Wintering (18 page)

Gus picked up a third letter, from Norway, and walked over to the front window, held it up to the late afternoon light, and looked back at me. “Can I open it?”

“I figure they belong to you and your sister.”

He returned to the counter, took a letter opener from a leather cup filled with pens and scissors and bric-a-brac, and slit the envelope open. He blew gently into it and removed the single sheet of paper and smoothed it carefully on the glass counter. The letter was covered in faint black ink, and Gus looked down on it for as long as it might have taken him to read it.

“Does anyone in town still speak Norwegian?” he asked.

“Signe does.”

“And she's in Minneapolis.”

I thought about Ingrid Gunnarson, sitting in her shared room up at the rest home, her mind gone much as Harry's had. Her daughter was living somewhere out on the East Coast. It seemed unfathomable that there were no longer any Norwegian speakers here. “I can't think of a single one,” I admitted.

“So that's that,” he said, motioning at the letters. “They were locked in a safe for a hundred goddamn years and now they're still mute. Jesus.”

He cut open another letter, written by his great-grandmother, and stared at it for a long time, shaking his head and gritting his teeth.

“Rebekah used to talk about what a crook Hosea Grimm was. I know a lot of the stories. But this?”

“You think he swiped these letters?” he said.

“Of course.”

“What about Rebekah?”

“Oh, I can't see that.”

“You said yourself that she was selfish and vain. Maybe stealing the letters was her way of keeping part of something she cared about. Maybe it gave her a feeling of control.”

“Let me see if I understand you. On the one hand, you've got Hosea Grimm, the only man as rotten as Charlie Aas who ever lived in this town, a man whose entire life was a fraud, whose every move was calculated for his own gain. On the other hand, Rebekah Grimm, who tried to make a living selling hats in a town of a thousand people. Half of whom were women who knit their husbands and children new hats each Christmas.”

“A woman who employed you for twenty-five years, largely for the company. She had no one. You said so yourself. Maybe she wanted to keep something all to herself.”

I studied the letters on the counter. This theory of Gus's, it wasn't out of the question. “I suppose it's possible,” I admitted.

“And I suppose it doesn't matter whether it was her or him.” His face drained of color and he picked yet another letter from the stack and held it at arm's length. “Sometimes there just aren't any words to explain things, are there?”

“Words in any language,” I said.

After Gus left I spent a long hour pondering the possibility of Rebekah Grimm's guilt. It had been quite some time since I'd held her up for scrutiny.

Gus hadn't said anything when I explained how she'd dealt out her considerable wealth, but it occurred to me—as it must have to him—that holding on to all of it would have required considerable shrewdness. Lord knows she was at times miserly. I can still see her counting out my weekly wage, her fine fingers dropping those nickels and dimes into my own callused hand. She'd put off a job for a whole summer in order to catch the handyman in his season of need, all so she might save ten bucks on a hundred-dollar job. But she was also prone to great extravagances and cunning business sense. It was one of the few things that surprised me about her. Some people said she was crazy. Others—those who'd known her longest—said crazy like a fox.

I remember, during the winter Gus and Harry spent on the borderlands, when everyone in town was whispering about the fix Charlie Aas was in, Rebekah told me something that she meant to incriminate him beyond doubt. It was a story that went back before my time in Gunflint, to the autumn of 1936, when Hosea Grimm died. His passing hadn't been unexpected. He'd been sick for years, having suffered two brain attacks in quick succession. The first left one side of his face like a melted candle. The second killed him in his sleep.

For years Marcus Aas and his boys had been circling Hosea's holdings, especially the Shivering Timber, a seedy brothel on a lake three miles up County Road Two. It had been around almost as long as Hosea himself had been. Once upon a time a dozen or more molls worked the front porch there, but during the last months of Hosea's life that number had shrunk considerably. Friday nights found only three or four negligeed girls out on the rail. Marcus had it in mind to revive the place. He'd come to Hosea with a middling offer in July of '36, one that a prudent man would have accepted for any number of reasons, not least of which would have been to avoid getting tangled up with the Aas clan. Even as early as then, Marcus and his boys were marking every light post in town. But Hosea said no.

