Witch Cradle (2 page)

Chapter Three

The distant droning of chainsaws intruded on a world bowed low and locked in ice. Only the hips on the shrub roses, beads of scarlet embedded in crystal, gave a spark of color to the surreal landscape of frost and silver.

McIntire's overshoes crunched on the path. It had been an incredible storm, like nothing he'd ever experienced, coming just when the tedium of winter was working its way from oppressive to intolerable. Crashing trees. Thunder and lightning in January. Power out for who knew how the hell long. It would give people something to talk about for the rest of the winter and for years thereafter, most likely. Nothing like some genuine inconvenience, if not adversity, to give a lift to winter-weary spirits.

He set the pail of laying mash in the snow, blew on his bare fingers, and gave a few raps on the henhouse door to crack the ice from the latch. “Get yourselves decent, ladies. It's a man.” He ducked inside, scanning the gloom for the Brown Leghorn rooster, a preening show-off, pugnacious and possessing razor-sharp spurs, but too cowardly for a frontal attack.

As his eyes adjusted, he spotted the bird about four feet away, nape feathers lifted, scratching a threat in the frozen litter. McIntire stared him into a corner and waded through the clutch of eager Rhode Island Reds to trade the galvanized waterer he carried for the one that sat waiting with its contents frozen solid. Why did water seem so much heavier when it became ice? And why did his wife persist in giving these creatures ten times the amount of water they could drink before it froze?

The hens crowded in to peck at the snow crystals clinging to his overshoes. “All in good time, dearies.”

He kept his eye on the strutting cock as he groped in the nest boxes with his free hand. Empty. Empty. The third contained one egg. The next nest was occupied. He reached under the hen, which gave a squawk and deposited a warm egg into his obviously too cold hand.

“Two? That's it? Angling for an invitation to Sunday dinner, are you?” McIntire stowed the eggs in his pocket and backed toward the door to retrieve the breakfast and dump it into the feeder. “
Bon appetit
.” The hens dived in like ungainly vultures. As he closed the door, the rooster gave a mighty crow of triumph.

Leonie had been considering the possibility of leaving lights on in the chicken house to encourage egg production. She'd have to wait a bit on that. For as far as McIntire could see, the road was lined with mangled wires and fractured poles.

He surveyed the flattened shrubbery and broken tree limbs and found himself feeling a tiny thrill of challenge. Was he on the verge of becoming a Yooper after all? Is this what a few months of snow-induced boredom did to one? When he started seeing clearing up storm damage as recreation, was it time to move on? Get a job? Take a nap?

He glanced toward the barn. The horses would be all right for the time being. Leonie could take care of them later. The single strand of barbed wire on the fence formed a ribbon of spun glass. Beyond it, the snow-covered pasture reflected the hazy rising sun in a flawless sheet to the—his breath caught.

It took a moment to register what it was that was different, what was wrong. At the limit of his vision there was only a naked line, a barren meeting of snow and sky. The treetops that had marked the horizon for as long as he could remember, a feature of the land that hadn't changed since his earliest years, one that gave him a daily connection to the house where he was born, had vanished.

It accounted for the earthquake crash in the night. How could the storm have taken them both? It was incomprehensible.

They had been barely visible, something he'd seldom consciously noticed: two dark clouds squatting at the edge of the earth, a reassuring bridge to the past. Their absence created a void far out of proportion to the physical gap they left. It kindled in him an uneasiness that the destruction in his own yard couldn't match. Maybe Leonie was right. The effects of this storm wouldn't be over so soon.

Mia must be devastated. She'd have seen those trees every day of her life. There were few enough of the giant pines left, something Mia had bemoaned since they were children, and she was proud that her father had saved two of the biggest. Mia's father had done more than that, he remembered. The pines were all that marked the burial place of Mia's sisters, her brother, and her own two infants. McIntire felt a sudden sickness over what might have been torn from the earth if the trees had been uprooted. His mood, as he returned to the house, was considerably less buoyant.

