The Ravens

by Vidar Sundstøl

  “Are you dreading talking to Andy about this?” asked Clayton Miller when he was done eating. He sounded friendlier now.

  Lance nodded.

  “I have lots of friends who are gay,” said Miller, “and it’s my experience that such conversations usually go more smoothly than anticipated.”

  The situation was so unthinkable that it threatened to overwhelm Lance. This isn’t happening, he thought. I’m sitting here in Matt’s Bar in Minneapolis and talking to Clayton Miller about Andy’s homosexual tendencies.

  “It’s a different environment than what you’re used to,” Lance replied. “More masculine.”

  “So masculine that Andy’s thinking of killing himself?”

  Lance nodded curtly.

  “Is there anyone else, besides you, who happens to know the truth of the matter?”

  “No.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “I think it would be totally unimaginable for anyone who knows him.”

  “Then why isn’t it unimaginable for you?”

  “I know something that no one else knows.”

  “Something you want to tell me about?”

  “No.”

  Miller took a cautious sip of the hot coffee.

  “Then I don’t know how else I can help you,” he said.

  Lance could hear in his voice that he was getting ready to leave.

  “Do you think it might happen?” he hurried to ask. “That Andy might actually kill himself?”

  “As I said, I know a lot of gay people, and they’ve always managed to figure out how to deal with it. You just need to make it clear to him that you know how he’s feeling and that he can trust you. That’s probably where you should start. But keep in mind that the thought of coming out will seem extremely scary at first. Especially in that kind of environment.”

  “But do you think it might have the opposite effect? Push him into committing suicide?”

  “It’s really important that you’re completely open with him. Don’t make any demands, don’t pressure him.”

  Lance thought with alarm about the scene a couple of days ago. The outmaneuvered brother standing on the front steps of his own house. He must have been really scared.

  “But you were the one who . . . ,” said Lance.

  It took a moment for Miller to understand what he was getting at.

  “Well, I never knew where it came from. Maybe because I wrote poetry?”

  Lance was about to say something about long, multicolored scarves that Miller had supposedly knit for himself, but he refrained.

  “Or maybe because I was so obsessed with clothes,” Miller went on.

  “No matter what, it was terrible that you ended up with that sort of reputation,” said Lance.

  “You think so? To be honest, it was kids like you who were behind it. You were the ones who kept the rumors going. Well, maybe not you personally, but others like you. Andy, on the other hand, had something open and seeking about him. He wasn’t judgmental, at least not during that one summer when I knew him. But I guess by now he’s just like all the rest. I feel sorry for Andy.”

  Clayton Miller pulled on his gloves and set the big Russian fur hat on his head.

  “But not for you,” he said.

  28

  THE ROWS OF PLASTIC CHAIRS that were placed back-to-back in the glaring light made the place look like an airport waiting room. Along one wall was a series of small cubicles for visitors. Inside each was a single chair facing a window, and on the other side of the window was a little room with a closed door. Lance was sitting in a cubicle and staring at the door, which he knew would open soon. On the divider to his left hung a telephone receiver that was connected to another receiver on the other side of the soundproof glass. He tried desperately to think of something to say to Lenny Diver, but his mind was blank. Once again he wondered why Diver was willing to talk to him. It couldn’t be just because he wanted to be accommodating.

  Then the door opened. Lenny Diver came in, holding a bottle of Chippewa mineral water in his hand. Lance noticed at once that he was a small man and that his hair, which he’d worn long and loose in the newspaper photo, had now been cut short. Since he hadn’t yet been convicted, he had on his own clothes: black jeans and a faded denim shirt. He moved with a supple ease as he came over to the window and sat down.

  They stared at each other from either side of the glass pane. Lance nodded and received a slight nod in return. “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” he began.

  Lenny Diver put down his bottle of mineral water, then took the receiver from its hook on the wall, and pressed it to his ear. Lance gestured apologetically and then he too grabbed the phone.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” he repeated.

  “Haven’t got much else to do,” said Diver. His voice had a metallic sound in the receiver.

  Lance was dismayed to feel beads of sweat appear on his face, something that happened only when he was very nervous around other people. He had an urge to wipe the sweat on the sleeve of his jacket, but that would draw too much attention. Yet the more conscious he was of it, the more he sweated. He could feel that a drop of sweat was about to roll down his forehead.

  “Nice weather,” said Diver.

  Lance seized the straw the man had offered him.

  “I thought I’d never get here.”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of remote.”

  “So how are things going?”

  Diver raised his eyebrows as he cocked his head to one side.

  Lance saw that he found the question irrelevant. “I was the one who found the body,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Georg Lofthus.”

  “Hmm?”

  “That was his name.”

  “Oh.”

  “A Norwegian.”

  “Right,” said Diver without interest.

  A drop of sweat ran down into the corner of Lance’s eye. He set the receiver on his lap and wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. This was a mistake. He’d come here in the hope that he’d feel better afterward. As if talking to the innocent man who had been wrongly jailed might somehow absolve him of his sin. But he was the one who ought to do something for Diver, not the other way around.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Lance said.

