Jack Pine, page 5
He envisioned the man with the chainsaw. The whirring chain would fly through the wood and then there would be a shower of sparks as the teeth of the cutting chain lost the battle to the steel spike. The chain would snap then and fly from the guides of the saw.
He pulled out another spike and raised the sledge. He pounded the spike into the tree and smoothed over the hole again. Nope. No one would ever find it. Only a man with a chainsaw would find the steel rods now. He finished with the four other trees then put his tools in the rucksack. Tomorrow was Sunday. He would come back on Monday and see what happened. It was for a good cause. That’s what he had to keep in mind. The end justified the means.
They had done a lot worse. This was nothing. You had to strike when you had your chance, or you would never get anywhere. That’s the way it was in this country.
9
REUGER SHOT OUT of the bay in the seventeen-foot lodge boat, sending curls of green gelatin toward the shore and clearing the last buoy. Tim Carpenter, Jim’s son, was in the bow staring straight ahead at a large slab of granite rising out of the lake less than a mile across in the shape of a wineskin with the mouth close to the lodge. The dark trees of Center Island grew larger as they passed fishing boats with the red and green navigation lights. Granite slabs and jagged graywacke cliffed the shore with scraggly jack pine and overhanging swamp tamarack.
Tim pointed to a slab-slopping water, and Reuger maneuvered between the boulders. The bottom rutted shore as they lifted the trashcan to the flat rock. Reuger looked at Tim across the opening of fish offal smelling sour and horrible. Reuger was in the lodge bar with Ben Johnson and Jim Carpenter when the boy came in and said he saw a canoe over on the island. Tim also said he had seen a man back in the woods with long black hair. Ben Johnson had been ranting about the environmentalists before that.
“So when you going to pick up that sonofabitch, Reuger?”
Reuger turned slowly and stared at him. Men like Ben Johnson had always owned logging companies or ranches or plantations. Johnson Timber was Ely’s sole employer since the mines played out in the sixties, and all the power came to reside in one company. He employed most of the town and had become the rallying point against the environmentalists who wanted to stop the logging.
Reuger turned away and sipped his coffee.
“What sonofabitch is that?”
“Don’t give me that crap.” His white eyebrows knitted together. “You know who—Jorde! He’s the one that’s done it. He’s the one that has the motivation to kill Foster.” He dropped the whiskey like Kool-Aid and looked up, eyes red and small. “Bet your last dollar Jorde had a hand in this, Reuger.”
He put his coffee down. Tom Jorde was the leader of the militant environmental group, Earth First. He had come to live in Ely five years before and made life hell for the loggers and for Reuger. The Earth First used a commando-style assault on industry. Logging equipment was ending up in the lakes and cars were left without tires on logging roads and salt was poured into the gas tanks of skidders and slashers and trucks. But there had been no violence yet and Reuger intended to keep it that way.
“Not their style, Ben.”
“Like hell! They chain themselves to trees and move boulders into the logging roads, and I hear Jorde carries a gun. Forgetting, aren’t you, that sonofabitch tried to put Jim here out of business?”
Reuger shook his head.
“That was the Wilderness Act, Ben.”
“Tell that to all the lodges the government came in and burned down,” Ben Johnson thundered, holding the bar like a man about to tear it away. “Shit, only reason they didn’t get this lodge was Jim happened to be just south of the line.”
“Yep, just a sixteenth of a mile short,” Jim nodded, leaning against the bar holding a bottle opener. “Been any shorter an’ we’d be sitting in the woods having a beer.”
“And how you can rent to goddamn tree huggers—”
“Don’t ask what people do for a living,” Jim said, looking down to the bar. “Long as they pay up.”
“I’d have thrown that environmental lawyer right out in the road,” he grumbled.
“He’s talking about the lady and the boy in cabin eight,” Jim nodded, filling Reuger’s cup again. “So…was Tommy still working with Foster?”
Reuger nodded, as the Colt clunked the bar again.
“Indians go bad sooner or later,” Ben muttered.
