Crucifixion River Read online

  “And you want me to go see it with you.”

  “Up to you. Only take a few minutes.”

  Coolidge thought about it. Then he grinned crookedly and said: “All right, for free d-u-r-t, why not? What have I got to lose?”

  “That’s right,” Peete said. He tightened his grip on Buck’s chain, tossed his new lucky piece into the air with his other hand. Sunlight struck golden glints from the doubloon before he caught it with a quick downward swipe. “What have you got to lose?”

  He Said…She Said

  by Marcia Muller

  Cal Hartley heaved the last of the five-gallon water jugs into the back of his van and slammed the rear doors. Then he coiled the hose onto its holder on the spigot. As he got into the driver’s seat, he glanced across the parking lot at the White Iron Chamber of Commerce building; only two cars were there, both belonging to employees, and no one had seen him filling up, or else they’d have come outside by now, wanting to know where their so-called voluntary donation was. Three bucks well saved.

  At the stop sign at the main highway, Cal hesitated. East toward home? West toward town, where he’d earlier run some errands? West. He didn’t feel like going home yet. Home was not where the heart was these days.

  The Walleye Tavern was dark and cool on this bright, hot August afternoon. Abel Arneson, the owner and sole occupant, stood behind the bar under one of the large stuffed pike that adorned the pine walls, staring up at a Twins game on the TV mounted at the room’s far end. When he saw Cal enter, he reached for a remote and turned the sound down.

  “What brings you to town, Professor?” he asked. “Professor” because Cal was a former faculty member of the University of Minnesota, recently moved north from Minneapolis to the outskirts of this small town near the Boundary Waters National Canoe Area.

  “Water run. Hardware store. Calls on the cell phone. It doesn’t work outside of town.” Cal slid onto a stool. In spite of him and Abel being native Minnesotans, their patterns of speech could not have been more different. Cal sounded pure, flat middle America, while Abel spoke with the rounded, vaguely Scandinavian accent of the Iron Range.

  Abel, a big man with thinning white hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses, set a bottle of Leinenkugel in front of Cal. “Not so easy, living without running water, huh?”

  “Not so bad. The lake makes a good bathtub, and we’ve got a chemical toilet. All we need the fresh water for is brushing our teeth, cooking, washing dishes.”

  “And from the hardware store?”

  Cal smiled wryly. “Heavy-duty extension cords. I think I told you the power company allowed us to hook into the pole up on the road till we finish with our renovations. Seems like we need more cords every day.”

  Abel shook his head, looked at his watch, and poured himself a shot of vodka. “I don’t envy you, trying to bring back that old, run-down lodge. Thirty-five years abandoned by old lady Mott, just sitting there rotting. Some folks around here say it’s cursed.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that. But I don’t believe in curses.”

  “No?”

  “Definitely not. A place is only what you make it. You saw the main building when you came out. It’s livable and will be a fine home eventually. We think we can save three of the cabins for when our kids and…someday…grandkids come to visit. The rest we’re demolishing.”

  “By yourselves? Didn’t any of those contractors I referred you to get back with estimates?”

  “The roofer, and he’s done already. The others we only need for the septic system, plumbing, and electrical. They’ll be in touch.”

  “Your wife…Maggie, is it?”

  “Right.”

  “She doesn’t seem the type for hard labor. Wasn’t she some kind of artist in the Twin Cities?”

  “Interior designer.”

  “How does she feel being dragged off to the end of the road here?”

  Cal felt his throat tighten up. He took a sip of beer before he said: “She feels just fine. It was her idea, in fact. She found the property.”

  “Good for her.” Abel looked up at the TV, reached for the remote, and turned the volume up slightly.

  Good for her. Yeah, right. You won’t say that when I tell you she’s trying to kill me.

  Maggie was painting the floor of the one-room cabin with red enamel when Howie, her black Lab, ran in and stepped on the wet surface.

  “Howie!” she yelled, and the dog-perverse creature-began to wag his tail and knocked over the paint can. Maggie stood up, shooed him out the door, and wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand. It must have been ninety-five degrees, and the humidity was trying to match the temperature.

