Jack Pine, page 11
Tommy turned, his hooked nose more pronounced in the ash light.
“Don’t use one.” He raised his rifle. “Why would I bother with that when I can shoot twice the number of deer with a rifle?”
Reuger kept his eyes steady.
“I saw some arrows coming my way at your cabin.”
“Nope.” He frowned. “That’s my sister. She lives there now, you know. I was up there checking traps, and that old cabin is a fucking wreck. She uses a bow and arrow and chases off people from the cabin.” His eyes slipped the corners like dark moons. “She all painted up?”
“Yep. Black face.”
“Ya, that’s her,” Tommy nodded. He breathed heavily. “She’s watched too many old movies and thinks she’s a Comanche or something.”
Reuger turned to the flat lake pooling under the moon.
“It’s a good way for her to get killed.”
Tommy’s mouth flattened, spinning a finger by his temples.
“I’ve got problems all right, but she’s real hard-headed, that one. You can’t tell her anything. She thinks she’s Joan of Arc of the Indians and is always getting ready for her last stand. I told her nobody gives a fuck that she’s up there, and if she wants to play Fort Apache then no one is going to try and take it from her, you know.”
Reuger turned and sat down on the overturned canoe with the Winchester on his lap. Tommy Tobin was a big man, at least six-five, and he didn’t like looking up at him. It was better to talk to a man on the same level.
“So what’s been going on out here, Tommy?”
He turned slightly. “What so?”
“You know what I mean here.”
“Ya,” he shrugged. “That’s why I told the boy to give you the message. Figured you wanted to ask me some questions about Foster and all that shit, you know.”
Reuger nodded, his brim low and saw the girl again in Pine Lodge. Her description of the man with the lantern in the shed fit Tommy.
“You been in any woodsheds lately?”
He turned all the way around with his mouth open. Reuger couldn’t see his face under the camouflaged cap.
“You’ll go back this time, Tommy.”
“Ya?” He shrugged, rolling the green army coat. “So I’m on parole, big fucking deal. Am I taking too many fish from the lakes or something?”
Reuger tapped the canoe.
“Have a seat here.”
He sat on the canoe with his knees like end tables. The bow sank slowly into the sand, and they had to lean toward the stern. They watched a bird glide across the glassy lake.
“So then…what about Foster, Tommy?”
He raised his arms slightly and frowned.
“Ya, heard he was dead, and his slasher burned there.”
Reuger leaned forward, seeing the scarred lines on his cheek.
“You didn’t do it?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“Nope.”
His lower lip curled out, and he turned.
“I didn’t work with him that day. He was an asshole, you know, about me being late and said if I was late then not to bother coming.” Tommy rolled his shoulders again. “So that day I was sleeping it off and figured I’d go anyway because when he calmed down he needed help to run the slasher or the cherry picker, and he was getting pretty old there. But when I come down the road there I could smell it, you know.” He touched his nose. “His truck was burning, and I left straightaway.”
“What time?”
“I don’t wear a watch.”
“Where’d you go then after you saw the slasher?”
Tommy nodded toward Canada.
“You know, up the Boundary Waters. Figured, you know, it was better to stay away for a while.”
Reuger pushed his hat up and wiped his forehead dry.
“Why for?”
He cradled his hands to the sky.
“All the shit that’s been going on lately. Tree huggers getting worse, and Ben Johnson taking more trees than ever, and I just figured they need somebody to blame it on, and I couldn’t think of anybody better than a Indian with a record, you know.”
Reuger leaned back and regarded the man hunched forward. He could have been fishing or playing checkers. He could see no evasiveness in his posture or his eyes.
“Have you been talking to them?”
He turned but didn’t look at Reuger.
“Who?”
“Tom Jorde.”
Tommy reached down to the sand and picked up a rock.
“No. That asshole, he come out to the reservation a bunch of times looking for anybody to talk to, and so I talked to him a couple of times, and he talks the shit about wanting to help us get back our lands and reparations and all, but I know it’s a bunch of shit.”
The stone splashed white far out on the lake.
“Good throw.”
“Ya, thanks.” His mouth clamped together and he blew air out of his mouth like steam. “Ah, they’re just like the loggers you know. They want to bring up more of their kind so they can eat their granola and wear their sandals and tell everybody else to get off the lakes and shit. I’d rather have the loggers.”
Reuger leaned forward again with his hands on the Winchester.
“What’d he ask you?”
Tommy tilted his head and frowned.
“You know, he knew I was working with Foster, so he wanted to know where he’s been logging. Wants me to say he’s been logging in the Boundary Waters, but I know that’s what he wants, and so I just say Foster he just takes scrub trees down below the line, but I don’t think he believed me.” He turned and grinned yellow teeth. “He’s a real obnoxious motherfucker.” His eyes surfaced from the dark. “More than most white people, you know.”
Reuger sat back and squeezed his hat brim.
“Ya, you look pretty tired there.”
“Long day.” Reuger yawned. “So why’d you run?”
“I told you,” he shrugged. “I saw the slasher burning and figured they try and blame it on me. That Jorde, he’d do anything to stop the logging, I figure, and I didn’t want to be around when they say who burned Foster out.” His eyes flickered. “But I didn’t know he was shot then.”
