Purgatory Ridge (7 page)

A knock at the door of the Quonset hut pulled him from the desk. He found Celia Lane and Al Koenig standing on his doorstep.

“Morning, Cork.” Celia smiled brightly. She was a small, energetic woman dressed in gray. She chaired the committee for Tamarack County’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Al Koenig, a big pot-bellied man who managed the Perkins restaurant on Center Street, was her cochair. “May we come in?”

Cork stood aside.

Celia, who’d never visited Cork at Sam’s Place before, glanced around. “Austere,” she commented. “I’m sure you’re glad to be back with your family.”

Cork waited, wordless. People in politics loved to talk. You never had to wait long. But it might be a long time before they came to a point. And Celia, once she began, talked in a line no straighter than a sloppy drunk could have walked. Cork hadn’t asked them to sit. They didn’t seem to notice, or if they did, didn’t seem to care. After a couple of minutes, Cork broke in.

“What is it you want?”

Celia and Al exchanged a cautious look. Al said, “We want you to run for sheriff come November.”

Cork offered them no reply.

Celia jumped in. “You had to have heard. About Wally Schanno, I mean. He’s not standing for reelection.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“On good authority,” Celia said. “From what we gather, the Republicans are going to run Arne Soderberg.”

“Soderberg?” Cork let his concern show.

“Exactly,” Al said.

Celia began again, a convoluted line of words, talking party, talking politics, aspects of the job as sheriff
Cork had never much cared for. He’d been a law enforcement officer first and foremost, and although he’d been a Democrat all his life, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party had simply been the way to the job. That way had always been a little like stumbling through a minefield. He wasn’t fond of Celia or Al or most of the men and women who became absorbed in politics in the county. He didn’t feel badly about not liking them. After the killings at Burke’s Landing, not one of them had stood by him during the recall that opened the door for Wally Schanno to take his job.

As Celia went on and on, Cork became aware of the sound of voices raised outside Sam’s Place. Annie stuck her head in the room. “Dad, you’d better get out there.”

Cork moved quickly out the door and around to the front of the Quonset hut. He paused a moment to take in what he saw.

A shiny black Ford F10 pickup had pulled into the lot and parked beside the green van. The faces of two children poked out the driver’s-side window of the truck. Their eyes were big and scared. Their father, Erskine Ellroy, had the young man who’d spoken French to Jenny pinned up against the front wall of Sam’s Place. Since he was eighteen, Ellroy had been a logger. With his huge upper body and biceps, he could have arm-wrestled a grizzly. He had a thick black beard and as angry a face as Cork had ever seen on a man. He had the kid by his T-shirt and he’d nearly lifted him off his feet. The kid offered him no resistance.

“You little son of a bitch.” Ellroy’s face was shoved so near, the long black hairs of his beard brushed the kid’s downy chin. “You come here where you don’t belong, where you don’t understand a thing about what’s going
on, and all you do is screw with people’s lives. What do you care, right?”

“I care about the trees, man.” The kid’s voice came out weakened from the press of Ellroy’s massive body against his chest.

“Fuck the trees.”

“You are,” the kid managed bravely.

Cork glanced at the woman who stood near the picnic table leaning on her cane. She watched with great interest and although the kid seemed in real trouble, she appeared not at all inclined to interfere.

Ellroy threw the kid to the ground. “Get up.”

Looking up at that great angry body towering above him, the kid was clearly afraid. Hell, Cork would have been afraid. But the kid stood up anyway.

“Question for you, nature boy. How’re you going to save the trees from a hospital bed?” Ellroy made a fist and cocked his right arm. The kid made no move to avoid what was coming.

“Erskine.”

“Stay out of this, O’Connor.”

“Question for you, Erskine. How’re you going to feed your kids from jail?”

“One, O’Connor. Just one good one.” His fist was back but still in a holding pattern.

Cork stepped out of the shadow of Sam’s Place into the sunlight. He slowly approached Ellroy and the kid. “Criminal assault, Erskine. Witnesses. Open-and-shut case. You’ll go down, I guarantee it.”

“The hell with you, O’Connor. You’re not the sheriff anymore.”