When he passed, Rebekah didn't even have to wait until morning before Marcus rang the bell on her counter. He came in just at closing time, his youngest son, Charlie, at his side like a yearling bear cub. Charlie's eyes darted around, as if he was checking for an assassin. Marcus offered neither pretense nor condolences. He simply told her that he would now be buying the Shivering Timber for one thousand dollars, half of his original offer and less than a quarter of its real value. Charlie, he told her, was going to handle the transaction. On that day Charlie was just a month past seventeen years old, though even then he had a full, manly beard that he stroked as his father spoke.

Marcus wanted there to be absolutely no confusion about the new order of things. He lectured Rebekah on the diminished nature of Hosea's estate. He told her how it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for Curtis Mayfair to poke his head into her affairs and try to arrange for Hosea's chattel to go to Odd Eide. He assured her that would be foolhardy, and beyond the scriptures of law both as the state and the good Lord above saw it. Marcus reckoned Odd was nothing but a prodigal waste. It was Rebekah who had served Hosea dutifully, and in his kindness he would help her manage what Hosea had left behind. Starting with the Shivering Timber. Marcus clapped his son on the back and told him to work out the details.

The details, as the young Charlie Aas made it known, were simple. “Sign over the whorehouse or you'll be back in bed with Hosea before he's underground. We already talked to Lenny Washburn, and it's no trouble at all for him to make a double coffin.”

Maybe it was because she was in shock from Hosea's death. Maybe she simply felt she had nothing to lose. Maybe she was looking for a reason to carry on and a fight with those thugs seemed like a noble idea. Whatever the case, she told Charlie Aas to leave. She told him the resort (as she would reincarnate it) up at the end of County Road Two was not for sale, nor would it be going on the market soon, not until some changes were made. She told him that if he had any concerns she might take them up with her attorney, the aforementioned Curtis Mayfair, who represented everyone in town save the Aas clan.

Charlie, of course irate, left in a tantrum. “You ain't seen the last of me, you lamebrained dyke! I were you, I'd sleep with one eye open! I'll be back and up your ass until we get what we came for! Don't you worry about that!”

She knew very well these were not idle threats. Still, she couldn't help being almost amused by his raving. Even so, that first night she slept with Hosea's Browning pistol on her bedside table. For three or four days she waited him out. She buried Hosea. She had a locksmith add a deadbolt to the front and back doors and a lock to her bedroom door on the third floor. Four or five days after Marcus and Charlie made their offer, as she readied for bed, she heard what sounded like glass breaking downstairs in the apothecary. She went into her room, locked the door, and spent a sleepless night wondering if Charlie was coming to make good on his barking promises.

In the morning she inspected the entire apothecary and found everything as it should have been. That night she heard voices in the back alleyway. She tried to spy out the window but saw nothing, so adjourned again to her locked room. The next morning she studied the
Ax & Beacon
classifieds. The only dogs for sale were a litter of miniature schnauzers offered by a family that she hardly knew who lived down in Misquah. When Claire Veilleux came in for her day's mail, Rebekah asked for a ride down the road.

Rebekah knew that getting a puppy was foolish. Even when full-grown it wouldn't be much bigger than a house cat. But she liked the idea of having another pair of ears in the apothecary, so she brought one home and named her Timmy.

The next morning, while Timmy slept in her basket under the mail counter, Charlie stepped casually into the apothecary. He had shaved part of his face so all that remained were muttonchops. With his hair slicked back, wearing a suit, he came right up to the counter and asked for the Aas family mail. She handed it to him.

“How are things, Miss Grimm? You sleeping all right?”

She didn't know how to explain what was more sinister about Charlie on that morning than there had been less than a week before. It was as if his calmness belied the urgency in him. Like he was dying to make his first mark in the world.

She didn't answer, saying instead, “Is there anything else you need?”

“How about the deed to the Timber? Our offer's fallen a tad but we'll give you forty dollars for it.”

