Nordic Nights (The Alix Thorssen Mysteries)

by Lise McClendon

  “Nice aim,” I said, standing to pick up two coins near my feet. I smiled, straightening up, and lifted the coins. Bjarne hollered, “Salut!” and blew me a kiss. I wiggled the coins and sat down under the quilt again.

  “Ooh, he is cute, Alix,” Luca teased. “Especially with horns.”

  “I know I’m partial to horny guys,” Maggie said, smirking.

  “You’re partial to anything in pants,” I reminded her.

  “Actually I like them out of their pants,” she said.

  Luca had her hand over her mouth, shaking with giggles. The cold did that to you, made you have to laugh or cry to keep warm. Laughing was definitely better. The next participant in the parade was a herd of four tame reindeer on halters, pulled by their owner, a renegade rancher who looked nothing like Santa Claus.

  Artie leaned forward. “That guy Bjarne doesn’t wear pants anyway. All he wears is Lycra.”

  “Yeah, and he’s not politically correct with all that fur on. Somebody’s going to squirt ketchup on him,” I said.

  “But he has horns,” Luca said, her voice veering upward. “Big horns.”

  I nodded to myself. He did seem to have big horns, if the way he kept showing up and offering to kiss away my troubles was any indication. I felt particularly cozy, under Olava’s quilt, with two guys chasing my skinny little Norwegian ass. What could be better?

  “Quit looking so self-satisfied,” Maggie said. “Go get that thermos of coffee. Make yourself useful. It looks like high school heaven for a while.”

  The marching band was next, so I went inside to pour coffee into the thermos and find four mugs. I had to go upstairs and rinse out a couple we’d used for breakfast, so by the time I got back down, the last of the high school teams was just rounding the corner of the square and filing past with their banners proclaiming them the Wyoming State Forensics Champions for 1999.

  “Where’s your mother in the lineup?” Maggie asked as I poured coffee into her mug around her rabbit fur mittens.

  “Toward the end, she said. But the parade isn’t all that big. It was a little hard to rouse enthusiasm to march around on a cold, dark January night at six thousand feet elevation in the Rockies.”

  “There’s a nice crowd, though,” Luca remarked. “Lots of customers.”

  “That’s the point,” Maggie said. “Of most everything in this town.”

  “You sound so cynical, Maggie,” Luca said. “I just love it here. It is so beautiful, so clean. What would the town do without customers?”

  “Good question,” I said. “You wouldn’t be a tad cynical, would you, Maggie?”

  “Luca, you have to understand I grew up in this town when it was a sleepy little western stage stop on the way to Yellowstone Park. Not an annex of an Aspen T-shirt shop.” Maggie flopped backward in her chair. “Oh, don’t mind me. I think it’s PMS.”

  “Hey, the Clydesdales,” Artie said. The Bud wagon went by, pulled by the shaggy-footed hulks. In the summer they were known to give away beer at the Fourth of July parade, but on this night a lone driver bundled in a long duster switched the big horses into action. The steam rose off their backs. Another group of torchbearers walked by next, looking bored and stepping around road apples of magnificent girth. Behind them two students, one with a wheelbarrow and one with a shovel, took care of the mess.

  “Is that the boat?” Luca said, pointing to the far corner of the square. Hank’s pickup was rounding the square, coming toward us now. The longboat’s sail was unfurled, an ethereal white silk square, billowing and rippling in the light breeze.

  I stood up to get a better view. “Wow. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Maggie took my arm. “I’ll say,” she whispered. “Your mom is something else, doing this today of all days. My mom would probably be home in the fetal position.”

  I glanced at Maggie and smiled. “She is something, isn’t she?”

  The Viking ship’s slender oars wiggled as Una crept around the corner by the Second Sun to move down the street in front of us. I saw her checking the mirrors, going so slowly, creeping along, so that the majestic sail didn’t pull too hard on the mast and booms. Luca and Artie stood up to the railing with us, all awestruck by the eerie beauty of the longboat. By itself the wooden boat was a fine model, precise, to scale, and crafted with loving care. But with the sail it became a true ship, ready to sail the clouds to another time, another place.

