Page 2 of God’s Country

Age sixty is in my rearview mirror now, but when I was a much younger man, I ran the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, twice. I wasn’t among the front runners, but I finished in the middle of the pack. I still run fairly regularly and bike and canoe and play basketball with a bunch of guys like me. We call ourselves the Old Martyrs. So I think of myself as being in pretty fair shape, and I told my daughter this.

“You didn’t answer my question. When was your last checkup?”

“I don’t remember. A year ago, maybe.”

“You saw a doctor when you got beat up at Sam’s Place last fall,” Rainy said.

I’m a private investigator and I was working on a murder case, actually a cold case that I’d first investigated when I was sheriff of Tamarack County twenty-five years earlier. I’d ruffled feathers during that second investigation and got bruised ribs and a slight concussion for my efforts. I’d been seen in the emergency room and sent home with ibuprofen.

“I’m sure he didn’t check your heart very carefully,” Rainy added. “He was more interested in your head.”

“Which is pretty hard,” I reminded her, giving my noggin a little thump with my knuckles. “No lasting ill effects.”

“You’re about to head into the Boundary Waters for several days. No clinics around the corner there,” Rainy said. “Please, see a doctor.”

“See a doctor,” Jenny said.

I glanced at Daniel, who gave a shrug, signaling defeat. “See a doctor,” he said.

CHAPTER 2

We were nearing Memorial Day, and a large family gathering had been planned. My son, Stephen, and his wife, Belle, were coming up from St. Paul. My sister-in-law, Rose Thorne; her husband, Mal; and their son, Luke, were coming from Evanston, Illinois. We try to get together a few times each year, and Memorial Day is usually one of those times. It’s an opportunity to visit the graves of those we’ve loved but have lost, to place flowers there, and to share memories. The stories we tell are poignant, sometimes quite funny, and though we’ve heard them many times, they still have the power to bring back among us a sense of those beloved spirits. It’s a tradition I’ve always valued.

That year, as part of our gathering, the men of the families were planning a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and the boys would go along. Luke was a little younger than Waaboo. This was to be his first time in the great wilderness. Mal had told us over the phone how excited Luke was. I was pretty stoked myself. I love the Boundary Waters and have always found that time spent there is a soul-cleansing experience. A Boundary Waters trip creates a memory for a lifetime, especially if it’s your first visit. I know how sexist this sounds, but I was pleased at the prospect of an all-male excursion, an opportunity to guide our boys into an early understanding of how to navigate successfully that kind of adventure, with all its challenges. The wilderness can be a dangerous place for the ill-prepared. Waaboo had been there on several trips. He’d already been initiated, was beginning to feel comfortable with the hardships. I hoped that Luke would end up feeling the same way.

They arrived in the late afternoon and we greeted them warmly, hugs all around. Waaboo and Luke went immediately to Waaboo’s room, which they always shared during a visit. The two boys got on well. By then, Waaboo had put his nightmare behind him. He’s pretty resilient that way.

“Good trip?” I asked.

“The roads were busy,” Mal said. “Holiday traffic.”

Jenny said, “I love that top, Aunt Rose. Tie-dyed.”

“One of the women who used to live at the shelter has started her own business. I thought I’d help. And it is fun, isn’t it?” she said, looking down at herself.

For many years, during my marriage to my first wife, Jo, Rose had lived with us in the house on Gooseberry Lane. Rose and Jo were sisters, and when our kids were young and Rose still single, she helped us to manage raising the family while Jo continued her law practice and I was a deputy and then sheriff of Tamarack County. She lived in our attic, which I’d made over into a large bedroom. In those days, Rose was a plain woman in appearance, with no prospects of marriage. She was, and still is, a devout Catholic. While she lived with us, she often considered the idea that when her help was no longer needed in the O’Connor house, she would enter a religious order. Rose has a huge heart and a fine mind and, in those days, a love of bodice-ripper books. When Mal Thorne came into her life, everything changed, including how she saw herself. It was like something out of those romance novels she read so voraciously. Love remade Rose. In her own mind, and in the eyes of those who cared about her, she became beautiful.

Mal, for a while, was our priest at St. Agnes in Aurora. He was a man already weakening in his embrace of the dictates of the Church, a man on the verge of becoming a cliché, a priest with too many doubts and too great a taste for liquor. In the strange way of the Creator, whose ultimate purpose is always beyond our ability to understand completely, Mal and Rose were brought together by a madman, a killer. That brush with death opened the door for both of them to see their futures differently and for their paths to merge. After Mal left the priesthood and married Rose, they moved to Evanston, where together they took over the running of a shelter for battered women and their children. They were two of the kindest people I knew.

We were settling down on the front porch in wicker chairs, with tumblers of sun tea Rainy had made, when Stephen and Belle arrived. My son had just finished his second year of law school. His wife, Belle, who is Ojibwe, was already an attorney, working in the area of Indigenous rights. They popped up to Aurora whenever they could, which in my opinion wasn’t often enough. But children grow up and have their own lives, right? The warm greetings we’d exchanged on the arrival of Rose and Mal were repeated. Stephen carted luggage into the downstairs office, where I’d put a futon for him and Belle to sleep on whenever the whole clan gathered. It was a little cramped, but they never complained. Rainy offered them both sun tea, and they joined us, taking the porch swing, whose chains squeaked a little as they rocked back and forth.

The sun was dropping in the western sky, which was as pure blue as a sapphire. We sat half in shade and half in sunlight, catching up. To my thinking, there’s nothing better than a gathering of family, especially if the love runs deep, and in ours it does. But I noticed Stephen casting furtive glances my way, and whenever he did, he looked worried.

Finally I said, “Is something wrong, Stephen?”

He hesitated. Then Belle said, “You need to tell him.”

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“We’ll talk later, Dad.”

“Something you can’t share with everyone?”

“Tell him, Stephen,” Belle said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Tell me.”

Stephen took a deep breath. “I saw something.”