Reuger set the enamel cup down on the bar.
“We took everything they had.”
“Shit, they have the courts.” He gestured to the ceiling. “Hell, they have more lawyers than I do!”
Reuger looked at him from the brim of his hat. “And all it takes is a court order to abrogate an Indian treaty made a hundred years before in blood.”
“You’ve seen the Indians on that damn reservation. They’re just like the blacks—living off the government and drinking all they can get their hands on!” He laughed shortly. “You have more sympathy for the Indians and tree huggers than the people around here who work the land?”
“You’ve stolen enough logs from them.” Reuger looked down at the grounds in his cup. “I would think you liked the Indians. Never had to pay a dime for timber rights on their land.”
“Stolen!” His eyes narrowed. “Whose fucking side are you on? You know where I just came from, Reuger?” He scooped the dice up. “Just come back from an auction in Washington state to pick up some equipment because the tree huggers decided a fucking owl was more important than people’s jobs!” He held the cup up to the light. “I saw the owner too, sitting in a damn folding chair in the middle of his lumberyard while they auctioned off his life’s work.”
Ben’s eyes pushed out from under the brim of his Stetson.
“I’m supposed to give the Indians a pile of money, because my grandfather didn’t give some tribal chief an extra blanket for logging out the territory?”
Then Tim had come in with his breathless story of the man in the woods. Reuger now looked at the boy who had grown into a teenager over night.
“Did you see that Reynolds girl at the campfire last night?”
“Oh, ya,” Tim nodded, veins swelling in his neck as they dragged the trashcan.
They sloshed the fish offal onto the rock then dunked the trashcan and poured out the water that congealed in the cold water. Reuger carried the trashcan back to the boat and saw a moon over the trees.
“Was Cliff there at the campfire?”
“You bet.”
Reuger lifted the can into the boat.
“The girl leave with anybody?”
“Nope.”
Reuger walked back up the shore and they watched the first vulture land then fast walk to the fish guts. The turkey vultures were long-legged birds with matted fur the color of charcoal.
“I sure hate turkey vultures,” Tim muttered, watching more blackwinged creatures waddle to the rock.
Reuger gestured to the trees.
“Why don’t you show me where you saw that canoe.”
* * * *
Tim walked across the granite and second growth to the tree line then pulled a canoe out of the brush. Pine Lodge was stenciled on the back and one paddle lay inside. He turned and frowned at the dark pines.
“Fire was a ways in there.”
“Lead on then, cowboy,” Reuger nodded, standing up from the canoe.
They ducked into the interior of the island through witch’s branches curled and knurled. Storms had submerged the island and left driftwood and thatches of sticks and even some trash in the trees. The second growth had died. Their shoes sunk into the mud under the canopy of trees. They passed through dim light into a small clearing. Tim glanced around nervously.
“Right about here.”
Reuger hunched down and touched the charred wood. He felt the mud and smelled charcoal from the fire and remnants of urine somewhere. Maybe feces. The grass was tramped down and mashed. It was a man’s lair back in the swamp. He picked up a wrapper from a candy bar and turned slowly around to the flattened grass, bordered by pale green tamarack and scraggly aspens.
“Here’s where his sleeping bag was,” he nodded, glancing at Tim. “Grass is already rising up, he probably left after you come out with that fire smoldering.”
Reuger touched the wood again and looked around the clearing. The half light gleamed dully on the cylinder wheel of the Colt and was bright on his badge. He paused then looked up at the boy.
“Better get your dad back his canoe, Tim.”
10
THE WOODSHED WAS off the left side of the lodge road. Reuger turned on the low fluorescent tube. Tools were strewn on the planking with sledgehammers, shims and axes in the corner. Cutting chains gleamed from the rafters. He saw an ashtray with a pack of Marlboros on a shelf. Jim had said Tim often went to the shed to smoke and thought he didn’t know. Reuger picked up several fresh cigarettes and smelled them. The woodworking table was swept clear of sawdust and two-by-four remnants.
