The Ravens (16 page)

INGA
HAD
AWAKENED
from a dream in which Oscar was sitting at the kitchen table in their house on Fifth Avenue. Behind him, outside the window, she could see a snowbank with the sun shining on it. The light had an April-like glow in her dream. But what she remembered most were his eyes, which were a uniform gray except for the big black pupils. That’s not my husband, she had thought as she stood next to the kitchen counter. “I’ve always had eyes like this,” said Oscar, and the second he said that, she knew it was true. She’d just never noticed before.

Now she was trying to figure out where she was. That was not Duluth out there—that much she knew for sure. Duluth never felt this dark. She didn’t know what she would encounter if she got out of bed. She might bump into something and hurt herself. For a moment she considered stretching out her hand to find out if there was a night table and lamp close by, but she decided not to, afraid of what she might touch in the dark. All right then. She’d just have to lie here until she discovered where she was. What if she simply fell asleep again? Maybe everything would be clear when she woke up. If so, how would she recall this first awakening? As a dream? And the dream about Oscar as a dream within a dream? Oscar. This probably had something to do with him; it usually did. Then she figured it out. She was staying with Aunt Edna! That’s why it was so dark. In Yellow Medicine County the night was as black as the inside of a sack. The vast
prairie darkness was what she sensed outside. She’d gone to visit Aunt Edna again. Her childless aunt was asleep in the next room, and outdoors the wash had been hung up to dry on the clothesline stretched between the cherry tree and the rusty hook on the wall of the outbuilding. Their underwear were dancing out there in the night breeze. Inga had to smile at the thought. Yet she realized that it was wrong to run off like this, leaving her husband and children behind. She had done it only a few times before, but that was still too often. She needed to stop leaving them in the lurch. When Oscar was in a certain mood, he couldn’t help what he said or did. That was just the way he was, but those episodes didn’t last long. Soon everything else inside him would take over, all the good that she loved so much to be near. Just the thought of how he smelled under the bedcovers in the dark, that masculine smell, oh . . . For a moment she felt dizzy, really dizzy, and that hadn’t happened to her in years. Why couldn’t she just stay with him like an obedient wife? That’s what she wanted. But now everything would be different. She would go back home at once and endure whatever the consequences might be. A great sense of happiness flooded over her. Eagerly she reached out her hand, found the lamp on the nightstand, and switched it on. But what was this place—with the knitting on the table and the checked curtains? This was certainly not Aunt Edna’s guest room. Where was she?

LANCE
FUMBLED
FOR
THE
CLOCK
on the nightstand and turned it around so he could read the red numbers. It was 3:18. What had awakened him? It wasn’t because he had to pee. As he was about to turn over to go back to sleep, he realized what it was. He’d left the bedroom door ajar, as he always did to keep the room from getting too stuffy, and through the crack in the door he saw faint flashes of light on the floor. It looked like the flickering light from a television screen. This wasn’t the first time that he’d forgotten to turn off the TV before going to bed.

He was already sitting up and moving his bare feet around on the floor to locate his slippers when it occurred to him that he hadn’t watched any TV programs that night. He’d driven to Minneapolis, and when he came home, he’d gone straight to bed and fallen asleep instantly. The TV must have turned on by itself, he thought, still only half awake. At last he found his slippers and stuck his feet into them. He stood up and went over to the door. There he paused for a moment to listen, with his hand on the doorknob. Without making a sound, he opened the door and stepped out into the hall, where irregular streaks of light were illuminating the floor and the small table under the mirror. Even as he took the last few steps over to the living room doorway, he knew that something was wrong. And when he caught sight of Andy sitting in the easy chair, he realized that the gun was no longer on the hall table where he’d left it when he came home.

“Tammy loves this show,” said Andy with a slight nod at the TV.

It was
The Price Is Right.

“Come in and have a seat,” he went on.

“How did . . . ,” Lance began.

Andy raised the gun and pointed it at his brother’s knees.

“Sit down,” he said.

Lance’s legs were shaking as he went over to the sofa and sat down. On the other side of the coffee table sat Andy, wearing a big down jacket and a cap with earflaps.

“That’s my service weapon,” said Lance cautiously.

“Not anymore,” said his brother. “It’s mine now.”

There was a strange metallic ring to his voice that Lance had never heard before. Had he taken some sort of medicine?

“You’re not thinking of shooting me, are you?”

“Of course not.” Andy laughed quietly. He didn’t sound like himself.

Then he raised the gun and pointed it at his own temple.