“I don’t have to be to know you’re making a big mistake, one you’ll regret. This tree business’ll be over soon.
You’ll be logging again, making regular payments on your mortgage. But you lay into that man and you’ll be in jail a long time after the rest of this is done. Think about it. Think about your kids there.” Cork nodded toward the black pickup and waited until Erskine had looked where his children watched, frightened. “Hitting this man won’t end the tree business, but it could take you away from your kids a long time. Is it worth that?”

Ellroy hesitated. A hot breath shot from his lips. He shoved the air in front of him as if pushing the whole business away. “Fuck it.”

“If you came for food, Erskine, go ahead. It’s on me.”

“Screw you and your food.” Ellroy stomped back to his vehicle. The tires of his pickup spit a lot of gravel, and a thick plume of dust followed him as he sped over the tracks into town.

The kid turned to Cork, pissed. “I didn’t need your help. I could’ve handled him.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” Cork looked toward the woman with the cane who seemed only to be waiting. “I’d be obliged if the both of you would take your food and eat somewhere else. You’re not exactly helping my business here.”

“We’re finished anyway.” The kid said it coldly. He moved to the picnic table, took the half-eaten meal, and threw it in the trash barrel. He escorted the woman with the cane to the van, got in, offered Cork a last hard look, and moved the van out.

Celia Lane and Al Koenig flanked Cork on either side.

“You’re a natural, Cork,” Al said.

“People would vote you back in a minute,” Celia added. “Think about it. That’s all we’re asking. Just think about it.”

They slid into their car and followed where the others had gone, down the short gravel road that led into town, kicking up more dust in their passage. Cork felt a tug at his leg and looked down. Stevie held on to him, looking scared. Usually, he was a boy full of questions. Now he was silent. Cork knelt and held him.

Jenny and Annie came from Sam’s Place. They were quiet, too, watching where everyone had gone.

Jenny cautiously put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you going to run for sheriff again, Dad?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I honestly haven’t given it any thought.”

Until now
.

He watched as the dust slowly settled on the road.

The bastards
.

I
SAIAH
B
ROOM WORRIED
J
O
O’C
ONNOR
. Long before she’d ever visited the Iron Lake Reservation, she had seen him, many times in many places. Not Broom exactly, but men just like him. Angry deep down, and with the slow-fuse potential for real destruction.

Broom sat halfway down the long table in the conference room of the Alouette Community Center that housed the tribal council offices. Broom was an elected representative on the council. With him at the table were the other elected members: George LeDuc, chairman; Judy Bruneau, secretary; Albert Boshey, treasurer; and representatives
Roy “One Swallow” Stillday, Edgar Gillespie, and Heidi Baudette. Thomas Whitefeather, one of the two hereditary chiefs of the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe, was also there, in an advisory capacity. The only man not present was Charlie Warren, the other hereditary chief and a man who, like Whitefeather, commanded great respect on the reservation. The council members spoke with much feeling about the incident at Lindstrom’s and the potential of its impact on the situation with Our Grandfathers. Although no one was sympathetic to Lindstrom, they were aware of the damage the violence could do to their own position in the controversy. Jo noted to herself that Isaiah Broom was uncharacteristically silent.

Near the end of the discussion that, in typical Ojibwe fashion, had gone on for hours, George LeDuc summed up the proposed position of the Iron Lake Ojibwe.

“We will issue a statement.” He looked toward Jo, who, they all understood, would draft the wording. “We will say that we are not responsible for this violence. In no way do we condone it. We are, and always have been, committed to a solution based on the law. This Eco-Warrior doesn’t act for the Iron Lake Anishinaabeg.” His dark eyes moved around the table and were met with nods of approval. Until they fell on Isaiah Broom.

“Bullshit,” Broom said.

George LeDuc crossed his big arms. “You could’ve said that real easy before, Isaiah. Instead, this whole time you sat there all wood eyed like some kind of decoy duck.”

