Copper River co-6

by William Kent Krueger

  Ren cleaned the area around the second wound where the stitches were broken. The fast flow of blood had subsided into a steady ooze. He reached into the medical bag again and pulled out a sterile pad, a roll of gauze, tape, and a pair of scissors. He pressed the pad to the wound, bound it in place by wrapping the gauze tightly several times around the man’s thigh, and secured it with the surgical tape.

  Charlie watched in silent fascination. When Ren finished, she looked at him with admiration. “That was pretty sweet.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Family. My mom’s cousin.”

  “Has he got a name?”

  Charlie pulled off the gloves and began to put away the medical things. He considered a moment before answering her.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s Cork.”

  3

  A mile outside Bodine, Jewell DuBois turned off the main highway and bounced up the rutted road toward the old cabins. She was not happy. She’d been on an emergency call, a horse whose symptoms made her suspect tetanus. The last thing she wanted to hear that afternoon was that Cork O’Connor needed her.

  She pulled her Blazer to a stop on the lane that ran between the guest cabins, grabbed her medical bag, and hopped out. Ren and Charlie were with him, sitting on the ground on either side. They didn’t seem upset. A good thing.

  Cork was awake.

  “Hope you don’t charge much for a cabin,” he said weakly. “The ground out here’s more comfortable than that bunk you had me in.”

  Jewell addressed her son as she went down on her knees, asking sternly, “What happened?”

  “He just opened the door and fell down the steps, Mom.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Out here,” Ren said.

  “What were you doing out here? Why weren’t you with him like I told you?”

  “Not his fault,” Cork broke in. “My own stupidity.”

  Jewell drew the blanket back and examined the work her son had done. “Good job, Ren.” Then to Cork: “Why did you get up?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Cork smiled faintly. “The truth is I forgot where I was and panicked. Then I fainted.”

  The sun was low in the sky, the afternoon going cool. Where the sun sliced between the trees that backed the cabins, the ground was still warm, but with sunset everything would chill quickly.

  “Orthostatic shock, probably,” Jewell said.

  Cork looked confused. “Orthostatic?”

  “You got up too fast,” Ren said.

  “Nothing to worry about. Your brain just needed more blood than it had at the moment,” Jewell explained. “Happens sometimes when people have been lying down for a while and stand up too quickly. We need to get you inside. Can you help us?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Ren, Charlie, take that side. I’ll help over here.” To Cork she said, “Don’t put weight on that leg if you can help it.”

  “Whatever you say, Doc.”

  They positioned themselves and he sat up, then they helped him to his feet. Cork grunted as he came upright, and his pasty face went even whiter, but he didn’t buckle.

  “Up the steps, one at a time,” Jewell instructed.

  They mounted slowly. Cork struggled not to lean on his bum leg. By the time they got him inside and laid him on his bunk, they were all breathing hard and Cork was soaked with sweat.

  A bag with a drip tube hung from the curtain rod on the window next to the bunk. “I see you pulled out your IV,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Don’t remember.”

  “Ren, get my bag.”

  Her son scurried out and came back a moment later with the medical bag and the blankets. He handed her the bag and laid the cleaner of the two blankets over Cork.

  Jewell pulled the blanket back enough to expose the wounded leg. She cracked open her medical bag, took out a pair of bandage scissors, and cut away the gauze binding Ren had put on. “I need to sew it closed again. I’ll be here awhile. You guys hungry?”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said quickly.

  “My purse is in the car. Get what you need for a couple of burgers in town or whatever you want. Charlie, you can’t talk about this, you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Not to your father, not to anybody.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good.” She thought about Charlie and about something else. “It’s Saturday. You want to stay here tonight?”

  Charlie shook her head. “I’ll be all right.”

  “That changes, you come on over, you hear?”

  “Thanks.”

  “And, Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When you go home tonight, do yourself a favor: take a good long shower, plenty of soap.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Right.” Charlie looked down.

  Jewell watched the kids walk out the cabin door, then she turned back to her patient.