“No,” gasped Lance.

His brother lowered the gun and laughed.

“So you do care, after all?”

“Could you at least turn off . . .” He motioned toward the TV, where a huge set of dinnerware had just been rolled onto the stage.

“No. Tammy loves this show,” said Andy harshly. “And we can’t ruin what Tammy loves, now can we?”

Lance didn’t dare say a word.

“Now can we?” Andy repeated in that cold, metallic voice.

“No,” Lance whispered.

“Speak up so I can hear you.”

“No, we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t ruin what Tammy loves.”

“By the way, thanks for leaving the gun out like that. Originally I thought we’d just have a little chat.”

“We can still do that,” ventured Lance.

“Sure, but a loaded gun definitely changes the terms. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

“You shot at me at close range,” snarled Andy.

“The rifle went off accidentally,” said Lance, even though he knew that his brother would never believe him.

“I saw you standing there and taking aim at me only a few minutes earlier, down by the cross,” said Andy. “I could tell that I was in real danger, so I got out of there fast. My own brother was aiming at me with a hunting rifle.”

“I was just looking at you.”

Andy laughed.

“Aiming at me like I was a fucking deer. That’s what you were doing. But now the tables are turned. Now it’s your turn to be scared.”

On the TV the contestants were guessing the price of the dinnerware. Whoever got closest to the actual price would get to take the dishes home.

“What a mess you’ve made of things,” said Andy. “Just because you always have to stick your nose in other people’s business. Is it really true that you talked to Clayton Miller?”

Lance nodded.

“How’s he doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“The Professor.” Andy snorted with contempt.

“Uh-huh.”

“So he told you about . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose you think it’s a fucking big deal. Right?” said Andy. “That it’s like night and day. But it’s not like that at all. It’s possible to forget all about it. It’s that simple.”

“But when you met those two Norwegians, then you remembered it again?”

“Norwegians?”

“I know that you met them at Our Place over in Finland. That you spent several hours with them.”

“Oh, those two. Nice guys. Real nice. It’s terrible what happened,” said Andy.

“Where exactly is your baseball bat?”

Andy moved so quickly that Lance didn’t even have time to raise his arms before he was pinned against the sofa. Andy recklessly shoved the barrel of the gun in his brother’s mouth and
halfway down his throat. The only thing Lance could hear was the gurgling sound he was making, a sound that filled his head. The gag reflex made his throat muscles tighten painfully around the cold steel, as if it might be possible for him to swallow the gun whole. Above him he saw Andy wearing the cap with the earflaps. In spite of the tears pouring out of his eyes, Lance could see that his brother’s face was terribly contorted. Desperately he kicked his legs to show that he was about to suffocate. At the same time, he expected the gun to go off at any moment.

“I’m the one holding the gun now,” snarled Andy.

Lance tried to nod, but he couldn’t manage it with the gun stuck in his mouth.

“And I’m the one asking the questions now. Understand?”

Lance felt a terrible, searing pain from the sight bead as Andy yanked the gun out of his mouth as brutally as he’d it shoved in. But the next second it was pressed between his eyes, the muzzle wet against his skin.

“Understand?”

Lance tried to answer, but only a whistling sound came out. Instead he nodded as best he could. Andy removed the gun, and Lance toppled over onto the sofa with his hands clutching his throat. He tentatively released a little saliva that fell from his lips onto the sleeve of his pajamas. It was red with blood. He couldn’t swallow. His throat felt like it was swelling up inside.

“Sit up,” Andy commanded.

Lance managed to push himself into a sitting position. Andy was already back in the easy chair. In the faint light from the TV screen the earflaps on his cap made him look like a cartoon dog.

“So I’m the one asking the questions here,” said Andy. “And by the way, you need to do something about the window to the laundry room in the basement. The wood is rotted all around the edges. All it takes is a knife to pop open the latches.”

Lance started to cry, not because of the pain in his throat but because the two of them had ended up like this.

“Are you blubbering?” said Andy scornfully.

“What do you want?” Lance managed to say, tears running down his face.

“I want my dignity back.”

Andy said the word with a surprised expression, as if he wasn’t quite sure he’d actually spoken that word.

“I want to go to my grave with my head held high,” he went on. “But if you can’t keep your mouth shut, they’re going to laugh at me.” He rubbed his forehead with the muzzle of the gun. “And I can’t let that happen.”

Since Lance could no longer swallow, a mixture of blood and saliva was spilling out of his mouth, and he couldn’t say a word. All he could do was sit there, huddled up on the sofa, and drool.