He shook his head slowly. If a man wanted to attack her, he would have no trouble trapping her in the shed. With the door pulled shut, it would be dark as a coal mine. If the girl was attacked, why didn’t she say so, and if she wasn’t, then why make up something? He stared at the chainsaws and axes and drifts of sawdust on the floor then turned out the light.
Reuger stepped out of the shed. Lights flared the trees, and he heard the roar of an engine behind him. He turned in the road and saw a jacked-up Ram four-by-four pickup. Reuger stood in the middle of the road and heard the heavy-metal music as the truck leaped toward him. The truck didn’t slow and splashed through a puddle, roaring ahead with the spotlights on the cab turning the trees white. At the last minute, the wheels locked and the pickup slid to a halt a foot away.
Reuger shook his head and saw the bumper sticker, Save a Job, Kill A Tree Hugger. He walked to the side of the pickup with a gun rack in the rear window and a CD hanging from the mirror. Chromed wheels gleamed like polished silver. He saw three Yamaha chainsaws in the bed of the truck with several axes and a coiled heavy chain. In the corners were drifts of yellow sawdust and firewood. Metallica blared from the open window.
Cliff Johnson swigged a beer then threw the can to the floor. The sweat and dirt made his eyes stand out like a minstrel. He was the owner’s son complete. Reuger had watched Cliff Johnson grow up and marveled at the swagger of youth and power in the potent cocktail of an athletic body and a razor sharp aim. Cliff could drill a dime at one hundred yards with a rifle and had been the star fullback on the high school team.
“Little late-night logging?”
“Ya, you betcha,” he nodded, spitting tobacco juice from his swollen lip. “Fucking tree huggers put up a bunch of shit on the road, but we just bulldozed it out of the way.”
He cracked open another can of beer and nodded to the shed.
“You hanging around woodsheds now?”
“Only when sixteen-year-old girls complain about getting attacked.”
Cliff swigged the beer then burped and jumped his hat back from his forehead.
“Oh, ya? Little trouble then.”
Reuger leaned against the pickup and nodded.
“This is new, isn’t it Cliff?”
“Ya,” he grinned, beating time on the steering wheel. “I rolled the last one….So what happened in the shed?”
Reuger pushed his hat up and turned to the cant hooks mounted outside the shed.
“A girl here at the lodge said an Indian came up on her.”
Cliff rested the beer on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.
“Do anything?”
“Scared her mostly. I think.”
He burped and spat out the window again.
“Sounds like that fucking Tobin.”
Reuger eyed Cliff closely.
“What makes you say that?”
He shrugged and scratched a lightning bolt on his arm.
“He’s a convict.…Isn’t he up there helping that old man?”
“He was, but Foster’s dead now. Shot in the head.”
“Oh man,” he said shaking his head. “Them tree huggers are getting out of hand!”
“Looks like a suicide.”
Cliff shrugged and spat again. “Maybe Tobin did that too. Got all liquored up and shot the old man….That’s who I’d look for, you know.”
Reuger nodded to the beer.
“Against the law to drink and drive.”
Cliff finished the beer then crushed it and threw it on the floor.
“Seen my dad around?”
“He was here earlier. I don’t know where he is now.”
Cliff yawned and lifted his oil stained cap with Johnson Timber in dirty green script.
Reuger nodded to the gun rack.
“How’s the shooting?”
“Don’t have time to shoot in competition anymore.” Cliff yawned again with the dash lights on his face. “Well, it’s been great talking with you, Reuger, but I think I’m going to go take a shower.”
“Staying above the boathouse with Tim this summer?”
“Oh, ya. I work here for the ladies.” Cliff jammed the truck in gear. “Keep your eye out for the injuns,” he called back, roaring down the road.
* * * *
Patricia Helpner dipped her hand into the water and watched the dusk retreat toward Canada. The shadow of northern light fell over the land, and she wondered whether she would ever feel the peace she was seeing unfold in front of her. Her son was hanging over the edge of the dock making small rings in the ink-colored surface. She watched him and realized how big he had become.
