William Krueger - Northwest Angle

When she was nearing forty and beginning to lose hope of ever finding love, Father Mal Thorne had been assigned to St. Agnes in Aurora, a remote parish buried deep in the North Woods. He’d been sent, ostensibly, to help the aging priest there. In truth, he was sent into exile, because he was a priest on the edge of falling completely away from the grace of the Church, a priest full of question, full of doubt, and too often, full of alcohol. Looking back on it, Rose saw God’s hand at work. Two people desperately in need of a connection more human than ethereal had been given each other and, in this unlikely union, had found their way back to the divine.

God, Rose believed fervently, worked in mysterious ways.

So when she peered toward the lights across the moonlit water of Lake of the Woods, she believed that, no matter how blind she and the others might be to the ultimate purpose of events, there was a great and compassionate heart at work. And her answer to Stephen’s question—did the lights mean his father and sister were safe and returning—was deceptively simple but deeply felt: “God willing.”

It was, indeed, a boat, a big power launch. It came straight for them, moving slowly across the water, and when it was near enough, a searchlight played over the houseboat, and a man hailed them.

“Hullo! You folks okay?”

“Yes,” Anne called back.

“Why don’t you cut your engine, and I’ll pull alongside?”

At the helm, Mal eased back on the throttle, and the engine idled. The big launch drew up alongside. The shape of the man at the wheel, large as a bear, was visible in the moonlight. The ambient light from the GPS screen on the dash of the helm gave his broad, bearded face a ghostly look. As the bow neared the houseboat, he cut his own engines, leaped forward, and grabbed the bow line.

“Catch this, son, and tie me up,” he called to Stephen and tossed the line. Then he stood next to the gunwale, meaty hands fisted on his hips, grinning up at Rose and the O’Connors.

“First folks I’ve run into out here,” he said. “I was beginning to be afraid nobody’d made it. Glad to see you’re all right. Were you caught in the blow?”

“The blow?” Stephen said.

“The storm,” the man replied. “It’s played hell across the lake from Baudette to Kenora.” The man eyed the shattered window at the helm station. “Looks like you got some damage.”

Mal limped out and came to the railing. “We lost the radio and got shook up a bit, but we’re okay. But we’re missing two of our party. They headed to the Northwest Angle this afternoon, but since we lost the radio we haven’t been able to check to see if they made it.”

“Let’s find out,” the man in the launch said. “What are their names?”

“Cork and Jenny O’Connor.”

The big man returned to the wheel, lifted a radio mike, and raised someone at Young’s Bay Landing. The answer from whomever he spoke to was that nobody by those names had come in that afternoon, either before or after the storm. But someone was there waiting for the O’Connors and worried as hell.

“Aaron?” Rose asked.

“Is the guy named Aaron?” the man relayed over the mike.

“That’s a roger, Seth,” came the reply.

“Tell him I’ve got some of his party here with me. We’ll be coming in.”

“Will do.”

The man in the launch said, “My name’s Seth Bascombe. Tell you what, folks. There’s an old Indian fishing camp just ahead. What say you tie up to the dock there and come on with me to Young’s Bay Landing. You can see about this Aaron, and we can figure what to do about your missing parties.”

“Can we go back out looking tonight?”

Stephen asked. Bascombe stroked his beard as if considering, then shook his head. “Son, the truth is it would be best to wait until morning for that. Mine’s one of the last boats still out searching, and I count myself lucky to still be afloat in all this damn debris. It may be that your missing parties made it to one of the inhabited islands, and we’ll be hearing from them before too long anyway. And to be honest, I’m pooped. Need some shut-eye. We’ll head back out at first light. Ought to be a flotilla along with us then. You all onboard with that?”

Their reluctance was obvious to Rose, but Bascombe’s wisdom was hard to argue with, and so they all agreed.

They crossed the international border in the dark. Once they’d left the area the storm had devastated, Bascombe made good time across what seemed, under the face of the moon, to be a lake of liquid silver.

“Young’s Bay Landing,” he called out, pointing toward a cluster of lights looming ahead.

He throttled back, and they entered a narrow passage and motored to a brightly lit dock where several people stood waiting. Bascombe eased the boat against the dock and asked Stephen to toss the bow line. One of the men caught it and looped it around a piling, and someone else tied the stern line to a cleat. Lots of hands helped Rose and the others from the launch.

“Everyone all right here?” The question came from a woman who scrutinized them with what appeared to Rose to be a trained eye.

“No,” Rose said. “My husband’s hurt. A broken ankle, maybe.”

“Let’s get him inside so I can take a look.”

Two men flanked Mal and gave him their shoulders for support, and he hobbled between them toward a long, lighted building that stood a dozen yards back from the dock.

The others followed, except for a tall, lanky young man who hung back. Rose hung back with him.

“Hello, Aaron,” she said.

She knew him from pictures Jenny had sent, knew him from the talks she’d had with her niece, the kinds of talks Jenny would have had with her mother if Jo were still alive. Jenny had told her Aaron was twenty-nine, but Rose saw something in his face, pinched and critical, that made him seem much older. For Jenny’s sake, she wanted to like him, and, instead of a handshake, she gave him a hug.

“You must be Rose,” he said. “Jenny’s told me all about you.” He looked toward the building where everyone had gone. “She’s told me about all of you.”

They stood together under the light on the deserted dock. Night insects flew about them. From inside the building came the hubbub of voices, and Rose heard the kids and Mal telling their story.

“You must be worried sick,” she said.

His hair was the color of wet sand and unkempt. His eyes were deep green and heavy with fatigue and concern. “They never showed up,” he said. “We could see the storm from here. It looked like some kind of monster barreling across the lake. Folks said it was headed straight up through something called the Narrows and God help anyone caught in it there.”

“She’s with her father,” Rose said, taking his arm. “If anyone could keep them safe, it’s Cork.”

She walked him into the building, which turned out to be a general store and café. Mal was at the center of the gathering inside, his injured ankle cradled in the lap of the woman who’d met them on the dock. With her fingertips, she felt carefully around the bruised area and finally pronounced, “I don’t think it’s a break, just a really bad sprain. Ice,” she said to no one in particular. “We need ice. And a towel.”

“Are you a doctor?” Rose asked.

“No, but around here you see everything,” the woman replied. “Fishhooks through the thumb, fingers nearly sliced off by some drunk trying to fillet a walleye, heart attacks, you name it.”

“Lynn here is the closest thing we got on the Angle to Florence Nightingale,” Bascombe said.

“Lynn Belgea,” the woman said and offered her hand to Mal. She was perhaps fifty, small, with a plain face honest as the day was long. “I’m a nurse practitioner. We probably ought to get you to Warroad and have that ankle X-rayed, just to be on the safe side.”