“I’m going to tell you one thing, Lance. You’re probably the dumbest person I’ve ever met in my life. A blind buffalo racing across the prairie, that’s what you are. And I pity whoever gets in your way.”

Andy cast a glance at the TV. A curtain had just been pulled aside to reveal a shiny new car. In unison, the contestants on
The Price Is Right
covered their mouths with their hands. Lance thought about all the times his brother must have watched this show with Tammy.

“If you . . .” Andy waved the gun back and forth, like an admonishing index finger. “If anyone finds out that . . . Then I won’t have any dignity left. I want you to tell me how much you think my dignity is worth.”

On the TV show the contestants were thinking hard about what the price of the new car could be. The program had reached its dramatic highpoint.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?”

Lance realized his brother was serious, but he had no idea what the question meant. Andy raised the gun, holding his arm out straight and aiming at Lance’s face.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he repeated. “How much do you think my dignity is worth? If you give the wrong answer, I’ll shoot you. Or me.”

Once again he pressed the gun to his own temple.

“Understand now?”

Lance had no choice but to nod.

“So, how much is my dignity worth?” Andy repeated with the gun pressed to his own head.

Lance desperately tried to think. He looked at the TV screen,
as if he might find the answer there, but of course
The Price Is Right
had gone to commercial before the final price was revealed.

“You have to answer,” said Andy calmly, with that eerie ring to his voice. “You have to answer now, and you only get one try.”

Lance first released a big clot of blood.

“The same as the dignity of Georg Lofthus,” he then whispered.

Andy’s expression didn’t change. He merely sat there with the pistol pressed to his head, but Lance could tell that he was considering what he’d said.

“I’m going to have to accept that answer,” he said at last and lowered the gun. “Lofthus. He was the guy who . . . right? I knew at once that they were . . . If only everything could be as good as that, I thought. As good as those two traveling together.”

Lance was curled up on the sofa, sobbing. When he glanced up he saw that Andy was on his feet. He was still holding the gun.

“You know nothing about love,” he said.

“My gun,” whispered Lance.

“Or about pain.” Andy practically spat out the last word.

“My service weapon.”

“I’m taking it with me. You’re not a real policeman, anyway.”

Andy quickly strode out of the room, earflaps swaying. Lance didn’t move until he heard the front door open and then close quietly, as if his brother was afraid of waking someone. Lance instantly got up, but his legs failed him, and he fell to the floor with a crash. As he lay there, he realized that he hadn’t yet heard the sound of a car engine. He managed to crawl over to the window and pull open the heavy curtains, but it was so dark outside that he couldn’t see a thing. Where was Andy? He wasn’t even sure that he’d left the house. He could have opened and shut the door and then sneaked down to the basement. Or into the bathroom. Or the bedroom. Then a pair of headlights came on down by the hardware store. Of course he’d parked down there. The car headed out along the highway and turned south. Lance kept his eyes fixed on the car lights until they disappeared.

DEBBIE
AHONEN
looked up from her magazine and smiled.

“You’re back,” she said.

Lance went over to the counter, but when he opened his mouth to say hi, only a hoarse sound came out. He’d realized that the pain and swelling in his throat might make it hard for him to talk, but he’d got in the car to drive to Finland all the same. Again he opened his mouth and tried to say something, with no better results.

“Got a cold?” asked Debbie.

At first Lance shook his head, but then he nodded.

“You should get some cough drops,” she said, reaching for a little box. But he waved his hand to stop her.

“So, what can I get you?”

He couldn’t very well say that what he wanted was her, even though that was the truth. Then she’d just reject him again. But since he had no voice, he couldn’t say it anyway. Not wanting to just stand there like an idiot, he picked up a few Dove chocolates and placed them on the counter.

“Is that all?” she asked.

Lance nodded. She was about to ring up his purchase, but then she seemed to change her mind. She moved the chocolates aside and glanced up at him.

“You look worn out. Shall we go into the back room and sit down for a minute?”

He nodded again, and when Debbie got up and walked through the store, he followed. The cramped back room looked the same as before. Once again the sight of the Yahtzee score card and the pen made him wonder if she passed the time by playing Yahtzee on her own.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” he whispered, putting his hand to his throat in explanation.

Debbie poured a cup for herself.

“To be honest, you really look shitty. Is it anything serious?”

“No, no. Just my throat,” he managed to squeak.

She glanced at her watch, which prompted Lance to look at his own. It was only nine thirty.

“Do you know why women like silent men?” she asked.