  She regarded the mess on the floor, then turned away and went outside. The red paint had seemed a good idea two days ago-it would conceal the poor quality of the wood and the indelible stains from years of a leaking roof, plus lend a cheerful note to a cabin that was perpetually dark because of the overhanging white pines-but now she decided she didn’t really like it. Better brown, or even gray, covered in colorful rag rugs from the White Iron Trading Post.

  She stood in the shade of the trees and looked down the gradual slope to what had once been the main building of Sunrise Lodge. A long two-story log structure with many-paned windows and a sagging porch, it sat in a clearing halfway between this cabin and the shore of Lost Wolf Lake. Over the thirty-five years that the property had sat abandoned, pines and scrub vegetation had grown up, so only a sliver of blue water was visible from the porch’s once-excellent vantage point. In time, the trees would be cleared, but first the lodge and three salvageable cabins must be made habitable. Each structure already had a new roof, but that was it. So much to be done before the long winter set in, both by Cal and herself and local skilled laborers, none of whom seemed prone to speedily working up estimates.

  Maggie shook her head and trudged downhill, giving the evil eye to Howie, who was rooting around in a thicket of wild raspberries. She mounted the steps of the lodge, avoiding loose boards, and fetched a beer from the small refrigerator beneath a window in the front room, which she and Cal had claimed as their living quarters. Then she went back outside and followed a rutted track down to the lakeshore, stepping gingerly to avoid the poison ivy that grew in abundance there. A rotted wooden dock tilted over the water; she navigated it as she had the lodge steps and sat down at its end.

  Lost Wolf Lake was placid today; on the far side a small motorboat moved slowly, and near the rocky beach to her left a family of mallards floated, undisturbed by human intrusion. Maggie shaded her eyes and scanned the water for the black-and-white loons she’d often spotted in late afternoon, but none was in evidence. The sun sparkled gold against the intense blue. Another day in paradise…

  Paradise? Who am I kidding? And what the hell am I doing here?

  Well, she’d found the property, hadn’t she? Up on a visit last July to Sigrid Purvis, an old college friend who operated an outfitter’s business in White Iron-canoe rentals, sportsmen’s gear, guided trips to the Boundary Waters. The talk of the town that month had been about old Janice Mott dying and her estate finally putting Sunrise Lodge on the market. Friends of Sigrid’s had pretended interest in buying it, just to get a look at a local legend, so she and Maggie decided to take a tour, too.

  A tour that Maggie now regarded as her undoing.

  At the time, the property had seemed the ideal solution-to Cal’s failure to gain tenure and his growing boredom with his work at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where he was a professor in the English department. To the empty-nest feeling of their spacious home in St. Paul. To the staleness that had fallen upon their marriage. To her having to deal with clients, mostly housewives, who were too uninventive or uninvolved to decorate their own homes.

  Some solution. Now she was one of those housewives, who couldn’t even decide on what color to paint a beat-up, water-stained floor in a cabin that one of their two boys-both now in graduate school on the West Coast-might use fo
r a week or so every summer.

  But she was not only a housewife, Maggie reminded herself. She was a brush clearer. A de molition expert. A stringer of extension cords. A patcher of chinks between logs. A glazier of broken windows. She could prop up sagging structures. Remove debris from clogged crawl spaces. Empty the chemical toilet. Cook on a propane stove and wash dishes in a cold trickle of water from a five-gallon container.

  The house part she could deal with just fine. But the wife part…that was another story. She didn’t feel like a wife at all any more. The deterioration of her relationship with Cal had been gradual since they’d arrived here at Lost Wolf Lake in April. At first he’d seemed excited about their new life. Then he’d become remote and moody. And then, after he’d taken a bad fall through the rotted floor of one of the cabins, he’d barely spoken to her. Barely made eye contact with her. Barely touched her.

  And when he did…

  Maggie drained her beer and looked out at the center of the lake, where one of the loons had surfaced and was flapping its wings. So free, so joyous. Resembling nothing in her life. Nothing at all.

