Cold (48 page)

Liesl came over and Norman raised his good arm and touched Lorraine’s face.
 
She was trying to stop crying.
 
“It’s all right now,” he whispered.
 
“We’ll get you somewhere warm.”

Del took the girl from Liesl and slung her up onto his back.
   

“How far is it to the lodge?” Liesl asked.

“It’s not far if we go over that hill,” Del said.
 
“Warren crossed it in snowshoes and I followed so there’s a good path now.
 
We should be able to make it.”

“He’s right,” Norman said.
 
“It’ shorter than walking way around the hill.”

“You’re sure?”
 
She looked at Norman, giving him the briefest smile.
 
“Just one hill?”

“Yep,” Norman said.
 
“Just one hill.”

They left the sawmill and leaned into the wind coming out of the north.
 
Walking single file Liesl led Norman up the wooded hillside, while Del followed.
 
He was tired but his legs kept moving.
 
The child buried her face in the thick fur of his coat collar, and he could tell as her arms and legs went slack that she had finally given in to her own exhaustion.

When they reached the crest of the hill Del stopped and looked back down toward the sawmill, but it was barely visible through the snow as though it were only an illusion.
 
He had never known such complete fatigue and he was hungry.
 
But there was also a cleansing sense of relief and the feeling that he was leaving things behind, not just his coat but things that had not really been his for a long time.
 
He couldn’t name them right now.
 
The naming of things could wait.
 
He began walking again, and ahead he watched Liesl and Norman descend through a stand of birch, disappearing into the white.

Epilogue

During the course of three warm days in late April, the snow retreated from Liesl’s yard, exposing soggy brown grass.
 
Still, it snowed intermittently through the first half of May, and out in the woods patches of snow remained on the northern slopes until Memorial Day.
 
In her constant search for firewood she and Lorraine often encountered dead carcasses.
 
Usually it was a deer but there was also raccoon, porcupine and one coyote.
 
Lorraine was fascinated by these discoveries and, though Liesl cautioned her against touching them, she was allowed to inspect the remains at close range.
 
The young robins they found nesting in the woodpile behind the shed seemed an antidote to the winterkill.

The child was unimpressed by the brief flurry of media attention that had hovered around her when Liesl first brought her home.
 
The phone calls from reporters became a nuisance and for several weeks Liesl seldom answered her phone.
 
The judge who reviewed Norman’s case had determined that he would be returned to prison in Marquette, but he received a reduced sentence and would be eligible for parole in nine months.
 
Norman’s elbow healed slowly and he would never regain full articulation of his left arm.
 
He had agreed to let his daughter stay with Liesl until he was released, and they made regular visits to him in Marquette Prison.
 

Early one morning a young woman came up the drive in a white sedan with a rental sticker on the bumper.
 
Lorraine was at the kitchen table eating oatmeal.
 
Liesl went out through the shed and something about her demeanor must have told the young woman that she had better keep her distance.
 
Other reporters said they mostly wanted photographs of a smiling child, but this feature writer from the
Chicago Tribune
started asking questions.
 
Liesl’s first impulse was to get Harold’s carbine and present her with one feasible option, but Francine d’Orr was the first reporter to offer evidence that she had done any research.
 
She knew that Liesl had lost her husband and daughter in a blizzard five years earlier and she wanted to know how it felt to have a child in the house again.
 
Liesl suddenly found herself inviting Francine d’Orr inside for breakfast.
 
They talked at the kitchen table for over two hours.
 
The feature article in the Sunday edition of the
Tribune
was done well enough that reporters no longer bothered Liesl.
 
She clipped the piece out of the paper, believing that Lorraine would one day want to read about it because she would only be able to vaguely recall her stay with the woman in the woods.

Del came by regularly in the evenings.
 
When he couldn’t he would call.
 
Monty’s recovery was slow and it meant that Del had more work than he could handle, and without Monty in the station he didn’t find the work very interesting.
 
The town council dragged its feet over the issue of hiring a temporary replacement, and then it became what Del called a bad case of small town politics.
 
First, complications arose over insurance coverage of Monty’s medical bills, and then the council balked at paying for repairs to Del’s Land Cruiser.
 
The gist of their argument was that both Monty’s injuries and the damage to Del’s vehicle had taken place outside of their jurisdiction; therefore, they had not occurred while either officer was on duty.
 
The council also thought it was time to invest in a real police cruiser, an idea championed by the councilman who owned a car dealership outside Negaunee.

The evening of June 21, the summer solstice, the repainted Land Cruiser rumbled up the hill.
 
Forest green with a white roof and four new over-sized tires, it looked splendid.
 
Liesl and Lorraine had been weeding in the garden alongside the drive.
 
She helped Lorraine onto Del’s lap so she could pretend to drive.
 
The interior of the vehicle seemed different; there were new leather seats, but something was missing.

“Your radio unit,” Liesl said.
 
“They removed it.”

“I gave it back.”

She looked at him and he nodded.

“You quit?”

“I resigned.
 
Monty’s constable and he gets a brand new cruiser.
 
Everybody’s happy.”

“Including you?”

