It seemed to Cork to cover things as well as any prayer of thanksgiving he’d ever heard.
The sound of an approaching car brought him around. Jo’s Toyota mounted the grade over the railroad tracks and pulled into the gravel parking lot. Jo wasn’t alone. Dorothy Winter Moon was with her.
In appearance, Dot Winter Moon reminded Cork a good deal of her uncle Sam Winter Moon. She was tall, solid, her hair black, but with a bit of red in it that came out in the proper light, like a second personality. She wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt with the sleeves cut away, and her arms were muscular.
When she was sixteen, Dot had left the Iron Lake Reservation and headed south to the Twin Cities. She came back four years later with a boy child, her maiden name, and no inclination to explain herself. She’d done her best raising her son, Solemn, but the early years had been tough going. She wasn’t very successful at holding on to a job, mainly because she was hardheaded, not particularly customer oriented, and didn’t believe in apologies. She didn’t ask for them, didn’t give them. She was scrupulously honest and forthright, however, and she expected the same of others. She finally found her niche working on a road crew for the county. The men on the crew gave her a hard time at first, a woman on male turf, but Dot gave as good as she got, and then some, and it wasn’t long before she was one of the boys. Eventually, she ended up driving an International dump truck spring through fall with a plow on the front in winter. She wasn’t a striking woman, but there were probably men who found her attractive, in a hard sort of way. She had a wide, sun-darkened face, a strong slender body, eyes that over the years had taken on a perpetual squint from working outside.
Cork put down his saw and smiled at the women. “Hey there, Dot. Been a while.”
“Cork.” Dot reached out and shook his hand so hard the bones grated.
“What’s up?”
“Cops been at my place,” Dot answered. “Looking for Solemn. Sons of bitches wouldn’t say why.”
“Was Solemn there?”
“Haven’t seen him for a couple of days. I told them that.”
“Has he been in any trouble lately?”
“Not that I know of.”
“They have a warrant?”
“No.”
“How many of them?”
“Three.”
Jo said, “My first thought was that since they’ve found Charlotte’s body, they’re just interviewing everyone who was at the party the night she disappeared.”
“Maybe,” Cork said. But he thought, not three of them.
“It would be good to know for sure,” Jo said.
“Did you call Arne?”
She nodded. “I tried. He wasn’t available. No one at the Department was able to offer me an explanation.”
“You’re sure you don’t have any idea what this might be about, Dot?”
For all her strength, Dorothy Winter Moon looked suddenly vulnerable.
If it hadn’t been for Sam Winter Moon, young Solemn would often have been left to fend for himself while his mother worked to make a living. Summers, Solemn hung out at Sam’s Place helping with the things that were within a small boy’s capability. He cleaned the grounds, swept the Quonset hut, Windexed the windows. When he wasn’t helping, he was fishing from the dock on Sam’s property or swimming in the lake. Whenever Cork stopped by to pass the time with his old friend Sam, Solemn was there, a thin boy, good-looking, who didn’t smile much but who loved to tell knock-knock jokes that Sam never failed to appreciate.
Still, there was a dark side to Solemn, even then. Sam knew it. There was something that came into the boy and filled him with anger, a hot, bubbling churn that put fire in his eyes and gave his movements a fast, jerky quality like bursts of flame. Eventually, Sam could tell when his great-nephew was ready to erupt. On those days, he sent young Solemn onto the lake in a rowboat to fish alone, and told him not to come back until he had a full stringer of sunnies. The solitude, the warm sun, maybe just the passage of time itself usually opened young Solemn up and let loose whatever it was that had entered him. By the time he came back and tied up at the dock, the dark look was gone, and the boy who loved Sam and loved knock-knock jokes was fully returned.
Unfortunately, Sam wasn’t always around when Solemn went into one of his moods, and his great-nephew often got into trouble. Fights, mostly. Public disturbances. Cork, who was sheriff then, often had young Solemn in his office awaiting the arrival of Dot or Sam. In those days, the transgressions were usually minor. Solemn wasn’t a liar; he never denied his guilt. He wasn’t a thief; he never stole anything. He was, in his dark moments, simply ruled by an impulse to strike out, and when the moment had passed, he was full of contrition. Generally, an apology would do the trick, or sometimes if property had been involved, a bit of time and labor served in repairing the damage. Solemn never tried to duck his sentence.
The spring Solemn turned sixteen, Sam Winter Moon died, died in Cork’s arms with his chest opened up from a shotgun blast. It happened at a place called Burke’s Landing during a tense conflict between whites and Anishinaabeg over fishing rights on Iron Lake. Without Sam’s firm, loving hand to hold him in place, Solemn spun off into space. The trouble he got into became more serious. He became a kid with an unhealthy reputation.
Cork knew the boy needed help. He remembered only too well how Sam Winter Moon had come into his own life after his father died and had guided him through the long journey of his grief. Solemn needed someone to step forward in the same way. That someone should have been Cork. But Sam’s death had nearly destroyed Corcoran O’Connor. Both the whites and the Anishinaabeg blamed him for the bloodshed at Burke’s Landing. Cork blamed himself, too, so it was pretty much unanimous. After that, for a while, his life fell apart. He lost his job as sheriff and his self-respect. He nearly lost his wife and family as well. He viewed Solemn’s plight from the distance of his own isolation and suffering. Although he knew he should help, he’d been unable to scrape himself off the bottom of his own dark hole, and Solemn was left to find his way alone.
Cork studied Dorothy Winter Moon, and she flinched under his stare.
“Why do they want to talk to Solemn, Dot?”
“Used to be I’d know. Used to be he’d tell me when shit was going to hit the fan. Not anymore. He’s been gone for the last two days, vanished, then the sheriff’s people show. I thought it might be serious this time, so I took the day off and looked for him. Then I went to Jo.”
Dot had often turned to Jo when Solemn’s impulses put him on the wrong side of the sheriff’s people. For many years, Jo had represented both the Iron Lake Reservation and the Ojibwe people in court actions. This hadn’t endeared her to the citizens of Aurora, but the Ojibwe trusted her as they would one of their own. So far, Jo had always been able to negotiate Solemn’s freedom in court.
Jo said, “I was hoping you might use your influence to get a few answers, Cork.”
“My influence is limited these days.”
“Would you see what you can do?”
“Sure.” As Cork gathered his tools, he said, “I’ve got to warn you, Dot, this may be all about Charlotte Kane, and it could be serious. Wasn’t Solemn her boyfriend for a while last fall?”
“They broke up.”
“And then she disappeared. And her body was found a few days ago, and now Solemn’s taken off. The police may see a connection.”
“But it was a snowmobile accident. Everybody says.”
“He’s just thinking like a cop, Dot,” Jo said. “Look, I’ll drop you back at your car, then why don’t you go on home. When I hear from Cork, I’ll give you a call. If Solemn shows up in the meantime, or if he contacts you, let me know.”
Dot nodded. It was obvious that the possibility Cork raised had shaken her. She walked toward Jo’s Toyota with her head down, staring at the gravel under her feet.
Jo asked Cork quietly, “Do you really think that might be it?”
He shrugged. “Like you said, just trying to think like a cop.”
When Charlotte Kane moved to Aurora with her father, everyone remarked on her beauty, which she must have inherited from her mother. They remarked on her manners, her reserve (very Kane-like), her intelligence. And when, in her senior year of high school, she began to run with Solemn Winter Moon, they remarked on her disastrous choice in a young man.