He was growing up without her. She was working and he was growing. She wanted to stop him before he grew up and left. Something had passed out of her life, and she had to be careful with what was left. After her divorce, she assumed dating would come as a natural event, but being a working mother took everything and sometimes, late at night, she saw the rest of her life. It was a lonely vision, and she sat up feeling her thirty-five years. Life was fast. It sounded trite to say so, but once life took a course, you suddenly became one of the lonely joining empowerment courses, buying self-help books, embracing new-age religion.
“I’m hungry, Mom!”
Patricia wiped her eyes and looked at her son with his new tennis shoes and shorts. At least they had this moment together. No one would take this vacation. It was a stretch, but she had wiggled her way into a situation and now she was here.
“All right, I’ll go up and get our groceries,” she announced, standing up. “Why don’t you put away your clothes I laid on your bed.”
“Sure,” Kurt called out, running ahead of her down the warm dock planks then letting the screen door slam behind him.
Patricia walked down the dock and navigated the trail through the woods to the lodge road. She pulled open the trunk of the station wagon and picked up a bag of groceries. The trees lit around her. Patricia squinted into the headlights as the bag tore and groceries spilled out in the white glare. There was movement behind the lights, then a voice.
“Lend a hand?”
“No, no.” She smiled quickly. “I can handle it.”
The engine stopped then boots sanded the gravel. A tall hat of some sort cut the afterglow of sky. She wiped her eyes quickly as Reuger saw her in the light. She was a small woman with the tight build of a gymnast. She bent over from the waist with her legs rock straight.
“Anything the matter?”
“What?” Her eyes were red rimmed. “Oh, just a cold.” She sniffed again, brushing back her hair. “You really don’t have to help.”
He had glimpsed her eyes and even in the darkness saw they were green. Her breasts rode high and a shiny belt looped her waist.
“Don’t mind,” he said picking up the apples, tomatoes, lettuce, deodorant, pasta, pasta sauce and ten yogurts.
He saw this as another strange event in a day of strange events. He had seen the car with the Illinois plates and watched her bending over the trunk and had braked long before he saw the bag tear. Reuger scooped a box of vegetable burgers then a package of vegetable hotdogs and soy ground beef and two boxes of herbal teas. The Tampax fell from the torn bag again and Patricia threw the box into the station wagon. She saw the gun on his thigh and badge on his chest, but his face was lost under that hat.
“Really,” she felt her face growing warm. “I can manage my own groceries.”
He picked up the other bags and stood. He liked the perfume waving from her. It smelled like sweet lemons to him.
“Lead the way.”
Patricia glanced down the path and felt annoyed. It was as if someone was already intruding on her vacation. At home, the neighborhood kids were in her house and her own work continually stole time from being with her son. She had looked forward to coming up to a place where it would just be she and Kurt. She decided to dispense with the situation as quickly as she could without being rude.
“All right, I’ll take the suitcases and you carry the groceries.”
Reuger looked at the trunk brimming with groceries and suitcases. He noticed the cell phone blinking on her belt and the new jeans showing the curve of her legs. She pulled back her short hair cut like a chow and auburn as a sunset.
“Why don’t you unpack and I’ll bring the rest of your things in?”
Patricia stiffened.
“I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own luggage,” she said tugging a suitcase from the trunk.
“Not too heavy, I hope there.”
“Don’t worry, I can handle it,” she gasped, dragging the suitcase across the ground. “Go ahead.”
Reuger walked down the path and waited several times for her to catch up. He heard the suitcase fall twice and heard her curse twice. He saw the franticness in her. When people came up from the lower forty-eight, they seemed to be ready to jump out of their own skin. It was as if they were still running in some race that had already ended. Her movements were short and fast, and her eyes flicked and never focused in.
He reached the cabin with a stovepipe and a fire pit with logs neatly stacked. The cabin had an old green sofa, two armchairs, a white refrigerator, and gas stove with box matches. Knotty pine bronzed the overhead light. He set the groceries on the counter and went back to the door. The woman stood at the bottom of the stairs breathing heavy.
