Boundary Waters Read online

  “SHIT.”

  Jo O’Connor stood in a bright square of kitchen sunlight, glaring down at a cherry pie that flaunted its perfection from the pages of Rose’s opened cookbook on the counter. Flour and dough surrounded the cookbook as if there’d been a battle in a bakery. Jo’s fingers were doughy, her jeans starred with floury handprints. Her conversation earlier that morning with Rose played again and again in her mind, like a bad tune she couldn’t shake.

  “You don’t really want to try this,” Rose had said, eagerly offering her sister an out.

  “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to,” Jo replied.

  “At least let me give you a few tips.”

  “Tips? I’m thirty-eight years old, Rose. I make a living deciphering legal gobbledy-gook. I can certainly follow the instructions in a cookbook.”

  “But—” Rose had tried.

  “No buts. This is my pie.”

  Rose had started to argue, then shrugged, opened her arms toward her kitchen, and proclaimed darkly, as if inviting an army to ravage that which she best loved, “Fine, then. Be my guest.”

  Jo jammed her fists on her hips and eyed the mess she’d made of the kitchen. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, and rued her own stubbornness with Rose.

  The territories of their interests had been established early. Their mother, an army nurse, moved them a dozen times when they were growing up, and a dozen times they’d faced the obstacle of being new in a place. Rose had been a plump child, freckled, terribly picked on by other children, and possessed of a gentle and uncertain spirit that kept her from fighting back. Jo had done that kind of fighting for both of them. When she was thirteen, she broke the nose of the son of a full colonel at Fort Sam Houston who’d goosed Rose, grabbed her purse, pulled out a tampon, and taunted, “Plug the ugly dyke!” Jo had been afraid her mother, whom she and Rose both called the Captain, would be angry. The Captain wasn’t. The colonel’s son not only apologized to Rose, he asked Jo to the movies. She turned him down.

  For Rose, each home was a haven, and she learned to care for each respectfully and well. From early on, she did the cooking. Jo fixed the leaky faucets. Rose did the laundry. Jo changed the oil in the car. Rose sewed. Jo mowed the lawn. In school, Rose was content to pass her courses without attracting attention. Jo battled to be at the top. They were so different—in appearance and interest—that except for the fact they loved one another fiercely, it might have been hard to believe they were sisters.

  Jo was in her third year of a full scholarship to Northwestern University when the Captain suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed on the entire left side of her body. Rose, who’d just begun a major in home ec ed at Eastern Illinois, dropped out to care for her mother. For more than seven years, that was the focus of her life. A few months before Jenny was born, the Captain passed away, another stroke, massive this time. Jo was about to begin her final year of law school at the University of Chicago, and Rose offered to come and help with the baby. She’d been an integral part of the O’Connor household ever since.

  Jo looked down at herself, dusted with flour, barnacled with bits of dough. She was sorry she’d insisted on tackling the pie. But there was motive in her madness. The pie, along with other desserts prepared by the women of St. Agnes, was to be served that evening at a church gathering honoring Elysia Notto, a local girl who headed a Benedictine mission in Togo and who was visiting her home parish for a brief while. Jo knew the women of the church had long ago opened their arms to Rose. Her kindness, her firm, gentle spirit, and her proficiency at skills those women admired had helped her overcome fairly quickly the hurdle of being an outsider in Aurora. It didn’t hurt, Rose was always the first to put in, that she was also heavy, unattractive, and no threat whatsoever where their husbands were concerned. Whatever the reasons, Rose had found her place, as if she’d always belonged in that isolated, far north town. But Jo never felt accepted in the same way. Although the women of Aurora were always cordial, Jo sensed a half-built wall there. Rose believed this was because the women didn’t understand Jo. Part of it, she argued, was that from the beginning Jo had chosen to represent the Anishinaabe in proceedings that were often at odds with the interests of the citizens of Aurora. Also, she worked in an arena generally populated by men and was extremely successful there. And, finally, she was very attractive. That, Rose told her bluntly, was a lot to overcome.