  The spirit of the Vikings moved past us, the gold prow glistening in the streetlights, the dragon head fierce. Luca pulled out her camera and took a picture. I watched it creep away, savoring the sight of the creamy sail and cataloging details to tell Hank of its beauty. I didn’t see the next parade entry until Artie shouted: “Cancer sticks! Cancer sticks! Smoking kills!”

  The man dressed as the Marlboro Man and his swinging cowgirl helper, who pulled a red wagon painted with the Marlboro logo and full of packs of cigarettes, looked up briefly and smiled. He had the look of a male model, handsome in a jawey way with dull eyes. He wore the chaps, hat, red shirt, and cowboy boots of the classic costume as he passed out packs of cigarettes, pausing only to shake his head benignly to little children.

  “Don’t get hooked! Cancer sticks will kill you!” Artie continued his tirade, cupping his mouth.

  “That’s right, Artie,” Maggie said. She turned toward the Marlboro Man and shouted, “What happened to the last Marlboro guy? Lung cancer?!”

  A couple of young men with packs of cigarettes in hand turned and waved them at us gaily. Free stuff is free stuff, even if it kills you. “You sap,” Artie called.

  “They’re bigger than you, Artie,” I reminded him I heard him jingling the keys to the gallery in his hand just before I heard the commotion down the street. A glance told me the news was not good. I dropped Grandma’s quilt to the chair.

  “Shit. The boat’s on fire!” I ran down the steps, pushed aside tourists, and made for the Marlboro Man, where the running room was better, upsetting the wagon of cigarettes quite by accident.

  Ahead the flames licked up the sail, rising higher in the night sky. The pickup was still moving the trailer forward.

  “Stop, Mom, stop!” I called as I reached the boat. The wooden boom across the bottom of the sail was engulfed now, with flames moving all across the parachute silk.

  Una stopped the truck, threw open the driver’s-side door.

  I grabbed her arm. “How do I get the sail down? Where’s the rope?”

  “On the other side.” She scuttled around the stern of the longboat with me at her heels. “There.”

  She pointed to a loose lanyard running up the side of the sail just as the fire licked upward along it. “Oh, no.” She covered her mouth.

  Quickly I scooped some snow into my heavy wool mittens, soaking them to the skin. Waiting for the fire to die down wasn’t going to help. I grabbed the rope, hearing the hiss of the wet snow against the flames, pulled the locking pulley out of position, and dropped the sail to the boat in a thundering heap. Instead of dousing the fire, the wind created by the lowering of the sail fanned the flames. Orange fingers of fire rose from the billowing silk close to the deck of the boat.

  “We’ve got to get the sail off!” I threw a leg over the gunwales and felt my mother give me a last heave-ho into the boat. Later I would wonder how I thought I could just vault into a boat that stood six feet off the ground, but somehow, in the heat of the moment, it happened.

  The deck was small, cramped with the handles of the oars, so I broke many of them trying to reach the mast. I stared at the boom, trying to figure out how to detach it from the mast, while the heat of the fire rose around me.

  “There’s a latch behind the sail,” Una called, peering over the gunwales. “Do you see it? Push it upward, the boom will roll out toward you.”

  A bucket of snow came flying over the boat and landed near my feet, making sizzling noises but doing nothing to put out the fire. I patted more snow in my mittens. I didn’t want to even look at my h
ands right now. I batted at the flames near the mast, pushing down the burning sail. Another bucket of snow flew in. Artie’s voice came with it. “I’m coming in, Alix!”

  “No, Artie, don’t! Take care of Una.” I picked up more snow. My eyebrows felt very hot I blinked hard, squinting to see the latch. I hit the sail again, putting out a small flame. There was the latch. I rammed it with my palm. Nothing happened. I hit it again, harder. The boom crashed against the wooden gunwales.

  “This way, Alix! Push it toward us,” Artie hollered. I saw him and Una, helped by Maggie and some strangers, getting ready to receive the mast from me. As I looked over, the boom began to roll. Toward me, just as Una said. The flames continued to burn the big sail on both sides of me. The mast looked charred but intact. As the boom picked up speed, I sat down hard on the deck, splintering oars as I fell.

  “Get down, Alix!”