He pulled out another spike and raised the sledge. He pounded the spike into the tree and smoothed over the hole again. Nope. No one would ever find it. Only a man with a chainsaw would find the steel rods now. He finished with the four other trees then put his tools in the rucksack. Tomorrow was Sunday. He would come back on Monday and see what happened. It was for a good cause. That’s what he had to keep in mind. The end justified the means.
They had done a lot worse. This was nothing. You had to strike when you had your chance, or you would never get anywhere. That’s the way it was in this country.
9
REUGER SHOT OUT of the bay in the seventeen-foot lodge boat, sending curls of green gelatin toward the shore and clearing the last buoy. Tim Carpenter, Jim’s son, was in the bow staring straight ahead at a large slab of granite rising out of the lake less than a mile across in the shape of a wineskin with the mouth close to the lodge. The dark trees of Center Island grew larger as they passed fishing boats with the red and green navigation lights. Granite slabs and jagged graywacke cliffed the shore with scraggly jack pine and overhanging swamp tamarack.
Tim pointed to a slab-slopping water, and Reuger maneuvered between the boulders. The bottom rutted shore as they lifted the trashcan to the flat rock. Reuger looked at Tim across the opening of fish offal smelling sour and horrible. Reuger was in the lodge bar with Ben Johnson and Jim Carpenter when the boy came in and said he saw a canoe over on the island. Tim also said he had seen a man back in the woods with long black hair. Ben Johnson had been ranting about the environmentalists before that.
“So when you going to pick up that sonofabitch, Reuger?”
Reuger turned slowly and stared at him. Men like Ben Johnson had always owned logging companies or ranches or plantations. Johnson Timber was Ely’s sole employer since the mines played out in the sixties, and all the power came to reside in one company. He employed most of the town and had become the rallying point against the environmentalists who wanted to stop the logging.
Reuger turned away and sipped his coffee.
“What sonofabitch is that?”
“Don’t give me that crap.” His white eyebrows knitted together. “You know who—Jorde! He’s the one that’s done it. He’s the one that has the motivation to kill Foster.” He dropped the whiskey like Kool-Aid and looked up, eyes red and small. “Bet your last dollar Jorde had a hand in this, Reuger.”
He put his coffee down. Tom Jorde was the leader of the militant environmental group, Earth First. He had come to live in Ely five years before and made life hell for the loggers and for Reuger. The Earth First used a commando-style assault on industry. Logging equipment was ending up in the lakes and cars were left without tires on logging roads and salt was poured into the gas tanks of skidders and slashers and trucks. But there had been no violence yet and Reuger intended to keep it that way.
“Not their style, Ben.”
“Like hell! They chain themselves to trees and move boulders into the logging roads, and I hear Jorde carries a gun. Forgetting, aren’t you, that sonofabitch tried to put Jim here out of business?”
Reuger shook his head.
“That was the Wilderness Act, Ben.”
“Tell that to all the lodges the government came in and burned down,” Ben Johnson thundered, holding the bar like a man about to tear it away. “Shit, only reason they didn’t get this lodge was Jim happened to be just south of the line.”
“Yep, just a sixteenth of a mile short,” Jim nodded, leaning against the bar holding a bottle opener. “Been any shorter an’ we’d be sitting in the woods having a beer.”
“And how you can rent to goddamn tree huggers—”
“Don’t ask what people do for a living,” Jim said, looking down to the bar. “Long as they pay up.”
“I’d have thrown that environmental lawyer right out in the road,” he grumbled.
“He’s talking about the lady and the boy in cabin eight,” Jim nodded, filling Reuger’s cup again. “So…was Tommy still working with Foster?”
Reuger nodded, as the Colt clunked the bar again.
“Indians go bad sooner or later,” Ben muttered.
Reuger set the enamel cup down on the bar.
“We took everything they had.”
