Purgatory Ridge

The conflict between red and white was old and deep. Cork left the Broiler feeling a heaviness that weighed on him from the past. Because Tamarack County had been down this road before, and not that long ago. The last flareup had occurred only two years earlier. It had been about fishing rights, an issue over which the two cultures had been skirmishing for more than a decade. Jo had argued successfully before a federal judge on behalf of the Ojibwe, asserting that the Iron Lake Treaty of 1873 gave the Anishinaabeg the right to fish that lake and any other in the state without restraint. The judge had decreed that Ojibwe fishermen had the right to take, if they desired, the full limit of fish set by the Department of Natural Resources for the whole lake over the entire season, leaving nothing for other anglers. Resort owners had panicked. Much of the citizenry of Tamarack County, whose economic welfare relied heavily on the money from weekend fishermen, rallied round the resort owners, and threats of violence arose. Cork had been sheriff then and charged with the duty of ensuring the safety of those Ojibwe who chose to gillnet and spearfish. The conflict came to a deadly head one cold, drizzly spring morning at a place called Burke’s Landing. Cork was escorting a group of Indian fishermen to their boats, down a corridor lined with angry whites. Jo was with the fishermen, as was Cork’s oldest friend Sam Winter Moon. He’d brought them safely almost to the landing when a scared little man named Arnold Stanley, a resort owner driven to desperation by the fear of losing everything he had, stepped in front of Cork with a rifle in his hand. He fired once before Cork cleared his revolver from its holster and pumped six bullets into the little man, the final three while Stanley lay on the wet ground. Although Arnold Stanley’s single shot had torn open Sam Winter Moon’s heart, killing him almost instantly, the people of Tamarack County, incited in large measure by Hell Hanover’s raging editorials, raised a hue and cry over the excessive nature of Cork’s response. In a recall election, Cork lost his job as sheriff. His self-respect pretty much followed. And just about everything else in his life had unraveled from there.

As he stepped outside into the smoke-scented air, he had the frightening feeling that he-and all the others who called Tamarack County their home-were about to walk a bloody road again.

4

JOHN LEPERE HAD BEEN WAKING SOBER long enough that even when he had one of the bad dreams, he woke fresh and strong.

And that night, he’d had a dream.

He woke early, at first light, pulled on his Speedo and his goggles, and hit the lake. Every day he swam, every day a little farther. He started when dawn colored the water with a cold, gray light, and he moved steadily, stroking his way north, heading out into the center of Iron Lake where the water turned dark and fathomless beneath him. He never tracked his distance. He swam for another reason, a reason that led-twisting and turning-ultimately back to vengeance.

When he drew abreast of North Point that morning, he paused and saw that the sun had risen, a feverish red through the smoke in the sky. The lake around him had turned a bloody hue. The same moment that he noticed the color of the water, he heard an explosion from the direction of Aurora. Beyond the town, a black column climbed into the sky like a snake out of a charmer’s basket, but John LePere watched with only mild curiosity. Whatever the cause, it was the concern of other men. His only concern was keeping himself strong for the work that had become his life. As the siren in town sounded, calling the volunteer firefighters to their duty, LePere turned back and focused on cutting through the blood-colored water toward home.

He’d had the bad dreams so often over the years that he’d learned to keep himself from thinking about them by focusing on physical chores. By the time he’d showered and shaved that morning, he wasn’t thinking about the dream at all. He dressed in clean creased jeans, a crisp white shirt, blue canvas slip-ons. He fixed himself breakfast-oatmeal with raisins, a sliced banana, brown sugar and milk, whole-wheat toast, and a tall glass of orange juice. He ate slowly, alone in the quiet of his small cabin on the shore of a cove off Iron Lake. When he’d finished, he did up the dishes. Finally, he lifted his Leitz binoculars from where they hung on a steel spike hammered into the cabin wall near the back door, and he walked out onto his dock. He settled himself in a canvas chair and watched the big log home more than a quarter mile north across Grace Cove.