Reuger rolled his tongue against his teeth.
“How’d you find out?”
Tommy grunted.
“You know you can’t keep a secret in the Boundary Waters. I have friends, you know. Besides, that radioman John Mcfee make sure everybody knows.”
Another loon splashed down. A lilting call rising to an echoing crescendo. Tommy clasped his hands together like knotted bones.
“Know anything about Carter Grissom then?”
His cap moved. “Nope.”
Reuger paused and watched him closely. “Someone spiked his tree and shot him, then burned his skidder. Same as Foster.”
Tommy’s cap moved again and he scratched the hair up on his forehead.
“Man, that’s fucked up. Them tree huggers are really going crazy.”
“What makes you say that?”
He pursed his lips and looked to the sky.
“That Jorde, he asked me about Carter too and says he thinks he’s been going over the line after the big trees too. He says he has proof and all this shit and that he just needs somebody to be a witness, you know.” Tommy shook his head slowly. “But I tell him I don’t know anything about it you know, because you get involved with those people and you never log again.”
Wind skitched the lake and lapped their boots. Reuger didn’t move or speak. A man who lied was uneasy in silence a lot of times. He found people really did want to tell the truth if given a chance. Lying wasn’t natural and sat with someone like bad food.
“I knew it would happen sooner or later with the trees running out and all.” Tommy stared at the dark eyes under the hat. “People are going crazy now.”
Reuger watched him for a long moment.
“Jorde say anything else to you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “He just asked if I wanted to make some money.”
“Say what you’d have to do?”
Tommy rolled his neck.
“No…but I knew what he was saying, you don’t have to say something like that.”
“Spiking the tree, you mean?”
“Oh, ya.”
The loon yodel echoed across the lake again. Tommy squinted and shook his head.
“They always do that right when I’m going to sleep you know.”
Reuger yawned again and turned toward where he left his canoe. He thought about paddling back and thought he might get back before dawn. He stood up.
“I need you to make a statement, Tommy. What Jorde said to you and where you were the night before and that morning.”
Sure,” he nodded. “I’ll come to the lodge tomorrow afternoon. I want to get some reading in tonight, you know.”
Reuger lifted the Winchester to the sky.
“Don’t make me come looking for you again here, Tommy.”
“Ya.” He waved his hand. “I’ll be there.”
21
THE OLD GROCERY store was planted on the far side of town away from the tourist streams looking for a coffee mug or a buckskin coat. It shut down for lack of business, and now it was a rag-tag headquarters for environmentalists. Printed letters were taped to the window: E-A-R-T-H F-I-R-S-T. A faded green sticker was low in the corner: We Take Food Stamps.
Reuger drained his mug before pulling the door to a faint scent of paper bags. He walked to a college girl with hair reaching to a gunmetal desk. The old plank floor groaned loudly.
“Here to volunteer?”
Reuger squinted at her book.
“Silent Spring. Any good?”
She flipped the tree-covered book around. Rings on her lower lip creased her expression like dashes in a sentence and Reuger guessed her hair somewhere between vermilion and green. He could see where the dye stained her scalp. “It really started the whole movement,” she declared, then she farted. Her face darkened. “Eating too many beans, I guess,” she said under her breath.
“I didn’t know that,” he said glancing at the other desks with pamphlets and fliers and phone cords snaking into a tangled mess. Most of the desks were empty save for a man eating a doughnut.
“Tom Jorde around?”
“He’s back there.” She turned around then smiled up. “The center door.”
“Mind if I leave this here?”
“Ya, sure, no problem,” she said turning back to her book.
He set his mug down and saw a man walking toward him in a Calvary hat with crossed swords. Reuger hooked his arm like a dancer as John Mcfee squeezed his right eye shut, puffing his small mustache.
“Police are now manhandling the press, I see!”
Reuger kept his hand locked on his arm.
“What are you doing here, John?”
He arced the space with his finger.
“That’s between the press and their client!”
Reuger stared toward the back of the store and nodded.
“What did you tell him, John?”
He pursed his lips, squinting like a man taking aim.
“The End of the Road program has many guest appearances and since this is not part of the ongoing investigation launched by the Ely Standard into the murderous rampage of loggers, then I don’t mind telling you I was firming up his interview for my show.”
Reuger tapped his gun belt, pulling him closer, speaking to him directly.
“Listen to me John, go find some old fisherman and tell all your listeners about the best walleye holes, but you screw this investigation up with Mcfee shenanigans and I’ll put you in jail.”
His eyes closed to half slits.
“So then, yer threatening the press again, are yer?”
Mcfee reached for his pocket.
“Touch that pad, and I’ll break your fingers.”
He paused then nodded slowly.
“Don’t matter. When you’re talking to me you’re talking to a tape recorder.” He tapped his forehead. “Yer talkin’ to the world here.” He tipped his Cavalry hat forward. “I bid yer a hearty farewell, sir!”
Reuger let him go and watched him tip his hat to the girl then disappear into sunlight. He turned and walked the old planks to a door of faded letters.