“Shit, they have the courts.” He gestured to the ceiling. “Hell, they have more lawyers than I do!”
Reuger looked at him from the brim of his hat. “And all it takes is a court order to abrogate an Indian treaty made a hundred years before in blood.”
“You’ve seen the Indians on that damn reservation. They’re just like the blacks—living off the government and drinking all they can get their hands on!” He laughed shortly. “You have more sympathy for the Indians and tree huggers than the people around here who work the land?”
“You’ve stolen enough logs from them.” Reuger looked down at the grounds in his cup. “I would think you liked the Indians. Never had to pay a dime for timber rights on their land.”
“Stolen!” His eyes narrowed. “Whose fucking side are you on? You know where I just came from, Reuger?” He scooped the dice up. “Just come back from an auction in Washington state to pick up some equipment because the tree huggers decided a fucking owl was more important than people’s jobs!” He held the cup up to the light. “I saw the owner too, sitting in a damn folding chair in the middle of his lumberyard while they auctioned off his life’s work.”
Ben’s eyes pushed out from under the brim of his Stetson.
“I’m supposed to give the Indians a pile of money, because my grandfather didn’t give some tribal chief an extra blanket for logging out the territory?”
Then Tim had come in with his breathless story of the man in the woods. Reuger now looked at the boy who had grown into a teenager over night.
“Did you see that Reynolds girl at the campfire last night?”
“Oh, ya,” Tim nodded, veins swelling in his neck as they dragged the trashcan.
They sloshed the fish offal onto the rock then dunked the trashcan and poured out the water that congealed in the cold water. Reuger carried the trashcan back to the boat and saw a moon over the trees.
“Was Cliff there at the campfire?”
“You bet.”
Reuger lifted the can into the boat.
“The girl leave with anybody?”
“Nope.”
Reuger walked back up the shore and they watched the first vulture land then fast walk to the fish guts. The turkey vultures were long-legged birds with matted fur the color of charcoal.
“I sure hate turkey vultures,” Tim muttered, watching more blackwinged creatures waddle to the rock.
Reuger gestured to the trees.
“Why don’t you show me where you saw that canoe.”
* * * *
Tim walked across the granite and second growth to the tree line then pulled a canoe out of the brush. Pine Lodge was stenciled on the back and one paddle lay inside. He turned and frowned at the dark pines.
“Fire was a ways in there.”
“Lead on then, cowboy,” Reuger nodded, standing up from the canoe.
They ducked into the interior of the island through witch’s branches curled and knurled. Storms had submerged the island and left driftwood and thatches of sticks and even some trash in the trees. The second growth had died. Their shoes sunk into the mud under the canopy of trees. They passed through dim light into a small clearing. Tim glanced around nervously.
“Right about here.”
Reuger hunched down and touched the charred wood. He felt the mud and smelled charcoal from the fire and remnants of urine somewhere. Maybe feces. The grass was tramped down and mashed. It was a man’s lair back in the swamp. He picked up a wrapper from a candy bar and turned slowly around to the flattened grass, bordered by pale green tamarack and scraggly aspens.
“Here’s where his sleeping bag was,” he nodded, glancing at Tim. “Grass is already rising up, he probably left after you come out with that fire smoldering.”
Reuger touched the wood again and looked around the clearing. The half light gleamed dully on the cylinder wheel of the Colt and was bright on his badge. He paused then looked up at the boy.
“Better get your dad back his canoe, Tim.”
10
THE WOODSHED WAS off the left side of the lodge road. Reuger turned on the low fluorescent tube. Tools were strewn on the planking with sledgehammers, shims and axes in the corner. Cutting chains gleamed from the rafters. He saw an ashtray with a pack of Marlboros on a shelf. Jim had said Tim often went to the shed to smoke and thought he didn’t know. Reuger picked up several fresh cigarettes and smelled them. The woodworking table was swept clear of sawdust and two-by-four remnants.
