Heaven's Keep

  “Loud and clear,” Rude said.

  Bolt opened the door, and wind and snow screamed into the cockpit. He leaned down and spent a couple of minutes getting into his snowshoes, swearing a blue streak the whole time. Finally he hollered over his shoulder, “Ready with that instrument, O’Connor?”

  “Ready!” Cork yelled.

  Bolt tugged his mittens on and disappeared from the doorway. Cork opened his own door, and the wind struck him like a fist. He squeezed his eyes shut against the needles of ice and held out the magnetometer, which was snatched from his hands.

  “Shut the door!” Rude called. “I’m taking ’er up.”

  The chopper rose a couple hundred feet above the lake. Below, they could make out Bolt, a figure in a dark green parka plodding south.

  “You know him well?” Cork asked.

  “Not really,” Rude said. “He used to prospect for himself. He’s been working for Luger for quite a while, but like most Wyoming men, he’d rather be independent. If it came down to it, he wouldn’t think twice about telling the Luger people to go fuck themselves. Hard as a branding iron and nobody you’d want to spend time with. But it’s a hell of a thing he’s doing down there.”

  They followed Bolt the length of the lake, more than a mile, which took a little over an hour. At the southern end, Bolt cut to the west a couple of hundred yards and started back north, heading into the wind. Above them, Nightwind flew a broad circle inside Baby’s Cradle. As Bolt began his long trek back through the deep snow that covered the frozen lake, Nightwind radioed a weather update. Static again prevented Cork from hearing Nightwind’s transmission. Over his shoulder, Rude said, “That storm’s moving faster than they predicted. Lame figures we’ve got at best another hour, before getting home safely becomes a serious question.”

  Cork watched the small figure below, which was obscured at times by sudden blasts of white. Bent into the wind, he moved more slowly now. Fatigue and the bitter high-mountain cold were probably working on him as well. Cork knew it would take much longer for the second leg of the sweep than it had for the first.

  He leaned toward Rude. “If the plane had come in from the north through Giant’s Gate and the pilot tried to land, he’d have ended up more toward the southern end of the lake, don’t you think?”

  “A reasonable assumption,” Rude agreed.

  “So even if Bolt doesn’t make it all the way back to the north end, he’ll still have covered the most likely area by the time we have to bring him in.”

  “I’d say that’s right.”

  “Then that’s the way we’ll have to play it.” Cork turned to his son, who looked troubled by the decision. “It’s that or put us all in danger, Stephen.”

  “But won’t there still be a question?”

  “Hardly any,” Cork said. “It’s the best we can do under the circumstances. Okay?”

  Stephen stared down where Bolt struggled against the elements, and finally he gave a silent nod.

  The rate of Bolt’s progress continued to deteriorate. Rude scanned the sky above Baby’s Cradle, where dirty-looking clouds were piling up against the tops of the ridges. Bolt had made it just over halfway when snow began to fall, and Rude said, “We’ve got to pull the plug.” He maneuvered the chopper to a spot a dozen yards in front of Bolt. The man came alongside and cracked the door open. He handed the magnetometer to Cork, then heaved himself in after. He turned on his seat and undid his snowshoes, which he handed to Stephen. He slammed the door, threw back the hood of his parka, spraying snow over the others, and howled, “Mother of God, it’s cold out there!”

  “Did you find anything?” Cork said.

  “Nada,” Bolt said. He pulled off his mittens and blew into his hands. “Christ, I can’t feel my toes.”

  “There’s a thermos of coffee in back, Harmon. Help yourself.” Into his radio mic, Rude said, “We’ve got our cargo aboard and we’re heading home. Do you read me, Lame?” The chopper began to ascend, and Rude brought it to a heading that would take them out through Giant’s Gate. He shook his head in response to something that came through his headphones. “Negative. Harmon got nothing.” He listened again and said, “That’s a roger.” He turned to the others. “We’ll stay with Nightwind until we’re clear of the mountains. Make sure the Absarokas don’t swallow another aircraft.”

