waitress with tanning-booth brown skin and dyed blonde hair, for a cup of coffee and a stack of buckwheat cakes, then he turned to listen to what was being said at the nearest table.
Jeeter Hayes was holding forth. Jeeter was head of a crew that did tree work for the Tamarack County Department of Parks and Recreation. He was a big man with an enormous number of tattoos that made his arms look, from a distance, like the green hide of an alligator. He had a small head for such a large frame, and Cork had always suspected that the size was an indication of how little that skull had to hold. Everyone at Jeeter’s table seemed to have a story of a social or criminal trespass by Solemn, and every story seemed to be worse than the last.
Jeeter finally looked in Cork’s direction. “I heard he did things to her before he killed her. That true, Cork?”
“You want details, ask Arne Soderberg.” Cork sipped his coffee and wondered where the hell his pancakes were.
“I heard your wife’s defending him.”
“You want to know, ask her.”
“I always kind of liked Jo,” Jeeter said. The way he said it made it sound vaguely dirty. “We all do, don’t we, boys?” He nodded, but the other men only looked at him, as if wondering where this was going. “We don’t like it when she pushes something for them out there on the rez, but she’s almost one of us by now, you know?” Jeeter stood up, walked to the counter, and sat on the stool next to Cork. “Defending a guy like Winter Moon, after what he did to Charlotte Kane, that’ll set a mean hook in a lot of folks’ thinking. Am I right?”
Cork said, “The kid hasn’t been formally charged yet, and you’ve already got him convicted and hung, Jeeter.”
Jeeter narrowed his eyes on Cork. “A man who’d piss on a cross, hell, I imagine nothing’s beyond him.”
Solemn had never pissed on a cross. He had, however, admitted to vandalizing St. Agnes Church, which included urinating in the baptismal font and spray-painting graffiti across one of the church walls. He’d written Mendax. The vandalism had taken place late at night, a few weeks before Christmas. In a door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood following the incident, the sheriff’s deputies found someone who’d seen Solemn’s truck parked on the street in front of the church. When they went out to Dot’s place to talk to Solemn, the deputies found a can of black spray paint in his truck. Solemn didn’t even try to deny his guilt.
Jo had defended him. Solemn claimed to have been drunk and to have acted alone, but Jo had a question for him he couldn’t answer and it made her believe he was not telling the whole truth. She asked him what Mendax meant. He told her he didn’t know. “Liar,” she said. He swore he was telling the truth. “No,” Jo told him. “Loosely translated, the word means liar.” When she asked him why he’d put that particular word on the wall of St. Agnes, he refused to reply. It was Jo’s belief that Solemn hadn’t done the deed on his own. She thought he’d been talked into it and was covering for his accomplice. She believed the most likely candidate was his girlfriend Charlotte Kane, who was bright, Catholic, and at that time, displaying a wildness that surprised everyone. Solemn insisted on taking the fall alone. He apologized in person and in writing, and he spent a day taking the spray paint off the wall. He also agreed to shovel the walks of St. Agnes free of charge during the rest of the winter.
At the counter of the Broiler, seated next to Cork, Jeeter opened his hands and said with great innocence, “I’m just going on history here, O’Connor. Just looking at the road that kid’s already traveled and torn up behind him.”
Cork said, “I took you in a few times for drunk and disorderly back when I wore a badge, Jeeter. Does that mean you’re ripe for killing somebody?”
Jeeter leaned close. Cork could smell the char of crisp bacon on his breath. “You want to know the truth, I don’t have to wait until a jury says he’s guilty. I know it already. Indian bucks, see, they love the idea of doing a white woman. Get ’em drunk and, hell, anything’s game.” His words were not spoken loud, but they were spoken into a hush that had settled over the Broiler.
Cork looked across the room at the faces of people he knew, but who sometimes seemed like strangers. No one contradicted Jeeter Hayes.
“This conversation’s over, Jeeter,” Cork said.
Jeeter sat up. “And if I keep talking, what? You’ll arrest me? You know, I’m thinking it’s a hell of a good thing you’re not sheriff around here anymore. What with you being a half-breed. You know what else? Those times you hauled me in, if it hadn’t been for your badge, you and me, we might’ve gone a few rounds. I would’ve liked that.”
Johnny Papp intervened at that moment, dropping a plate of steaming cakes on the counter between the two men. “Go on back to your table, Jeeter,” Papp said. “Let the man eat in peace.”
“Sure,” Jeeter said after a long moment. “I got work to do anyway.” He stood up and headed toward the register. “Come on, boys. We got a lot of rotten trees to take care of and time’s a wastin’.”
After they’d gone, Johnny Papp said, “Sorry, Cork.”
“Not your fault, Johnny.” He slid off the stool and picked up his check.
“What about your cakes?”
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
Papp reached across the counter and took the check from Cork’s hand. “Then don’t worry about paying.”
“I drank your coffee.”
“It’s on me.” Papp crumbled the check. “And for the record, Jeeter Hayes is a jackass, and everybody knows it.”
The day was overcast. A chill wind came out of the northwest, straight out of Canada. Now and then, a wet snowflake splattered against the windshield of Cork’s Bronco, probably just the lingering echo of winter, but in that far north country, you never knew for sure. He was on his way to Sam’s Place, to work on getting things ready for the May opening. The grayness wedged its way into his mood, and by the time he arrived, he was feeling pretty lousy.
Long ago, after he bought the Quonset hut for a song from the Army National Guard, Sam Winter Moon had divided the building into two sections. In the front, he’d installed a gas grill, a freezer, a sink, storage shelves, and a food prep area. He cut out two serving windows in the south wall, and between them he hung a wood-burned and hand-painted sign that read SAM’S PLACE. During tourist season, the rear of the Quonset hut was his home. It consisted of a kitchen, a bathroom, a living area with an eating table and chairs that Sam had made from birch, a desk for doing business, and a bunk. There were bookshelves, too, for Sam loved to read.
Cork opened the door and stepped inside. The curtains were drawn over the windows, and the room was dark. Cork lifted his hand toward the light switch, but stopped when a voice said, “Don’t.”
“Solemn?” Cork let his hand fall, the switch untouched. It wasn’t so much that he’d recognized the voice immediately as he understood the rightness of the situation, that Solemn should seek shelter in yet another place where Sam Winter Moon had dwelt.
“Close the door.”
Cork did. His eyes were adjusting, and he could make out Solemn lurking in the entryway to the bathroom. He had something in his hand that Cork assumed must be a firearm.
“You can put the gun down.”
“Gun?” Solemn laughed quietly. He came forward into what little light filtered through the curtains, and Cork saw that what he held was a hammer. Solemn aimed the handle at him. “Bang.”
“Been here all night?”
“Most of it.”
“Hungry?”
Solemn seemed surprised by the question.
“I haven’t eaten yet,” Cork said. “I was thinking of fixing some eggs. You want, I’ll fix enough for both of us.”
Solemn looked at him, making some kind of assessment. “I could eat,” he said.
Cork drew open the curtains over the sink to let in some light. He opened the refrigerator, where he kept a small supply of food-eggs, milk, butter, cheese, fruit, bread-in case he got hungry while he was readying the place for the tourist season. During the time when Cork’s life fell apart and he and Jo were separated, he’d lived in Sam’s Place. The pans and utensils he’d used then were still in the drawers and on the shelves. Many of them were left from the time when Sam had lived there.
