In the picture they stood far apart. Presumably with their respective families, thought Nyland. They looked more like children as they posed for the photo.
“So that makes them your great-grandparents?”
“That’s right.”
Nyland leaned forward to get a better look, but up close the faces seemed no more than pale ovals atop the dark clothing.
He saw that someone had written “Duluth, October 3, 1902” in one corner.
“But it was the diary we were going to . . . let me see . . . ,” murmured Lance behind him.
Now Nyland noticed that more pictures were lying on the desk. He picked up one of them to look at it. An old black-and-white photo of a man who seemed to be standing in a small meadow, or maybe a forest clearing. He had his thumbs hooked in his suspenders as he directed a hostile gaze at the camera. Nyland thought he looked like an Indian. And then it occurred to him that it was quite possible that was exactly what he was. He was just about to ask about the picture when Lance spoke first.
“Here it is,” he said.
Nyland turned around to see that Lance had an old book in his hands.
“Feel it,” he said, holding out the book for Nyland to touch, although he gave no sign of wanting to hand it over.
Nyland ran his fingers over the leather. It was so soft that it almost felt like the supple skin of a living creature.
“How old is the book?”
Lance placed it on the desk before cautiously opening it. At the top of the first page was the date 1890, printed in old-fashioned script.
“The entries go until sometime in 1894,” said Lance.
“And who did you say wrote this diary?”
“One of my great-grandmothers. Nanette. She was French Canadian.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
Nyland looked at the lines of writing that covered the first yellowed page. There was something untidy about the script, as if Hansen’s great-grandmother had not had a steady hand. Or maybe she wasn’t very skilled at writing, he thought. The diary entry was clearly old, but there was also something so personal and intimate about the handwriting that he had a very distinct sense of mortality and the passage of time.
“Where was this written?” he asked.
“In a little log cabin not far from what today is the center of Tofte. No more than a five-minute walk from your hotel.”
“Did she write other diaries?”
“I don’t think so. At any rate, this is the only one we know of.”
“And you’ve never tried to have it translated?”
“There aren’t exactly a lot of people in my family who have mastered French,” said Lance with a smile. “And we don’t know anyone else who speaks the language. Well, not until now,” he added.
“But there are translation agencies that do this kind of work,” said Nyland. “And I don’t think they’re particularly expensive.” He placed both hands on the desk and then leaned over the old book, which was still open to the first page.
“No, wait a minute,” said Lance. “Let’s go farther in. There’s something . . . something special . . . ” He turned one page after another, apparently looking for something.
“What is it?” asked Nyland.
“Something special,” Lance repeated. “She was sick . . . She had an illness that . . . I don’t know what it was. That’s what I’m trying to find. The name of her illness.”
“Did she die from it?”
“No, she didn’t. Although it almost killed her. Let’s see now . . . I think it was in March 1892. At least that’s what I remember hearing . . . let’s see. Here it is!”
He pointed to a page on the right-hand side of the book. Nyland leaned closer. He could see that the entry was written on March 17.
“Le garçon . . . something about a boy,” he began. “Let’s see . . . This isn’t easy . . . Le garçon est . . . arrive . . . ce matin . . . ”
“But what does it mean?” whispered Lance, as if somebody were listening on the other side of the door.
“It means: ‘The boy arrived this morning.’ ”
Hansen was standing close to Nyland, bending over the book. “The boy arrived this morning?” he whispered. “Are you sure that’s what it says?”
“Yes,” said Nyland. “Do you think it means a birth? Maybe her illness had something to do with a birth or a pregnancy.”
“I don’t know,” said Lance. “Keep reading.”
“But I really can’t make out much of it. It’s been twenty years since I studied French. And besides, the handwriting is hard to decipher.”
“Just do your best. Okay?”
Nyland scanned the page, looking for some recognizable word in the strange forest of old ink that seemed to have grown over the paper.
“God,” he said. He saw the word DIEU, written in big letters. It practically jumped out of the sentence.
“God?” Hansen repeated.
“Yes, she’s writing something about God. Let me see now . . . la gr â ce de dieu . . . God’s mercy . . . encore vivant . . . something about being alive due to God’s mercy, or something like that. Okay . . . par la gr â ce de dieu, il est encore vivant . . . Thanks to God’s mercy, he is still alive . . . mais à peine . . . but just barely. Thanks to God’s mercy he is still alive, but just barely. This must be about a birth, don’t you think?”
Eirik Nyland could feel Lance Hansen’s upper arm touching his own.
“Sure . . . a birth . . . ” His voice sounded distant, as if he were thinking about something completely different.
“Well,” said Nyland, “I don’t know whether I can contribute much more. This was harder than I expected.”
“Please try again,” said Lance suddenly. “Just a little more? I may never have this opportunity again.”
Nyland had to laugh at his eagerness.
“Okay,” he said and went back to scanning the page.
“Deux profondes blessures,” he read aloud. “Two deep wounds . . . That’s what it says, but the rest is illegible.”
“Two deep wounds?” Lance repeated.
