Northwest Angle: A Novel Read online

  Food was a different matter. She hoped she was rescued before that became an issue. She was glad she’d had both a hearty breakfast and lunch.

  As she moved up the other side of the island, Jenny caught sight of something in the interior. She shaded her eyes against the brilliant sunlight and squinted. It was a small cabin amid the debris. Hope, a kind of spiritual adrenaline, ran through her. She turned quickly inland.

  The going was far more difficult than she’d imagined. She worked her way laboriously over dozens of fallen trunks—pine, spruce, and poplar. Climbing and crouching and slithering, she took ten exhausting minutes to go only a hundred yards. She stood at last before a small structure built of logs and with a roof that was made of cedar shakes covered with birch bark. Each side ran maybe fifteen feet in length. Windows had been cut in each wall and were covered with soiled oilcloth. An enormous red pine had toppled in the storm and cleaved the roof, causing much of the back wall to tumble. It had come to rest on the top cross log of the front wall.

  She’d seen such structures before, old trapper cabins or abandoned hunting camps in the woods of Tamarack County, north of Aurora. She walked to the door, lifted the latch, and entered.

  It was a single room. The huge, fallen pine had invaded much of the area inside, creating a kind of labyrinth of sharply needled branches. The logs of the toppled back wall also cramped the room, and what open space was left felt tiny. Against the wall to her right, clear of the wreckage of the back wall and untouched by the pine boughs, was a bunk with bedding. Except for fallout from the damaged roof and the wetness from the rain that had come through, the bedding looked relatively clean. Toward the back, crushed under a couple of tumbled logs, was a rough-hewn table, with two broken chairs. In the center of the room stood a cast-iron potbellied stove. A long section of stovepipe had come down when the pine hit the roof, and it lay on the floor amid a shadowy splash of soot.

  She ducked under the trunk of the protruding pine, and the far side of the cabin was revealed to her.

  “Well, well,” she said, pleased. “At least I won’t starve.”

  Against the wall of the cabin, cardboard boxes stood stacked waist high. On the side of each box was printed the contents, which included canned peaches, canned lima beans, canned peas, canned Hormel chili, canned Spam, and half a dozen other edibles. A long, slender table had been shoved against the cabin wall next to the boxes. The tabletop was maple, planed smooth and cleanly varnished. On it sat a Coleman propane stove, open and ready for business. A little way down the table were neatly stacked cooking pots and two cigar boxes, one filled with utensils and the other with candles. There were kitchen matches in a sealed Ball jar. Near the end of the table lay a stack of folded towels. Arranged against the wall beneath the table were a dozen plastic, two-gallon jugs of distilled water.

  At first, she considered that maybe this was a seasonal camp, but it looked as if someone had been there for a while and was planning to be there for a while longer. A semipermanent residence. There was only one bunk, and unless a couple of toothpicks slept in it, it was only large enough for a single body.

  “Where did he go?” she said to herself and decided the cabin’s resident had fled before the storm.

  She spotted a cardboard box that was not stacked with the others but had been placed specially under the long maple table. The name on the box was familiar to her, and surprising. Similac.

  “Baby formula?” she said to herself.

  In the quiet of the moment that followed, from somewhere outside the cabin, came the whimper of what sounded very much like an infant.

  FIVE

  The wind was gentle, but the houseboat was large. Its broad side acted as a sail. Despite Rose’s best and desperate efforts, the boat drifted farther and farther beyond her ability and her endurance. For what felt like hours, she swam through the debris the storm had littered on the surface of the water. She finally stopped, exhausted, and watched the boat scoot out of the little bay and into the great expanse of open water.

  She kicked and pivoted so that she could see the shoreline where she’d been forced to abandon Mal. He sat against one of the big rocks. He appeared small and vulnerable, a consequence of the distance and his situation and Rose’s love for him. She looked across the bay toward the beach where the kids had been. Still abysmally empty. She was exhausted. But for the life vest she wore, she would have had trouble staying afloat.