He slipped out of his overshoes and wiped fogged-over glasses on his sleeve. Leonie stood at the kitchen stove, pale in the light of the kerosene lamp. Her wan appearance might have something to do with being awake and vertical at what was, for her, an indecently early hour. McIntire doubted she had gone back to sleep after the storm subsided.

She took the waterer, wrinkling her nose at the collection of litter frozen to its bottom, and placed it in the chipped enamel pan that sat on the floor near the heat register. Her lips formed an unconvincing smile. “Well, we've survived.”

“You don't sound particularly happy about that.” McIntire put his arms around her, careful to keep his hands off any exposed skin. Her head dropped to his shoulder. She gave a soft sigh followed by a hiccup and clutched him violently about the waist. Whatever emotion had overcome her was arrested by the crunch of eggshells.

“Fancy them scrambled today?” McIntire would be happy to walk around drenched in egg yolk if that was what it took to bring his normally cheerful wife back. Pots rattled as she rummaged in the cupboard for a basin. “Don't expect me to clean it up. Anyone harebrained enough to cuddle with eggs in his pockets deserves whatever he gets.”

She turned off the burner under the percolator and filled the cups, while McIntire did his best to transfer the mess to the basin. His efforts produced meager results. He pulled the lining of the pocket out a bit farther and dropped the jacket on the floor. Kelpie roused herself from sleep, turned her liquid spaniel eyes to his in gratitude, and clicked her way across the linoleum to claim the unaccustomed treat.

“Did we lose anything other than that exotic
soufflé
I was planning to whip up for supper?” Leonie asked. “What about the fences?”

“Okay as far as I can see. A lot of branches to clean up. Nothing I'd call an emergency situation.” He paused. “Not for us, at least.”

McIntire's duties as township constable probably didn't include ice storm patrol. Basically, they boiled down to doing as he was told by the town board, the coroner, the sheriff, and any other official of the country, state, county, or township, down to, and including, the justice of the peace. Harry Truman might claim that the buck stopped at the top. McIntire knew better. The ladder of responsibility is more of a firemen's pole; the more onerous the job, the more rapid its slide to the drudge at the bottom. The constable position's only redeeming aspect was the excuse it gave him to get out and look around. And right now, it might be interesting to see how the rest of the neighborhood had fared.

He sipped and hoped his expression was one of grudging resignation. “I suppose I'd better drive around a bit and see how things are.”

Any lingering fear was no match for Leonie's sense of civic responsibility. She nodded. “Do you think the roads are all right?”

“No,” he said, “and I doubt I'll be able to get very far.”

She removed a pan from the oven and poked a corner of one of the four curled slices of bread. “It sort of resembles toast.”

McIntire leaped up and grabbed one to butter it while it was still hot. “It's fine,” he assured her. “It looks like the big pine trees at Thorsens' went down. I'd better go see if they landed on anything important, like Nick or Mia for instance, or if there's anything I can do. Nick might not be able to do much clearing up.”

“I don't suppose he'll accept help gracefully.”

“That's not my problem.”

She gave another resigned nod.

He made the sacrifice. “I'll pump some water for the horses before I leave.”

“Thank you. Just leave it inside by the feed. I'll give it to them in a little while.”

McIntire was grateful for Leonie's understanding that entering those horse stalls was a more daunting prospect to him than battling icy roads or fallen trees could ever be. “Thank you,” he said.

She smiled. “Don't put your tongue on the pump handle.”

Chapter Four

The Thorsens lived not much over a quarter mile away as the crow flew, but tramping across a field through two feet of crusty snow was not something McIntire felt inclined to do. Eight gallons of water pumped and tongue intact, he slid onto the Studebaker's frigid seat and pulled the door shut. The car's glazing of ice cracked, slipped, and crashed to the ground in a single swoosh.