  They continued to be pummeled as they approached the gap in the north ridge, which had grown faint behind a gauze of blowing snow. In the battle between the little chopper and the wind, it was clear to Cork which of them was Goliath, and he began to be afraid they’d waited too long to get out. He feared for his own safety, but more he feared for Stephen, whose face was drawn taut and whose dark eyes were riveted on the icy ridge dead ahead, where thick coils of snow rose up into the air like snakes on the head of Medusa.

  “God fucking damn it!” Bolt yelled. “You want me to get out and lift, Rude?”

  “Easy, Harmon. We’re going to make it.”

  Rude swung the chopper back the way they’d come, turning in an impossibly tight radius, so that Cork’s stomach rolled. The helicopter climbed rapidly, and Rude swung it again toward Giant’s Gate. The snow was falling more heavily now, and, along with what blew off the ridge, it appeared as if a white door had slammed shut before them.

  Bolt’s hand wrapped around his passenger assist handle in a death grip. “Jesus, you got any idea where we are?”

  “I know exactly where we are,” Rude replied in a tight voice, and added a few moments later, “We’re through Giant’s Gate.”

  They broke out of the blind of white, and Cork saw the mountains to the north, wrapped in dense clouds almost level with the chopper. Half a mile directly ahead, Nightwind’s Super Cub circled in a holding pattern.

  “We’re clear, Lame,” Rude said into his mic. Then to his passengers he said, “We’re heading back.”

  The flight seemed to take forever, and the silence among the men in the little chopper was profound. At one point, Rude spoke with Dewey Quinn on the radio. Quinn reported that, like every other day, the search planes had found nothing. Above them, the clouds were rushing forward, and behind them the mountains were already nearly lost. The turbulence had increased, and there were moments when the chopper bounced like a rubber ball on a storm-tossed sea. Stephen stared out the window. Cork thought about the flight through Giant’s Gate, about how afraid he’d been that they wouldn’t make it, and he thought about Jo and what it must have been like for her as the plane dropped from the sky. And he wondered, wondered deeply, wondered sadly where she’d come to rest. And he wondered if he would ever know.

  They set down at the Hot Springs airfield, where Cork and Stephen helped Bolt transfer his equipment to his old pickup while Rude secured the chopper.

  Bolt paused before he climbed into his cab to leave. He looked into Stephen’s eyes. “Son, I don’t know if I ought to be wishing I found something up there. But seems to me since I didn’t, maybe you still got something to hope for.”

  “Thank you for trying,” Stephen said, and he shook the man’s hand.

  As Bolt drove off, Lame Deer Nightwind came from where he’d momentarily parked his Super Cub. “I need to get back to my own place before the storm hits. Anything I can do, Cork, let me know.”

  “You’ve already been a big help, Lame. Thanks for everything.”

  Nightwind put his hand on Stephen’s shoulder. “I don’t say this to many men, but I admire everything about you, son. I wish things had turned out different.” He headed back to his plane and a few minutes later was airborne.

  Rude stood in the gathering gloom of the afternoon. The first flakes began to fall, and he looked up at the sky. “Dewey’ll call off the search, at least until this passes.”

  “He’ll call it off for good,” Cork said. “It’s what I’d do. Where haven’t we looked?”

  Rude nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. You did everything you could. We all did.”

  ??
?You want to come over for dinner, you’re welcome to.”

  “Thanks, but I think we’d like to be alone tonight.”

  “Sure.” Rude reached out his hand one last time. “Take care, guys.” He got into his pickup and headed away.

  Cork and Stephen stood alone at the edge of the airstrip. The snow drifted down around them like ash from a fire. It was quiet and the air was strangely still, but that would soon change. Cork could feel it. Even in the basin of the Bighorn River, where sometimes the storms didn’t blow, something big was about to hit.

  “She’s gone,” Stephen said. He stared toward the mountains. “She’s really gone.”

  He’d held his back straight through the whole ordeal, but now Stephen bent and began, quietly, to cry.

