Vermilion Drift

by William Kent Krueger

  At the house on Gooseberry Lane, he fed Trixie and walked her. Afterward he carted in the boxes he’d taken from Millie Joseph’s room. He carried them to the office on the first floor, the office that had, for nearly twenty years, been his wife’s, and he set them on the floor next to the desk. Then he stopped, caught in one of those moments that still ambushed him sometimes. He reached out and ran his hand along the polish of the desk, recalling the day Jo had bought the old antique. He remembered the overcast sky, the farm where the estate sale had been held, the look on his wife’s face when she’d seen the desk that had been stored in the barn, covered with dust and strung with cobwebs. Somehow beneath that thick skin of neglect, she’d been able to see the beauty waiting to be rediscovered. She refinished the piece herself, over the course of the summer that she’d been pregnant with Stephen, and now, sometimes, when Cork’s hand touched the wood, it was as if he was touching Jo’s hand as well.

  The moment set him to wandering. He left the office and walked the first floor, encountering apparitions. Trixie followed him, but only Cork saw the ghosts, which were the memories that haunted him and made him happy. They were his memories of being a father and husband. Memories of his children and Jo and him gathered around the dining room table for the pleasure of a thousand meals he’d thoughtlessly taken for granted. Of the games they’d played in the living room—Operation, Monopoly, Risk! Of wrestling with the kids when they were small enough and the girls not so worried about being girls. Of Jo and him on the sofa together in that quiet hour after Jenny and Anne and Stephen were asleep and before they themselves, wearied, had trudged upstairs to bed. Often in that sofa hour, Jo would slip her feet, cold always, under him for warmth.

  So small and so precious, the moments lost to him now, lost to him forever except as the ghosts of memory.

  He realized that he’d forgotten to eat, a chronic occurrence since Stephen had been gone and Cork had become responsible for feeding only himself. In a saucepan, he stirred together milk and Campbell’s tomato soup, and when it was hot he crumbled in some crackers. He grabbed a cold beer to wash it down.

  He returned to the office and ate at the desk while he checked his e-mails, hoping for word from his children. He wasn’t disappointed. Jenny had sent him a short note updating him on a home painting project she and Aaron had undertaken. Anne had sent him a longer note. Her work in El Salvador was hard and the conditions were difficult and she was tired. But the bottom line was that she was doing what she felt she was meant to do and was happy. Nothing from Stephen. No surprise. Stephen was too busy having fun being a cowboy.

  At last he turned to the boxes from Millie Joseph, boxes that contained more ghosts. Ghosts, Cork would discover, that he could never have imagined on his own.

  He began to read his mother’s journals.

  July 22, 1946

  I wasn’t excited about the reunion in Chicago. My father’s family are ruffians, for the most part, and I’m amazed that Mother seems to enjoy herself in their company. They call her “their darlin’ squaw.” If it were said by anyone else, Mother would lash them and not just with her able tongue. She calls them “ignorant Micks,” an epithet that would land most folks flat on their back with a bloodied lip. But the men laugh and toast her, and I have heard them say to my father that she’s the prettiest and smartest bit of skirt they’ve ever laid eyes on, and how the hell did a four-eyed bookworm covered in chalk dust ever manage to land such a prize?

  Tonight at dinner a guy sat across from me. A little older than me, I suspect. His name is William, although he goes by Liam, and he’s an O’Connor, too, the grandson of my grandfather’s brother, I’ve learned. I’m still trying to figure out what iteration of relation that makes us. He said nothing to me during the meal—it would have been hard, anyway, to be heard above the hubbub—but his eyes kept finding me and later he caught me outside, alone, enjoying the dusk. He introduced himself and I was about to offer my name in return when he said it wasn’t necessary. He already knew all about me. Attending teacher’s college in Winona—on scholarship, he said. I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of that or if it was something he saw as admirable. I told him he had me at a disadvantage. He said, rather pleased, “Then I’m a mystery to you.” And I said, “Not so much as you imagine.” I looked him up and down and said, “You’re a policeman. New to the force. You have very little money and you live with your parents. On Friday nights, you drink with your bachelor friends. On Saturday, you play baseball. And on Sunday, you go to Mass and pray that a pretty young colleen will be swept off her feet by your blarney and favor you with a kiss.” He laughed and said, “And, sure, you’re the answer to my prayer.”

