The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy)

by Vidar Sundstøl

  “That’s what you said.”

  “Well, that’s not entirely true. While we were out on the lake, we heard voices. Or maybe just one voice. And it happened only once. I’m not even sure where the sound was coming from. That’s probably why I didn’t mention it last time.”

  “No doubt,” said Nyland, his tone still sarcastic. “And when did this happen, do you think?”

  Hauglie looked as if he was giving it plenty of thought. “It was after we set up camp and ate dinner. We went out in the canoe, to paddle in the moonlight. So sometime during the first half of the canoe trip. Between ten and ten thirty, I would guess.”

  “I see. And what did this voice say, or shout?”

  “It was impossible to tell. It lasted only a few seconds.”

  “So you didn’t hear any words?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Was the voice talking or yelling?”

  “Yelling, I think.”

  “Aggressively?”

  “Maybe. And I think it was only one voice.”

  “Was it coming from somewhere near your tent?”

  “I don’t know. We were way out on the lake, you see.”

  “Did the two of you discuss this?”

  “No. I don’t even know if Georg noticed. It was just a voice. And only once. Nothing worth discussing.”

  “Was it a man’s voice?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Nyland knew that while he and Hauglie were talking, the evidence from the crime scene was being analyzed in Chicago. The results would probably come in the following day.

  “Did you kill Georg?” he asked.

  “No,” said Hauglie, his voice loud and emphatic.

  “Then who do you think did it?”

  “I’ve thought a lot about it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I just mean that whoever killed him was an instrument for something greater. It’s actually quite obvious. Maybe not for you, because you’re not a believer. You’re blind. But for someone who can see, it’s not difficult to realize that this was the punishment. The punishment for the way we were living. Georg and I. We brought this upon ourselves.”

  Nyland listened with interest. Was it himself that Hauglie was talking about as “an instrument for something greater”?

  “But if it was God’s punishment for how you and Georg were living,” he said, “why are you sitting here while Georg is dead? Why would God punish only Georg?”

  Bjørn Hauglie looked at Eirik Nyland. It seemed as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

  “So you think I’ve escaped punishment?” he said.

  21

  LANCE HANSEN had seen Willy Dupree only once since the divorce three years ago. It was at Nancy Dupree’s funeral. Willy had been a widower for almost two years now. Lance hadn’t talked with him at the funeral. He merely shook hands and offered his condolences.

  For a few seconds as he turned onto the road that led to Willy’s house, Lance could see a white wooden building that stood all alone down by the lake. Around it was a high palisade of pointed posts. That was the reconstructed headquarters of the North West Company, where Willy used to work as a guide during the tourist season after he retired. He had practically become a tourist attraction himself. An old Indian gave the visitors a feeling of authenticity. It was only two years ago that he had stopped being a guide.

  When Willy’s house came into view, Lance remembered what it had felt like to drive Mary home in the evening during that first summer, when she was still living upstairs in her parents’ house. He glanced up at the window that had been hers. It was dark and there were no curtains.

  He parked and climbed out of the Jeep. A moment later the door opened and there stood Willy Dupree.

  The most noticeable change was that he’d become considerably smaller. Both shorter and thinner. As if someone had shrunk his body. Otherwise he didn’t look bad, considering that he was now eighty years old. When he opened his mouth to speak, Lance could hear that his voice had also changed. It had lost all strength. As if it were coming from the other side of a wall.

  “Lance . . . ,' said Willy. “It’s been a long time.'

  TWO OLD PHOTOGRAPHS in oval frames hung above the sofa. A man and a woman with white hair and sunken, toothless mouths. Under the pictures hung a dream catcher. It was the size of a per-son’s palm, faded, gray with age.

  Without thinking, Lance had sat down in the same easy chair that he always used to sit in whenever they came to visit. When he realized what he’d done, his first impulse was to get up and move. But he stopped himself.

  He heard the floorboards creak out in the kitchen. Willy came in, carrying a plate of cookies. His hands shook, but he would have been annoyed if Lance had offered to help. He set the plate on the table and, with some effort, sank down on the other easy chair.

  “Getting old is the shits,” he said.

  Lance had intended to ask how things were going, but now he simply nodded, to show that he accepted Willy’s pronouncement. “At least my hearing is still good,” he added.

  “I’m glad. That must make it easier to talk to Jimmy,” said Lance. “He’s over here every day. He’s all I live for now.”

  Lance noticed that his ex-father-in-law’s voice quavered. “Do the two of you still go fishing?” he asked.

  “Oh no . . . I can’t . . . it wouldn’t be safe.”

  Lance nodded sympathetically.

  “Go ahead and have a cookie,” said Willy.

  Lance knew at once that Mary had baked them.

  “I heard you found a dead man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And they haven’t caught who did it?”

  “No.”

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Lance looked at the dream catcher hanging on the wall over the sofa. He thought that it was the opposite of what he needed. He could use something that released dreams. Because it was as if all dreams, both good and bad, got caught in an invisible dream catcher that was always hanging over him when he slept.

  “There’s something I was wondering about,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Earlier today I was going through some photographs in the archive. Soderberg’s archive. And I happened to come across a picture that was from you.” He took the old photo out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Willy.