In the driveway the ice was cushioned by a thick under-layer of snow, but the road beyond gleamed like a well-groomed skating rink.

McIntire left the car running and went back to the barn, passing by the horse stalls for the concrete-floored granary. He shouldered a hundred-pound sack of cracked corn, staggered over the treacherous path to the car, and plopped it next to the bag of sand in the trunk. If the car could still move, it would have a tad more traction.

He eased onto the ice and drove off at a crawl.

It might not have been a good time to leave Leonie alone. On the other hand, she looked like she could use about a three-hour nap. He wouldn't be gone long. He didn't expect to get far before his path would be blocked by a fallen tree or power pole.

The distance by road was upwards of a mile, and it was close to twenty minutes before he inched into the Thorsens' driveway.

A solo emanating from their yard joined the chainsaw chorus of background music.

McIntire could see that there would be no saving of the trees. One was reduced to a thirty-foot monolith of splintered wood. It's partner lay full length on the snow, roots in the open air. Close up and horizontal, its size was indeed impressive.

Nick Thorsen's red plaid cap bounced among the heaps of broken branches. The buzzing saw hit a higher pitch and one of the limbs fell with a thud. Mia came forward to drag it to a straggly pile. She spotted McIntire and walked over to him. “He's going to kill himself.”

Nick seemed to be doing okay to McIntire. Steadier than he'd seen him in weeks.

“Sorry about this, Mia. It's a terrible shame. Both of them.”

“Yes.” She turned her face to the anemic sun. “There's a whole lot more sky here than there used to be.”

“Anything I can do?”

She shook her head, then removed one of her leather mitts and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, who knows. Hang on a bit until Nick turns that thing off and we can hear ourselves think. It won't hurt to ask him.”

McIntire backed up to take in the soaring mass of roots, a webbing barely a foot thick stretching ten feet above his head. “How in hell,” he asked, “could a thin coating of ice weigh enough to yank a tree this size right out of the ground?”

“How in heck did such a flimsy root system hold it up in the first place?”

Mia had apparently changed since the days when she took uproarious delight in shocking young Johnny McIntire with her use of unladylike language.

“It's quite a work of art.”

“My mother would have called it a witch's cradle,” Mia said.

Nick cut the engine on the chainsaw. The silence sounded strange in McIntire's head.

“Quite a night, eh? Your house still standing?” Nick's face was flushed and beaded with sweat, but there was no sign of tremor in the hand that held the saw.

“Not a scratch,” McIntire told him. “Just wound up with a yard full of branches. Power's out of course.”

Nick glanced toward the house and quickly back. Not quick enough to prevent McIntire from following suit and noticing the cracked roof slates and the two windows covered with blankets.

“John asked if there was anything he could help us with.”

Nick went through the same process of polite refusal and possible assent, then turned to her. “Any coffee, Mia?”

She hesitated for a minute, then nodded and turned toward the house, leaving the men to follow. The thick braid that hung to the hem of her jacket matched the silvery hue of the landscape.

There was no path cleared to the front door. The one that led to the kitchen was only the narrowest of tracks, making it necessary to place one foot directly ahead of the other like a tightrope walker.

Once inside, Mia took her time, fussing over the pine pitch on her mittens, stoking up the fire in the wood heater, making the coffee. Such devoted attention to household tasks was unlike her, but McIntire didn't mind. This wide, warm kitchen was the seat of his earliest memories. Entering it was like a journey back to the womb. Mia had made few changes over the years. The big wood-fired cookstove had been replaced by a gas range. A cabinet with a maple countertop stood where the white enamel cupboard had been. Especially today, illuminated only by the light from the two windows, as it had been in those pre-electric days, the room was much as it had been forty-five years earlier.

An added benefit, Mia's coffee was good. She used a different sort of pot that came in two pieces, one atop the other. McIntire wished he could come up with a diplomatic way of suggesting that Leonie dispense with her percolator in favor of such an appliance.