  Cork put his arms around his son and looked toward the mountains. Up there the snow was already falling heavily, burying everything more deeply. Beneath it, the grass and flowers of the meadows would lie dormant until spring, when they would rise again. Beneath it, animals lay curled in holes and in mountain caves where they would sleep through the dark, cold months ahead, and wake in the spring. And beneath it somewhere, God alone knew where, lay Jo, who would neither wake nor rise.

  “Come on, Stephen,” Cork said gently. “It’s time to go home.”

  PART II

  FOUND

  EIGHTEEN

  In the weeks and months after, as the details of Jo’s final hour became known to him, Cork cobbled together a scene, played out again and again in his mind when he lay alone in bed at night, or while waiting for the pancake batter to bubble on the griddle, or in a thousand unexpected moments when the image would fall on him suddenly like a thief intent on stealing his heart. Small details differed: what blew in the wind across the hotel parking lot; Jo’s private thoughts; the words exchanged between her and LeDuc, exchanges that Cork knew would have taken place but the subject of which—mending the rift in her marriage—came mostly from his own deep yearning. Some of the elements were, of course, true. What the shuttle driver had reported of the conversations in the van. The recording Jo left on voice mail. The final radio transmission from the pilot as he lost altitude. Cork never allowed himself to imagine beyond the start of that precipitous descent. He held himself back from going with Jo to her final moment. That was a place he knew his heart couldn’t bear to be.

  And so time passed, and although there were many periods when Cork yearned deeply for Jo, his life went on. And nearly six months later, the time finally came when he realized that for a full day he’d forgotten to imagine his wife’s last hour. And he wept as if he’d betrayed her, though he knew it was not so.

  “Stephen,” Cork called up the stairs. “If you don’t get a move on, we’ll be late.”

  “I’m coming!” Stephen yelled back.

  “That’s what you said fifteen minutes ago. What’s taking so long?”

  Trixie came bounding down the stairs, and behind her came Stephen, tall and in a suit and tie.

  “My God,” Cork said. “You look downright handsome.”

  “I don’t care about handsome. I just want to look nice.”

  “You look stunning, buddy.”

  “You don’t look half bad yourself,” Stephen said and gave his father a playful punch. “What time is Hugh picking us up?”

  Cork glanced at his watch. “Should be here any minute.”

  “I’ve never ridden in a limo,” Stephen said.

  “Just a big car. I’m guessing that when you look back at all the firsts in your life, a limo ride won’t even make the top twenty.”

  Stephen went to the window and checked the street. “How long do you think this’ll take?”

  “Couple of hours, maybe. Why? Got a hot date?”

  “I’m going fishing with Gordy Hudacek. We’re taking his dad’s new boat over to Grace Cove to do some fishing.”

  “That’s the cigarette boat with the twin Merc engines, right? Give me a break. That boat’s all about speed. You’re going to run it over to Grace Cove just to see how fast it’ll get there.”

  “Well, sure, that’s part of it. But we’re going to fish, too.”

  “Middle of the day? Grace Cove?” Cork shook his head. “You won’t even get a nibble. You want to catch something, you should be dropping a line off Finger Point.”

  “Dad, I’ve been fishing Iron Lake all my life. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Make you a deal, then. You catch anything in Grace Cove, I’ll fry it up tonight, along with my special potatoes O’Connor, and I’ll throw together some coleslaw. You come back empty-handed, you’re responsible for dinner.”

  “Deal,” Stephen said with confidence. “Is Hugh eating with us?”

  “Haven’t invited him. Should I?”

  “Yeah. And tell him you’ll be serving walleye.”

  In the long winter months following his mother’s disappearance, Stephen had done his grieving. He’d arrived finally at a place of acceptance and, in truth, had reached that place before his father. Cork believed that partly this was because, having gone to Wyoming, Stephen felt he’d done all he could for his mother. And partly it was because Henry Meloux had worked with Stephen to help him come to this understanding and others about death. And partly it was because Stephen still had his whole life ahead of him and so much of Cork’s life felt gone. And partly—the worst part—it was because when Jo left she’d left in anger and Cork had never had a chance to make that right. He’d held a memorial service for her, and all the family had gathered. On one of the two plots in the cemetery that he and Jo had chosen together, he’d placed a simple granite stone that said “Beloved Wife and Mother.”