There was something odd about his tone. Nyland no longer knew what to believe. Maybe this had nothing to do with an ill great-grandmother after all.
“I’m afraid that’s all I can make out,” he said.
“What about the next page?” said Lance. “Just a little of it?”
“You seem to be really interested in this sick great-grandmother of yours.”
Lance laughed, but it sounded strained.
“She was my own flesh and blood, you know,” he said.
Nyland didn’t respond, just carefully turned the page. The entry for March 17 ended in the middle of the page, with only a few more lines.
“What does she write at the end?” asked Lance.
“Something about not wanting to say anything . . . ” muttered Nyland as he tried to conjure recognizable French words from the scrawls on the yellowed paper.
“Il ne veut rien raconteur . . . he doesn’t want to say . . . de ce qu’il lui est arrivé . . . Aha! It says: He doesn’t want to say anything about what happened to him.”
Lance Hansen straightened up and exhaled loudly, as if he’d been holding his breath the whole time they’d been examining the diary. He looked at Nyland.
“I’m never going to forget this,” he said.
Nyland wanted to reply, but he had no idea what to say. He had a feeling that Lance’s explanation didn’t quite ring true. But there could be so many reasons for that. The diary was an old family heirloom, after all. Well over a hundred years old. Maybe it was linked to something shameful. Some extramarital scandal, for instance. It could be so many different things. But it had nothing to do with him, at least. Yet he still wanted to respond. There was something about Lance Hansen’s attitude toward his ancestors that had made a deep impression
on Eirik Nyland. He, on the other hand, knew the name of only one of his great-grandparents. He had to make a real effort to pull from his memory the full names of his four grandparents. In short, he knew next to nothing about his own ancestry. And had never cared to know anything either. While this man standing at his side had practically pleaded to have a few lines from a diary translated. His great-grandmother’s diary. The thought of how deeply Lance cared about such things filled Nyland with admiration. And embarrassment. He still had no idea what to say. Whatever he came up with was bound to sound stupid.
To break the silence that had ensued, Nyland grabbed his glass of beer from the desk and finished it off.
“What did you say ‘Mesabi’ means?” he asked, setting the glass down again.
“It means ‘giant.’ The Ojibwe thought they could see the outline of a sleeping giant in the mountain chain that we call today the Mesabi Iron Range,” Lance told him.
“Right . . . the Indians . . . that’s what you said before.”
On their way out, Nyland pointed to the hunting photo hanging in the front hall. He asked Lance if one of the two men was him.
“Yep. Twelve years ago and plenty of pounds lighter,” he replied.
“So who’s the other man in the picture?”
“That’s my brother. Andy.”
“Does he live up here too?”
“No, he lives in Two Harbors.”
“Oh, that’s right. The woman you waved to when we drove through Two Harbors was . . . ”
“That was Andy’s wife. By the way, would you like to see a picture of my son?”
“Of course,” said Nyland.
He followed Lance into the living room, where one whole wall was nearly covered with family photos.
“So this is your whole family tree?”
“No, not at all. This is nothing. But there’s my son, Jimmy, anyway.”
Nyland saw a little boy holding up a tiny fish. The picture had been taken outdoors in the evening. Nothing was visible in the darkness surrounding the boy. His eyes shone red from the flash. There seemed to be something Asian-looking about his eyes. Then it dawned on Nyland that of course it had to be because he was half-Indian.
“A nice-looking boy. And is that him too? Sitting there?” He pointed to a photo of Lance seated on a snowmobile, holding a little boy on his lap.
“Yeah, that’s us, all right,” said Lance.
Eirik Nyland moved along the wall, peering at the photographs.
“Is that you?” he asked, pointing at the picture of a young boy with a haircut and shirt that had to be from the late seventies or early eighties.
“Yep. My high school picture.”
“And that’s your brother?”
“That’s right. Andy in high school.”
“So who’s that sweet-looking girl?” He pointed to a picture of a young blonde.
“That’s Chrissy. Andy’s daughter. I don’t think she’s more than ten in that photo. She’s seventeen now.”
They both stood there for a moment staring at the picture of the fair-haired girl.
“Don’t you miss your daughters when you’re out traveling?” asked Lance.
“Yes, I do. I miss them terribly.”
“Isn’t having kids the best thing in the world?”
“Absolutely,” said Nyland.
18
LANCE WOKE UP IN THE DARK. The first thing he thought about was whether he’d had any dreams. But of course he hadn’t.
The alarm clock on the nightstand said it was one thirty. It was the Fourth of July, but there were many hours ahead before it was time for the parade and the fireworks. It was still night everywhere on the continent.
He got up, put on his bathrobe, and went into the living room, which was faintly lit by the streetlamp down near the hardware store. The dark outline of the building was visible on the left. A short segment of the road was also illuminated. Otherwise it was completely dark outside.
He thought about the lake out there in the darkness. The enormous expanse of water that went on and on, unseen by anyone, except as pictured in the minds of a few insomniacs. He wondered exactly how many people that might be. Regardless, he was one of them. One of the sleepless individuals who was thinking about the lake at this very moment.