  “No?”

  “No. I suddenly can’t remember why I’m here.”

  “Maybe you were wondering if I was really the one who did it.”

  Lance nodded.

  “Everybody claims to be innocent, so what’s the use?”

  “You still maintain that you’re innocent?”

  “I am innocent. But you know what’s going to be my downfall?”

  “No. What?”

  “A baseball bat that I’ve never seen before, with my fingerprints on it. I was so drunk that night that they could have put my fingerprints on Sheriff Eggum’s ass, if they wanted to.”

  “Eggum has retired,” said Lance.

  “Christ, I thought he’d stay on forever. What’s the new guy’s name?”

  “Bud Andersson.”

  “Andersson? Another herring eater?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was in Grand Marais the whole time that night.”

  “With a woman you refuse to name.”

  “So you actually believe me?” Lenny Diver seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Because it’s true, isn’t it?” said Lance. “You know who you were with, but you’re refusing to tell.”

  “Those are your words, not mine,” said Diver.

  All Lance had to do was open his mouth and say that he knew Diver was innocent and that he knew who had done it. In theory, it was as simple as that. Just a few words, and then everything would be set in motion.

  “But if you didn’t do it,” he said, “who do you think did?”

  Diver shrugged.

  “All I know is that I’m going to be in here for a very long time.”

  Lance s
ensed that he wouldn’t be able to stand this much longer, sitting face-to-face with Lenny Diver in this building, where no outside sounds penetrated, and doubtless no sounds moved in the other direction either. The jail might just as well have been on the moon. But one thing was perfectly clear: He was the one who should have been sitting on the other side of the window. The one who should have stayed here when the meeting was over, while Diver should have stood up and gone out into the snowy weather to drive north.

  “Weren’t you married to a woman from the reservation?” Diver asked unexpectedly.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Oh, you know. It’s a small place.”

  “Well, you’re right,” said Lance.

  “So she was Ojibwe?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s her name?”

  He was about to answer when he happened to think about the two young men who had threatened him the last time he was in Grand Portage. They clearly knew something about the situation he was in. They told him that he could save Lenny Diver from life in prison. But how did they know that?

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “And don’t you have a son?”

  Lance didn’t reply.

  “Are you scared of me?” Diver was practically sneering.

  “Why would I be scared of you?” said Lance.

  “I have no idea.”

  Lance realized that it would be an easy matter for him to find out the names of his ex-wife and son.

  “Her name is Mary Dupree,” he said.

  “Wasn’t she a teacher?”

  “She still is.”

  “She was my teacher in junior high.”

  “She told me that.”

  “What did she tell you?’ Diver suddenly seemed on guard.

  “Just that you didn’t make much of an effort. And then she said something about a job that you had after junior high, something to do with canoes.”

  “I was an apprentice with Hank Morrison, who builds canoes in the old way.”

  “Was it interesting?”

  “I liked it.”

  Lance thought that it was less than ten years ago that Lenny Diver was a young apprentice learning a craft that was a thousand years old. Now he was sitting behind soundproof glass in a jail.

  “I’ve seen birchbark canoes,” said Lance. “Beautiful yellow-colored vessels.”

  “When they’re new, yes. It’s the inner side of the fresh bark that looks like that.”

  “ ‘That shall float upon the river / Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,’ ” said Lance.

  “‘Like a yellow water-lily,’” Diver continued. “Hank Morrison used to quote ‘The Song of Hiawatha’ to me while we were working on a canoe.”

  “But you quit?”

  “Other things got more interesting.”

  “Like what?”

  “Partying. Women. Dope.”

  The same old story, thought Lance. First a few years of hero status among a group of friends, then a life of misery. Sinking ever deeper. As a police officer, Lance was often in contact with men like that. Still, he had to admit that few of them could quote Longfellow.

  “Do you have any regrets?” asked Lance. He had a feeling the man sitting in front of him could have become something quite different if he’d made other choices.

  “Do you?” asked Lenny Diver.

  “Regrets about what?”

  “How do I know?”

  “Of course I have regrets,” said Lance.

  It felt good to say that, even though the other man didn’t know what he regretted.

  Diver took a big gulp of bottled water. “What exactly do you want?” he asked impatiently.

  “Maybe I’m looking for some sort of resolution to this case.”

  “Then you’ll have to look somewhere else, but I hope you find it.”

  “And I hope you find it too.”

  “Oh, I’ve already found my resolution,” said Diver. “It’s happening right now, in the present. But it’s a present that will go on for a very long time.”

  “If you’re convicted.”

  “Of course I’m going to be convicted. They have the baseball bat with the dead man’s blood on it, along with my fingerprints.”

  “And biological evidence that proves the killer had to have been an Indian,” said Lance.

  “Yeah. That too. Bad luck for me, as usual.”