  “Good kid, Ren,” Cork said. “Sure he won’t say anything?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What about the other boy?”

  She reached into her medical bag. “Charlie? Not a boy.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “She fools most everybody.”

  He eyed the syringe she held.

  “Local anesthetic,” she explained, and stuck him. “I should have put you in Thor’s Lodge with us last night so we could keep an eye on you better.”

  “I’ll be fine here. Promise not to go wandering again.” He laid his hand gently on her arm. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “A hospital, for starters.”

  “I told you last night. I can’t do a hospital right now. They’d have to report the gunshot wound, and I’d end up a sitting duck for the people trying to kill me.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Professionals.”

  “You mean like hit men.”

  “Yeah, like that.”

  “Why do they want you dead?”

  “They’ll be paid handsomely for it.”

  “Who put up the money?”

  “A man who believes I killed his son.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why does he think that?”

  “Circumstances.”

  “You couldn’t just talk to him?”

  “I tried. He wouldn’t listen. It’s complicated.”

  “So what now?”

  “There are people trying to prove I’m innocent.”

  “That could take a while?”

  “I don’t know. Look, as soon as I can, I’ll leave.”

  She put on latex gloves, pulled an Ethilon nylon suture pack from her bag, tore it open, took out the curved needle and black thread.

  “I don’t hear from you in forever, then you show up on my doorstep, shot, bleeding all over everything, expecting me to take you in. Christ, that’s just like a man.”

  “You’ve cut your hair,” he said.

  “Easier to keep out of my way while I’m working.”

  When her hand, which held the needle, descended toward the entrance wound on the outside of his thigh, he looked away. “How are you doing?”

  “How am I doing?” She squinted over her work. “I go to the clinic in the morning, come home late, fix dinner, help Ren with his homework, do laundry and what I can around the house, try to go to bed so tired I don’t have to think about anything. So I guess, all things considered, I’m doing pretty shitty.”

  “Long time to be grieving.”

  “What do you know about grief? Damn.” She shook her head at something she’d done. Cork didn’t look and was glad she’d numbed the area first. “I still miss him. Every minute of every day. You want to know the worst part? Sometimes I hate him. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m grieving or just royally pissed at him. There.” She clipped the thread.

  “I didn’t fe
el a thing.”

  “Because I’m good. Hungry?”

  “A little.”

  “I’ll fix something that’ll go down easy.” She closed her bag, stood up, and headed for the door.

  “Jewell, thank you.”

  She paused before stepping outside. “You can thank me best by getting better and getting out of here without bringing any more trouble around.”

  “As long as no one knows I’m here, you and Ren are okay, I promise.”

  “Good. I’ve had enough of people I care about dying.”

  In the late afternoon air outside Cabin 3, she stood a moment, breathing out her anger, her despair, still feeling the hurt of a wound that hadn’t healed. In the cabin at her back, Cork O’Connor coughed.

  Men, Jewell thought. All they’d ever brought her was trouble.

  4

  Bodine, Michigan, was the end of the line. It lay near the terminus of thirty miles of poorly maintained county road that ran northwest out of Marquette along the shore of Lake Superior. It was Anatomy of a Murder territory, a place that despite its beauty was probably best filmed in black and white. For decades Bodine had been fighting a slow death.

  To the south and west rose the Huron Mountains, thick with timber. Beyond that lay the Copper Country where the red-brown native ore leached out of the Keweenaw Peninsula and spread its veins through much of the western U.P. Stretching north all the way to the horizon was the vast blue of Lake Superior, which became, somewhere far out of sight, part of Canada. On good, clear days, you could see the Keweenaw curling out of the west, protecting Bodine from the worst of the gales that swept across the lake in late fall, storms that had spelled doom for generations of sailors. Looking east from Bodine, you could almost see the spot where the water had swallowed the Edmund Fitzgerald.

