“Just driving around.” She and Sasha got away quickly.
“He knows,” Cory whispered.
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’ll be punished for this.”
“Only when you get to hell. Now relax.”
Two-beer drunk at her mother’s funeral luncheon. Cory stood by the buffet table and concentrated on the display of food. The man next to her said something.
“That’s nice,” said Cory. “Thank you for coming.” The man looked confused and left with his plate of food. Sasha giggled.
“What’s funny?”
“He just told you his sister died of the same heart disease as your mother. You said, ‘That’s nice.’ It’s obvious you had better eat something. Oh, no, here comes the minister.”
“The bathroom, let’s hide in the bathroom.” They retreated quickly, elbowing their way through clumps of people and arriving at the bathroom just as Cory’s sister-in-law was about to step inside.
“Emergency,” Cory said. “Sorry.”
Elaine pounded on the door after they closed it. “Don’t take forever.”
“Go upstairs,” Cory shouted back. She and Sasha leaned against the door and laughed.
“We can’t stay here forever.”
“Two minutes if we’re lucky.” Cory turned on the cold water and splashed her face. “You have corrupted me. I will rot in hell.”
“Probably. But at least you’ll get through today.”
“That’s my motto: Just get through it.”
“Cory!” Elaine pounded again.
“I said go upstairs.”
“Someone named Mac is here and he’s asking for you.”
“Oh, oh,” said Sasha.
Cory closed her eyes. “Wonderful. My boyfriend makes a surprise return from putting his alcoholic brother in a halfway house and he finds me drunk at my mother’s funeral.” She looked at Sasha. “Do you think he’ll find it funny?”
“Two beers, Cory. Only two.”
They left the bathroom. As she walked into the living room Cory took a peppermint from a candy dish on a table. Sasha left to find Tony.
Mac was standing in front of the fireplace, listening to Mr. Bartleby. They both turned to greet Cory. She nodded to her former boss and smiled at Mac. “This is a nice surprise.”
“Barb called me last night and threatened to dump my things in a snowbank if I didn’t get back today.”
“An empty threat,” said Mr. Bartleby. “The weather has been so warm that there are no snowbanks, just the usual layer of early March mush. Well, Cory, do you want your job back? I can offer a little raise. When fishing season opens, we’ll be getting busy.”
“Maybe I will do that, Mr. Bartleby. Thank you. I won’t be needed around here anymore.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “She was a sweet person, Cory. Let me know about the job.” He left.
“I’m really glad to see you,” Cory said to Mac.
He nodded slightly. “I talked to Tony. He said you and Sash put away most of a six-pack in twenty minutes.”
Cory felt flushed but suddenly sober. “Don’t disapprove. I don’t think you have the right to disapprove.”
“Is this sort of thing going to be a habit?”
She sucked on the last chip of peppermint, then let it slip down her throat. “Would you dump me if I said yes?”
“I think I would.”
“Don’t make me grovel in shame, Mac. It was a little bit of craziness on the crummiest day of my life.” He didn’t answer. He put his hands in his pocket, took them out, then tightened the knot on his tie. “You look nice,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t wear a suit. I don’t have one.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re perfect.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“After four days with my brother I guess I just didn’t appreciate the timing of your ‘little bit of craziness.’ I’m sorry.”
“Cory, I found you!”
Cory felt a gentle tug on her sleeve and turned. “Hello, Pastor Lunden.”
“Hello, dear. I need to get back to Rice Lake, but I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed meeting your family and how I wish I had known your mother. She certainly was loved. Who’s this?”
“A friend of mine. Harvey MacNamara. Mac.” Cory stepped behind the minister. “Bikini briefs,” she mouthed silently.
Mac’s eyes widened. Cory could tell he was fighting back a smile. He offered his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Pastor Lunden.”
“Oh, I do prefer first names. Kathleen, please.” She turned and hugged Cory. “I’ll be thinking of you.” Then she was gone.
“And I’ll be thinking of you,” said Cory, “in bikini briefs.”
“My idea worked?”
“Perfectly, especially when I thought about how
you’d
enjoy her preaching. I didn’t shed a tear.”
“You can, you know. It’s okay.” He stroked her cheek with a finger. “I’m so sorry about your mother.” His voice cracked slightly, and he bit his lip.
Cory hugged him. She didn’t care who might be watching.
They decided to get food and found Sasha and Tony grazing around the table. “I found him on the deck,” said Sasha, “where your brother and his friends have opened up a cooler of beer.”
“Can you imagine? Beer on my mother’s burial day!”
“Whatever gets you through,” said Mac. “Where’s Mike? I really should speak to him before I sit down and eat.”
“He took someone to the front deck,” said Sasha, “to show how he converted it to a three-season porch.”
Mac excused himself. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“He is so polite,” said Sasha as she watched him work his way through the crowd.
“Has your brother met him yet?” Tony asked Cory.
“No. He knows I’m going with someone, but they’ve never met.”
“It might be interesting.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Tony spooned ripe olives onto his plate. “Evidently the tribe has designated Summer Lake as a spearing site. The guys on the deck were pretty heated up.”
“You mean your dad was,” said Sasha.
Tony shrugged. “He’s been the town racist for years and always gets wound up.” He smiled at Sasha. “That’s where I get it from.”
“You didn’t inherit that part, Tony,” she said. “You have a good heart.”
“They were talking about staging protests again,” Tony went on. “Rob and some of the others have built up a head of steam. Does he know your boyfriend is an Indian?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“It might not be a bad idea to get him settled down before he actually meets Mac. Just a suggestion.” Cory went to find her brother. A large group of men had collected on the deck. They were all working on cans of beer. She stood behind her brother, waiting for him to finish an anecdote about the road crew that had the other men shaking their heads and swearing. Rob had gone to the barber the day before in preparation for the funeral. No more ponytail to tweak. When the story was finished, she tapped him on the shoulder. He saw her standing behind him, put down his beer, and hugged her tightly.
