William Krueger - Purgatory Ridge

“Everybody knows what she’s supposed to have said.”

“What?” Stevie asked.

Jenny smiled down at her brother. “‘Thank you, Lord.’ “

Stevie’s right cheek bulged around his Tootsie Pop. “Huh?”

“Never mind,” Cork said to him. “Why don’t you help your sisters get some more cups out and ready to go. I’ll be in the back with the books,” he told the girls.

Cork sat at the desk in the back part of Sam’s Place and pulled out the ledgers he used to track the finances of his business. So far, in terms of profits, the summer had been stellar. The heat drove people early to the lake, and when they got hot on the water, they often headed toward the little stretch of shoreline at Sam’s Place where the big red pine shaded the picnic table. Cork paid his daughters a good wage, and not just because he loved having them around. They were excellent help. Annie possessed such a sense of responsibility that God, on the seventh day, could easily have turned his new creation over to her and napped without a worry. Jenny had a mystique and a skill with people that kept them talking with her through the serving window long after they’d been given their order. Studying the numbers in his ledgers and listening to the laughter of his children in the other room, Cork was fairly certain that-even full of smoke and fire-this summer would be the best since he’d taken over Sam’s Place.

A knock at the door of the Quonset hut pulled him from the desk. He found Celia Lane and Al Koenig standing on his doorstep.

“Morning, Cork.” Celia smiled brightly. She was a small, energetic woman dressed in gray. She chaired the committee for Tamarack County’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Al Koenig, a big pot-bellied man who managed the Perkins restaurant on Center Street, was her cochair. “May we come in?”

Cork stood aside.

Celia, who’d never visited Cork at Sam’s Place before, glanced around. “Austere,” she commented. “I’m sure you’re glad to be back with your family.”

Cork waited, wordless. People in politics loved to talk. You never had to wait long. But it might be a long time before they came to a point. And Celia, once she began, talked in a line no straighter than a sloppy drunk could have walked. Cork hadn’t asked them to sit. They didn’t seem to notice, or if they did, didn’t seem to care. After a couple of minutes, Cork broke in.

“What is it you want?”

Celia and Al exchanged a cautious look. Al said, “We want you to run for sheriff come November.”

Cork offered them no reply.

Celia jumped in. “You had to have heard. About Wally Schanno, I mean. He’s not standing for reelection.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“On good authority,” Celia said. “From what we gather, the Republicans are going to run Arne Soderberg.”

“Soderberg?” Cork let his concern show.

“Exactly,” Al said.

Celia began again, a convoluted line of words, talking party, talking politics, aspects of the job as sheriff Cork had never much cared for. He’d been a law enforcement officer first and foremost, and although he’d been a Democrat all his life, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party had simply been the way to the job. That way had always been a little like stumbling through a minefield. He wasn’t fond of Celia or Al or most of the men and women who became absorbed in politics in the county. He didn’t feel badly about not liking them. After the killings at Burke’s Landing, not one of them had stood by him during the recall that opened the door for Wally Schanno to take his job.

As Celia went on and on, Cork became aware of the sound of voices raised outside Sam’s Place. Annie stuck her head in the room. “Dad, you’d better get out there.”

Cork moved quickly out the door and around to the front of the Quonset hut. He paused a moment to take in what he saw.

A shiny black Ford F10 pickup had pulled into the lot and parked beside the green van. The faces of two children poked out the driver’s-side window of the truck. Their eyes were big and scared. Their father, Erskine Ellroy, had the young man who’d spoken French to Jenny pinned up against the front wall of Sam’s Place. Since he was eighteen, Ellroy had been a logger. With his huge upper body and biceps, he could have arm-wrestled a grizzly. He had a thick black beard and as angry a face as Cork had ever seen on a man. He had the kid by his T-shirt and he’d nearly lifted him off his feet. The kid offered him no resistance.

“You little son of a bitch.” Ellroy’s face was shoved so near, the long black hairs of his beard brushed the kid’s downy chin. “You come here where you don’t belong, where you don’t understand a thing about what’s going on, and all you do is screw with people’s lives. What do you care, right?”

“I care about the trees, man.” The kid’s voice came out weakened from the press of Ellroy’s massive body against his chest.

“Fuck the trees.”

“You are,” the kid managed bravely.

Cork glanced at the woman who stood near the picnic table leaning on her cane. She watched with great interest and although the kid seemed in real trouble, she appeared not at all inclined to interfere.

Ellroy threw the kid to the ground. “Get up.”

Looking up at that great angry body towering above him, the kid was clearly afraid. Hell, Cork would have been afraid. But the kid stood up anyway.

“Question for you, nature boy. How’re you going to save the trees from a hospital bed?” Ellroy made a fist and cocked his right arm. The kid made no move to avoid what was coming.

“Erskine.”

“Stay out of this, O’Connor.”

“Question for you, Erskine. How’re you going to feed your kids from jail?”

“One, O’Connor. Just one good one.” His fist was back but still in a holding pattern.

Cork stepped out of the shadow of Sam’s Place into the sunlight. He slowly approached Ellroy and the kid. “Criminal assault, Erskine. Witnesses. Open-and-shut case. You’ll go down, I guarantee it.”

“The hell with you, O’Connor. You’re not the sheriff anymore.”

“I don’t have to be to know you’re making a big mistake, one you’ll regret. This tree business’ll be over soon. You’ll be logging again, making regular payments on your mortgage. But you lay into that man and you’ll be in jail a long time after the rest of this is done. Think about it. Think about your kids there.” Cork nodded toward the black pickup and waited until Erskine had looked where his children watched, frightened. “Hitting this man won’t end the tree business, but it could take you away from your kids a long time. Is it worth that?”

Ellroy hesitated. A hot breath shot from his lips. He shoved the air in front of him as if pushing the whole business away. “Fuck it.”

“If you came for food, Erskine, go ahead. It’s on me.”

“Screw you and your food.” Ellroy stomped back to his vehicle. The tires of his pickup spit a lot of gravel, and a thick plume of dust followed him as he sped over the tracks into town.

The kid turned to Cork, pissed. “I didn’t need your help. I could’ve handled him.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” Cork looked toward the woman with the cane who seemed only to be waiting. “I’d be obliged if the both of you would take your food and eat somewhere else. You’re not exactly helping my business here.”

“We’re finished anyway.” The kid said it coldly. He moved to the picnic table, took the half-eaten meal, and threw it in the trash barrel. He escorted the woman with the cane to the van, got in, offered Cork a last hard look, and moved the van out.

Celia Lane and Al Koenig flanked Cork on either side.

“You’re a natural, Cork,” Al said.