  She laid her head back against the collar of the vest and stared up at the lie that was blue sky. It had promised calm that morning, promised heaven. It had delivered hell. Rose, who never swore, swore viciously, “God damn you!” Her anger was directed at the sky and the situation and herself for her helplessness. And some of it, she accepted, was directed at God.

  Eventually she became aware of a distant cry: Mal calling to her. She peered at him and realized he was gesturing wildly toward the channel. Turning, she saw what he meant. The houseboat had stopped moving.

  Rose looked up again. “Sorry, Lord.”

  And she began to crawl her way out of the bay.

  It took another ten minutes of constant stroking. The whole time she feared the boat would begin to drift again, but it didn’t. She reached the swim platform and climbed onto the aft deck. She bent over the railing and studied the clear water along the edge of the leeward pontoon. Rocks. The houseboat had come to rest against a submerged reef.

  She headed to the control station in the cabin. She took the seat there and stared at the console, a dashboard that held a confusion of gauges and toggle switches. Whenever Mal and Cork had started the engines, she’d paid only vague attention. Because of the protruding key, she recognized the ignition. She also recognized the steering wheel, which Mal called the “helm.” She knew about the throttle. But putting everything together in a process that would get the boat moving was another matter. After a few moments of hesitation, she turned the key to the On position. Nothing happened. She twisted the key to Start. To her great relief, the outboards fired and caught. She reached for the throttle handle and gently pulled it into reverse. The houseboat didn’t move. She eased the throttle farther back, and a frightful scraping came from the pontoon wedged against the reef. She returned the throttle to the neutral position, left the station, ran out, and leaned over the bow railing. She could see that the wind had nudged the pontoon solidly onto the reef, which lay eighteen inches below the surface. Rose considered her options briefly, then hurried to the swim platform. She entered the water, swam to the shoal, and climbed onto the rock. She walked carefully to a spot that was roughly midship, where she spread her hands against the hull of the houseboat. She wedged her bare feet against the reef beneath her and pushed. Nothing happened. She tried again, harder this time. The houseboat would not budge. She realized that, once again, the wind, though gentle, was her enemy. She knew, too, that if she didn’t get the damn boat off the damn rock, people she loved might be lost to her forever. She turned herself and squatted and this time laid her back against the hull. She put all her strength into the effort. Her legs quivered and her muscles burned. She saw black for a moment and then felt the boat slip into the clear.

  She kept pushing until she lost her footing and fell into the lake. As quickly as she could, she made for the swim platform and climbed aboard. She raced to the helm, swung the wheel hard to bring the boat back toward the bay, and eased the throttle forward. The houseboat responded.

  In a few minutes, Rose brought the boat carefully near the shoreline where Mal now stood, leaning against one of the tall rocks. He called to her, “Not too close! Don’t hang her up on the bottom.”

  Rose throttled back, hit Reverse for a moment, and the forward motion ceased. Mal was less than ten yards away. On one leg, he hopped toward the houseboat until he was in water almost to his knees, then he crouched and began to swim. Rose met him at the platform and helped him aboard. She could see that his ankle was swelling badly.

  “How does it feel?” she asked.

/>   “Hurts like hell,” he said. But he smiled and kissed her. “You did good. Now let’s find the kids.”

  SIX

  The whimpering came from under the trunk of a spruce that lay toppled by the storm. Jenny crouched and made her way into the tangle of branches. The little crying, which was like that of a small, hurt animal, guided her. She drew aside a sweep of bough and discovered a mat lying flat on the ground. The mat had been woven of reed and laced with brush to create a kind of blind. The whimper came from beneath it. She lifted the mat and found a deep basin dug into the earth. In the basin sat a dun-colored, oblong wicker basket. And in the basket, wrapped in a small, quilted blanket, lay a baby. The child looked to Jenny to be no more than a few weeks old and had thick black hair and a round face and dark little eyes. But what drew Jenny’s attention, what would have drawn anyone’s attention, was the misshapen mouth.

