tonight?”
Charlie shook her head. “I’ll be all right.”
“That changes, you come on over, you hear?”
“Thanks.”
“And, Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“When you go home tonight, do yourself a favor: take a good long shower, plenty of soap.”
“Whatever.”
“I mean it.”
“Right.” Charlie looked down.
Jewell watched the kids walk out the cabin door, then she turned back to her patient.
“Good kid, Ren,” Cork said. “Sure he won’t say anything?”
“I’m sure.”
“What about the other boy?”
She reached into her medical bag. “Charlie? Not a boy.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“She fools most everybody.”
He eyed the syringe she held.
“Local anesthetic,” she explained, and stuck him. “I should have put you in Thor’s Lodge with us last night so we could keep an eye on you better.”
“I’ll be fine here. Promise not to go wandering again.” He laid his hand gently on her arm. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“A hospital, for starters.”
“I told you last night. I can’t do a hospital right now. They’d have to report the gunshot wound, and I’d end up a sitting duck for the people trying to kill me.”
“Who are they?”
“Professionals.”
“You mean like hit men.”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Why do they want you dead?”
“They’ll be paid handsomely for it.”
“Who put up the money?”
“A man who believes I killed his son.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why does he think that?”
“Circumstances.”
“You couldn’t just talk to him?”
“I tried. He wouldn’t listen. It’s complicated.”
“So what now?”
“There are people trying to prove I’m innocent.”
“That could take a while?”
“I don’t know. Look, as soon as I can, I’ll leave.”
She put on latex gloves, pulled an Ethilon nylon suture pack from her bag, tore it open, took out the curved needle and black thread.
“I don’t hear from you in forever, then you show up on my doorstep, shot, bleeding all over everything, expecting me to take you in. Christ, that’s just like a man.”
“You’ve cut your hair,” he said.
“Easier to keep out of my way while I’m working.”
When her hand, which held the needle, descended toward the entrance wound on the outside of his thigh, he looked away. “How are you doing?”
“How am I doing?” She squinted over her work. “I go to the clinic in the morning, come home late, fix dinner, help Ren with his homework, do laundry and what I can around the house, try to go to bed so tired I don’t have to think about anything. So I guess, all things considered, I’m doing pretty shitty.”
“Long time to be grieving.”
“What do you know about grief? Damn.” She shook her head at something she’d done. Cork didn’t look and was glad she’d numbed the area first. “I still miss him. Every minute of every day. You want to know the worst part? Sometimes I hate him. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m grieving or just royally pissed at him. There.” She clipped the thread.
“I didn’t feel a thing.”
“Because I’m good. Hungry?”
“A little.”
“I’ll fix something that’ll go down easy.” She closed her bag, stood up, and headed for the door.
“Jewell, thank you.”
She paused before stepping outside. “You can thank me best by getting better and getting out of here without bringing any more trouble around.”
“As long as no one knows I’m here, you and Ren are okay, I promise.”
“Good. I’ve had enough of people I care about dying.”
In the late afternoon air outside Cabin 3, she stood a moment, breathing out her anger, her despair, still feeling the hurt of a wound that hadn’t healed. In the cabin at her back, Cork O’Connor coughed.
Men, Jewell thought. All they’d ever brought her was trouble.
4
Bodine, Michigan, was the end of the line. It lay near the terminus of thirty miles of poorly maintained county road that ran northwest out of Marquette along the shore of Lake Superior. It was Anatomy of a Murder territory, a place that despite its beauty was probably best filmed in black and white. For decades Bodine had been fighting a slow death.
To the south and west rose the Huron Mountains, thick with timber. Beyond that lay the Copper Country where the red-brown native ore leached out of the Keweenaw Peninsula and spread its veins through much of the western U.P. Stretching north all the way to the horizon was the vast blue of Lake Superior, which became, somewhere far out of sight, part of Canada. On good, clear days, you could see the Keweenaw curling out of the west, protecting Bodine from the worst of the gales that swept across the lake in late fall, storms that had spelled doom for generations of sailors. Looking east from Bodine, you could almost see the spot where the water had swallowed the Edmund Fitzgerald.
On this late Saturday afternoon, Bodine, population 1,207, was quiet as usual. Ren straddled the ATV his father had purchased for the old resort, and Charlie held on tight behind. For nearly a mile, he drove along the drainage ditch at the side of the road. Then he came onto the asphalt, crossed the iron bridge over the Copper River, and entered town. Legally, he couldn’t drive on a roadway, but in Bodine, a place used to ATVs and snowmobiles and anything else that would lure the tourists, no one paid much attention to that detail. He passed the Superior Inn, a lodge and restaurant of lacquered yellow pine logs, and the Supervalu market, where the parking lot was almost empty, and pulled to a stop in front of Kitty’s Cafe. Charlie sprang off the seat with the flourish of a gymnast and bounced to the cafe door.
“Jesus, you’re like a slug or something,” she called to Ren, and disappeared inside.
They sat at the counter and ordered pasties, chocolate shakes, and fries. Pasties were small pies consisting of meat, vegetables, and gravy completely enclosed in a flaky crust. They were a local favorite, an import brought by Cornish immigrants who’d come to that part of Michigan in the late 1800’s to work the copper and iron mines.
