Iron Lake (13 page)

T
HE RECTORY DOOR WAS OPENED
to him by Ellie Gruber, a stout woman in her late fifties who’d been housekeeper for the ancient Father Kelsey more than a decade. She told him Father Griffin wasn’t there yet, but she showed him to the priest’s office and brought him coffee. Cork could hear a television in another room. Ellie said the Timberwolves were playing the Bulls. Cork could also hear Father Kelsey mumble and groan and occasionally toss in an unpriestly expletive.

“The Timberwolves must be losing.” Cork smiled.

Father Tom Griffin’s office was a mess of papers and books covering every flat surface of the room. The furniture consisted of a desk with a telephone and a small brass lamp, three scarred wooden chairs, an ancient green filing cabinet, and, in front of the window, a typing table with an old Olivetti electric. A crucifix hung on one wall; on another were several framed photographs; against the third stood a bookcase with every shelf crammed full. Cork gravitated to the photos. He believed a lot could be inferred from the photographs a person chose to display. In Father Tom Griffin’s case, Cork saw much of the road the man had traveled to reach that cluttered office. One photo showed a young Tom Griffin, a long and lanky college kid in a Notre Dame baseball uniform with a self-confident and likable grin. Another, taken much later, showed him in his collar standing with the pope. The pope looked small and severe next to the tall priest, who was relaxed and smiling. Several of the other photos seemed to have been taken in Central America. They were village shots, dusty streets or cobble-stone, and shy, emaciated mestizo kids smiling for the camera. The last picture was quite recent, taken on the Iron Lake Reservation, and showed Tom Griffin standing beside the mission building he was restoring. With him stood Wanda Manydeeds. It was fitting. The priest and the Midewiwin. Wanda looked serious as ever. The priest, although he had a black eye patch now and he’d let his hair go shaggy, was still smiling just as broadly as the kid in the photo who’d played ball for Notre Dame.

Tom Griffin’s eye wasn’t the only wounded part of his body. The priest bore other scars, some visible on his hands and arms. Although he had never asked the priest directly, Cork had heard about the long political internment that had ended the cleric’s involvement in the church in Central America. This information was always offered in a hushed tone, as if to the conservative parishioners of St. Agnes it was some kind of questionable skeleton in the priest’s closet.

Tom Griffin caught Cork by surprise, sweeping into the room suddenly, bringing with him the hard cold that had stiffened his old leather jacket. He wore a stocking cap with the red face mask still pulled down, so that, with only the eye holes and nose hole and mouth, he looked like some kind of demon conjured out of a North Woods black night.

“Sorry I’m late, Cork.” He pulled off the stocking cap and mask.

“Didn’t hear your snowmobile, Tom,” Cork said.

“It died on me out at the mission this afternoon. That’s why I’m late. Had to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup.” He shrugged off his coat and threw everything on a chair already occupied by a stack of papers. He wore a red plaid flannel shirt, faded jeans, and hiking boots. Rubbing his cold legs vigorously, he smiled at Cork, and said, “I’ve taken to calling it Lazarus because starting it’s like trying to raise the dead.

“I see Mrs. Gruber got you some coffee. Good. I think I might have something a little stronger. Care for a beer? I’ve also got some Chivas Regal that would spice up that coffee nicely.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Cork replied.

“Suit yourself.”

The priest stepped over to the file cabinet, opened the top drawer, and took out a bottle. Lifting a plastic cup from the top of the cabinet, he cleaned out something with his little finger and poured in the whiskey. He cleared off a chair and pulled it up next to his desk, motioning for Cork to go ahead and sit. He sipped from his cup, closed his eye, and sighed.

“First chance I’ve had to sit down all day.” The sounds of Father Kelsey’s reactions to the game carried into the room. “Timberwolves must be losing tonight.” St. Kawasaki smiled and got up to close the door.

“I hear Joe John finally called Darla,” Cork said. “Were you there?”

“I was at Darla’s most of the night.”

“Joe John give any particular reason for taking Paul that way?”

“He missed his son,” the priest said with a note of sympathy. “And he was ashamed. He couldn’t face Darla. Pretty simple really.”

“You talk with him?”

“No.”

“Know where he is?”

The priest sipped his Chivas Regal and shook his head. “I was just out at the reservation talking to Wanda. Darla asked me to intercede.”

“Did she tell you anything?”

“She says she doesn’t know where Joe John is.”

“What do you think?”

The priest shrugged. “You know The People, Cork. When they want to, they can say nothing very well.”

“And Wanda’s saying nothing. That should tell you something.”

The priest studied his whiskey a moment. “I have a good feeling about this. Somehow, it’s all going to turn out for the best.”

“I wish I did,” Cork said.

“Maybe that’s the difference between the law and religion. I hope for the best, you’re prepared for the worst.”

