The Ravens (Minnesota Trilogy)

by Vidar Sundstøl

  “Yep! And I think you and I are the only ones in the family who know that.”

  “But how . . . ?”

  Then Lance told her the whole story about Nanette’s diary, how he’d had some pages translated, and how she’d written that she made an “asabikeshiihn,” a dream catcher, for the seriously injured Thormod Olson, who was having nightmares. And several times she’d mentioned “nokomis,” which meant “grandmother” in Ojibwe. Finally he told Chrissy about his own investigation into the disappearance of Swamper Caribou, and the fact that he believed Thormod, for some reason, had killed the medicine man the night he arrived on the North Shore.

  18

  THE THOUGHT of a bloodstained Andy standing by the side of the road kept Lance awake. Only one other image had made as big an impression on him: the sight of the murdered Georg Lofthus with a row of white teeth visible in all the red, even though he was lying on his stomach in the woods. Once these two images had merged in his sleepless brain, it was impossible for Lance to separate them again. Previously he’d had in his mind only the picture of Andy driving toward the cross at around ten o’clock at night, after which he’d turned up at the ranger station on the following day and lied to everyone. Now Lance had a picture of his brother out in the vast darkness between these two time periods. Some kids drive past him outside Finland just before dawn. He’s standing on the shoulder, next to his car, spattered with blood and holding a baseball bat in his hand. Maybe he’s on his way down to the river to wash off the blood.

  Chrissy said the guys who saw him thought he’d hit an animal, possibly a cat, and had been forced to kill it with the bat. Lance suddenly remembered the weight of a big wrench in his hand and a white cat howling as he struck it. And as he lay in bed, unable to sleep, Lance wondered whether at that moment he had looked just like Andy who stood at the side of the road outside Finland, holding not a wrench but a baseball bat. When he thought about that, he almost felt like he and the murderer had merged.

  Lance got up, put on his bathrobe, and went out to the kitchen, where he poured himself a cup of coffee, since he wasn’t going to sleep anyway. He took the coffee into his home office. Everything was just as he’d left it. On the wall hung an old black-and-white photo of his ancestors from Halsnøy, taken on the deck of the steamer America in Duluth in October 1902. His desk was covered with papers and loose photographs. On a bookcase that filled an entire wall was the archival collection belonging to the local historical society. The materials had been largely accumulated by the society’s founder, the teacher Olga Soderberg. When she died, young Lance Hansen had taken over, and he was still the chairman even though there were no longer any active members. A small handful of individuals, including Willy Dupree, still paid dues, but it was pointless to schedule any meetings since the members were all too old to show up.

  Lance pulled out the chair and sat down at his desk. In the midst of the clutter was a picture of the brother of Swamper Caribou, the medicine man who had disappeared. “Joe Caribou on the path leading to his mother’s house, 1905.” That was the caption written in Olga Soderberg’s florid schoolteacher handwriting on the folder in which the photo had been placed. In the picture Joe Caribou looked like his brother’s ghost, which Lance had now seen four times—the last time during the dramatic deer hunt in November when the medicine man had stood before him in the woods, soaking wet, as if he’d just emerged from the lake. Water poured out of his sleeves and dripped from the brim of his hat. After a moment he had stretched out his hand toward Lance with a pitiful expression on his face, like someone pleading for something. As far as Lance knew, there were no photos of Swamper Caribou. The picture of his brother taken in 1905 was the closest he was going to get, and this was not the first time he noticed the similarity between the man in the photo and the ghost of the missing medicine man. Was it possible that the ghost was actually some sort of tangible thought that arose in his subconscious and that it had simply taken its face from the closest thing, meaning the photo of his brother? Yet, according to an old story that Willy Dupree had told, the two brothers had supposedly looked so much alike that shortly after Swamper vanished a man thought he saw Swamper’s ghost, while in reality it was the very much alive brother, Joe Caribou, who was walking about.