  I leaned back as the boom rolled over me, protecting my face with my wet mittens. Yelling from the street, indistinct, came over the gunwales as the heat went through my knit cap to my scalp. I peeked through my mittens; the boom and sail had stopped over me. I used my feet to scoot down toward the mast and twisted around to stand up.

  “Tip up the far end!” somebody hollered. Two men, strangers to me, lifted one end of the boom. On the other side, Artie grabbed the end and hung on it. Maggie and Una pulled. As the boom rose higher and the two strangers let it go, I moved under it, found a spot untouched by flame, and pushed it up over the side.

  The boom stood for a moment on its end, charred sail flapping around it, flames finding new fabric. “Watch out—it’s going to fall!” I yelled to the small crowd who had formed to watch the drama. Slowly, gracefully, the boom tipped toward the prow of the ship, missed the pickup, and landed in the snowy street with a thud. Artie and Maggie began immediately to throw snow on the remaining flames and stamp them out I swung my legs over the gunwales and jumped down, feeling a catch in my rib cage that made me suck air.

  Una stared at the soggy, stinking mess, stunned. She had bits of black on her coat and hat, a dark smudge across one cheek. I looked back at the longboat. The mast was blackened, the gunwales dented and charred, most of the oars broken. Yet it hadn’t burned. We had saved it. The sail could be replaced, I hoped. I turned and gave my mother a hug.

  “What will I tell Hank?” she whispered, rubbing her hands together. “He won’t believe it—he’ll think—”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mom. The boat was so beautiful. It was magnificent.” It seemed almost a sacrilege to say this now that it was ruined. But it had been magnificent.

  Una took her eyes off the boat and looked me in the eye. “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Ma’am?” The voice with a Texas drawl came up behind us. I turned, not sure if I was the ma’am in question or Mom was. A young man stood there, eyes wild from the excitement, in a homey cap and oversize dull brown snowboarder jacket. “Ma’am, I didn’t get a look at him or anything, but if you need me when you talk to the cops and all, well, I’ll do what I can.”

  I looked at Una and back at the snowboarder. He sported a scraggly goatee, mostly blond, and matching hair that stuck out the bottom of his cap. “A look at who?”

  “The guy who threw the torch,” he said, jumping from one lug boot to another. “He must have been behind me, because suddenly as you were chugging by, this torch came sailing over my head! I saw it in the air, you know? Like a frigging comet or something, you know? Zoom, over my head! Just like that.” He demonstrated with hand movements.

  “And it hit the sail?”

  “Oh, yeah. Just the corner, you know? But it was enough to light the cloth up. Whoosh, just like that!”

  I looked at the shadowy faces staring at us in the street. Artie and Maggie had stopped their stamping on the burning sail and were coining toward us. Una had her head cocked, frowning at the snowboarder’s voluminous pants, then up at his face, uncomprehending. The scene, with the yellow porch lights under the eaves, the dirty snow, the ruined ship, the smoldering silk, the pickup still running with a wheezing sputter, was surreal. I looked closer at the young man. “Someone threw a torch? You saw him?”

  “Not a good look.” The snowboarder shook his head. “By the time I turned around, he was running. I saw his back, it was dark.”

  “What did he look like?”

  The young man tried to smile. “Sorry. It was dark. He went down that alley.” He pointed over the boat toward a break in the storefronts, an alley running the width of the block. “I mean, I’m pretty sure it was a guy from the way he was running. Dark clothes, that’s all.” He looked at Una. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  Artie stepped up to Una, touched her arm. “You want me to pull the boat back into the garage for you?”

  Una agreed, gratefully. Some bystanders helped Artie get the soggy sail and boom back onto the boat. I checked it first to make sure the fire was out, then took Maggie’s suggestion that we duck into the Six Point Bar down the side street The bartender and proprietor, Rusty Pehrson, put a pot of coffee on and served free beer.

  Maggie, Mom, and I crowded into the tiny rest room to clean up, and I examined myself in the pocked mirror. The bathroom had been paneled with barn siding back in the seventies in an effort to rusticate it. By now the cigarette burns, graffiti, and drunken kicks with cowboy boots had decorated the siding far past the rustic. I leaned over the small hanging sink and pulled my stocking cap off. My hair was all still there, but my eyebrows had curled with heat, singed just a little.