  He is a handsome man, much too sure of himself. But then, he got his kiss.

  The books were covered in leather, black or brown or red or green, and the spaces between the printed lines were small, perfect for the tight, precise script that filled them. The dates that headed all the entries began the year his mother had entered Winona Teachers College in Winona, Minnesota. The first entry was simple:

  September 14, 1943

  Away from home, at last! I feel like Dorothy at the door to the farmhouse, with Oz awaiting me outside. Homesick? A little. But I know that will pass. My roommate is named Gloria O’Reilly. She’s from St. Paul. Big city girl. We’ll be the best of friends, I can already tell.

  Mingled with the journal entries were poems, generally brief.

  The river bends to the strength of the hill

  But does not from the conflict resign.

  It shapes the rock with persistent will.

  In both forces, beauty. In both, the divine.

  She had graduated in the spring of 1947 and taught sixth grade for a year in Kittson County, in far northwest Minnesota, one of the flattest places in the world. She’d been fond of saying that it may not have been the end of the earth, but you could see the end from there.

  In 1948, her father had become ill, very ill, and she’d returned to Aurora to help with his care. In returning, she discovered that the place she’d fled had changed, or that she had, and what she saw in the North Country was both beautiful and divine. After her father passed away, she stayed on with her mother in the small house in Allouette, living with her mother’s people and teaching in the one-room schoolhouse on the reservation that her parents together had founded.

  In all that time, she’d been courted by the cheeky policeman from Chicago named Liam O’Connor.

  November 24, 1949 (Thanksgiving)

  Liam is asleep on the living room sofa. As I lie in my own bed, I can hear his deep breathing. A gentle sound, but with just a little forcefulness. That is Liam, yes. He’s asked again for me to move to Chicago. How can I? I find it an odious place, full of noise and stockyard smells and too many people living too closely together. I ask him, What’s wrong with Aurora? And he laughs. Backwater, USA, he calls it. Hayseed City. But I know he likes it here. He gets on well with my mother’s people, my people. He adores their humor. They make light fun of him. “City boy,” they call him. He and Sam Winter Moon have become fast friends. They both share a passion for baseball. Liam has told Sam if he ever gets down to Chicago, they’ll see the Cubs play.

  In the spring of 1950, Liam O’Connor got a job as a deputy with the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. He was one of a force of four. In August of that year, he married Cork’s mother. With the G.I. Bill and his savings from his years as a bachelor cop in Chicago living with his parents, he made a down payment on the house on Gooseberry Lane. A little over a year later, Cork was born.

  January 30, 1952

  Corcoran is a fussy baby, colicky. Liam’s mother has told me that Liam was that way, too. She advised putting him in a basket and setting the basket on top of our washing machine and letting the machine run. We did not have a washing machine, but Liam bought one, used. And his mother was right. It calms Corcoran immensely. Liam is a wonderful husband. And even when Corcoran has been screaming for hours, L
iam doesn’t lose his patience. He says it’s the result of years of having drunks and street punks scream at him in Chicago. He says it reminds him of home. (Ha, ha.)

  The journals were not in any order, and Cork spent a good deal of time organizing them chronologically. He’d meant to locate immediately the journal or journals written during the period of the Vanishings, but every time he opened one of the volumes, he discovered his parents and rediscovered his childhood.

  November 16, 1956

  Cork’s fifth birthday today. Mom baked Indian fry bread and Sam Winter Moon supplied a venison roast. Henry Meloux came and said that a naming ceremony was long overdue. Hattie Stillday clicked away on her camera. Maybe we’ll end up in National Geographic, alongside the giraffes and emus and other exotics. Lots of friends from the rez, and from town, too, though the two groups don’t mingle well. Liam, ever the grand host and proud father, was everywhere with Cork on his shoulders, telling stories that kept our guests in stitches. Everybody says that someday he should run for office. Cork is a quiet boy, thoughtful. He watches, sees everything, but he isn’t a talker like his father. Liam was called away in the middle of festivities. A bad accident on Highway 1 due to ice. I prayed for him and for those on the road.