  The room made him feel depressed. In the weeks following the murder, what had made him think he was any sort of detective? Most discouraging of all was that soon afterward he had started investigating something entirely different, a missing-persons case from 1892. That was so typical of Lance. Had he ever done anything that required him to look forward instead of back? He immediately thought of Jimmy, but didn’t it seem like even the boy had started to belong to the past? Part of what once existed, the little family that would never return.

  He looked at the archival materials that reached from floor to ceiling. It was true that he loved history—how he felt couldn’t be described in any other way. He loved the distinctive feeling of opening a folder, which was like opening a landscape, to see how things used to be. Or driving along a paved road and knowing where the invisible cart road veered to the right and where the Indian cemetery had once been and still was. That was the sort of landscape in which Lance lived. And he couldn’t live in any other kind. But when it came to his son, only the future was important. That was why he was doing these things now, such as shamelessly exploiting his niece, Chrissy, and getting her to collaborate in her father’s downfall and imprisonment. All so that Jimmy wouldn’t grow up and live his life in an atmosphere of secrecy and lies, as Lance had done. That’s the stuff we are really made of, he thought. Secrecy and lies.

  19

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON he rang the doorbell of Andy’s house. Tammy opened the door. She let out a little squeal that sounded genuine, but Lance couldn’t tell whether it was prompted by enthusiasm or alarm.

  “Back from Norway?” Her voice quavered slightly.

  “A couple of days ago. Can I come in?”

  Tammy stepped aside and opened the door wide.

  “Andy?” she called over her shoulder. “Your brother’s here.”

  Lance didn’t hear anything from inside the house except for some muted but throbbing music coming from Chrissy’s room on the second floor. He took off his boots and his heavy jacket and went inside. Andy looked over his shoulder and gave him a quick glance before turning away. Lance sat down on the sofa right across from his brother, who was wearing jeans and an open flannel shirt over the same T-shirt he’d worn when he showed up at the ranger station the day after the murder. The word “baseball” was printed on the front.

  “Back from Norway,” said Lance before his brother had time to ask.

  “We know. Inga called to tell us,” shouted Tammy from the kitchen, where the teakettle had already begun to whistle. Her famous instant coffee was coming right up.

  Andy merely sat there, looking at his brother with a trace of that scornful smile on his lips. Lance was suddenly filled with a feeling of solidarity toward his younger brother. No one else was allowed to enter the space that contained the ongoing, silent dialogue between the two of them. It had always been that way, but lately the conversation dealt with murder and guilt and a prison sentence for life.

  “So how was it over there?” asked Andy at last.

  “Well, er . . .”

  “Just like here?”

  “More or less,” said Lance.

  “Not especially warm people, from what I’ve heard.”

  “About like us.”

  “Right,” said Andy.

  Tammy came in with three steaming mugs, which she set on the coffee table.

  “Have you gone out to see Inga?” she asked.

  “Going to do that later today.”

  “She sounded so happy to have you back.”

  “Uh-huh. She said it’s been pretty quiet while I was gone.”

  Tammy made sure there was ample space between her and her brother-in-law as she sat down on the sofa and crossed her long legs. Lanc
e remembered that she had actually been quite an attractive girl when she was young.

  “What a winter,” he said.

  Tammy sighed in agreement.

  “Didn’t think you would have noticed,” said Andy. “I mean, because you haven’t been here since November.”

  “The winter was exactly the same over there. Just as cold.”

  “It sounds like you could have just as well taken your vacation on the Range, huh?” said Andy.

  “Not really the same thing, you know.”

  “Oh, right. Because you got to meet the relatives.”

  “Actually, I didn’t. The roads were closed.”

  “The roads were closed?” Andy feigned surprise.

  “The roads to the west coast. Because of all the snow.”

  “What rotten luck,” said his brother.