  Willy put on his glasses and studied the picture. After a moment he shook his head. “I’ve never seen this before,” he said.

  “But it says ‘Owner, William Dupree,’ in Soderberg’s list of photos.”

  The white-haired man slumped in the easy chair looked equally puzzled. “I can’t remember ever donating photographs to the historical society. Can you?”

  “No, not in my time. But this picture was apparently given to Olga Soderberg.”

  “When was it that she started collecting material?” Willy asked. “Before the war, at least.”

  “She must have gotten it from my father.” He nodded toward the two pictures on the wall above the sofa. “Dad was also named Willy Dupree. Or rather, William.”

  “Of course,” said Lance.

  “Do you know who the man is in the picture?” Willy handed the photo to Lance, who put it back in his shirt pocket.

  “Joe Caribou.”

  He could see Willy soundlessly repeating the name to himself as he tried to make some connection.

  “And who was that?”

  “Swamper Caribou’s brother.”

  “Ah, Swamper Caribou . . . now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” Willy said. “‘Don’t go down to the lake alone, or Swamper Caribou will get you.’ That’s what the grown-ups used to say when I was a boy.”

  “Have you heard stories about him?”

  “Sure,
lots of stories. But most of them were nonsense, you know.”

  “Like what?”

  “Hmm . . . like about the girl who disappeared. I remember that. Here in Grand Portage. Everybody knew she was a wild one. She didn’t need a ghost to make her vanish, I can promise you that. But nevertheless . . . My mother made up a story. And she said the girl was lured into a canoe, and it was Swamper Caribou’s doing. He paddled her out on the lake, and she was never seen again. My mother claimed to have seen this in a dream. Evidently the girl was actually pregnant and ran off to Minneapolis, or something like that.”

  “So you don’t believe the story?”

  “Stories.” Willy rubbed his chin. “If you knew how many stories I’ve heard in my lifetime,” he said. “And most of them will never be told again.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll die out with my generation. Everything the old ones told us when I was a boy.”

  “Are there any stories about Swamper Caribou that you do believe?”

  “I don’t know. One of my uncles told me about when he was out hunting near the lake. Suddenly he caught sight of a man sitting cross-legged on the top of a big boulder. A couple of inches of new snow covered the ground, so it was impossible to move without leaving footprints. But there were no prints leading to the boulder. My uncle said that the man just sat there, staring. Motionless. But then a gust of wind blew the stinging snow into my uncle’s face, and he had to shut his eyes tight. When he opened them, the man was gone. My uncle went over to the boulder to look around. But the only footprints in sight were his own. According to my uncle, it was Swamper Caribou that he’d seen.”

  “And what do you think?” asked Lance.

  “The man who told me the story was a trustworthy man. That much I know,” said Willy Dupree.

  “Have you ever heard any theories about what happened to Swamper Caribou?”

  “No. He just disappeared. That’s what I’ve always heard.”

  “Sure, but that alone must have stirred up speculation about what happened to him. From a purely factual point of view, I mean. Did he drown? Was it possible that he was killed?”

  Lance could see that Willy was hesitating. The furrowed face of the old Indian was moving, as if he were chewing on something. “Do you know what a windigo is?” he asked.

  “Isn’t it some sort of monster?” said Lance.

  “A windigo is an ice giant. It looks like an incredibly huge human being, but it’s made out of ice. You might ask: Where do windigos come from? Certain individuals become windigos. Then they hide in the woods and come out only when they want human flesh. Because they’re cannibals. Ice cannibals.”

  “Did people think that’s what happened to Swamper Caribou?” said Lance. “That he became a windigo?”

  “No,” replied Willy. “They thought that he’d met a windigo. And that it killed and ate him.”

  “An ice cannibal . . . ”

  “But the whole story is nothing but nonsense. It belongs to a different time. The old ones no doubt thought that it would take a supernatural being to slay Swamper Caribou. He was a powerful medicine man, you know.”

  “If someone became a windigo, could he ever become human again?” asked Lance.

  “Yes. But first somebody would have to catch the windigo. And then a magic ritual was performed to melt the ice. The human being who had become a windigo still existed in a space inside the ice giant.”

  “A space?”

  “Almost like a child in the mother’s womb,” said Willy, forming his hands into a protective hollow to illustrate what he meant.

  Lance thought about how many times he’d seen those hands carefully taking hold of Jimmy to lift him up. The soft little baby body and the old leathery hands. And suddenly he knew that he could tell everything to Willy Dupree. I can tell him about Andy! he thought. Willy would never say a word to anyone. Nothing could make him do anything that harmed Jimmy. The old man lived for the boy. He’d said so himself: “He’s over here every day. He’s all I live for now.”

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” said Lance. “It’s a secret. Something that you’ll think about every day for the rest of your life.”

  “Something to do with Jimmy?” asked the old man.

  “No. At least not directly. It’s something . . . a secret that nobody . . . but I can’t bear to keep it to myself any longer.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “All right. What is it?” Willy asked, sounding like someone who expected the worst.

  “It’s . . . ,” Lance began.

  “What?”

