The Big Law

His attention was riveted to a reddish gray oblong shape jammed in the bottom of the bag. It reminded him of something he had last seen back home, after Thanksgiving on a shelf in his refrigerator. The chemical ice steamed on expos-ure to the air.

Someone behind Garrison gagged and cleared their throat.

“Steady,” said Garrison. He took a ballpoint from his coat pocket and poked the bag open more.

Several chunks of dry ice oozed out onto the terrazzo floor.

So did a slightly blackened, intact human tongue trailing tentacles of ligament.

Garrison carefully removed his suit jacket and laid it on top of the X-ray machine. Then he leaned forward to inspect the shriveled organ lying on the cement floor in a clutter of fuming ice. As he squatted to make a closer examination, a young agent stifled a gag reflex and muttered in back of him:

“Jesus, they cut out his tongue?”

Lorn mentored the younger man without turning. “You’re a city bo-” Garrison paused and enunciated clearly. “City guy, aren’t you, Terry?” Terry was what they used to call a high-yellow Negro back home in Kentucky. His hair was tinged with a reddish hue, and he had orange freckles. Garrison reminded himself. You hadda watch it these days.

The younger man shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

“If you were country, you’d know your organ meats better.

That tongue was ripped out, root and branch. See the liga-ments there. It’s a message.”

“Alex Gorski’s talking days are over.”

“That’s a roger.”

“You ever have anybody send something like this to the office before?” asked Agent Terry.

“No,” said Lorn Garrison as he stood up with the careful posture of an athletic man past a certain age. He cocked an eyebrow at Terry. “But these Russian guys aren’t your normal hoods, now are they.”

There was an attempt to squash the “tongue rumor”

through all the agencies involved in the event, but-something like this-people were bound to talk, and by happy hour, the word started to crackle. The routine story about the bomb scare was spiced with an unconfirmed rumor about enclosed body parts delivered to the FBI. CNN picked the story up from local TV that night, and it appeared, page one, in both the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers in the morning.

The local FBI was furious, and no one was more pissed than Lorn Garrison, who was three months from retiring to his home county in Kentucky and running for sheriff. Some sumbitch was sticking their tongue out at the bureau, and they would pay.

2

Interstate 35 started in Laredo, Texas, curved up the bread-basket of the country, ran a few blocks past the St. Paul Federal Building and ended, 144 miles north of St. Paul, in Duluth. Beyond Duluth, North 61 was the only road in and out of the North Shore of Lake Superior. Mileposts commence at the Duluth city limits and pace Highway 61 for 150 miles, northeast, to the Pigeon River on the Ontario border. Some locals hold to the notion that you leave the climate and culture of the lower forty-eight behind when you pass through Grand Marais at Milepost 109. North of Grand Marais, the terrain was claimed by loggers, trappers, dog mushers, and Indians who fancied they would be at home on the Alaskan frontier.

This rocky wilderness shore also attracted pilgrims like Phil Broker, who grew up here, left twenty-five years ago, and had returned for the winter.

Broker decided that his baby daughter, Kit, would learn to walk north of Grand Marais. And she had. Now she had seen her first wolf, a little past Milepost 127.

Except the spot this wolf picked to cross the road was occupied by a speeding pulpwood truck that chopped him, dragged him, and rolling-pinned him flat.

Broker, driving home from his weekly grocery shopping at the IGA in town, saw the truck swerve, straighten, and roar past. A hundred yards later, he stopped the green Cherokee Sport, got out, and stared at the mature black wolf, its dusty gray fur presented with the usual roadkill trimmings.

From her car seat, fourteen-month-old Kit watched, big gray-green eyes under a flip of copper curls.

Not like her stuffed Wolfie toy, not like the friendly talking wolf on Sesame Street.

And not like Daddy, with his shaggy black eyebrows that grew straight together above his olive-gray eyes, who growled “Grrrrr” when she pulled on them.

Just the thing they leave out of the children’s books-real dead. And now, he thought, she gets to see the inside and the outside at the same time.

It should have been a Daddy thing: her first wolf, first deer, first bunny, glimpsed in the cathedral hush of snow-draped balsams or out on the frozen lake- Shh, quiet, see it, there, that shape against the snow. But there wasn’t any snow, and Christmas was two weeks away.

The freeze clamped down each night and lost its edge by afternoon. No ice jostled the shore. No crystalline lattices tethering the ledge rock with abstract webs. The forecasters on Duluth TV swirled their hands around Arctic air masses, the West Coast storms. They predicted an unusually mild season.

It was the year of El Nino. The year his daughter turned one. The second year since the adventure, from which he and Nina had returned rich, pregnant, married. And the second year since he’d quit police work.

The year Nina went back to the army.

Along with the weather, his personal world was upside down. His wife traveled “down range” to Bosnia, where she ran an MP company stationed in a grim haunted town outside of Tuzla called Brcko.

While Nina chased Serbian war criminals, he got stuck on stateside baby watch, changing diapers. So he’d brought Kit up here, to the old home ground, to teach her THE BIG LAW/9

Daddy things on the bedrock of the Canadian Shield, the oldest exposed granite in the world.

Broker stared one last time at the pile of mangled fur, then walked back to his truck, got in and said, “How you doing, Kit, we’re almost home.” Kit, very involved in an Arrowroot animal cookie, said nothing.

Broker put the Jeep in gear, continued up the road and scanned the sodden brown birch leaves that carpeted the forest.

Kind of hard to teach Kit to be a hardy survivor-a Broker-if winter wouldn’t come.

He turned off at a weathered sign that spelled BROKER’S BEACH RESORT and drove down the access road. A natural amphitheater hollowed the granite bluff and overlooked a cove. Resort cabins were tucked into the stone terraces. All closed now. Electricity and water turned off. His folks, who ran the cabins, were in Arizona for the winter. Just him and his daughter staying in his lake home on a point that formed the south arm of the cove.

He turned his truck and backed up to the porch. As he unstrapped Kit from the car seat and placed her on the porch, the phone rang inside. He ignored it, popped the rear hatch, and began lining up bags of groceries. Car to porch. Then open the door and ferry them to the kitchen. All tasks were modified and extended by the factor of minding Kit. The ringing stopped.

He worked one-armed so his other arm could anchor her.

He hovered in his task, ready to pull her back from a fall, or from digging in one of the bags. Or from sticking something in her mouth.

As he transferred the grocery bags, he talked in a calm voice. “Careful. Look out for the edge.” Specifically, he meant where the top porch step dropped off. But his intent was larger, to sketch an awareness of boundaries. And of dangers, which, as a former cop, he saw everywhere. “Easy,” Broker said endlessly. “Watch it. Look out.”

He unlocked the door and ferried bags into the kitchen and placed them on the table. Kit charged from the table to the door and back with more speed than balance.

The phone started ringing again. He continued to ignore it, busy tucking half gallons of milk and frozen baby food in the fridge. Four rings. Let the tape pick it up. He paused. It could be his folks or Nina calling long-distance. Better check for messages. He left the groceries and went to the phone.

Kit stood at his knee, squinted up as he picked up the receiver, watched him tap in the voice mail code and listen.