  If there had indeed been a wall, events of the last year had begun to make it crumble. Cork’s affair with Molly Nurmi, something known to the whole town now, had brought Jo a good deal of sympathy. Although she felt guilty—if people knew the whole story, there would be little sympathy—she was touched by the warmth of the concern suddenly showered on her, and she found herself trying, often in awkward ways, to reciprocate.

  The pie, in some pathetic twist of thinking, was one of those ways.

  Now she looked down at the ruins of a crust that refused to do for her even something as simple as roll flat on waxed paper. She swore quietly.

  “Is Rose dead?”

  Jo turned around and found Cork standing in the kitchen doorway taking in the devastation.

  “At church all day. I’m cooking,” Jo said gravely.

  “You?”

  “I’ve cooked before. Remember?”

  “Believe me,” Cork said. “I remember.”

  She’d been notoriously bad, had had a reputation among their Chicago friends for possessing a flair for the soggy, the lumpy, the burned. Consequently, Cork had done most of the cooking before Rose came to live with them. He was pretty good at it; she’d always been the first to admit it.

  Cork took a couple of steps into the kitchen. “What are you making?”

  “Cherry pie. For the St. Agnes Guild tonight.”

  Cork scanned the counter, the whole mess, and Jo was afraid he was going to offer her advice. He didn’t. Just nodded and glanced at the potato peelings lying in the sink. “Cooking dinner, too?”

  “Yes.” She recalled the looks of horror on the faces of the children when they’d heard the news. “Shake ’n Bake chicken, mashed potatoes, canned corn, and gravy from a jar,” she confessed. “Want to stay?”

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “Coward.”

  “No, really. I just stopped by to tell Jenny and Annie I won’t be opening Sam’s Place today.”

  Jo turned back to her recalcitrant crust and lay on it with the rolling pin. “Going fishing?”

  “Hunting’s more like it. A woman’s lost in the Boundary Waters. I’m going in to help find her.”

  The crust rolled up with the rolling pin as if it were metal and the roller a magnet.

  “Jenny’s at Sean’s. You can reach her there. Annie’s helping Rose at church. They should be home pretty soon. I heard Arkansas Willie Raye’s out at Grandview. Annie said he stopped by Sam’s Place yesterday.”

  “He wanted to shoot the breeze about Marais and the old days,” Cork said.

  “I didn’t even know he was still alive.”

  “He definitely is,” Cork said. “And kicking.”

  He leaned against the stove, watching Jo struggle with the pie crust. She wore a powder blue sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up. A small trickle of sweat crawled from her blond hair onto the soft down of her temple and then her cheek. He studied the curves of her hips as they rolled to her labor. He felt an old desire rising up, one that hadn’t visited him in quite a while, tempting and, at the same time, frightening.

  “I’d better go,” he said.

  Before Cork could move, Stevie burst through the back door. He ran and leaped into Cork’s arms. “Daddy!”

  Cork nuzzled his son, who smelled of sunshine and dry leaves.

  “Can you play football?” Stevie asked eagerly.

  “Sorry, buddy. Not today.”

  Disappointment flooded Stevie’s small face.

  “I have to go away for a while. A day or two. When I come back, we’ll toss the old pigskin until our arms
fall off. Okay?” He tousled Stevie’s black hair.

  Stevie pushed out of Cork’s arms. “Okay,” he said, but his voice betrayed him.

  Jo put down her rolling pin and knelt to Stevie. “Tell you what. Right after dinner, we’ll make some cookies shaped like footballs, you and me, then we’ll toss them down our mouths till our arms fall off. What do you say?”

  “Cookies?” Stevie’s dark eyes were pools of concern. “Yours?”

  “We’ll make them together. They’ll be ours.”

  “All right,” he finally agreed. He turned around and drifted back outside.

  “Smooth, counselor.” Cork smiled.

  “I’m great at negotiations. Especially when the opposing party is six years old.”

  She followed Cork to the front door and they stood a moment, awkwardly, as if they were on a first date.

  “I’ll stop by soon as I get back so I can keep my promise to Stevie.”

  Jo nodded. “Fine.”