  “I know . . . I think I know . . . ” He couldn’t look Willy in the eye as he spoke. “I think I know who killed . . . ”

  Silence settled over them. He couldn’t even hear Willy breathing. The old man had fixed his gaze on Lance’s face. His lips were lightly parted. He was sitting there, waiting to hear what Lance would say next.

  “I think I know who killed Swamper Caribou.”

  Willy looked bewildered. “Really?” was all he said.

  “Yes. I’m not a hundred percent sure. It was a long time ago, after all. But it was probably not a windigo that did it.”

  “So who do you think killed him?”

  “One of my ancestors. A relative on my mother’s side.”

  “A Norwegian?”

  “Yes. Thormod Olson. Have you ever heard of him?”

  “No, but why do you think he killed Swamper Caribou?”

  “Because of the convergence of time and place. Thormod came here from Norway in March 1892. That was when Swamper Caribou disappeared. In an article in the Grand Marais Pioneer from that same year, it says he went missing sometime around the full moon, which was on March sixteenth. Thormod Olson was on his way from Duluth to Carlton Peak, where his uncle lived. At night, he walked across the ice in the moonlight, heading across the bays. Near the mouth of the Cross River, he fell through the ice and almost drowned. That was also where Swamper Caribou had his hunting cabin. That was where he disappeared. It looks like these two things happened more or less at the same time, and in the same place. I wonder whether the story about falling through the ice was just something that Thormod made up. Maybe he met Swamper Caribou somewhere, and for some reason ended up getting into a fight with him.”

  “I don’t understand this,” said Willy. “How can you be sure that the Norwegian killed Swamper Caribou?”

  “I’m not sure. And yet . . . ”

  “Lance . . . it happened more than a hundred years ago. Why are you letting an old story like this get you so upset?”

  “Well, I . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I’m just in a difficult place in my life.”

  “You should get married again,” said Willy Dupree.

  “Why?”

  “You’re spending too much time brooding about things. It’s not good for someone to live alone the way you do. Not a man of your age, in any case. A man needs a woman. Here, take another cookie.”

  Lance did as he was told.

  22

  HE WAS ON HIS WAY TO ANDERSON LAKE, where two men had been observed setting out nets. He suspected they were Ojibwe. If so, they had the right to be fishing with nets. On the other hand, if they were not Ojibwe, fishing was strictly forbidden, and Lance would have to issue fines and confiscate the nets. He’d done this many times before. It was a routine part of his job.

  On the previous day, which was a Sunday, he’d gone into his small office at the ranger station and scanned four pages from Nanette’s diary. Then he had faxed them to a translation agency in St. Paul that specialized in handwritten texts, often in the form of old letters from Europe. He started by faxing a single page so they could determine whether this was a task they could handle. A short time later he received a pleasant e-mail confirming that there shouldn’t be any particular problems. They woul
d send the translation to his personal e-mail address as soon as it was finished, just as he’d requested. They thought it would take about a week. Most likely he would receive the completed translation the following weekend.

  As he drove to Anderson Lake, he thought about his visit to Willy Dupree two days earlier. His ex-father-in-law would have protected the secret as faithfully as Lance was doing, in order to spare his grandchild. But if Lance had told Willy, he would have made his own guilt even greater. That was what he realized at the last minute. He now knew that he couldn’t share this secret with anyone. He would have to bear it alone.

  “Don’t give any more thought to Swamper Caribou,” Willy had told Lance when he was about to leave. “He just disappeared.”

  But of course he was still thinking about Swamper Caribou. He was also thinking about the Indian he’d seen in Grand Marais. The man paddling the birchbark canoe. The same man he’d seen walking along Highway 61. It was as if a photograph had come alive. Or at least started moving. The image that should have been contained within the narrow white borders of a black-and-white picture had leaked out into the world and was now moving around like some sort of animated double-exposure.

  HE FOUND A SUITABLE PARKING SPOT next to a pile of old logs that for some reason had never been picked up. Then he began making his way through bracken that reached almost to his waist. Up ahead was the edge of the pine forest that surrounded most of Anderson Lake. Between the tree trunks he could see the glitter of water. As he stepped in among the tall, straight pines, he paused to lean against one of them. He raised his binoculars to his eyes and quickly spotted two plastic jugs floating in the water, about a net’s length from each other. Then he caught sight of two men sitting in a canoe close to shore, making ready a third net. They were no more Ojibwe than Lance was. They looked like they might be brothers. Two young brothers putting out nets. And it was Lance’s job to punish them for that offense. Yet he was the person who was hiding the identity of a murderer. What right did he have to intervene with these two young men? Did their illegal net fishing really matter, compared with Lance’s sins? No. That much he knew. And even though his job required him to confiscate the nets and fine the men, he still made no move to do any such thing. Yet this was one of his responsibilities. How would things end if he stopped doing his job? Then he thought about what had already happened. When he decided not to tell anyone that Andy was the perpetrator, he stopped being a real policeman. That was the moment when he became corrupt. Because that was what he was: a dirty cop. Not the type who took bribes, but the kind who looked through his fingers when it came to close family members. And that was basically just as bad.