As Mia's fiddling went on, and he found himself facing the prospect of making small talk with her husband, McIntire's tranquility began to wane. He'd never been at ease with Nick Thorsen; had never liked Nick Thorsen. Even before he learned more about Nick's past indiscretions than he wanted to know, he'd considered the mailman an arrogant little smart aleck. The cocksureness was gone now, buried in tremor and fear. Thorsen's coming down with Parkinson's disease took the edge off some of the overt antipathy McIntire felt, but left him awkward and at a loss for what to say. Should he ask how he'd been feeling? Which was more callous, to refer to his illness or to ignore it?

Mia finally poured the coffee and perched on the edge of a chair. Nick ran his fingers through his hair where it had been glued to his scalp by sweat and a heavy wool cap. “I found something under that tree.”

McIntire glanced at Mia before he could stop himself. She pressed her lips together and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Then she turned to her husband. “Oh, I don't think John would be interested in….”

Mia's notion of the aid McIntire might be able to give was apparently not what her husband had in mind. John was suddenly quite interested.

Nick pulled open a drawer and produced a handful of tattered scraps of paper and thin cardboard. “They were in a fruit jar.” His voice was low and McIntire had to lean forward to hear. “Along with,” he emptied the contents of a brittle leather wallet onto the table, “seven hundred twenty dollars.”

“You found it under the tree? Somebody buried it?”

“Looks that way.”

Nick had indeed mellowed. His usual rejoinder to such an inane question would have been some remark about how maybe the jar had screwed itself into the ground.

McIntire turned to Mia. “Your father?” She shrugged.

McIntire picked up the largest of the fragments. It was creased and torn and smelled of earth and mold.

“They were stuck together,” Nick said. “We couldn't get them apart in one piece.”

The ink was faded. The few words retaining some legibility were reversed—ink run through to the back of the paper. McIntire turned it over.

“It's backwards,” Mia said.

“I can see that.”

“I looked at it in the mirror.”

McIntire carried it to the mirror over the sink. He was able to make out a few words. Some kind of tractor,
Jaeger….
He turned back. “It seems to be a list of tools or machinery.”

“You can buy a lot of tools for that kind of money,” Mia said.

McIntire held the paper to the light. The faint lines indicating that the paper was some sort of official form showed through. “I don't think it's a shopping list.”

Mia fingered an over-sized fifty-dollar bill. An unfamiliar bubble of excitement sounded in her voice. “Maybe we'd better start making one.”

“Why would your father have buried seven hundred dollars?” McIntire asked. Eban Vogel hadn't seemed like the miserly type, quite the opposite. “I take it he didn't tell you about it?”

Nick's voice trembled a little. “It can't have been—”

“He must have been worried about it being stolen or something,” Mia said. “He'd never have kept that much money in the house, and he didn't trust banks.”

“This can't have been Mia's father's,” Nick started again. “Eban didn't have that kind of money. If he had, he wouldn't have squirreled it away. Look at the rest of the stuff.”

McIntire shuffled through the papers. Two smaller shreds showed faded printing in an ornate script, most of which had been obliterated by the bleeding ink. McIntire could make out a
Bi
, a couple of
Ls
and the concluding
ing
. The rest was a pile of stiff confetti.

“I've been thinking about it all morning.” Nick said. “I think I know what this is.”

“Me too,” Mia said. “Indoor plumbing!”

He ignored her. “This one,” he held the fragile paper by its edge, “looks like it could be a bill of lading.”

Mia put down her cup. “A bill of what?”

“A receipt from a shipping company,” Nick said. “And this?” He handed a rectangle of thin reddish cardboard, folded like a small book, its pages stuck tight, to McIntire. Even without the familiar eagle, or a number showing through the small cut-out space, it was readily recognizable.

“A passport.”

Nick nodded. “Not enough left of it to say whose.” He picked at its corners. “You ever know Teddy Falk?”

