Copper River (8 page)

R
en loved Bodine. And he hated it. The town circumscribed his life, defined him in many ways. It gave him a place to belong, offered him a stable center from which to view the world in order to make some sense of it. On the other hand, it was small, suffocating, and sometimes cruel. There were days when he felt like a prisoner. He knew every street, every shop, every shop owner, and they knew him. They called hello when he passed. They made him feel part of a large family. Like any family, however, they always had their noses in his business, and in his mother’s. When his father died a little over a year ago, there’d been an outpouring of sympathy, but there’d also been a vein of censure that ran through the sentiments, the feeling—occasionally voiced—that Ren’s father had somehow got what he deserved, that his business should have been minding the resort cabins and taking care of his family, not stirring up trouble in other places. This bothered Ren. What bothered him more was that he knew there was a dark voice inside his mother that sometimes spoke to her in the same way.

Harbor Avenue, Bodine’s main street, ran due north off the county road straight to the lake. Shops lined the street in the block before the harbor. The commercial buildings were mostly brick, built simple and sturdy to withstand the gale winds that often blew off Lake Superior.

In the sixth grade, Ren had done a long project about the history of the town. He learned that over the years, Bodine had seen good times and bad, though for a long time they’d been mostly bad. It had begun as a lumber town, taking the fine hardwoods of the southern Hurons and turning them into planks prized for their solid grain and durability. Henry Ford had been so struck by the quality of the wood that he’d purchased vast tracts of forestland and used the timber for paneling in his early automobiles. But the lumber didn’t last.

In 1881, the Cyril Mine opened fifteen miles southwest of Bodine, tapping into a solitary vein of native copper, a long splash of ore as rich as any on the Keweenaw. That had brought prosperity in many forms until the copper finally petered out in the late 1950’s. When the mine closed, jobs vanished and people with them.

Both the lumber and copper industries had resulted in the development of Bodine’s harbor, which was small but deep enough to accommodate the heavy freighters of the day. Early on, Bodine had become a modest terminal for lake traffic. In 1890, an entrepreneur named Edward Farber, who’d made decent money in shipping and who’d fallen in love with the beautiful Huron Mountains, built a fine hotel overlooking the picturesque little harbor. In its day, the Farber House was reputed to serve the best food between New York City and the Mississippi River, and for a while it attracted a rich clientele who considered the Upper Peninsula an exotic destination.

For most of the wealthy, however, the U.P. turned out to be a passing fancy, and eventually they found other places to play. By the early 1920’s, the writing was on the wall, and Farber, an old man by then, let things slide. The advent of the Great Depression seemed to nail the coffin shut on his beautiful hotel.

In the years since, the Farber House had gone through a number of incarnations. It had served as temporary housing for the Civilian Conservation Corps, which carried out numerous public works projects in the area, like the picnic shelter on the Copper River. During World War Two, it housed a group of Canadians and Americans who worked on breaking codes. For three decades after that, it had been a nursing home. Finally, it had simply been abandoned.

In 1998, it was purchased by a couple, Ken and Sue Taylor, who invested their life savings into making it once again a fine inn. They’d captured much of the old charm, and they called it by its proper name: the Farber House.

The parking lot was full that Sunday morning, and Ren left his ATV on the street in front. As soon as he entered the lobby, he smelled coffee and pastries. Both were freshly made and available in a small bistro area opposite the front desk. On the far side of the hotel was a large dining room with windows that opened toward the deep, placid blue of the lake. Most of the tables were occupied. Leaf peepers, Ren figured.

Ren went to the bistro, where Barb Klish was wiping crumbs from the top of the glass case that held the pastries. A tall blonde with a broad smile, she taught home economics at the high school, worked at the Farber House on weekends, and had recently begun trading over the Internet on eBay. She liked to call herself a broker.

“Hey, there, Rennie,” Barb said. She was the only person who ever called him Rennie, but he liked it. “I know what you want. A
kolache,
right? What kind?”

“Ham and cheese. Two, please.”

“Really hungry, eh?”

“One’s for Charlie,” he said.

“What a good friend you are.” She slid open the case.

“And I’d like a vanilla latte, too.”

She eyed him through the glass as she bent for the
kolaches.
“Since when do you drink coffee?”

“It’s not for me.”

“Charlie?”

“No. A friend who’s staying at the resort.”

This was one of the problems with Bodine. No question was a simple one. They led one to another until you found yourself caught in a web from which it was impossible to escape.

“Oh? Friend of your mom’s?”

“Yes.”

“How’s she doing? Your mom, I mean. I can’t remember the last time we talked.”

“She’s fine.”

“I’ll just put these
kolaches
in a bag and then whip up that latte for you.”

He heard the elevator doors slide open at his back.

“Well, look what the north wind blew in. Renoir!”

He turned as the Taylors swept into the lobby. They were in their early sixties, but always seemed full of more energy than people half their age. With his towering stature and brilliant red hair, Mr. Taylor reminded Ren of a maple tree in fall. Mrs. Taylor was half his size. That morning she wore a dark blue dress and heels. Her husband wore a suit and tie.

Church,
Ren thought.

“Don’t move,” Mr. Taylor said. “I’ve got something for you. Wait right there.” He vanished into the office behind the front desk.