  There were photographs slipped into the pages with this entry, clearly the work of Hattie Stillday. They were black and white, but not like the Kodak box photos his parents shot. They were taken with an eye that understood the nuances of light and shadow, that divined the drama of a human look. Cork was in one, a small child off to the side, watching a group of adults who surrounded his father. His little face was turned upward, hopeful, it seemed. But hopeful of what, Cork could not now say. There was another, of his mother, a beautiful woman whose hair was long and black (though he remembered that in the proper light you could see the scarlet tint that was a bit of her father’s Irish red), caught leaning against a doorjamb with a cigarette in her hand and a laugh on her lips. Cork didn’t remember his fifth birthday at all.

  He glanced at the clock on Jo’s desk—his desk now, he reminded himself—and was surprised to see that it was after midnight and he still hadn’t found the journal entries that were of particular interest to him. He opened volume after volume and finally found one whose dates were promising.

  June 15, 1964

  Mom told me that Hattie Stillday’s daughter, Abbie, has run off and Hattie is heartbroken. Alcohol, Mom says. Hattie tried to get her to Henry Meloux, but she refused to be helped. And now she’s gone. Where, no one knows. The Twin Cities probably. Hattie’s afraid Abbie will end up a prostitute on Hennepin Avenue. She’s called friends down in the Cities, asked them to keep an eye out for her daughter. So many are lost to us. So many.

  June 26, 1964

  Naomi Stonedeer has vanished. Simply vanished. Mom says she went to practice the Jingle Dance at the community center and never came home. Liam has begun an official investigation, though he believes she probably ran away, which is what some of the men on the reservation believe, too. I don’t believe this, nor does Mother, nor does Becky Stonedeer. Naomi’s only thirteen. She has no reason to run. Men are blind sometimes. Worse, they’re stupid. And even worse, they don’t listen to their hearts. In my heart, I know that Naomi is in grave danger. Cork is sick with worry. He’s so fond of Naomi. And he’s angry with Liam for suggesting the girl has run away. He’s vowed that if Liam doesn’t find her, he will.

  July 10, 1964

  It’s been two weeks and Naomi is still missing. Liam has called authorities in the adjacent counties and in the Twin Cities. He’s gone to Crosby to question Naomi’s father, Corbett, whom we all called Fisheye when he was a kid because of his bulgy eyeballs. He’s turned into a hard-drinking man, and he claims ignorance and innocence. Liam doesn’t trust him, but he can’t break Fisheye’s story. I think Liam still believes that Naomi simply ran away, but he’s doing his best, what he calls “due diligence,” to make sure he’s covered every possibility. A lot of white folks in Tamarack County think he’s on a wild-goose chase and wasting both his time and public funds. He may be blind sometimes and stupid in the way of men, but he does listen to his heart. And in his heart he’s committed to being a good and fair officer of the law, and that means doing everything he can to give Naomi Stonedeer a chance to be found.

  Cork remembered that time. He remembered it differently, though. In his own recollection, his father was too cautious, too lax. Cork wanted him to crack someone’s head, Corbett Stonedeer’s for sure, to get answers. He recalled that, when his father finally brought an official end to the search, there’d been an angry confrontation. It was in the evening, on the front porch, when, long after dinner had gone cold, his father returned from the last day of that futile effort. Cork didn’t recall now his exact words, but in no uncertain terms, he’d called his father a fraud. Liam O’Connor had stood there, taller by two heads than his son, and heard him out. And when Cork’s frenzied sputtering had come to an end, his father had said—this, Cork remembered icy word for icy word—“I’ve done my level best. That’s all I ask of anyone. That’s all I expect anyone to ask of me.” He’d moved toward the door, but Cork had blocked his way. His father had reached out, firmly threw his son aside, and gone in. For days after, they barely spoke to one another.

  July 17, 1964

  It hurts them both, I know, this silence. They walk past each other like strangers. Worse, like enemies. I’ve tried to mediate, but they hold to their anger fiercely. Liam refuses to discuss it with me. Cork listens but doesn’t really hear. He’s still a child, and his silence is understandable. Liam’s refusal, that’s just plain stubbornness. But, oh, he cares about his son’s opinion of him. He loves Cork so much.