“No, why?” he whispered.

“Because they don’t keep getting interrupted.”

He smiled politely.

“Are you working?” asked Debbie. “If you are, you should take off a day or two until your sore throat is better.”

Lance grabbed the Yahtzee card and pen.

I’m on vacation,
he wrote, shoving the pad across the table to her.

“On vacation?” said Debbie, in disbelief.

Lance grabbed the pad and pen again.

Yes,
he wrote, and handed her the pad.

She laughed that special laugh of hers, which was equally cold and sweet. Lance wasn’t sure why she was laughing. Maybe because he was on vacation in this miserable condition, or maybe because he’d taken the trouble to write yes on the pad of paper instead of simply nodding. He’d once seen someone do the same thing on TV, and it had seemed really funny.

The only window in the small room faced the inside of the store. Now the front door opened and a man came in. Lance recognized Richie Akkola.

“Excuse me,” said Debbie, jumping up.

Lance stayed where he was, watching the couple out of the corner of his eye. She went behind the counter and leaned forward. Akkola was wearing a big brown jacket that looked even
older than he was, and a dark blue cap pulled well down over his ears. So this was the man who had finally won Debbie. He was apparently helping out by taking care of her eighty-year-old mother. Helping financially, thought Lance. And in return, Debbie had agreed to live with him? No, that couldn’t be right. But how else to explain their relationship? She couldn’t possibly be interested in that scarecrow of a man! Now she was smiling and laughing at something Akkola had said. It was true that Richie was considerably older than Debbie, who was probably about forty-five now, but he hadn’t yet reached seventy, and there was something lively and self-confident about the way he moved. Lance had pictured himself playing the role of the knight in Debbie’s life, rescuing her from that old geezer, but now he started to wonder whether she really needed to be rescued at all.

After a few minutes Akkola left, without casting a single glance at the man sitting at the window in the back room.

“So,” said Debbie as she came in.

Richie Akkola?
wrote Lance on the Yahtzee score card and then held it up.

“Yeah, that was Richie. Do you know each other?”

He shook his head. Debbie gave him a long look, as if wondering why he’d asked. Then she sat down and lit a cigarette. Lance started to sweat, not because of the smoke, which tore at his injured throat, but because he couldn’t think of any reason to keep her sitting here when she was supposed to be working. An awkward silence settled over them, until Debbie abruptly stubbed out her cigarette.

“Well, I guess I’d better . . . ,” she began.

Lance stood up and followed her into the store. She went behind the counter and gathered up the heart-shaped chocolates he’d placed there before they retreated to the back room. She rang up the price, and Lance paid for them.

“Always Dove,” she murmured as she stuffed the chocolates into a paper bag.

She handed it to Lance, and he was about to leave when he saw that Debbie had thought of something.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “There was something I wanted to show you. Something I found the other day.”

She hurried over to the front door to lock it.

“It won’t matter,” she explained. “There are practically no customers anyway. Only right after they get off work.”

Lance followed her down the aisle and over to the door labeled “Stock Room.” The air inside was cool, and the shelves on the walls were filled with inventory.

“Come on,” she said, motioning him forward.

They went through the storeroom to a door at the other end. When Debbie opened it, a gust of clammy air smelling of brick wafted toward Lance. It reminded him of his childhood, although he couldn’t place what the smell came from. It was just one of those familiar smells. When Debbie switched on the light, he saw that they were standing at the top of a steep flight of stairs.

“Be careful,” she warned him as she started down.

Lance followed, and soon he could see that they were in the store’s junk room. Stowed down here were all those old and unneeded things that they somehow couldn’t bring themselves to discard. The hoarding process had undoubtedly been going on for decades. Old lawn mowers, rubber boots, balance scales, snowshoes, several old chainsaws, traps for foxes or wolves, newspapers and magazines stacked so high they nearly reached the ceiling, rows of brown medicine bottles, fridges and stoves, umbrellas, hats, fishing rods, patio furniture, snow shovels, a big poster of President Eisenhower, boxing gloves, electric boot warmers, a couple of vacuum cleaners, ear protectors, hockey sticks, ski equipment, empty milk bottles, a stuffed beaver, one of those long crosscut saws that loggers used before chainsaws, a pinball machine, and much more.

“We could open a junk store with all this,” said Debbie.

The room was big and lit only by a bare bulb in the ceiling. A cloud of frost issued from her mouth when she spoke.

“Do you remember these?”