“We haven’t seen you in a while, Ren,” said Mrs. Taylor. She snared his shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

“I’ve been around,” Ren said.

“Not around here. How’s your mother?”

“Fine. She’s just fine.”

“We’re on our way to church, and I do so miss her voice in the choir. Will you tell her that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mr. Taylor returned carrying a white cardboard box, which he handed over to Ren. “Go ahead and open it.”

Ren found it packed with dozens of comic books, all Marvel and DC, that seemed to cover many of the classic superheroes he knew and appreciated: Green Lantern, Batman, Superman, Blackhawk, the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, Thor.

“Wow,” he said. “Thanks.”

“We knew you had a birthday coming up—when is it?”

“Next week.”

“Right, so we had Barb do a little horse-trading for us on eBay.”

“Some of those issues are rare, Ren,” Barb said behind him. “Real collector’s items. I struck some good bargains.”

“This is great,” Ren told them. “Let me take these outside. And I’ll bring back something I want you to see.”

He carried the box to his ATV and took from the storage compartment his own small box. He brought it inside and handed it to Mr. Taylor, who opened it and removed the contents.

“What have we here? Looks like a big-cat track.” He studied the plaster cast further. His hands quivered, a slight tremor that had affected him his whole life. He’d told Ren that people made all kinds of harsh erroneous judgments about him based on that insignificant detail. Ren, who was part Ojibwe, and small for his age, understood. “A bobcat?” Mr. Taylor asked.

Ren shook his head. In his estimation, Mr. Taylor was the smartest man in Bodine and seemed to know something about everything. Ren knew he’d appreciate the significance of the cast.

“Not a bobcat, eh? Well, it couldn’t be a cougar, could it?”

“It is,” Ren said.

“You made this cast? Where’d you find the track?”

“Near one of our cabins.”

“A cougar that close to human habitation? Interesting. Ren, do you mind if I keep this for a while? I have a friend who’s a zoologist at Northern Michigan down in Marquette. I’d like him to have a look at it.”

“Sure.”

“Wonderful. I’ll have it back to you in a few days.” He disappeared into the office again, came out with his hands empty, and took his wife’s arm. “If we don’t want to be late for church, Sue, we’d best be moving. Good to see you, Ren. Say hello to your mother for us.”

When they’d gone, Ren paid for the
kolaches
and the coffee, then he headed off on his ATV, making for Charlie’s place. He followed Lake Street, where the finest houses in town had been built, old Victorian places. The people who lived there now were professionals—doctors, lawyers, executives—most of whom worked in Marquette but had been lured to Bodine by the beauty of the place and the stunning old houses they could buy for a song. A lot of the homes had been refurbished over the last few years. Stash’s family lived there. So did Amber Kennedy’s.

Ever since the day before when Charlie told him that Amber liked him, the girl had occupied much of his thinking. She was pretty, with long gold hair that always seemed to flip in just the right way over her delicate shoulders. She wore braces on her teeth, and when she smiled she usually covered her mouth. For some reason, that made Ren like her more. In truth, he’d been thinking less about her prettiness or long gold hair or smile than about her breasts, which over the past summer seemed to have erupted and now pushed up like a couple of active volcanoes under her sweater.

He didn’t linger when he reached her house, not wanting her to think, should she see him pass, that he’d come that way just because of her. He did cast a quick glance in that direction, but was disappointed to see no one at the front windows.

He turned west. Near the edge of town, the pavement gave way to gravel. He bumped along beyond the last of the small ranch houses and entered an area of failed commerce. He passed Zeke’s Small Engine Repair, now abandoned, a small pasture where a man named Fry Ahearn still sometimes kept a few goats, and finally the Huron Lumber Company, which had given up the ghost years ago and now sat idle behind a tall Cyclone fence.

Charlie lived with her father in a beat-up green trailer home set on a cinder-block foundation a quarter mile south of the abandoned lumberyard. There were two red maples in front and between them a big patch of raggedy grass that was usually long overdue for mowing. In back a sea of weeds swamped the empty frame of a swing set, a couple of rusted barrels, an old gas stove, a claw-foot bathtub, and a hundred other smaller items with so many jagged or broken edges that Charlie and Ren no longer set foot there.

Because he didn’t want to risk waking Charlie’s father, who would probably be battling a mammoth hangover, Ren pulled to the side of the road a good distance from the trailer, killed the engine, and walked the rest of the way. Far from town, everything was quiet. The maples were a deep red and shedding. Their fallen leaves lay embedded in the tall grass of the front yard like rubies. Ren knew better than to knock. He crept to a side window, which was closed, the blinds inside lowered. He tapped at the glass, waited, tapped again. He put his lips to the window pane and called softly, “Charlie?”

Nothing.

Which was understandable. It had been a late night for them both. He walked around to the front, saw that the door was open. He climbed the crumbling set of concrete steps and peeked through the screen.

He’d been inside hundreds of times over the years and the place was always a mess. This morning it looked even worse than usual. Way worse. As if Charlie’s father had gone on a drunken rampage and tried to break everything he hadn’t already broken. Christ, how could Charlie stand it?

Ren didn’t like the idea of disturbing Mr. Miller, but the place looked so bad, he was worried about Charlie. If she’d come home while her old man was going crazy…

“Hello?” Ren called timidly. “Mr. Miller? Charlie?”