  Cork started down the walk. He was dressed in loose khakis and a red T-shirt. In the last year, he’d lost weight, and he looked good and strong. He’d stopped smoking, too. A promise to another woman—Jo knew and accepted.

  A couple of weeks earlier, Jo had taken the girls and Stevie down to the Twin Cities so they could cheer Cork on in the marathon. Although she didn’t say anything to anyone, she felt a good deal of admiration for him—a man in his midforties, running his first marathon. In the best of ways, he was like the old Cork, before so many circumstances had come between them, split them apart, sent them both into the arms of other lovers.

  “Cork,” she called suddenly, and went quickly to him as he stood by the Bronco.

  He turned to her. Although his face was full in the sun, there seemed so much in it that was shadowed, so much unspoken between them.

  “What is it?”

  She felt foolish, not certain at all what she’d meant to say. “Just—oh, just take care of yourself.” Then she surprised them both. She leaned to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “Thanks.” He looked slightly bewildered. “I—uh—I will.”

  She watched the Bronco pull away. The street was quiet. Sunlight dripped over the houses along the block like butter melting over stacks of pancakes. From across the street drifted the aroma of Birdie Frank’s sauerbraten and the sound of Birdie in her kitchen whistling “That Old Black Magic.” Jo felt empty and out of place.

  A moment later, she heard Rose call out. Turning, she saw her sister and Annie approaching along the sidewalk from the other end of the block.

  “Was that Dad?” Annie asked.

  “Yes. He stopped by to say don’t come out to Sam’s Place. He’s not opening today.”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t even invite him to dinner,” Rose said.

  “I did,” Jo replied. “He declined.”

  “Wisely,” Annie said. Then she ducked, as if her mother were going to swing.

  “For that, you get to set the table.” Jo pointed an admonishing finger toward the house.

  Jo stood with Rose in the sunlight after Annie went in. She was looking where the Bronco had gone.

  “Why don’t you just ask him back?” Rose suggested. “He’d come in a minute.”

  “He’d come for the children. I don’t want that.”

  “Look in his eyes, Jo. He’d come for you, too.”

  “You’re an incurable romantic, Rose.” Jo turned away and headed toward the shadow of the house. She felt suddenly weary, though it was not even noon.

  “If you’d just listen to your heart for once, darn it—” Rose began to say.

  Jo closed the front door before Rose could finish.

  Rose stormed into the house behind her. “You’re so damn stubborn.” She followed Jo to the kitchen and stopped abruptly, staring about her in disbelief. “My God. What are you trying to do?”

  “Make the cherry pie. I’m just having a little trouble with the crust.”

  Rose smiled. The smile turned to a giggle, the giggle to a full-blown laugh that Rose couldn’t stop. She shook like a sack full of puppies. She laughed hard and crossed her legs. “I think I’m going to pee.”

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  Rose went to the refrigerator and, from somewhere near the back, pulled out a package that she held out to Jo. The package contained two round—perfectly round—and flat—perfectly flat—premade pie crusts.

  “I haven’t made my own crust in years, Jo. Pillsbury does it for me. And so much better than I ever did.”

  15

  THE DIRT AND GRAVEL ROAD cut alongside a wide meadow full of marsh grass and cattails. The grass was yellow in the late afternoon sun and redwing blackbirds perched on the swaying cattails. Cork took stock of the sky. Long wisps of feathery clouds trailed across the blue. High cirrus clouds. Ice crystals.

  “Much farther?” Willie Raye asked.

  “Couple of miles.”

  “You’re sure this is the way Shiloh went in?”

  “Louis is.” Cork swerved to miss a turtle. “You ever been in the Boundary Waters?”

  “Never.”

  “It runs all the way to the border. Continues on the other side, but the Canadians call it the Quetico there. More than two million acres of tall trees, blue lakes, and fast rivers.”

  A white RV came toward them. Cork waved as they edged past one another on the narrow road.

  “It’s funny,” he went on. “Spring, you battle ticks. Summer, it’s the mosquitoes and no-see-ums. Then come the black flies. Acid rain is killing the fish and trees. But people still line up for permits like this was Disneyland. There’s something about this country that’s like nowhere else on earth.”