  Because when Cal speaks to me, or looks into my eyes, or accidentally touches me, there’s a coldness. A coldness that makes me feel as if he wishes I were dead.

  The ball game ended-ten to three, Twins-and Abel shut off the TV.

  Cal signaled for another Leinie, his third, and the bartender set it in front of him. It was warm in the tavern in spite of the air-conditioning. Cal brushed his thick shock of gray-brown hair off his forehead.

  Abel frowned. “Nasty cut you’ve got there.”

  Cal fingered it; the spot was scabbed and still tender. “Roof beam fell on me while I was taking down one of the cabins.”

  “You have it looked at?”

  “Not necessary. One of the staples at home is a first-aid kit.”

  “You must use it a lot.” Abel motioned to a burn mark on Cal’s right forearm. “Last week it was…what? Twisted ankle? And before that a big shoulder bruise.”

  “Accidents happen.”

  “You always been accident-prone?”

  “No, but I’ve never done this much physical labor before. Stuff around the house in St. Paul, that’s all.”

  “Told me you’d built a whole addition yourself.”

  “Well, yeah. But I was a lot younger and more fit then.”

  “What are you…forty-five? Fifty, tops?”

  “Forty-six.”

  “And you still look fit. I’d say you’re not keeping your mind on the job at hand. Everything OK out there?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Well, a man who’s got problems…say, financial or marital…can let his concentration slip.”

  Cal studied Abel Arneson. The man wasn’t a friend, not exactly, but he was the first resident of White Iron who’d welcomed Maggie and him, driving out to the lake with a cooler full of freshly caught walleye and two six-packs. He’d steered them to contractors-who had shown up, promised estimates, and someday might call. He’d arranged for the purchase of a used skiff and ten-horsepower Evinrude outboard motor, which were to be delivered this week, and he’d promised to go out with Cal and show him all the best fishing sites. He was the logical person for a worried man to confide in…

  Cal said: “To tell the truth, if anything, my concentration’s heightened.” He paused, sipped beer broodingly. “You see, all these injuries I’ve had…I don’t think they were accidental.”

  When the motorboat was about 100 yards away, Maggie recognized it as Sigrid Purvis’s. Sigrid waved, cut back on power, and the boat swung toward the dock-a little too fast, bumping its side and making the rotting timbers groan. As Maggie went to help Sigrid secure it, Howie ran down the rutted track from the lodge, barking until he recognized the visitor.

  Sigrid stepped out of the boat, grinning up at Maggie from under the bill of her Purvis Outfitters baseball cap. She was a tall, thin woman with a wild mane of blonde curls and a weathered face-one made for laughing.

  Howie bounded up to her, and she leaned down to pat him, the cap coming loose and nearly falling in the water. Sigrid snatched it up, then reached into the boat and pulled out a plastic sack.

  “Blueberries,” she said. “My crop’s so big I’m getting sick of them.”

  “Thanks! We could use some fruit. Our raspberries’re really tiny, and mainly the birds get them.”

  “Got a beer?”

  “Sure. Come on up.”

  When they were seated on folding chairs on the lodge’s sagging porch, Sigrid said: “Things better or worse with Cal?”

  “Worse. The coldness and the silences are really getting to me. And I’m getting vibes off him. Bad ones. Almost as if…”

  “As if?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Mags, this is Sig you’re talking to.”

  “…As if he wants to kill me.”

  “Cal?” Sigrid looked shocked. “That’s impossible.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course. Your imagination’s in overdrive, is all. Look, you’re living on a huge property miles from town. You’re both under stress, spending your savings like crazy and trying to get the place in shape before winter sets in. Everything’s overgrown, the ruined cabins are creepy, and most of this lodge, except for the front room, is uninhabitable. Cal was depressed at not making tenure to begin with, and now he probably feels this project is more than he can handle. No wonder he’s acting weird. And no wonder you’re reading all sorts of extreme things into his behavior.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  “Believe it. It’s better than believing he wants to harm you. Or that the place is cursed.”

  “Cursed?”