“Yeah, it’s open, Reuger!”
He pushed the door and inhaled a scent of fried food. Tom Jorde stabbed a computer resembling a large egg in a green T-shirt of white lettering—SAVE THE SPOTTED OWL FROM EXTINCTION. Empty coffee cups and potato chip bags and paper littered the desk and overflowed a trashcan. The room smelled of coffee, paper, and smoke.
“Have a seat. Almost finished,” he muttered.
Reuger sat in a chair with one arm missing and looked at a calendar with three gray wolves in snow next to a sign: NO ONE IS TO USE THE COMPUTER WITHOUT PERMISSION. A framed yellow map of the Superior National Forest was behind the desk. The printer hummed, and Jorde leaned back and squeezed his eyes shut. Reuger crossed his boot over his knee and moved the Colt out.
“Long night, Tom?”
“Have to get a petition off this morning.” He opened his eyes. “Let’s see, you’re here to accuse me of killing loggers, right?”
Reuger pursed his lips and moved his shoulders.
“Mcfee would be better off sticking to the fishing reports.”
“I would think he must be a damn fine journalist for Charles Kroning to leave him a radio station and a newspaper. I’m going over there this afternoon to tape a show with him and give him the real story about what’s been going on around here!”
Reuger leaned back in the chair. “Be careful there, Tom. Mcfee plays both sides against the middle, and then he plays the middle.”
“He’s not accusing me of murdering loggers,” Jorde scoffed. “He’s not sticking a gun against my head like the Hitler youth you have running around out there.”
Reuger lifted the clear plastic bag he had been holding in his left hand. It dropped on the metal desk with a loud thunk.
“I have another dead logger on my hands. Carter Grisom was cutting a sixty-foot white pine when he sawed into that steel. Then someone shot him next to his burning skidder.”
Jorde stared at the chafing marks glinting through the plastic wrap. His red-rimmed eyes drifted up.
“So…what’s that got to do with me?”
“Environmental sabotage, don’t you think?”
Tom backed up in his rollaway chair and smiled slowly.
“Okay…so you think I’m jamming spikes in trees and then shooting loggers?”
Reuger slapped another baggy on the desk.
“I found that next to Foster Jones’s slasher.”
Tom picked up the baggy. “I haven’t had this button for years!”
Reuger rubbed his chin and stared into the washed-out eyes. “Anything you want to tell me here, Tom?”
“I’ve got nothing to do with these dead loggers,” he muttered, throwing the button down. “Why don’t you go ask Ben Johnson or his fascist son what he fucking knows? It’s more their style than mine.”
“Have you been protesting up around there?”
“No!” Jorde jumped out of his chair and stared at the yellow map of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. “But I probably should be with the shit that’s been going on up here while you’ve been looking the other way.” Jorde turned. “But you’re a logger and don’t give a shit, do you?”
Reuger bit his lip.
“Wouldn’t say that.”
Jorde leaned close to the desk.
“This land was raped once before at the turn of the century when they came up with steam barges and stripped the trees. The same way they destroyed the Ohio River Valley, the same way they tried to destroy the trees in Washington State Park.” His eyes burned with a feverish glow. “When I was up there I realized something. I had been tracking the owls and we had to stay in that forest all night. I woke early one morning and saw those old trees wet with dew, and I knew then they were the last ones and that if someone didn’t do something, they would all be gone from the planet, and my children would never see real forests.”
Tom Jorde’s eyes burned even brighter. Reuger could see a fine sheen of perspiration on his brow. “That’s when I decided to speak for the trees, and I joined Earth First. So when I got up here and saw what had been done to this land, I vowed to never let it happen again. I know what Ben Johnson is after…” Jorde nodded slowly. “He wants the Old Pines in the Boundary Waters.”
Reuger crossed his boot over his knee.
“What makes you say that?”
Jorde sat down in his chair.
“What’s it matter to you?” A slim smile crossed his lips. “I haven’t been murdering loggers, but if some poachers got what they finally deserved, then I’m not going to cry any tears for them. They knew what they were doing, and they knew the risk. They’re killing the trees, so maybe the trees are getting back at them finally. Ever think of that?”
Reuger stared back at the excited man. He found zealots as bad as the people they fought against. For the first time, Reuger considered Tom Jorde might have killed Foster Jones.
“You ever talk with Tommy Tobin?”
Jorde leaned back.
“I’ve spoken with Tommy before.”
“What for?”
“That’s my business,” he answered coolly.
“You still carry your pistol, Tom?”
His faced flushed suddenly.
“It was stolen out of my truck right after I saw you.”
Reuger scratched his jaw, thumbing his hat farther up.
“You really think so?”
Jorde’s faced reddened. “You think my gun was used. This is just a fucking setup…”
The door opened at his back, and Jorde glanced up.
“What!”
Reuger didn’t turn around.
“I’m sorry…I’m looking for a Tom Jorde.”
“You found him,” he said slapping the desk.
Reuger stared straight ahead and felt muscles knotting along his upper back with the voice continuing like the haunt of a drowning woman. If he had been standing, he might have stepped back.
“I’m your lawyer. They called and said you might need…”