“Don't insult me.”

“That ain't an insult, it's a life-insurance policy against a slow and painful quarter hour.” His voice was steady and calm.

“I've spoken with my attorney, and he advised me that if you made another threat, I could press charges against you for harassment.”

“This ain't harassment, you whore. It's your final warning.”

“He's keeping an eye on this place,” she said. She thought her voice was as steady and calm as his. “He would've seen you come in. He knows the minute he sees you to call the sheriff.”

“You think I'm worried about Sheriff Anderson? That pissant? Or old Curtis? You think he's got some jurisdiction up here that trumps mine? It's true what they say, you're goddamn batty.”

No sooner did he finish talking than Sheriff Anderson and Curtis Mayfair came hurrying in.

“Miss Grimm,” the officer said. “Muttonchops here isn't causing any trouble, is he?”

Charlie swung around. “You're choosing the wrong side, Anderson. Who the hell do you think pays for your wife's fine dinnerware? The good people of Gunflint? Kiss my ass.”

“Charlie,” Curtis Mayfair said, his voice still booming even at his age, “don't do something you're going to wish you hadn't. As of this minute, there's a way for you to walk out of here without cuffs on your wrists. But that window's closing. Yes, sir.”

“You're a goddamn donkey, old man. Keep your nose out of this.”

Then it was Rebekah who spoke. “Charlie Aas, I will not sell you any of my property. Your threats or your father's threats, they're pointless. I'm not afraid of you. No one's afraid of you.”

This last was a lie, and not a convincing one. Everyone feared the Aases. Clem Anderson, his hand on his service revolver, he was scared of Charlie, and not only because what Charlie had said was true, and he meant to keep his wife happy. No one had been killed yet, but there was a trend and it wasn't veering toward town picnics. But as of that day, Curtis still wielded some moral authority and Clem felt he needed to protect Rebekah, even if he wouldn't feel this way for much longer.

“Hey, Charlie,” he said, “let's step on over to the Traveler's and have this out over lunch. What do you say?”

“Daddy's gonna string you up by your balls, Anderson, if you don't step aside,” Charlie told him. As soon as the words left his mouth, Clem was on him. He wrenched his arm behind his back and kicked one of his feet out from under him and Charlie's face slammed into the counter. Before he lifted it he was cuffed and knocked to his knees.

“Goddamn you, Charlie. Why don't you listen? Why do you run your mouth like that? Don't you know people don't want to hear that shit?”

Charlie was so red-faced and angry his blond whiskers looked ablaze. He started ranting then, hurling his threats first at Clem and then at Rebekah and Curtis, and then all around three times more. By the time Clem had ushered him to the door, he was shouting loud enough that the lighthouse keeper might have heard him across the harbor.

“You'll next see me through the flames of hell, you crazy whore! I'll burn this place to the fuckin' ground with you in it!”

Clem was telling him to shut up and was smacking him across the back of his head. “Where's your sense, son? You sound like a madman. Folks can hear you raving.”

Charlie craned his face into Clem's. “You don't know what a madman is until you see me. You all better keep the bucket brigade ready. This place is gonna burn bright.”

Clem took his club from his belt and hammered Charlie's knee. Rebekah didn't hear another peep from Charlie that day.

In fact, it would be a long time before she heard anything at all. His eruption certainly hadn't lacked for attention. She thought maybe that's all he really wanted. Just another Aas pissing on another light post. She'd have to wait a long while to find out how serious he was. For that misdemeanor in the apothecary, Charlie was given a fine and corralled by his father, who couldn't have predicted he would go so far. But even as he checked his son's behavior, Marcus saw something in his actions that he liked. He saw a boy ready to take what needed to be taken. He saw his heir.

Though he never would take a thing from Rebekah. She kept the Shivering Timber from his claws. Within a month of Charlie's arrest, she'd not only shuttered it, but also sent the remaining molls on their way to better days with what she called severance. A thousand dollars per girl, five thousand dollars in all. And passage out of Gunflint.