“I have so much comp time saved up that I’ll get paid through the summer.”

“Then what?”

“Then comes fall and usually after that winter.”

“You look relieved.”

“It’ll sink in eventually and then we’ll see.
 
It seemed I spent most of my days in that station feeling the cold and waiting—waiting for something to happen.
 
A call, some complaint.
 
Law enforcement is mainly a deterrent.
 
I’m tired of being a deterrent.
 
And I don’t want to wait any longer.
 
I want to—”
 
He stopped and said, “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

“You’re doing fine,” Liesl said.

“All I know is that right now it’s okay.
 
You might say I’m even happy, though I’ve always thought the concept overrated.”
 
He picked up a plastic bag off the passenger seat.
 
“So let’s celebrate.”

Lorraine looked in the bag.
 
“Ice
cream!
 
Vanilla?”

“Not just vanilla, French Vanilla,” Del said.

This exotic detail had the desired effect on the girl and she turned her big eyes on Liesl to make sure that this was indeed as good as she suspected.
 
When Liesl nodded, Lorraine clapped her hands, which lately had been her response to anything that she thought beneficial, desirable or just plain fun.

They went into the kitchen and while Liesl doled out ice cream into three bowls, Del told her the rest.
 
“I got a couple of estimates on my house and property.
 
The mortgage is nearly paid off and I figure I could come out of it with enough money to go—”
 
He hesitated.
 
“To go to the next best thing, to quote an old Warren Zevon song.”

She handed one of the bowls of ice cream to Lorraine.
 
“Let’s sit by the garden.”

The child led them outside and they sat in the faded canvas lawn chairs behind the shed.
 
The air smelled of moist topsoil.

“What is the next best thing?” Liesl asked.
 
“Or perhaps I should ask, where is it?”

“With the right sailboat, it could be the seven seas.”
 
Del kept his eyes on his bowl as he carefully cut away a mound of ice cream.
 
“Just kidding.”
 
He stuck the spoon in his mouth and slowly pulled it out, leaving a small smooth lump.
 
He put the spoon back in his mouth and as if by magic the lump disappeared.
 
“Over the past few weeks I’ve been in touch with people over in North Eicher.
 
One thing about this job I won’t miss is all the forms you have to deal with.
 
I learned that Pronovost changed his will last fall and he left everything to relatives in Quebec and they want to liquidate his real estate.”
 
He became occupied with his bowl, digging around as though he were looking for something.

“The lodge?” she asked.
 
“You want to buy the lodge?”

He nodded.
 
“It’s a lot but if I do all right with the sale of my house, I should be able to swing it.
 
They’re willing to sell it and a portion of the land.
 
My guess is the rest of the land will either be picked up by one of the lumber companies or the government will take it.
  
I can manage the lodge and about sixty acres.
 
I think I’ll need a partner.”

“A business partner.”

“Well, you could put it that way.”

She worked on her ice cream.
 
Suddenly she was afraid to look at him.
 
It was ten o’clock, though at this time of year the sky stayed light until eleven.
 
The summers in the U. P. were short but the days long and the fading light had a Nordic clarity.
 
She realized that she had been wary of this moment.
 
They had become lovers as well as friends these past few months, but there had been no attempt at forging anything that resembled a commitment.
 
“How would you make it work?” she asked.
 
“The lodge, I mean.”

“Use it for what it is, a lodge.
 
For people who want to get away.
 
To hunt, fish, simply walk out into the woods.
 
I also wonder if it couldn’t be attractive to artists, as a retreat where they could get a lot of work done.”

Liesl put her empty bowl down in the grass.
 
She left her hand there for a moment, her fingers touching the slick, cool blades.
 
There came the sound of a splintering twig and she looked toward the woods.
 
“I’ve lived in this house a long time.
 
I don’t know.
 
I’ve lived alone for years.”
 
Then she glanced at him because she realized that he had not said anything about their living together.
 
He had never spent more than two nights in a row at her house.
 
She was always sorry to see him leave but she liked her solitude.
 
She knew he did too.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t have to leave here?” he said.
 
“My guess is that it’ll be seasonal, at least for the first few years.”
 
His eyes were steady, and she believed that he was trying not to push her into a quick decision.

“I need to think about it.”

“I know.”

She looked at Lorraine, whose mouth was covered with ice cream.
 
The reporter from the
Chicago Tribune,
Francine d’Orr, had understood something that Liesl had been trying hard to avoid.
 
When Norman got out of prison and came for his daughter, she would lose a child—for a second time she would have to give up her life with a young girl.
 
She worried about how she would deal with that.

“I was thinking,” Del said.
 
He got up and collected the empty ice cream bowls.
 
“If this works out, Norman might want to come to work at the lodge, at least for a start.”

Liesl felt something drop out of the bottom of her stomach and for the briefest moment she felt nauseous.
 
It was, she knew, because of the sugar from the ice cream.
 
It passed and she watched Del walk toward the house.

“Can I have more?” Lorraine asked him.

“No, but you can help me clean these up, if you want.”

The child turned to Liesl and waited for an alternative opinion.