Seven years ago he’d dreamed he was standing at the deepest spot in Lake Superior. He thought he was going to freeze to death. At the same time, it was beautiful. A blue landscape he was convinced existed only in his dream. Now he stared out at the darkness enveloping the lake. Once upon a time this was a place where dreams determined a person’s path in life. The Ojibwe, before they became Christianized, were a people who interpreted dreams. No important decisions were made without considering dreams. Their names often came from dreams. They made dream catchers to protect themselves from nightmares, and they wore amulets that represented particularly significant dreams they’d had.
And now? Now there was a different kind of land out there.
My brother is a murderer, he thought. A dark chasm was contained in that thought, and it was in that darkness that he now belonged. Not out in the bright Fourth of July celebrations that would take over in a few hours. He would end up walking around like some sort of phantom. Like a dead man who had come back to wander among the living one last time, but without being able to share their warmth or participate in their laughter and conversation.
Andy had killed the Norwegian. He had done what he was in the process of doing to Clayton Miller when Lance had shown up at the schoolyard on that day so long ago. He had bashed in the man’s skull the way he had planned to bash Clayton’s skull. Those two young men, both of whom were gay. Because that has to be the reason, thought Lance. He hardly dared think about it, and yet he knew Georg Lofthus had been killed because he was a homosexual and just by chance happened to meet Andy Hansen in a bar.
Ben Harvey had neglected to tell the FBI that he’d seen the two Norwegians with Andy. Instead, he had pushed that burden onto Lance’s shoulders. “And if you think it’s necessary, you can pass the information on to the FBI,” Ben had said. But he knew there was a connection between the Norwegians and Andy Hansen. And since Lance wasn’t the only one who knew about this, he could never be certain it wouldn’t all suddenly come to light. Maybe Ben would start having second thoughts, especially as time passed and no arrests were made in the case. And Andy had met the Norwegians in a public place, after all. It was true that the majority of customers at Our Place were sport fishermen and other tourists, people who were in the area for only a few days. But it was still possible that someone who knew Andy by sight had been in the bar in Finland on that evening. Our Place was a blind spot for Lance, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Moving slowly, he went into his home office and turned on the light. He paused to look around. Still lying on his desk was the photograph of Joe Caribou, standing on the path that led to his mother’s house. Lying next to it was the picture of Thormod Olson and his friends, taken in the photographer’s studio in Duluth. Lance picked up the picture of Thormod to study his face. What had he gone through on that night in 1892 when he was only fifteen years old? “Two deep wounds,” he remembered. “He doesn’t want to say anything about what happened to him.” Falling through the ice was apparently not the only thing that had happened to the boy.
It was tempting to get more of the diary translated, three or four pages from the relevant dates. Then maybe he’d know the full story. Solving the mystery of Swamper Caribou’s disappearance might be much closer than he’d dared believe. He decided to contact a translation agency first thing on Monday.
Based on the few fragments Nyland had translated, it seemed as if young Thormod had been involved in some sort of violent event. Lance again looked at the photograph. Did you meet Swamper Caribou? he wondered as he studied Thormod’s face as it looked twelve years after his dramatic arrival in the Nor
th Shore. Even though he was twenty-seven and long since grown up, his face still had something boyish about it. That steely expression, which appeared well practiced, seemed to convey the message that this young man was not about to back down no matter who might stand in his way. Just try it! And it was exactly this defiant and stubborn expression that made his face seem boyish, even childish.
Was it possible that there were similarities between Thormod and Andy? Lance studied the obstinate face staring into the camera in Duluth on that day in 1904. The eyes. The lower lip, thrust out ever so slightly, like a little boy refusing to obey the wishes of an adult.
None of the other three in the photo had that hard-as-flint and yet childish expression. Sam Bortvedt and the brothers Helge and Andrew Tofte all looked like ordinary, hardworking young men, well scrubbed and wearing their best clothes for the occasion. None of them looked angry or defiant. Instead there was something steadfast and composed about their faces. Lance presumed they were men who acted with calm deliberation. Thormod Olson, on the other hand, looked as if he might leap from his chair at any second and give someone a punch. Had that face ever revealed the same sort of loneliness Lance had seen in his brother’s face? Had someone—a brother or a friend, or maybe his wife—looked at him and thought: What’s the matter with Thormod?
Lance had to admit there was no resemblance in the faces of those two men. There was nothing he could point to and say: I recognize those features in Andy. His brother looked completely different. There was no physical similarity at all. Yet they were related by blood, just as Lance was also related to Thormod. And he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that something about the well-groomed Thormod in the picture from 1904 reminded him of Andy. There was nothing specific, like the jawline or nose, ears or eyebrows; nothing he could put his finger on. Maybe it was just that Lance now believed both Thormod Olson and Andy Hansen were murderers. That was what they had in common, much more than any family connections. “That’s the stuff we’re made of,” he remembered his father saying about Thormod. How ironic these words now seemed.
The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy) Page 20