  The child had an enormous cleft in its upper lip. It was as if some cruel hand had taken a pair of shears and snipped away a triangle of flesh. Through that cleft, a broad stretch of pink gum showed.

  Jenny drew the basket from the basin, and the baby began to cry in earnest. Its little arms poked from beneath the blanket and flailed. Its face grew hot red. Jenny backed out from under the fallen spruce, lifted the child, and cradled it in her arms.

  “Oh, little one,” she said softly. “Where are your parents?” She scanned the devastated island and answered her own question. “Caught outside in the storm.” She looked down into the tiny red face with the gaping cleft in its upper lip. “Don’t worry. We’ll find them.”

  The child quieted for a moment, pressed against her, and turned its face into her body. She realized it was trying to suckle her breast through the flimsy cotton of her T-shirt.

  “You must be starved,” she whispered.

  She laid the baby back down in the wicker, and the child began to scream again, though muted, as if it had already cried itself hoarse. Quickly, she returned to the cabin, set the basket on the bunk, and searched the maple tabletop on the far side of the room. Next to the stacked cooking pots, she found two clean glass baby bottles and several nipples.

  Behind her, the baby’s cries were growing ever more feverish.

  “Hold tight, little one,” she called. “I’ll be right there.”

  She lifted the Ball jar, unscrewed the lid, and pulled a kitchen match from the supply inside. She pumped propane into the Coleman stove, something she’d done a zillion times with her father on camping trips, then opened the line to one of the burners and lit a flame. She took a quart-size cooking pot, filled it from the distilled water in one of the plastic jugs, and set the water over the burner to heat. From the opened carton under the table, she grabbed a canister of baby formula, popped the lid, and unsealed the contents. She measured formula into the bottle, filled it with distilled water, screwed on a cap and nipple, and shook it to mix. She set the bottle in the pan of water heating over the burner. Finally, she returned to the baby and took it in her arms. Immediately, its little face turned to her breast, and it tried again to feed.

  “I wish I had something for you there,” she said.

  Now she smelled it. The baby needed changing. She remembered seeing a squat wicker hamper beside the bunk. When she lifted the lid, she found clean diapers inside, folded neatly, along with baby clothing. She took one of the diapers, spread it out on the damp mattress of the bunk, and set the squalling child on it.

  “Ah,” she said, when she’d unpinned the soiled diaper. “A boy. No wonder you scream so loud.”

  She could tell he hadn’t been changed in a good long while, but fortunately no rash had developed. She grabbed another clean diaper, hurried to the jug of water, and soaked the cloth. At her back, the baby’s screams grew more furious.

  After she’d cleaned and rediapered him, all the time working around his flailing limbs, she carried him to the stove, where the bottle was heating.

  She bent her face near his and said, as if he could understand, “Not long till dinnertime.”

  At last she removed the bottle and shook a few drops onto her wrist to test the temperature. It would do. She plugged the nipple into the baby’s mouth, and instantly, he fell silent and tried to feed. He sucked loudly and then began to cry again in frustration. Jenny realized that the divide in his upper lip prevented him from forming a good vacuum. She gently pressed her finger over the cleft to seal it. The child sucked again, this time successfully.

  “How long since you ate, little guy?” Jenny said, watching how furiously he worked at the nipple. She looked around her at the deserted cabin. If not for the damage from the storm, it would have been a clean, cozy place. “Where’s your mother?”

  While the child fed in her arms, Jenny stepped outside. She walked the perimeter of the cabin. She came across a wooden tub with a washboard inside. Strung between a couple of aspen saplings that had survived the storm was a fifteen-foot length of nylon cord. A clothesline. She ducked under the line and headed to a rocky rise that backed the cabin. But for the baby, she would have climbed immediately to have a look at her surroundings. Later, she decided.

  By the time the baby had finished the bottle, his eyes were drifting closed. Jenny took a minute to burp him, then returned him to the wicker basket, where he fell instantly asleep. Hungry and exhausted from crying, she figured. How long had it been since someone had fed him, cared for him? Where was his mother?