She held up a pair of wraparound sunglasses. The kind that was popular back in the eighties. But it was only when she put them on that it occurred to Lance she’d worn a pair like them during the summer they’d spent together. Good Lord, it was only one brief summer. And now, more than twenty years later, they were standing here in the ice-cold basement of the Finland
General Store, and she was wearing those very same sunglasses again.

“Uh-huh,” he whispered.

Debbie smiled as she played with the glasses, sliding them up and down her nose, one moment peering at Lance over the rims, and the next hiding behind the dark lenses.

Lance recalled how almost all the guys wanted to date her back then, but he was the one she’d chosen. Okay, maybe it was only for a summer, but that was still more than the others had been granted. The man he was now could never have managed something like that, could never have won a woman whom all the other men wanted; it was unthinkable. Yet a young man named Lance Hansen had accomplished just that more than twenty years ago, if only for a brief period in the summer. That young man must still be somewhere inside me, thought Lance. Part of the young man, at least.

“But there was something else I actually wanted to show you,” said Debbie, putting away the sunglasses.

She squatted down and rummaged through several stacks of newspapers and magazines before she stood up holding an old issue of the
Cook County News Herald.
She leafed through it for a moment and then found what she was looking for.

“Here,” she said and handed him the paper open to an article.

It took Lance several seconds to realize what he was looking at. The headline read:
“Eighteen-year-old from Duluth Appointed New Chairman of the Cook County Historical Society.”
Underneath was a photograph of the new chairman. Lance knew that the picture had been taken outside his family’s house on Fifth Avenue in Duluth. He had a big smile on his face as he looked at the camera, and even though the old, moldy newspaper had been lying down here for close to thirty years, Lance could still see how young he looked.

He read the short article:

For a short time he had actually contemplated becoming a historian, simply because he’d been chosen chairman of the pathetic little historical society in Cook County. Fortunately he’d come to his senses and become a police officer instead.

“When I saw that, I was totally . . .” All of a sudden Debbie sounded on the verge of tears.

Lance continued to stare at the article. From the yellowing page of the newspaper his own young face stared back across the gap of thirty years that had passed since the photo was taken, and been forgotten. He vaguely recalled seeing the article when it first appeared. No doubt he’d kept a copy for a while, but eventually it probably hadn’t seemed so impressive, since it was merely a brief article in a local paper, and he’d thrown it out.

“That was how you looked when we were together,” said Debbie.

“But this was taken seven years earlier,” whispered Lance hoarsely.

“That’s still just how you looked.”

He glanced up at her and then back at the article before resolutely folding up the newspaper.

“Take it with you,” she said.

Neither of them said another word as they stood there, feeling somehow at a loss, in that big cold basement room. Every time Debbie exhaled, a little cloud of frosty vapor issued from her lips. He had a strange thought that it was her soul trying to escape, but each time she sucked it back in. Thousands of days and nights had passed since they were together, and there was no more time to lose. Lance always had a pen in his breast pocket, but did he have any paper? The paper bag would have to do. He
emptied the chocolates into his jacket pocket and then proceeded to write on the stiff white paper, using the old newspaper as a pad underneath. It took a while because the paper had a waxy surface, and he had to go over each letter several times so it could be clearly read, but he finally had a legible sentence.
You are more beautiful than anything else in Minnesota.
His heart felt as if it had stopped beating as he handed the piece of paper to Debbie.

She read what he’d written, then closed her eyes for several seconds. When she opened them again, Lance could have sworn that she looked exactly as she had twenty years ago.

“Oh, Lance,” she said.

He took a step toward her, but before he could do or say anything, she turned on her heel and headed toward the stairs. He hurried after her, carrying the folded newspaper in his hand. At the top of the stairs she had to stop and wait for him so she could lock the door to the basement after him. They didn’t look at each other as he climbed the stairs to join her. After locking the door, she immediately strode with great purpose through the storeroom and into the store itself. There she took her usual place behind the counter and went back to paging through a magazine. Lance went over to the counter. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he went over to stand in front of her.

Debbie raised her eyes from the magazine and looked up at him.

“Don’t you realize that you and I are yesterday’s news?” she said, nodding at the paper that Lance was holding.

“No,” he whispered in his ruined voice. “You and I—we’re like the ravens. They manage to make it through the whole winter up here. The two of us can make it through anything.”

Debbie gave him a smile that seemed older than the rest of her. He could see all of her wrecked marriage in that smile, all the years she’d spent in California and the defeat it must have been to come back here.

“We’re not ravens,” she said. “We’re the carcasses they peck at along the road.”