  Cork glanced out the window. “Limo’s here,” he said.

  They headed down the porch steps and into the fine sunshine of a warm May morning. Hugh Parmer slid out of the limo and stood grinning at them. He was dressed in a brown western-cut suit, white shirt, and bolo tie. He held a tan Stetson in his hands. Or a cowboy hat of some kind, anyway. To Cork, all cowboy hats were Stetsons.

  “Damn, Stephen, but don’t you look good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, I’ve got a granddaughter about your age.”

  “Don’t go there, Hugh,” Cork said.

  “Hell, you ought to see the guys she dates, Cork. Jeans hanging halfway down their asses, holes in their T-shirts.”

  “Your generation’s showing, Hugh.”

  “Guess you’re right. Still, if I’d come courting Julia that way, her father would’ve horsewhipped me.”

  “Laws against that now. Probably then, too,” Cork said. “Are we going to stand around bemoaning the younger generation all day, or is Stephen going to get his first limo ride?”

  “Hop in,” Parmer said and waved Stephen ahead.

  It was a short ride to Sam’s Place. When they turned onto the access off Oak Street, both sides of the road over the Burlington Northern tracks were lined with parked cars, and there was a stream of people walking in from town. The parking lot was filled, but a place had been saved for the limo. They parked and got out and were greeted by lots of locals, Cork’s friends and neighbors. A platform had been erected under the pine tree next to the lake where usually Cork had a couple of picnic tables sitting. The North Star Pickers were playing bluegrass to an appreciative audience gathered there. A couple good long lines had formed at the serving windows of Sam’s Place.

  Cork said, “Let me check with my staff, then I’ll join you guys.”

  He split off from Stephen and Parmer and entered the old Quonset hut through the side door. The smell was a familiar slice of heaven: grilled burgers and French fries hot from the oil. He headed up front to the serving area, where Judy Madsen, who managed Sam’s Place when Cork wasn’t there, was working fast and furious with three teenage girls, trying to keep up with the flood of orders. She was a retired school administrator, a no-nonsense but good-natured woman with time on her hands, who worked well with the high school kids who were Cork’s
usual hires.

  “How’s it going, Judy?”

  “Been hit by a landslide,” she replied from the grill, where she had half a dozen burgers and just as many hot dogs cooking. “If you wanted to shuck that sport coat and tie, you could roll up your sleeves and give a hand.”

  “Got ceremonial duties to see to first.” To the teenage kids in aprons, he said, “You guys are doing great. Keep it up!”

  They gave him quick smiles in reply and returned to their work.

  “I’ll come back and lend a hand as soon as all the business out there is finished, Judy.”

  She gave a grilling patty an expert flip. “If you don’t make it, we’ll be fine. But if this keeps up, a couple of extra hands wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I’ll be back,” he promised.

  Several boats had tied up to the dock. There were blankets spread along the shoreline of Iron Lake, and folks sat there eating food they’d purchased at Sam’s Place or from baskets and coolers they’d brought themselves. At a long table, members of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce were filling balloons with helium and handing them to anyone who wanted one. Escaped balloons drifted over Iron Lake like birds lost from migrating flocks.

  Cork found Stephen and Parmer shaking hands with Gary Niebuhr, mayor of Aurora, and Ted Hertel, who was a county commissioner.

  “Just telling Hugh here how excited we are with the project,” Niebuhr said to Cork.

  “And how much we appreciate his willingness to work with us to make the development something we’re all proud to have as part of our community,” Hertel finished.

  “Did you guys take that directly from the speeches you’re about to make?” Cork asked.

  Niebuhr laughed and looked at his watch. “You about ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” Cork said.

  “Then let’s interrupt the music and get on with business.”

  They cleared the band off the platform, and Niebuhr spoke first. He welcomed everyone and told a lame joke about a man and a talking fish, and then he spoke for too long about the Northern Lights development and what a great thing it was for Aurora and for Tamarack County. Then he introduced Hugh Parmer.