“It hasn’t been too bad today, has it?” he said. “Good friends help.”
“Rob, would you come inside? There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Great news, Cory,” he said as he followed her into the kitchen. “Fred Strickler says my name has come to the top of the hire list for the plant and that I should be taken on within a few weeks. Mike says we can move in here for a while. Lord Almighty, no more road tar and working in the sun. I’m coming home, kid.” His face was radiant.
“That
is
good news, Rob. But you can’t have my room for your weights.”
“Won’t need it. In a few months we’ll have our own place. And then let the babies start rolling out!”
“You are sad, Robbie. Elaine’s only twenty-one. Let her get a life first.”
“She thinks I am her life.”
His smiling face rekindled her sadness. “Rob, you look so much like Mom.”
“No. She was never this pretty.”
“That’s true. You got it all didn’t, you? Blond hair and curls. I can’t believe you cut it off.”
“I don’t miss it.”
“If you aren’t going to wear the tail, maybe you should get an ear pierced. Something.”
“Right. And have people think I’m queer?”
“That’s old. No one thinks that anymore.”
“I think that.”
“Rob, I hope you’re not turning into someone I don’t like.”
He frowned. “I’m your brother. How could that happen? Now, who am I supposed to meet? The new boyfriend?”
“His name is Mac.”
“Wrong. His name is Harvey. I’ve heard about him.”
“Did you hear that he’s Indian?”
Rob sipped his beer. “I did. Lord, Cory, you always did like being different. Loud and different, that’s my sister.”
“Don’t be ordinary, Rob. Don’t be an ordinary Wisconsin redneck.”
He raised his eyebrows. “A redneck?”
“I heard that all your beer buddies out there were screaming about the spearing. That’s a Wisconsin redneck.”
He sipped again. “Mike said the same thing. He said he’s got Indian guests today and he didn’t want them to hear it and
he
didn’t want to hear it. He told us to keep it out of the house. Boy, Mom dies, and suddenly I feel like I’ve got a family of strangers.” Rob looked behind her. “Hello. I bet you’re the guy.”
Cory turned and saw Mac. She hooked her arm through his and pulled him forward. “This,” she said firmly to her brother, “is Mac. My boyfriend. And this,” she said, reaching out and tapping Rob on the chin, “is my brother.”
9
In 1837 and 1842 the Chippewa Indians living in northern Wisconsin signed two in a series of treaties with the United States government. In those treaties land was ceded to the federal government while the right to fish, hunt, harvest, and gather on the land was retained. In 1854 another treaty was signed. That one established permanent homelands, or reservations, for the Chippewa. For more than a hundred years, state and local authorities restricted Indian hunting, fishing, and rice harvesting to the reservations. In 1983 a federal court decision affirmed the Chippewas’ right to take fish from lakes in all of the northern third of Wisconsin. Later decisions broadened this ruling to include hunting and harvesting rights. As the tribes in Wisconsin exercised their rights, especially the right to spear spawning fish in spring, an activity prohibited to the general public, there were protests by some of the white population of the state.
The Chippewa, however, were undeterred from reclaiming their rights.
Derived from the word Ojibwa, Chippewa is the legal name for the people who call themselves Anishinabeg—original people.
*
“Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Ojibway. Can’t these people figure out what to call themselves?” Rob rolled up the newspaper he had been reading and smacked Cory on the rump as she walked by the kitchen table. She was in her bathrobe, just out of the shower. “What term does the boyfriend prefer?”
“His name is Mac. Anyway, he’s Cree, so he’s not the one to ask.”
“Cree-ist Almighty, does it make a difference?”
“Not to a Neanderthal,” said Elaine. Cory laughed and gave her sister-in-law a thumbs-up.
The back door opened and closed, and Mike shouted a greeting. A moment later he appeared in the kitchen and set a grocery bag on the counter. “Sorry I’m late. But I picked up some chicken and salad so we won’t go hungry.” He noticed Cory in her bathrobe. “I thought you were going to Sasha’s tonight, but you look like you’re going to bed.”
“I showered and I’m waiting for my jeans to get out of the dryer.”
He handed her some items from the bag to put away in the cupboard, then smiled at Rob and Elaine. “Was she in for the usual hour?”
Rob nodded. “There won’t be hot water for a week.”
Cory protested. “Not true. Anyway, it’s almost impossible to get rid of the cleanser odor without a good soak, and I am not going out on a Saturday night smelling like disinfectant.”
Rob rose from the table and started laying out place mats and napkins. “If you quit working at the motel, we could probably save your salary in hot water bills.”
“I’m not going to quit, not a second time. It’s kind of a crummy job, but it beats spending the whole weekend here.” She quickly looked at Mike and wished she’d phrased it differently. He was gently bouncing a lettuce head in his hands.
He tossed it to her. She bobbled it, then secured it against her chest.
“I just mean the days seem kind of empty,” she said to him.
“I know what you meant, Cory. And they are empty.”
Rob opened the dishwasher and pulled out some clean silverware. “Not next Saturday. I guarantee a full agenda that day.”
Mike’s expression tightened. “Don’t, Robbie. I haven’t asked up until now, but now I am asking. Please don’t go to the landing.” Mike faced his stepson. “The law is clear. They have the right to spearfish. You and Jack Merrill and Clem Woodruff and the other noisemakers you enlist can go to the boat landing and protest forever, but all you will gain is a sorry reputation for yourself and the town. The law says you are wrong.”