was small, but not delicate, and so very Ojibwe in her genes-high cheeks, dark hair, eyes the color of almonds. Stephen thought she was beautiful, even though at the moment she didn’t look happy to see him. “You’re early.”

“Like five minutes.”

“I’m not ready.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Not out there.” She opened the storm door. “Come in, but quick. We’re letting in the cold.”

Stephen stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Dexter bounded at him gleefully, tail wagging. Stephen had been to Marlee’s several times in the last few weeks, and Dexter knew him, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. The big chocolaty-spotted mutt, a slobbery mix of Newfoundland and Saint Bernard, was as easygoing and friendly a dog as Stephen had ever encountered.

“I’m going to finish getting ready,” Marlee said, heading down the hallway toward her room. “Let Dexter out. He needs to do his business before we leave.”

“Sure.”

Stephen watched her go and wondered if she was as pissed at him as she sounded and was five minutes really so early? He opened the door and said, “Go on, buddy. Do your thing.”

Dexter, whose sheer size and exuberance made the inside of the home feel claustrophobic, bounded out with the eagerness of a child.

Which left Stephen alone in the place. Marlee’s mother was a smoker, and the house reeked of it. She was also, according to her daughter, a lousy housekeeper. Marlee, on the other hand, prided herself on being fastidious and kept everything spotless. A Christmas tree stood in one corner, decorated brightly. It was a live tree, a balsam, and the strong evergreen scent from it battled the residual odor of the cigarette smoke. Stephen pulled off his gloves and stocking cap and put them in the pockets of his parka, then hung the parka on a coat tree near the door.

He spent a few minutes looking at the family photos that hung on the walls. Marlee’s grandparents, Daniel and Amanda Lussier, elders on the rez whom Stephen knew, but not well. Marlee’s older brother, Hector, a Marine serving a second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Stephen had barely known him before he’d joined the military, but Marlee and her mother both spoke of Hector proudly. In the photographs, Marlee’s mother, Stella, was a stunning beauty-dark eyes, prominent cheekbones, slender body, the sense that a smile might appear if you said just the right thing. Marlee was that way, too. And like her mother, she had hair so dark brown that in bad light it appeared to be black. In sunlight, however, Stephen had seen flashes of deep auburn there. In a way, it mirrored Marlee herself. She wasn’t just one thing. She was hard to pin down. Unpredictable. Not always in a good way. Like tonight. Her reaction to him being five minutes early. What was that about?

Still, when he was with her, when she smiled at him, when she turned those deep, almond-colored eyes on him, when she let him kiss her, oh God, she was worth every moment of concern she caused him.

She came out fifteen minutes later looking nothing short of awesome. She’d dried and brushed her hair, and it hung long and loose over her shoulders. Whatever makeup she’d put on her face was subtle, but it did, in Stephen’s opinion, everything that kind of stuff ought to do, and then some. She wore a caramel-colored turtleneck and skintight jeans, and around her neck hung a small gold cross on a delicate gold chain. When she was near enough, he caught the scintillating fragrance of Beyonce Pulse, what she called her signature scent. Inside, Stephen was like one of those windup toys with the spring so taut another twist and he would go sproing!

“You look great,” he said, his mouth a little dry.

“Are you gonna kiss me then or not?”

There was no “or not” about it. He put his arms around her and pressed his body against hers and kissed her lips very hard.

“Oooh,” she said, and drew back a little. “Not so rough.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Like this.” And she showed him what she liked. And, Jesus, did he like it, too.

“The show’s in twenty minutes,” Stephen heard himself say, stupidly.

“I don’t care if we miss it.” Her lips, as she whispered, brushed his cheek, and he heard himself reply, “The hell with it.”

Five minutes later, they were prone on the sofa. His right hand was on her sweater where he could feel the thin material of her bra beneath, and beneath that the pliant palmful of flesh that was her breast. He’d never done this before, gone this far with a girl, and he was nearly breathless. His lips tingled. He had an erection that, under normal circumstances, would have embarrassed him no end. But he was in a wonderfully unfamiliar world of circumstance. He felt as if his brain was sizzling, as if it was meat on red-hot coals, and he couldn’t have thought clearly even if he’d wanted to. Which he definitely did not.

Later, he would wonder, not without a measure of relief mixed with his disappointment, what would have happened if they hadn’t heard Dexter’s barking.

