William Krueger - Purgatory Ridge

“Charlie Warren wasn’t here,” George LeDuc pointed out. “But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. We would have listened to him with great respect, and we would have done what we did, because it was the right thing.”

“One way or another,” Broom declared, “Our Grandfathers will be protected.”

“Isaiah,” Jo called to him.

He turned back.

“Be careful who you say that to. Advice from someone who knows the law.”

He only stared at her, and she knew that to Isaiah Broom her counsel was useless.

By late afternoon, Jo and George LeDuc had agreed on the wording of the statement, which LeDuc issued to the press on behalf of the Iron Lake Ojibwe. The sun in the western sky was copper colored as Jo headed home, and everything around her was cast in a hard copper hue. She switched on the radio and listened to the five-o’clock news. Forest fires burned out of control. The blaze near Saganaga Lake was worsening. Firefighters from as far away as Montana and Maine were prepared to fly in to help if requested. Jo had never seen a summer like this. She wondered if anyone had.

The house felt empty when she stepped inside. The window air conditioners were on, and the cool of the living room was a relief. She set her briefcase beside the door.

“Hello!” she called. “Anybody home? Rose?”

“In here!”

Jo headed to the kitchen.

Rose stood at the sink washing fruit. She wore white shorts and a sleeveless white blouse. Her feet were bare. A glass of iced tea sat on the counter beside her, dewy drops trickling down the sides.

“Too hot to cook, so I’m just going to fix up a big fruit salad for dinner.” When she saw Jo, she stopped preparing the fruit and wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “You look absolutely beat. How about some iced tea?”

“Milk and cookies is what I need.”

“Sit down. I’ll get it.”

Rose pulled a couple of her homemade cookies from a cookie jar shaped like Sesame Street’s Ernie. She took out a half gallon of Meadowgold from the refrigerator and poured milk into a blue plastic glass. She brought them to the kitchen table and sat down with Jo. “Talk to me,” she said.

Jo knew that on the outside, it probably appeared to folks in Aurora that Rose had given up her life for others-first for their mother during the seven years between the stroke that left her paralyzed on her left side and the stroke that killed her, and then for Jo and Cork and the children. Sometimes Jo felt guilty because the presence of Rose in the house made her own professional life so much easier. But in truth, she’d never felt any bitterness from her sister, never any regret. Rose seemed to be the robust embodiment of an enviable and endearing goodwill, a personal grace that was certainly deepened by her spirituality but had, in fact, always been there. Rose never seemed empty, never unable to give. To the church, to the community, to Jenny and Annie and Stevie, whom she hadn’t birthed but had certainly nurtured. With the children, Rose had a special bond. Often Jo came into a room-usually the kitchen-and found her sister in quiet conference with one of them. The talk ceased the moment Jo entered, and she understood that Rose was a confidant to the children in a way that she, as their parent, could never be. And Jo knew there was no one Cork admired more than Rose.

She ate her cookies and sipped her milk and told Rose everything-the bombing, the body, the council meeting. Finally she confessed to Rose her concern that Cork might consider running for sheriff again.

“What are you afraid of?” Rose asked. “Really?”

Jo stared at the crumbs on her plate. “I like things the way they are right now. I don’t want anything to change. We seem to be heading toward happiness again.”

Rose waited, her wide, freckled face full of calm.

“I feel like we’re all still wounded,” Jo stumbled on. “I think we need more time to heal.”

“Does Cork know how you feel?”

Jo got up and carried her glass to the sink.

“You haven’t told him,” Rose surmised.

“It’s not that easy.”

They heard the front door open and the sound of Stevie’s laughter. A moment later Cork and Stevie came into the kitchen, Stevie holding up proudly a string full of sunnies.

“Look what I caught.”

“Wonderful,” Rose said. “Where are you going with them?”

“To clean them,” Stevie replied.

“Not in my kitchen. Downstairs to the basement. You can use the laundry sink.”

“Come on, buddy.” Cork opened the basement door and followed Stevie down.

Rose smiled after them, then turned to her sister. “This family means too much to him. He wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize it. Just talk to him.” Rose returned to washing the fruit.

Jo headed upstairs to change her clothes. In a few minutes, Cork stepped in. She could smell the fish on him all the way across the room.

“How’d it go on the rez?” he asked. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it into a wicker hamper near the closet.

Jo sat on the bed and bent down to buckle her sandals. “We put together a statement denying any connection with the Army of the Earth or any knowledge about Eco-Warrior. We criticized the action. And we did our best to distance the Iron Lake Ojibwe from any threat of violence over Our Grandfathers.”

“How’d Charlie Warren take that?”

“He wasn’t there. But Isaiah Broom had a huge problem with it.”

“That’s because he probably is this Eco-Warrior.”

“Don’t joke.”

“Who’s joking?” Cork dropped his jeans and reached into the dresser for some shorts.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you were sheriff.”

“No?”

Jo stood up. “You’d be reserving judgment until you had more facts. Even then you’d say it was up to the court to decide guilt or innocence.”

“But I’m not the sheriff anymore.” He grabbed a red T-shirt and tugged it on.

They were at the edge of a subject they never talked about-the events that surrounded Cork’s fall from grace in Aurora. To talk would risk opening old wounds, discussing events that had hurt them terribly, that had nearly torn them apart. Although Jo felt all these things constantly between them, dark and restless, she was afraid that to look at the past straight-on might be deadly to her marriage. Cork had never seemed eager to talk either, and Jo believed his own silence on the subject of their past indiscretions meant a mutual-though unspoken-agreement not to dwell on hurtful history.

“I’m going to go down and give Rose a hand with dinner,” she said. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Annie came in the front door. “Where’s Jenny?” Jo asked.

“Sean showed up at Sam’s Place. He said he’d help her close and then bring her home.”

Sean was Jenny’s boyfriend. Jo knew Cork had a grudging liking for the boy and didn’t mind his dropping by to give Jenny a hand.

“Mom,” Annie asked, “did Dad tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“We almost had a fight at Sam’s Place today. Dad broke it up, and some people there asked Dad to run for sheriff.”

“People?”

“Yeah, like party bigwigs or something.”

“They want your father to run for sheriff?”

“Yeah. Pretty cool, huh? Where’s Aunt Rose?”

“In the kitchen.”

Annie made a beeline in that direction.

Jo was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when Cork came down. “Could we talk? In my office?”

Although Jo practiced out of an office in the Aurora Professional Building, she maintained a casual office at home as well. Cork followed down the hallway and looked at her with apprehension when she closed the door behind them.

“Annie told me there was some trouble at Sam’s Place,” she said.