  “Take off your mittens,” Una said after scrubbing the black off her face. “I want to see your hands.”

  “I think I’ll go home and clean up,” I said. I didn’t want to take off my mittens here. My palms had developed a low ache, especially my left hand. The wet wool kept them cool. “I’ll just put a little more cold water on them.” I ran the faucet and felt the cool liquid against my hands.

  Maggie leaned over me and turned off the water. “Turn around,” she said, pushing my shoulder back so I faced her. “Let’s see ‘em.” She picked up my right hand. The knit mitten was charred, black. I pulled it away.

  “I can do this at home,” I complained. “I don’t want you fussing over me like a couple of old hens.”

  Una looked at Maggie, pursing her lips. “She gets like this when she really needs help. I’ll bet they hurt, don’t they?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Then take it off,” Maggie said, putting her hands on her hips and blocking the exit. Surrounded, I acquiesced. The knit fabric stuck slightly to my palm as I pulled the mitten off. Una took my hand.

  “It’s red but not too bad,” she said.

  “I told you that. Can I go now?”

  “The other one, missy,” Maggie ordered.

  I sighed, then pulled slowly on the wet knit. The fire had charred this mitten badly, and it seemed to be stuck to my palm. “Okay, it hurts,” I said. “You don’t have to watch, though. I’ll go home and do it.”

  “Let me, honey,” Una said, taking my hand. Gingerly she lifted the knit up with pinched fingers. I clenched my jaw, blinked my eyes a few times, and finally the mitten was off.

  “It’s starting to blister,” my mother said. “What have you got at home for burns?”

  “I’ll get some ice from Rusty,” Maggie said, leaving the rest room in a rush.

  Una leaned over my palm, picking errant fuzzies off the reddened, raised blister. “She’s right, ice will help. What else do you have?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, trying to remember the contents of my medicine chest. “Like what?”

  “We’ll just swing by the emergency room and get them to bandage it up,” Una said. “And no arguing with me this time.”

  “Yes, Mom.” I smiled at her, and her eyes smiled back.

  Luca was sitting at the bar when we got out of the rest room, talking to Rusty, who stood behind the bar. I insisted on a moment of calm and a glas
s of wine before heading off to the hospital. Luca turned to me, her forehead a web of concern.

  “Are you all right? Maggie said you had a burn?”

  I held a bag of ice cubes against my palm. “It’s not the important hand.” I winked at Rusty. He poured me a glass of white wine. This was why I liked this place so much. Not that I drank here a lot. Not that I liked the decor, a jumble of dead animals with antlers and marble eyes, the creative Wyoming varieties of critters like jackalopes and the rear end of a white-tailed deer with eyes painted on its cheeks called a “Wyoming Jackass.” But the guy behind the bar remembered what you drank and he left you alone to drink it. Or talked to you if you felt like it. Rusty, in his flannel shirt and lumberjack boots, looked more like a macho sawmill operator or hunting guide than a sensitive bartender. But that’s what he was.

  “Does it hurt awful?” Luca asked.

  I shook my head. Luca still had her camera around her neck. “Did you get some pictures?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, smiling. “Even of the fire. I took the whole roll.”

  “Pardon me.” A man sitting on the other side of Luca peered around her. He looked local. “I work for the paper. Would you be willing to let us run some of your pictures of the fire?”

  Luca’s mouth dropped open. She looked at me, then the man, and gasped.

  “Sure she would,” I said. “For a price.”

  “Naturally,” the man said. He extended his hand. “Conrad Baker. Call me Con.” Luca shook his hand and introduced herself, blushing. He extended his hand then to me.

  “And Danny Bartholomew has told me all about you, Miss Thorssen.”

  “Oh,” I said, pulling my hand back. Danny worked at the Jackson Hole News; he had not forgotten how his tipping me to the whereabouts of an artist had gotten me, and him, into trouble. “Was it all bad?”

  Con Baker laughed. He was dark and bearded, a man who got enough to eat at night. “There might have been a few choice adjectives, but almost all of it was good.”