“There’s another difference,” Cork said.

“What’s that?”

“Your parishioners can’t kick you out.”

The priest laughed. Cork took a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket. “Mind?” he asked.

“No, go ahead. Can I bum one?”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Cork said.

“I gave it up when I was in Central America. Rather involuntarily,” he added with a smile.

Cork held out the pack, the priest took a cigarette, and Cork offered his lighter.

“You wanted to talk,” the priest said, lighting his cigarette.

“I need some—” Cork thought a moment. “I was going to say advice, but the truth is, I need some guidance, Tom.”

“We all do sometimes. It’s not always easy to admit.”

“I haven’t been to church in a long time. Can’t remember my last confession.”

“Is that what this is?”

“Maybe. At least partly.” Cork lit his own cigarette and slipped the lighter in his pocket. “I’ve been out of the house a long time now. You knew that.”

He paused, expecting the priest to say something. But St. Kawasaki appeared content to smoke his cigarette and listen.

“I’ve started seeing another woman.”

The priest didn’t seem surprised in the least.

“I didn’t think about it at first, where it was going, what ultimately would be invloved. I wasn’t thinking clearly about a lot of things. But now—” Cork hesitated.

“Now?” the priest encouraged.

“Now every time I see my children, I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Hurting them badly. Hurting them forever.”

The priest held his cigarette delicately between his thumb and index finger, smoking in a way Cork had always considered continental. He studied the tip of his cigarette a moment, then said, “Children are resilient. But I agree it’s a reasonable fear.”

“I don’t know what to do, Tom. I don’t want to lose my family. I don’t want my children hurt.”

“What I hear you saying is that more than anything you want your family.”

The understanding in the priest’s voice touched Cork deeply. “Yes,” he confessed.

“And this other woman, does she know?”

“She suspects. She hasn’t pressed me.” Cork felt himself shouldering again a weight that seemed unbearable. “She’s a wonderful woman, Tom.” He stood up, walked across the cluttered office to the window. He blew smoke against the glass and stared at the empty steps of the church across the yard. “Funny. I remember every detail of the morning Sam Winter Moon and Arnold Stanley died. But the whole next year is a blur. I wasn’t much of a husband or a father. I didn’t even fight it when Jo asked me to leave. I think about that now and it’s like I was someone else. Someone in a bad dream. Or like I was sleepwalking. This woman woke me up, Tom.”

“Maybe time did that, Cork.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you love her?”

“I haven’t said that to her, no.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Cork watched cigarette smoke crawl the windowpane as if it were looking for a way out.

“Yes,” he finally admitted. “I do.”

“And you love your family.”

“Of course.”

“Does that include Jo?”

Cork turned back. The priest was watching him with a placid expression.

“Not at the moment. But maybe it could again if we tried. If we had some help.”

“From me?”

“Isn’t that what priests do?”

“Some.”

“Would you?”

“What about Jo? Is this something she wants?”

“She wants a divorce. And one thing about Jo, once she’s made up her mind about something, she won’t back down.”

“Sounds like you’re asking me for a miracle.”

“It does seem pretty hopeless,” Cork said.

“Hopeless.” The priest sipped his whiskey and smoked his cigarette and seemed to consider the word. “Let me tell you something, Cork. In all my life I’ve learned two things.” He pointed to the black patch over his eye. “One is never call a small man in a uniform ‘Shorty.’ The other is that nothing is ever hopeless.” He dropped the last of his cigarette into the plastic cup. “I’ll talk with Jo. I’ll do my best to convince her to join you in some counseling.”

“Thanks.”

“But, Cork, I need to be sure you’re going to end this other relationship. There’s nothing that I or anyone else can do if you’re not willing to sacrifice everything for your family.”

“I know. I’ll end it.”

St. Kawasaki smiled a little wearily. “The things that ask the most of us are the things most worth having.”

Cork left the window and walked to the desk. He tossed his cigarette into St. Kawasaki’s cup. “Mind if I use your phone?”

“Go ahead.”

He dialed Harlan Lytton’s number, waited while the phone at the other end rang eight times. He put the receiver back in the cradle. “Thanks.”

“No one home?”

“It’s Harlan Lytton. Sometimes he doesn’t answer out of sheer orneriness.”

“Lytton? The one with the dog they call Jack the Ripper?”

“That’s him. I have to go out to see him tonight.”

“Mind me asking why you’d want to pay a visit to a man like that?”

“If he answered his phone, I wouldn’t have to. But he didn’t answer.”

“Why go out there at all?”

“Long story. Kind of hard to explain.”

The priest grabbed his leather jacket. “I’ve heard things about this Lytton. I’m not going to let you go there alone. Not at night.”

“I used to go out there alone all the time when I was sheriff.”