“Wouldn’t have done any good to talk, George,” Broom said. “You knew the outcome before you called
us here. We all did.” He stood up, all six feet four inches and two hundred sixty pounds of him. Although he was a logger, one of many independent Ojibwe contractors, he was a man deeply committed to observing and preserving Anishinaabe traditions. He’d run against George LeDuc for the position of council chairman, but his passionate—some said militant—rhetoric on many of the issues had ultimately worked against him. He was not yet forty, but his broad face was lined in such a way that he looked much older. He wore a black ball cap over long black hair that was pulled back in a braid. He had on a black T-shirt with
HONOR TREATY RIGHTS
printed in white across the chest. “What you’re all worried about but ashamed to admit is the casino,” he charged. “You’re worried about pissing off the white people who might decide not to come and throw away their money.”

“We’re businesspeople, Isaiah,” LeDuc reminded him. “We’ve got to consider the impact of all this on the casino business. But that’s not our only concern, and you know it.”

“You want to know what that casino is?” Broom took a moment for his eyes to encounter every face in the room. “A blanket with smallpox.”

He shoved his chair back and slowly walked the length of the room. Through the long windows, a playground was visible. Half a dozen children were playing in the morning sunlight.

“That casino kills us,” Isaiah Broom went on. “It makes us weak and afraid to fight like warriors for the things sacred to us. There is a warrior out there right now and he is doing what we should be doing. We should embrace him. We should honor him. But here
we are, ready to condemn him. Once, we were a people not afraid to fight with our bodies. For too long now we have fought only with words. We’ve crouched like cowards behind the false shield of laws we didn’t make but must obey.” He leveled an unkind gaze on Jo. “We have become just like the enemy.”

“There’s no enemy here,” Heidi Baudette said, “except foolish action.”

“Foolish? To act like a warrior is foolish?”

George LeDuc responded, “To call up the ghost of a time none of us remember and can’t bring back anyway is about as useful as offering us all an empty quiver, Isaiah. Things change. The People have changed. We’re still warriors in the sacred fight to protect Grandmother Earth, but we fight as modern Shinnobs with the weapons Kitchimanidoo has given us—our brains, our determination, and our friendship with those who understand and use the law on our behalf.”

“The law,” Broom said coldly. “The white man’s law is like the Windigo. You all know the Windigo. A cannibal with a heart of ice that feeds on the Anishinaabe people. And you remember how to kill the Windigo? A man must become a Windigo, too. If it is one of the People who did this thing at Lindstrom’s, then I am proud, because it means we have a Windigo on our side.”

Thomas Whitefeather shook his head. His face was dark and wrinkled as a dry tobacco leaf. In his early years, he’d been a trapper; later, he’d been a photographer who’d chronicled Ojibwe life until arthritis crippled him so badly he could barely walk. “Sometimes, Isaiah, you remind me of a cicada. A very big sound from a very small thing.” With a gnarled finger, he tapped his forehead.

Broom saw that others in the room were smiling at the old man’s remark. He looked as if he were about to snap at Whitefeather, but respect restrained him. He returned to his chair and sat erect and silent as the council voted to issue a statement disassociating the Iron Lake Ojibwe from the action at Lindstrom’s. Although Broom’s was the only vote against, Jo could tell by the looks on the faces of some of the council members that they believed there was a good deal of truth in the words Broom had spoken. Broom held back as the other council members left. He looked across the table at Jo.

“You know the law, but you don’t understand war,” he told her.

“What I understand about war,” Jo said, “is that usually a lot of innocent people end up hurt. I don’t think anyone wants this to become a war, Isaiah.”

“This is already a war. The innocent are already dying. The problem is that you close your eyes to the reality. Trees are slaughtered every day. The water is poisoned. Our food kills us. And instead of fighting back like warriors, we cringe behind laws you claim will protect us.”

“The law does protect.” But even as she said it, she knew the truth was not that easy. The law often failed those who needed it most. In the history of the Ojibwe Anishinaabe people, the law had more often been their enemy than it had been their friend.

Broom threw his hands up as if he were arguing with a child. He rose and headed toward the door, where George LeDuc stood watching. As he passed LeDuc, Broom said, “The council doesn’t speak for all the Shinnobs on the rez. If Charlie Warren had been
here, his voice would have been loud, and the others, they would have listened. He’s a man who understands what it is to be Anishinaabe, understands our sacred duty to Grandmother Earth.”