  “Yeah.” This wasn’t how Lance had imagined things. He’d pictured making use of the surprise factor to go on the offensive and unsettle his brother. That was what he liked least about Andy’s brief visit—that he’d been caught off guard. But now it turned out not to be as easy as he’d thought to regain the initiative Andy had seized by being the first to put in an appearance.

  “Do you remember that we talked about your baseball bat when we were out hunting?” he said in a new attempt to take the upper hand.

  “Not that bullshit again,” said Andy, sounding resigned.

  “What?” asked Tammy, looking curious.

  “Oh, just that I no longer have a bat, but I was thinking of hitting a few balls with Jimmy. So I asked Andy if I could borrow his, but apparently he forgot it somewhere.”

  “I know where it is,” said Tammy, getting to her feet.

  “No, you don’t,” Andy protested.

  “Yes, I do. It’s in the garage, where it’s always been.”

  “Good Lord, who plays baseball in the middle of winter, anyway?” Andy was obviously annoyed.

  “But he can still borrow your bat, can’t he?”

  Tammy left the room, and they heard the front door slam behind her. Then it was just the two of them, like it was on that Sunday in November.

  “Do you think she’ll find it?” asked Lance.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Is that why you tried to kill me?” said Andy. “Because of the baseball bat?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “I know what I saw. You were aiming at me.”

  “You’re a dead man, Lance,” he said, mimicking what Andy had said.

  “I will defend everything that is mine. If that means I have to kill you, then I will,” said Andy.

  Lance reached out his hand to pick up his coffee mug and held it to his lips, blowing on the hot liquid. He peered at Andy and blew on the coffee again before taking a noisy sip. Then he set the mug back on the table. The whole time Andy kept his eyes fixed on Lance, as if expecting his brother to slosh the coffee onto the table because his hand was shaking, or in some other way reveal his nervousness. But instead Lance carried out a series of one-hundred-percent controlled movements under his brother’s intense stare. When he was done, he leaned back against the sofa and looked at Andy. As if in another world, they heard the front door open and close. Tammy huffed and puffed as she bent down to take off her boots in the hall.

  “You know what?” she said to Andy when she came in. “It’s gone. Where could it be?”

  Lance raised his eyebrows and gave his brother an inquiring look.

  “Somebody must have taken it,” mumbled Andy.

  “Taken it?” Tammy seemed genuinely surprised. “But nobody else knows where you keep it.”

  At that moment Chrissy appeared in the doorway. Dressed in gray jogging pants and a yellow T-shirt, she looked more like the niece Lance remembered. She wasn’t even wearing any makeup. Her hair was the only reminder of the Goth girl that he’d seen lately. And the brown contact lenses. He was positive that she hadn’t heard any of their conversation about the bat.

  “Oh. Hi, Uncle Lance,” she said in surprise.

  “Hi, Chrissy.”

  “Back from Norway?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “By the way,” she said. “There’s something I want to show you. Wait here.”

  They heard her bounding upstairs, as if she were ten again. None of them spoke as they waited. After a few seconds they heard her come running back down, and then she was standing there holding Clayton Miller’s book. She handed it to her uncle.

  “Do you remember him?” she said. “Apparently you guys both went to Central High at the same time.”

  Lance pretended to study the photograph on the back cover as he thought about her question.

  “Clayton Miller,” he said. “You’re right. There was a boy who . . . Wait a minute! Hey, Andy, wasn’t he the kid who knitted his own scarves?”

  “Dad couldn’t stand him,” said Chrissy before her father managed to say anything.

  “Really?” Lance looked at Andy in surprise. “I didn’t know you knew each other.”

  “I didn’t. But there was something sort of disgusting about him, something girlish.”

  “So being a girl is disgusting?” said Chrissy.

  “Only for menfolk,” replied Andy.