  On this late Saturday afternoon, Bodine, population 1,207, was quiet as usual. Ren straddled the ATV his father had purchased for the old resort, and Charlie held on tight behind. For nearly a mile, he drove along the drainage ditch at the side of the road. Then he came onto the asphalt, crossed the iron bridge over the Copper River, and entered town. Legally, he couldn’t drive on a roadway, but in Bodine, a place used to ATVs and snowmobiles and anything else that would lure the tourists, no one paid much attention to that detail. He passed the Superior Inn, a lodge and restaurant of lacquered yellow pine logs, and the Supervalu market, where the parking lot was almost empty, and pulled to a stop in front of Kitty’s Cafe. Charlie sprang off the seat with the flourish of a gymnast and bounced to the cafe door.

  “Jesus, you’re like a slug or something,” she called to Ren, and disappeared inside.

  They sat at the counter and ordered pasties, chocolate shakes, and fries. Pasties were small pies consisting of meat, vegetables, and gravy completely enclosed in a flaky crust. They were a local favorite, an import brought by Cornish immigrants who’d come to that part of Michigan in the late 1800’s to work the copper and iron mines. While they ate, Charlie made fun of the other customers, some of them locals, some tourists come for the fall colors. The customers, for their part, eyed Charlie-her buzzed head, her piercings, her dirty clothing-as if she were an animal who’d wandered out of the woods.

  When they finished, Ren pulled out the money he’d taken from his mother’s purse and paid the bill.

  Outside, the sun had settled on the tops of the distant Huron Mountains and the air was cooling fast with the approach of evening. Ren knew he should head back to the resort to help his mother with the man in Cabin 3, but he’d already wasted most of the day sitting by the man’s bed, and he wasn’t eager to return.

  At that opportune moment Stash appeared.

  “Hey,” he called out, and skateboarded across the street toward the cafe. Stash was never without his skateboard. Taller than Charlie and Ren, older by a year, he wore his dark hair long. He was dressed as usual in baggy jeans that rode low on his butt, a black T-shirt a couple of sizes too large, and Doc Martens. A long, thin chain connected to a belt loop hung against his thigh and disappeared into his back pocket where he kept his wallet.

  “Dudes, I was looking for you. I’m heading to the river, thinking of smoking a little weed. Want to come?”

  “I’m there,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, okay,” Ren agreed. “Hop on,” he said, indicating his ATV. “You can ride behind Charlie.”

  Before they could mount up, three teenagers rounded the corner beyond the cafe and made straight for Ren and his friends.

  “Circus must be in town,” the boy in the lead said. “Check out the freaks.”

  “Ah, shit,” Stash said. “Greenway and his Nazis.”

  “Be cool,” Ren said.

  Charlie ignored him. “Make like a bee,” she said to Greenway, “and buzz off.”

  The big kid smiled. Goose Jablonski and Kenny Merkin smiled, too. They all wore gold and blue Bodine Bobcats letter-man jackets.

  “Yeah, and who’s going to make us?” Greenway said.

  “Bite me,” Stash said under his breath.

  Greenway turned to him. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” Stash said.

  Charlie stepped forward. “He said fuck off.”

  “Whoa. The junior dyke’s flexing her muscles. What do you think?” Greenway said, addressing his buddies. “Maybe she really was born with balls.”

  “Leave her alone,” Ren said.

  “Shut your hole, Pocahontas. You’ll end up with your head split open just like your old man.”

  Ren threw himself at Greenway with all the fury his small body contained. The larger boy stumbled back a step, then held his ground. He wrapped Ren in a powerful hug, flung him to the ground, and sat on him. He gave Ren a couple of hard open-handed slaps before Charlie kicked him in the ribs. Greenway toppled over, holding his side. Goose grabbed Charlie and gripped her in a headlock before she could dance away. He squeezed until her face turned red.

  “Let her go, shithead.” Ren tried to get up, only to have Merkin pounce and pin him to the ground.

  “Help her, Stash,” Ren hollered.

  Stash stood frozen.