  “Oh, you know, the local legend. Janice Mott and her husband were having a hard time keeping the lodge going. Old customers dying off, newer ones finding the place too primitive. Then her husband died in a freak accident, and she abandoned the property and moved to that tiny house in town.”

  “Right. And she never returned here again…or allowed anyone else to set foot on the property. Who would, given that kind of tragedy?”

  Sigrid was silent for a moment, squinting through the trees at the sliver of lake. “But why not sell it?” she asked. “Why put up an electrified fence and hire a private guard service to patrol it every day? Why, at fifty-five, retreat to that little house in town and never again have contact with anyone, except for random encounters at the grocery and drugstores?”

  “The husband’s death made her a little crazy?”

  “A whole lot crazy, to live in near poverty, paying out all that money to a guard service, while holding on to a prime property like this. And to let it deteriorate the way she did…”

  “Maybe I’m beginning to understand her brand of craziness.”

  Sigrid shook her head. “No, you’re not. You’ve just hit one of those temporary bumps in the road of life. But Janice Mott…It makes you wonder if there’s something on this property she didn’t want anyone to find.”

  Abel shook his head. “Professor, if what you say is true, you’re in big trouble. But why on earth would Maggie want to kill you?”

  “Well, there’s a substantial life insurance policy. And our marriage has been pretty much dead for a long time.”

  “Still, murder…Besides, how would she know to rig those accidents?”

  “She worked around contractors in the Twin Cities, knows more than the average person about construction. Easy for her to weaken a floor joist or roof beam, or to cause an electrical fire.”

  “I just don’t buy it.”

  “I didn’t want to believe it, either. But as I told you, each time I’ve found something that indicated the accident was rigged.”

  “Wouldn’t she be able to hide the evidence?”

  “Some things you can’t hide.”

  “I don’t know, Professor.”

  Time to go. Cal stood. “Whether you believe it or not, I want you to remember thi
s conversation. If anything happens to me, repeat it to the police.”

  On his way out of town, Cal adhered to the speed limit. The local law was strict on speeding, stricter yet on drinking and driving. He didn’t want to call attention to himself, not that way.

  After Sigrid left to motor back across the lake, Maggie decided to begin clearing out one of the bedrooms. Cal had insisted they make outdoor work and the cabins their priority before it grew cold, and reserve interior work on the lodge for the long snowy winter. But under the circumstances, there was no way she could endure even part of those months living in the single front room; the more space she freed up now, the better she’d survive till springtime.

  The bedroom she’d chosen was on the first floor, behind the dining room and kitchen-most likely the former own ers’ living space, as it connected to another room with a stone fireplace. Both spaces were crammed with heavy dark-wood furniture, probably dating from the late 1940s. The curtains, the rugs, the upholstery, and the mattress had been ravaged by mice and mildew. In the closet, clothing hung in such tatters that it was unrecognizable. The walls were moldy and water-stained, the floorboards buckled.

  It’s more than I can contend with. Nonsense. Look what you’ve contended with already.

  She began with the bedroom, heaving the mattress from the bed and dragging it through the kitchen-outdated appliances, restaurant-style crockery on sagging shelves, rusting pots and pans on a rack over the stove-and out a side door. The rag rugs and curtains and what remained of the clothing went next. She’d build a pile and hire a hauler who posted on the bulletin board in the supermarket to take it away.

  Inside, she looked over the furniture. The bed frame and springs were good; add a new mattress, and it would be a huge step up from the futon in the front room. The bureau’s attached mirror had lost much of its silvering; Maggie looked into it, saw herself reflected patchily. In an odd way, she liked the image; she looked the way she felt.

  Other than the mirror, the bureau was a fine old piece, and she was sure mice hadn’t been able to penetrate its drawers. She began exploring them. The top one on the right was stuck tightly, and it took a few tugs to open it. Inside were a man’s possessions: handkerchiefs, a pocket watch, a scattering of miscellaneous cuff links, a ring with a large blue stone, a wallet in its original box, obviously a gift that hadn’t been used. The drawer on the left was empty.