Marlee’s body went instantly rigid, and in the terrible blink of an eye, her hands had positioned themselves to throw him off. “What was that?”

“Just Dexter,” Stephen said. “Barking. It’s what dogs do.”

He tried to kiss her mouth, but she turned her face so that his lips planted themselves on her cheek instead.

“He’s going crazy out there.” Her body remained frozen, and her eyes darted across the ceiling and around the room as she listened intently.

The barking went on, then stopped, then the clumsy mutt let out a yelp, and the barking stopped, for good this time.

“There,” Stephen said. “Whatever it was that got him going, it’s gone.”

“He sounded hurt. Didn’t he sound hurt?”

Stephen didn’t want to agree. There was such a huge part of him so terribly reluctant to alter the way things were going. But Marlee was right. Dexter had sounded hurt. And then Dexter had gone silent, which didn’t bode well.

He righted himself and removed his weight from Marlee’s body. She brought herself upright and got off the sofa. She went to the front door, and Stephen followed. She opened up to the cold night and called, “Dexter! Here, Dex! That’s a good boy! Time to come in!”

They studied the snow outside, brightly illuminated by the yard light and cut with a lacework of prints left not only by Dexter but also by other creatures of the Northwoods. From where he stood, Stephen could easily identify deer, squirrel, and rabbit tracks.

“He’s a good dog. He always comes when I call,” Marlee said. “Something’s wrong.”

Stephen quickly went through all the reasonable possibilities he could think of. There were coyotes on the rez. Hell, there were coyotes everywhere these days. People lost cats and very small dogs to them all the time, but he didn’t think they’d attack a big dog like Dexter. He’d heard stories of recent cougar sightings in the Arrowhead of Minnesota. He thought a cougar, especially a hungry one, might go after a big dog, but if that had been the case, there would have been the noise of a hell of a fight instead of Dexter’s sudden silence. Bears? He’d seldom heard of a bear attacking a dog, and such an attack usually happened only if it involved a sow protecting her cubs. But it was too early for bears to be birthing and cold enough that they should have been deep in hibernation. And anyway, like the cougar possibility, a bear attack would involve a lot of noisy ruckus. In the end, he didn’t have a good explanation.

“Dexter!” Marlee called again, and Stephen heard the panic in her voice.

“I’ll go out and look for him,” he offered.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

They put on their coats and gloves and stocking caps and left the house. The sky was black and full of stars, and a waxing quarter moon hung high above the western horizon. The temperature was well below freezing, and their boots squeaked on the snow as they walked. Stephen went to Jenny’s Forester and took a flashlight from the glove box.

“His barking came from the lake,” Marlee said, which was also what Stephen thought.

He nudged the flashlight switch with his thumb, and they followed the beam onto the dark of a trail that led toward the lake. He could see Dexter’s tracks, big galumphing paw prints amid lots of kicked-up snow. There were older tracks as well, also made by Dexter, an indication that this was a favorite route for the mutt.

Marlee called to the dog as they walked, but still received no answer. The yard light behind them became a dim glimmer among the bare branches of the birch that crowded the shore of Iron Lake. The trail tunneled deeper into a darkness that was both night and forest. There was no wind and no sound except for that generated by the two of them: the squeaking snow, the sizzle of their synthetic outerwear, the huff of their breathing, and Marlee’s increasingly desperate calls.

They came to the lakeshore, where the trees opened onto the great flat white of the frozen water. Far out, several small black humps stood silhouetted against the hoary expanse, islands the Ojibwe called Maangwag, the Loons. Far to the southwest, a tangerine glow rose in the sky, as if from a huge fire. And that, Stephen understood, was the electric haze above Aurora. Nearer at hand were the tracks of Dexter bounding out onto the lake, and for a moment, another possible explanation came to Stephen: Dexter had somehow fallen through the ice. Marlee had taken a few steps ahead, following where Dexter had gone, and Stephen reached out and grabbed her arm.

“Wait!” he said, harshly enough that Marlee turned on him in anger.

“Let go of me!” She pulled from his grip.

“The ice,” Stephen tried to explain.

But Marlee was already marching ahead, calling “Dex! Dex!”

“He might have gone through the ice,” Stephen called to her, hesitating at the shoreline.

“That’s stupid. The ice is . . .” She stopped speaking.

Then Marlee screamed.