McIntire shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“He was one of that bunch of communists that went off to find Paradise in Russia—Karelia. Used to live on the old Makinen place. Teddy and Mia's father were pretty chummy.”

“I thought it was Jarvi Makinen that went to Russia.”

“Jarvi? Hell, no,” Nick said. “Jarvi kicked the bucket twenty-five years ago. Pneumonia. Teddy Falk bought his farm, and he married Jarvi's daughter, Rosie. Maybe she came with the place. Or the place came with her. Anyway, it was Rosie and Ted that went off to Karelia…supposed to have, anyway.”

“Supposed to?”

“They wouldn't have gone and left this behind. Couldn't have. The people that made that trip needed to pay quite a bit to go. Five or six hundred dollars. The Falks sold everything they had except,” he tapped the papers, “some tools and machinery that they shipped over.”

“They did leave?”

“They went somewhere.”

“But not to the Soviet Union?”

“I don't see how they could have. They might have gone without the passport. I don't know that you had to have one. Though, if they did, there'd be no reason to leave it behind. But if this is their money and the receipt for their stuff…”

“What makes you think it
is
theirs?” Nick's reasoning seemed to be taking some pretty big leaps.

Nick said, “Teddy had a Jaeger saw, and….” He sifted through the tattered fragments and presented one with a scrawl of ink to McIntire. Without excessive imagination, it could indeed be read as
J.T. Falk
.

“But if this guy shipped off his tractor and whatever else it says here, why would he go
anywhere
without the receipt, let alone Russia?”

“Good question.”

“Exactly when was this?”

“Exactly, I can't say. Early thirties. Nineteen thirty-three or four. Close to twenty years ago.”

McIntire thumbed through the bills. At a quick glance, they all appeared to be pre-nineteen-thirty. Some were the older large-sized kind. The twenties looked surprisingly crisp and new. “But they must have let somebody know where they went. Didn't anyone hear from them?”

“Nobody I know of,” Nick said. He rubbed his forefinger rhythmically against his thumb, then lowered his hand beneath the tabletop. “Not that what I know, or don't know, means a hell of a lot.”

It did mean a hell of a lot. Nick delivered the mail, and if anybody on his route had been in the habit of getting letters from Russia, he'd have been aware of it and would be bound to remember.

“There were quite a few people that went to Russia,” Nick continued, “and a lot of them haven't been heard from since. I don't think anybody knows what happened to them.”

McIntire had an inkling of what might have happened to quite a few of them. But then he'd been a bit closer to the action.

Nick went on, “Maybe Sulo Touminen would have some idea. He's got the place now.”

McIntire drained his cup. He saw a glimpse of a challenge that could be more satisfactory than piling brush. “I'll see if Sulo's around. I can't think he'd be gone far.” He stood up. “I imagine there's some perfectly reasonable explanation, although after twenty years it might be hard to get. Can I take this stuff then?”

Nick shoved the stack across the table. Mia put out her hand to stop him. “No.”

“No?”

“You can take the papers and billfold and the jar, too, if you want it. Not the money.”

“Mia—”

“That money was in my yard. My father had to have put it there. He wouldn't have done that if it didn't belong to him.” She glanced at her husband. “We could have just kept our mouths shut, and nobody would ever have known. I won't spend it right away, just in case, but it's staying here. You don't have any right to take it.”

McIntire supposed she was correct. He didn't have any right to do that. Or any reason to either.

Nick Thorsen's readiness to turn the shreds of paper over to him, and his wife's grudging acquiescence, could be a reflection of their reluctance to go to someone of higher authority than township constable. Passing the stuff on to McIntire was a relatively safe method of taking care of any responsibility they might feel. He headed for the door. “I'll let you know if I find anything, but it'll probably take a while.” He looked out at the mangled trees and telephone poles. “I might not be able to
get
anywhere for a while.”