  She left the cabin again and this time climbed the rise behind the cabin. The crown of the hillock was bare and gave her a decent view of the island. She shielded her eyes against the low sun. She could see the rocky outcropping at the other end, where she’d sought shelter from the storm. What lay between that far place and where Jenny stood was total devastation: snapped trunks, uprooted trees, an enormous web of fallen timbers. She cupped her hands and hollered, “Hello! Can anybody hear me?”

  No reply. She called again and again with the same result.

  She deserted the rise. In front of the cabin, she found a trail that led toward the shoreline. The trail was blocked by fallen trees, but she followed it anyway, ducking and climbing, and, in a couple of minutes, stood at a little inlet littered with detritus from the storm. Around a ragged pine stump was a groove bare of bark, worn, Jenny guessed, as the result of a boat tying up there often. No boat was tied there now. She stared out from the inlet and saw only more destroyed islands across the channel. She was afraid for her father and for her family. She felt utterly alone and was tempted to give herself over completely to despair. But there was the baby to consider now.

  She returned to the cabin, sat on the mattress beside the wicker basket, and studied the child. His skin was the color of sandstone. His hair was thick and black. When his eyes had been open, Jenny had seen their hard, almond color. Ojibwe? she wondered. She tried to sort through the whole strange situation of finding the baby in the basket hidden under the woven mat outside. One more odd circumstance in what was becoming a long line of circumstances that were not at all right.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said quietly to the sleeping child. “Maybe I’ll build a bonfire on top of the rise out there, keep feeding it until someone sees the smoke and comes.”

  But will anyone come? said the voice of reason inside her head.

  “It may take a while, but yes,” she replied aloud. She looked toward the stacks of cardboard boxes on the other side of the cabin, beyond the fallen pine. “If we have to, we can wait a long time.”

  Yeah, as long as there’s propane for the stove, reason pointed out.

  “Let me see what we can find,” Jenny said.

  She hadn’t seen another propane tank near the stove, so she began to clear away debris where the fall of the pine tree had toppled the back wall. She pulled away broken branches and put her back into moving one of the logs enough to create a gap for her to slide through so that she could explore the corner of the cabin where the crushed table and chairs lay. She made her way into a tiny open spac
e behind the logs and stopped. A woman lay on the cabin floor, facedown, her cheek in a puddle of coagulated blood. She was utterly naked.

  Light came into the cabin through the shattered roof and fell across the body in a swath of bright yellow-orange that was like a satin ribbon. Jenny stood a moment, absolutely stunned. Slowly, and with great reluctance, she knelt and checked the woman’s neck for a pulse. Nothing, and the skin was cold to her touch. She drew her hand away, then reached out again and carefully rolled the woman onto her back. Young, Jenny saw. No more than seventeen or eighteen. Her hair was long and black and done in a braid. Her skin was the same color as the child’s, faded sandstone. Her cheekbones were high and proud. She was clearly Indian. Jenny knew that in this area it meant she was probably Ojibwe or Odawa or maybe Cree. The side of her face that had been pressed against the floor was covered with clotted blood. The other side was a mottle of deep bruising. There were burns on her breasts, little singes dark and round as old pennies. And there was also a bullet hole dead center in her forehead.

  Jenny turned away. She rose and stumbled back, scrambled through the gap she’d created in the tumbled logs and stood shaking. She wished her father was there. Her father would know what to do.

  But he wasn’t. There was no one but her.

  Whoever did this may be back, said the voice inside her head.

  “They’ve already killed her,” she said aloud. “Why would they come back?”

  Do you want to take that chance?

  She knew then that there would be no bonfire. Although it might bring rescue, it might also bring back a murderer. She looked the damaged cabin over carefully, forcing herself to think clearly. She knew she had to leave that place, find shelter somewhere else. She said aloud but quietly, “I’ll take the stove, a pan, some formula, and a few canned goods.”