  “Hey, hey, hey, break it up here.” Gary Johnson trotted up, waving his hands. He was an adult and built like a bulldozer. Johnson latched an enormous hand onto Goose’s shoulder. “Let her go, Goose.”

  The kid complied, but unhappily.

  “Get off him, Kenny,” Johnson said to Merkin.

  Merkin lifted himself off Ren.

  Johnson stared down at Greenway, who was still on the ground holding his ribs. “I’m more than a little disappointed, Dan. Big guys like you picking on kids, and a girl yet.”

  “Bitch kicked me,” Greenway said.

  Johnson shoved his ball cap back showing a high forehead. “Big deal. You get kicked all the time on the football field, and by guys with cleats, eh.” He turned to Ren. “That lip’s going to be puffy for a while. Better go on home and put some ice on it.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Johnson faced the three lettermen. “I’ve a good mind to talk to your fathers.”

  “Screw off,” Greenway said.

  “Or how about this, Dan? How ‘bout I talk to Coach Soames, tell him what a big man you are, how you and Goose and Kenny here like beating on girls? I could get you yanked from that starting position faster ’n you could say Brett Favre. I’ll do it.”

  In addition to being the publisher and editor of the Marquette County Courier, Johnson covered all area high school sports. That carried a lot of weight in Bodine.

  Greenway and the others exchanged surly glances but said nothing.

  “Now go on.” Johnson gestured down the street. “I’m sure there are cats somewhere need torturing, eh.”

  When the boys had gone, Ren said, “Thanks.”

  Charlie said, “We were doing fine.”

  Johnson laughed. “That’s exactly what Custer said, Charlie.” He turned his attention back to Ren. “Like I said, have your mom look at that lip. How is sh
e, by the way? Haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “Busy,” Ren said. “You know.”

  “Sure. Tell her I said hello, eh.”

  Ren nodded.

  “Charlie, I swear I’m going to see you in the Olympics someday.” Johnson gave her a smile, then strolled away.

  “Come on,” Stash said, stowing his skateboard under his arm. “Let’s get high.”

  5

  A hundred yards from where the Copper River spilled into Lake Superior, perched on a small rise among a stand of red maples on the west bank, stood an old stone picnic shelter. The shelter was part of the Big Cascade Wayside, a little park named for the stair step of rocks and churning water it overlooked. The shelter had been built during the Depression as a CCC project but wasn’t used much anymore. The locals and tourists preferred Dunning Park on the lakefront. More often than not, Ren and his friends had the place to themselves.

  By the time they reached the river, the sun had set. The water as it dipped and swirled over the rocks was a reflection of a golden sky. Ren parked the ATV and the three kids stepped inside the shelter. The corners were littered with fallen leaves. A blackened fireplace dominated the back wall. The place smelled of old burn, dusty stone, rotting leaves, and faintly of piss. Stash stood on one of the two concrete picnic tables, reached up to a low rafter, and pulled down a cigar box bound with a thick rubber band. He sat down, slipped the band off, and lifted the lid to reveal a dime bag of weed, a package of Zig-Zag rolling papers, and a Bic lighter. His real name was Stuart, but Ren and Charlie had dubbed him Stash because he kept small caches of weed hidden in a number of places around Bodine. A hole in a tree in Dunning Park on the lake. Taped under the bleachers at the ballpark. In a disconnected downspout in the alley behind Linder’s Garage. He didn’t like to carry anything on him. He’d been stopped too many times and ripped off, he claimed, by the deputy constable.

  As Stash sat on the table and rolled a joint, Ren eyed the inside of the box lid. Printed in bold magic marker: PROPERTY OF STUART GULLICKSON.

  “You’re crazy, man,” he told Stash. “That’ll get you sent to juvie for sure.”

  “So I get picked up. The old man springs me, gives me a lecture on disappointment and shame, yells about military school again. Only problem is there aren’t any I haven’t already been kicked out of.” He licked the seam to seal the joint. “Besides, it’s a rush whenever I think somebody might find it and turn me in. Walking the edge. You down with that?”