  Cork put down the journal and stared at the far wall. Of course his father loved him. He knew that. And he’d loved his father. Their anger had passed eventually. Hadn’t it?

  August 12, 1964

  Fawn is missing. We’re all frantic. God, what’s happening here?

  That was the final entry of that particular journal volume. One line on the page, and when Cork turned that page, there was nothing more. But at one time, something more had been there. There’d been more pages. It was clear from the neat slivers left attached to the binding that someone had, very carefully, cut those pages out.

  EIGHTEEN

  Cork rummaged through the journals until he found one that began with the earliest date following the final entry of the volume whose pages had been removed.

  September 17, 1964

  Fall is here and everywhere I look I see blood. It’s in the color of the sumac and the maple leaves and the sky at sunset and at dawn. Henry Meloux is helping Hattie and Ellie and Mom and me. Liam walks like a man made of stone, cold and hard. Cork, ever the quiet, watchful child, sees and wonders but does not ask. Thank God.

  Cork scanned the other entries for September of that year. No mention of the missing five weeks between August 12 and September 17. No indication of what had occurred in that time, though he knew of two things from his own recollection and from the collective recollection of Tamarack County. The search for Fawn Grand was futile. And another woman had vanished, a white woman: Monique Cavanaugh.

  It was nearly 2:00 A.M., and he was tired and confused. He turned out the lamp on the desk and headed for the door. Trixie rose from the carpet where she’d been sleeping and followed him upstairs. He readied himself for bed, laid himself down, and stared at the ceiling where light from the streetlamp outside, shattered by the leaves of the elm on his front lawn, lay scattered like shards of broken glass. His mind was a muddy swirl of too little information and too many questions. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to sleep. But before he knew it he was dreaming.

  His father stands at the edge of the flat rock, and behind him is the thunder of water. It seems familiar, this landscape. Mercy Falls, Cork thinks, watching from only a few feet away. There’s laughter at his back. A party perhaps. He considers turning to see, but he can’t take his ey
es off his father, whose own eyes are locked on Cork. Is it anger in them? Disappointment? Confusion? Cork can’t tell. His father opens his mouth as if to speak and at the same moment steps backward, losing his balance. He flails his arms, fighting to right himself, and Cork, in a terrible panic, reaches out for him, but his arm is not long enough, and his father plummets, vanishing into the gray mists of the falls.

  And then it happens again. The whole scene replays. Only this time Cork stands outside the dream, watching himself in it as it unfolds. He sees, as he always does in this nightmare revisited, that his father does not simply lose his balance. He sees that it is his own small hand, reaching out, that pushes his father backward, sending him—surprised? disappointed? angry?—stumbling over the edge into oblivion.

  The next morning, he was waiting at the door to the Aurora Public Library when it opened at 9:00 A.M. Maggie Nelson swung the door wide and greeted him with a smile. He went immediately to the cabinets that contained the microfilm archives of the Aurora Sentinel, which was the town’s weekly newspaper. They also contained archived material from the Duluth News Tribune and several newspapers from the Twin Cities. He spent the morning reading every account about the investigation of what the reporters had dubbed “the Vanishings.”

  The reportage was basically the same in all of them. The Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department was stumped. They’d asked for assistance from the BCA and later the FBI. The authorities believed—were certain—that foul play was involved, but they couldn’t find any evidence. The victims had simply vanished, as if into thin air. There was no mention of the priest at St. Agnes and, except for Corbett Stonedeer, no indication of any suspects or persons of interest. The families were interviewed extensively, and their pain came through. Until Monique Cavanaugh disappeared, the white community of Tamarack County had been concerned mostly about the money and resources the sheriff’s department was expending on the search for the two Ojibwe girls. The predominant white sentiment seemed to be that most likely the girls had simply fled the abominable conditions of the Iron Lake Reservation. The Ojibwe community was more tight-lipped, but those who spoke for the record had nothing good to say about Cork’s father, whom they accused of being less than diligent in his investigation of the missing girls. Cork recognized the names of those quoted. Percy Baptiste. Bob Fairbanks. Arthur Skinaway. Shinnobs for whom, no matter what a chimook did, it was no good. The way the news stories were structured, however, made it sound as if the whole of the Anishinaabe people were aligned against Cork’s father.