  “Do you go into the Boundary Waters often?”

  He used to. With the kids and Jo. They’d all loved it.

  “Not much anymore,” he replied.

  Booker T. Harris was already in the parking area at the terminus of the road, along with Agents Sloane and Grimes. The two agents were dressed in jeans and long-sleeved wool shirts. Harris had on a tasteful blue sweater and Dockers and didn’t look at all ready for a trip into the wilderness. Stormy Two Knives and Louis were there with Sarah, all keeping to themselves. As Cork pulled up, Sheriff Wally Schanno got out of a Land Cruiser with the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department seal on the door. He sauntered to where Cork parked the Bronco and he leaned in at the window.

  “Harris is staying behind,” he told Cork. “Sloane and Grimes’ll be going in with you. They’ve already got the canoes in the water and loaded up.”

  Cork turned to his passenger. “Willie, why don’t you head on over. I’ll be right there.”

  Arkansas Willie Raye took his big Duluth pack from the backseat of the Bronco and walked toward the others.

  Schanno studied him, then said, “Isn’t that—”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s the woman’s father.”

  “How’d he get wind of all this?”

  “Long story. Bottom line is he’s going in, too.”

  Schanno didn’t look happy with Cork’s cursory explanation. Cork thought he was probably wondering what else had been kept from him, but Wally didn’t push it. “Heard how those agents buffaloed Two Knives. Any wonder the Ojibwe have a healthy suspicion of lawmen?” Wally Schanno glanced at the sky. “You heard the latest weather forecast? Rain tomorrow. Maybe turning to snow by nightfall.”

  On the far side of the graveled lot, Harris stepped toward Stormy and Louis and Sarah Two Knives. The three formed a tight group when they faced him. Cork was moved by the way they held together, had held together despite all the circumstances that might have torn them apart. How had they managed it? How did anyone, white or Ojibwe?

  Schanno kicked at the gravel. “I sure don’t like the feel of this whole thing. Taking a boy like Louis on something like this. You watch those agents, Cork. Look after that boy.” He leaned close and asked, “You carryi
ng?”

  “My thirty-eight. Cleaned and oiled it last night.”

  “Good.” Schanno shoved his big hands helplessly into the pockets of his khakis. “Good.” He eyed the agents again. “Harris says they’ve got regular radio check-in times set up. He’ll be monitoring it himself on this end.”

  “Did they set up a command post of some kind at the department?”

  “No, didn’t want anything to do with us local lawmen.”

  “O’Connor!” Harris waved Cork toward him.

  Cork pulled his gear out of the back of the Bronco and joined the others.

  “Special Agent Sloane’s in charge out there, O’Connor. You make sure you do what he says. Am I clear?”

  “Clear,” Cork said.

  “Good. Canoes are in the water, rest of the gear’s loaded. It’s time to get rolling.” Harris pointed to Stormy and Louis. “Two Knives, you and the boy first. The rest of us are right behind you.”

  Sarah touched Stormy’s arm. Only that. But she leaned down and gave her son a long, tight hug. “You do what your father tells you, understand? Akeeg-ow-wassa,” she said. Be careful.

  Stormy led the way along a corduroy path of logs toward the lake that was invisible beyond the tall swamp grass and cattails. Louis followed closely.

  “You two next,” Harris said to Cork and Raye.

  “I want to speak with Sarah a moment,” Cork replied. “You go on.”

  Harris tried a withering look on him, but Cork turned away and walked to Sarah Two Knives. “Make it quick,” Harris snapped, then jerked his head for Sloane and Grimes to accompany him. They took off after Stormy and the boy.

  Sarah watched the agents as they headed into the tall grass. Her face showed nothing, but her eyes raged. “That gun wasn’t Stormy’s.”

  “I know,” Cork said.

  “You won’t let anything happen.”

  “It’ll be fine, I give you my word,” he said.

  “Those men—they’re majimanidoog.”

  “I know.” Cork hefted his pack, grunting as he slid into the straps. “A couple of days, Sarah, and it’ll all be over.”

  “We are Anishinaabe,” Sarah Two Knives reminded him. “It never ends.”