  “Why don’t you just tell them who you spent the night with?”

  He wished that Diver or somebody else would lift the burden from his shoulders, because at this moment it seemed unthinkable to replace this man on the other side of the glass with Andy.

  “I was so drunk I can’t remember her name or what she looked like,” said Diver automatically, as if he’d rehearsed the reply.

  “But that means that someone out there could give you an alibi.”

  “Sure. And there’s also somebody out there who knows who the killer is. There are lots of reasons why people choose not to talk.”

  Lance felt like some heavy object was pressing down on him. His shoulders ached. It was the weight of guilt.

  “But maybe someone will finally speak up.”

  “If they were planning to talk, they would have done it long ago.” Diver raised his index finger in warning. “But they’re going to be cursed for the rest of their life. That’s their punishment.”

  Lance couldn’t stay there even a minute longer. He turned around and craned his neck to get a glimpse of the big window in the waiting room. Outside he saw the snow drifting down in the harsh light from the spotlights.

  “I’ve got a long drive ahead of me,” he said.

  Diver nodded.

  On his way out, Lance again noticed how the place looked like an airport waiting area, but no planes ever took off from here. That much he knew.

  29

  INGA HAD AWAKENED from a dream in which Oscar was sitting at the kitchen table in their house on Fifth Avenue. Behind him, outside the window, she could see a snowbank with the sun shining on it. The light had an April-like glow in her dream. But what she remembered most were his eyes, which were a uniform gray except for the big black pupils. That’s not my husband, she had thought as she stood next to the kitchen counter. “I’ve always had eyes like this,” said Oscar, and the second he said that, she knew it was true. She’d just never noticed before.

  Now she was trying to figure out where she was. That was not Duluth out there—that much she knew for sure. Duluth never felt this dark. She didn’t know what she would encounter if she got out of bed. She might bump into something and hurt herself. For a moment she considered stretching out her hand to find out if there was a night table and lamp close by, but she decided not to, afraid of what she might touch in the dark. All right then. She’d just have to lie here until she discovered where she was. What if she simply fell asleep again? Maybe everything would be clear when she woke up. If so, how would she recall this first awakening? As a dream? And the dream about Oscar as a dream within a dream? Oscar. This probably had something to do with him; it usually did. Then she figured it out. She was staying with Aunt Edna! That’s why it was so dark. In Yellow Medicine County the night was as black as the inside of a sack. The vast prairie darkness was what she sensed outside. She’d gone to visit Aunt Edna again. Her childless aunt was asleep in the next room, and outdoors the wash had been hung up to dry on the clothesline stretched between the cherry tree and the rusty hook on the wall of the outbuilding. Their underwear were dancing out there in the night breeze. Inga had to smile at the thought. Yet she realized that it was wrong to run off like this, leaving her husband and children behind. She had done it only a few times before, but that was still too often. She needed to stop leaving them in the lurch. When Oscar was in a certain mood, he couldn’t help what he said or did. That was just the way he was, but those episodes didn’t last long. Soon everything else inside him would take over, all the good that she loved so much to be near. Just the thought
of how he smelled under the bedcovers in the dark, that masculine smell, oh . . . For a moment she felt dizzy, really dizzy, and that hadn’t happened to her in years. Why couldn’t she just stay with him like an obedient wife? That’s what she wanted. But now everything would be different. She would go back home at once and endure whatever the consequences might be. A great sense of happiness flooded over her. Eagerly she reached out her hand, found the lamp on the nightstand, and switched it on. But what was this place—with the knitting on the table and the checked curtains? This was certainly not Aunt Edna’s guest room. Where was she?

  30

  LANCE FUMBLED FOR THE CLOCK on the nightstand and turned it around so he could read the red numbers. It was 3:18. What had awakened him? It wasn’t because he had to pee. As he was about to turn over to go back to sleep, he realized what it was. He’d left the bedroom door ajar, as he always did to keep the room from getting too stuffy, and through the crack in the door he saw faint flashes of light on the floor. It looked like the flickering light from a television screen. This wasn’t the first time that he’d forgotten to turn off the TV before going to bed.

  He was already sitting up and moving his bare feet around on the floor to locate his slippers when it occurred to him that he hadn’t watched any TV programs that night. He’d driven to Minneapolis, and when he came home, he’d gone straight to bed and fallen asleep instantly. The TV must have turned on by itself, he thought, still only half awake. At last he found his slippers and stuck his feet into them. He stood up and went over to the door. There he paused for a moment to listen, with his hand on the doorknob. Without making a sound, he opened the door and stepped out into the hall, where irregular streaks of light were illuminating the floor and the small table under the mirror. Even as he took the last few steps over to the living room doorway, he knew that something was wrong. And when he caught sight of Andy sitting in the easy chair, he realized that the gun was no longer on the hall table where he’d left it when he came home.

  “Tammy loves this show,” said Andy with a slight nod at the TV.

  It was The Price Is Right.