He shook his head slowly. If a man wanted to attack her, he would have no trouble trapping her in the shed. With the door pulled shut, it would be dark as a coal mine. If the girl was attacked, why didn’t she say so, and if she wasn’t, then why make up something? He stared at the chainsaws and axes and drifts of sawdust on the floor then turned out the light.
Reuger stepped out of the shed. Lights flared the trees, and he heard the roar of an engine behind him. He turned in the road and saw a jacked-up Ram four-by-four pickup. Reuger stood in the middle of the road and heard the heavy-metal music as the truck leaped toward him. The truck didn’t slow and splashed through a puddle, roaring ahead with the spotlights on the cab turning the trees white. At the last minute, the wheels locked and the pickup slid to a halt a foot away.
Reuger shook his head and saw the bumper sticker, Save a Job, Kill A Tree Hugger. He walked to the side of the pickup with a gun rack in the rear window and a CD hanging from the mirror. Chromed wheels gleamed like polished silver. He saw three Yamaha chainsaws in the bed of the truck with several axes and a coiled heavy chain. In the corners were drifts of yellow sawdust and firewood. Metallica blared from the open window.
Cliff Johnson swigged a beer then threw the can to the floor. The sweat and dirt made his eyes stand out like a minstrel. He was the owner’s son complete. Reuger had watched Cliff Johnson grow up and marveled at the swagger of youth and power in the potent cocktail of an athletic body and a razor sharp aim. Cliff could drill a dime at one hundred yards with a rifle and had been the star fullback on the high school team.
“Little late-night logging?”
“Ya, you betcha,” he nodded, spitting tobacco juice from his swollen lip. “Fucking tree huggers put up a bunch of shit on the road, but we just bulldozed it out of the way.”
He cracked open another can of beer and nodded to the shed.
“You hanging around woodsheds now?”
“Only when sixteen-year-old girls complain about getting attacked.”
Cliff swigged the beer then burped and jumped his hat back from his forehead.
“Oh, ya? Little trouble then.”
Reuger leaned against the pickup and nodded.
“This is new, isn’t it Cliff?”
“Ya,” he grinned, beating time on the steering wheel. “I rolled the last one….So what happened in the shed?”
Reuger pushed his hat up and turned to the cant hooks mounted outside the shed.
“A girl here at the lodge said an Indian came up on her.”
Cliff rested the beer on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.
“Do anything?”
“Scared her mostly. I think.”
He burped and spat out the window again.
“Sounds like that fucking Tobin.”
Reuger eyed Cliff closely.
“What makes you say that?”
He shrugged and scratched a lightning bolt on his arm.
“He’s a convict.…Isn’t he up there helping that old man?”
“He was, but Foster’s dead now. Shot in the head.”
“Oh man,” he said shaking his head. “Them tree huggers are getting out of hand!”
“Looks like a suicide.”
Cliff shrugged and spat again. “Maybe Tobin did that too. Got all liquored up and shot the old man….That’s who I’d look for, you know.”
Reuger nodded to the beer.
“Against the law to drink and drive.”
Cliff finished the beer then crushed it and threw it on the floor.
“Seen my dad around?”
“He was here earlier. I don’t know where he is now.”
Cliff yawned and lifted his oil stained cap with Johnson Timber in dirty green script.
Reuger nodded to the gun rack.
“How’s the shooting?”
“Don’t have time to shoot in competition anymore.” Cliff yawned again with the dash lights on his face. “Well, it’s been great talking with you, Reuger, but I think I’m going to go take a shower.”
“Staying above the boathouse with Tim this summer?”
“Oh, ya. I work here for the ladies.” Cliff jammed the truck in gear. “Keep your eye out for the injuns,” he called back, roaring down the road.
* * * *
Patricia Helpner dipped her hand into the water and watched the dusk retreat toward Canada. The shadow of northern light fell over the land, and she wondered whether she would ever feel the peace she was seeing unfold in front of her. Her son was hanging over the edge of the dock making small rings in the ink-colored surface. She watched him and realized how big he had become.