  She sat down on the sofa between her mother and Lance. She smelled of smoke. Lance thought her parents had to be aware of it, but clearly they didn’t care. Had they simply given up on her? Could it be that the little he’d seen, for example, when he visited the Kozy Bar, was only the tip of the iceberg? He’d confided so much in her lately, and now he was suddenly afraid of what she might tell her parents. For instance, the story he’d told about Andy and Clayton Miller, although Chrissy didn’t know it was about her father. Not to mention the two boys who had seen a bloodstained man with a baseball bat standing at the side of the road on the night of the murder. If it really was Andy they’d seen, what would he do if he found out?

  “It’s nice to be together once in a while,” said Tammy. “As a family. It happens all too seldom.”

  Chrissy made a face.

  “Your mother’s right,” said Andy. “In difficult times, family members are the only ones you can count on, unconditionally. Right, Lance?”

  Lance nodded.

  “My dear brother knows that only too well,” Andy went on. “But even in this case, he’s strongest in theory.”

  “Andy,” warned Tammy in a low voice.

  “You’re quite right, sweetheart. We should all be friends. Lance and I are brothers, after all. We still go out deer hunting together, for instance. I’m already looking forward to next year.”

  Lance stood up.

  “I think I’d better be going,” he said. “I’m planning to drive to Duluth to visit Mom. Guess it’s been awhile since she had any visitors. Not since I went out to see her. Hope you all have a good day.”

  Chrissy and Tammy stood up too, but Andy didn’t move.

  “Could I go with you?” asked Chrissy.

  “You’re staying here,” snapped Andy.

  “But Dad . . .”

  “Go upstairs to your room!”

  “Honestly, Andy,” protested Tammy.

  Andy jumped to his feet, and for a moment Lance thought he was going to hit his wife. Instead, he grabbed Chrissy by the neck of her T-shirt and twisted the fabric.

  “Go. Up. To. Your. Room.”

  He carefully enunciated each word in an icy voice. Chrissy’s face crumpled, and she started breathing hard. Lance didn’t know what to do, but Andy abruptly released his hold on his daughter, and she stormed upstairs. Her sobs could be heard through the whole house.

  Lance, Andy, and Tammy were standing uncomfortably close to each other.

  Tammy opened her mouth to say something but refrained when Andy looked at her. Then he turned on his heel and left the room. Lance and Tammy listened to the sound of him putting on his boots and jacket in the hall. The front door opened and closed, a car door slammed, and the engine ra
ced a few times before they heard him drive off.

  Lance hadn’t said a word or lifted a finger during the whole scene.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  Tammy sank onto the sofa. She was sniffling.

  “Is he abusive?”

  She shook her head.

  “But Chrissy just asked if she could . . .”

  “Exactly,” said Tammy. “Chrissy. He’s completely crazy when it comes to that girl. Won’t even let her leave the house anymore.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “It started with the murder at Baraga’s Cross. At first I could understand it; I even agreed with him. A murderer was on the loose, you know? But the suspect was arrested long ago. Wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he’s in jail?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Lance.

  “And they’ve got the right man?”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  “But Andy refuses to let Chrissy go anywhere alone. Or even with you. And all she was going to do was visit her grandmother!”

  “But she’s been . . .”

  Lance was just about to say that Chrissy had already been out with him the past few days, but he stopped himself in time.

  “You mean she spends all her time up in her room?” he asked.

  “I try to let her go out now and then. But it’s sheer hell every time. Like a few days ago, when she went to a poetry reading in Duluth. I mean, poetry? Who the hell worries about his daughter listening to poetry? That’s like saying that he’s scared she’ll die of boredom. Andy had a fit when I told him. Sat up and waited for her to come home. She had that book with her, by that . . . I can’t remember his name. The guy who went to high school with the two of you.”

  “How did Andy react to that?”

  “To what?”

  “The book by Clayton Miller.”

  “Why should he react at all?” asked Tammy, surprised.

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, Chrissy is the only thing on his mind. As if his sole purpose in life is to protect her. It’s not healthy,” she said.