He was growing up without her. She was working and he was growing. She wanted to stop him before he grew up and left. Something had passed out of her life, and she had to be careful with what was left. After her divorce, she assumed dating would come as a natural event, but being a working mother took everything and sometimes, late at night, she saw the rest of her life. It was a lonely vision, and she sat up feeling her thirty-five years. Life was fast. It sounded trite to say so, but once life took a course, you suddenly became one of the lonely joining empowerment courses, buying self-help books, embracing new-age religion.
“I’m hungry, Mom!”
Patricia wiped her eyes and looked at her son with his new tennis shoes and shorts. At least they had this moment together. No one would take this vacation. It was a stretch, but she had wiggled her way into a situation and now she was here.
“All right, I’ll go up and get our groceries,” she announced, standing up. “Why don’t you put away your clothes I laid on your bed.”
“Sure,” Kurt called out, running ahead of her down the warm dock planks then letting the screen door slam behind him.
Patricia walked down the dock and navigated the trail through the woods to the lodge road. She pulled open the trunk of the station wagon and picked up a bag of groceries. The trees lit around her. Patricia squinted into the headlights as the bag tore and groceries spilled out in the white glare. There was movement behind the lights, then a voice.
“Lend a hand?”
“No, no.” She smiled quickly. “I can handle it.”
The engine stopped then boots sanded the gravel. A tall hat of some sort cut the afterglow of sky. She wiped her eyes quickly as Reuger saw her in the light. She was a small woman with the tight build of a gymnast. She bent over from the waist with her legs rock straight.
“Anything the matter?”
“What?” Her eyes were red rimmed. “Oh, just a cold.” She sniffed again, brushing back her hair. “You really don’t have to help.”
He had glimpsed her eyes and even in the darkness saw they were green. Her breasts rode high and a shiny belt looped her waist.
“Don’t mind,” he said picking up the apples, tomatoes, lettuce, deodorant, pasta, pasta sauce and ten yogurts.
He saw this as another strange event in a day of strange events. He had seen the car with the Illinois plates and watched her bending over the trunk and had braked long before he saw the bag tear. Reuger scooped a box of vegetable burgers then a package of vegetable hotdogs and soy ground beef and two boxes of herbal teas. The Tampax fell from the torn bag again and Patricia threw the box into the station wagon. She saw the gun on his thigh and badge on his chest, but his face was lost under that hat.
“Really,” she felt her face growing warm. “I can manage my own groceries.”
He picked up the other bags and stood. He liked the perfume waving from her. It smelled like sweet lemons to him.
“Lead the way.”
Patricia glanced down the path and felt annoyed. It was as if someone was already intruding on her vacation. At home, the neighborhood kids were in her house and her own work continually stole time from being with her son. She had looked forward to coming up to a place where it would just be she and Kurt. She decided to dispense with the situation as quickly as she could without being rude.
“All right, I’ll take the suitcases and you carry the groceries.”
Reuger looked at the trunk brimming with groceries and suitcases. He noticed the cell phone blinking on her belt and the new jeans showing the curve of her legs. She pulled back her short hair cut like a chow and auburn as a sunset.
“Why don’t you unpack and I’ll bring the rest of your things in?”
Patricia stiffened.
“I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own luggage,” she said tugging a suitcase from the trunk.
“Not too heavy, I hope there.”
“Don’t worry, I can handle it,” she gasped, dragging the suitcase across the ground. “Go ahead.”
Reuger walked down the path and waited several times for her to catch up. He heard the suitcase fall twice and heard her curse twice. He saw the franticness in her. When people came up from the lower forty-eight, they seemed to be ready to jump out of their own skin. It was as if they were still running in some race that had already ended. Her movements were short and fast, and her eyes flicked and never focused in.
He reached the cabin with a stovepipe and a fire pit with logs neatly stacked. The cabin had an old green sofa, two armchairs, a white refrigerator, and gas stove with box matches. Knotty pine bronzed the overhead light. He set the groceries on the counter and went back to the door. The woman stood at the bottom of the stairs breathing heavy.
