Ice-Out Read online

  Ice-Out

  Also by Mary Casanova Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  Curse of a Winter Moon

  Frozen

  Moose Tracks

  Riot

  Stealing Thunder

  When Eagles Fall

  Wolf Shadows

  Ice-Out

  Mary Casanova

  University of Minnesota Press

  Minneapolis

  Copyright 2016 by Mary Casanova

  Mary Casanova asserts her right to be identified as the Proprietor of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, mn 55401-2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  ISBN 978-0-8166-9417-4 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-5179-0211-7 (pb)

  ISBN 978-1-4529-5300-7 (e-book)

  A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available for this book from the Library of Congress.

  Design and production by Mighty Media, Inc. Interior and text design by Chris Long

  The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

  Dedicated to the memory of my father

  This story is a work of fiction,inspired by true events in northern Minnesota.

  Contents

  PART I: Deep Winter

  PART II: Slow Thaw

  PART III: Dreams of Summer

  Author’s Note

  For Further Reading

  Part I

  Deep Winter

  Folks try to predict ice-out—the day ice goes off the big lake—but it’s always a guess. Sure, Rainy Lake may look solid—clear to the Canadian shore. That’s when a guy makes mistakes. Some dumb cluck drives his Model T to his island cabin and goes through, losing the whole thing, front grill to back fender.

  The change happens slowly, and the ice becomes unpredictable. Unknowable as your girlfriend. One day, you think you know exactly what she’s thinking. You think you can tread safely, from one shore to the other. But you’d be wrong.

  Nothing is what it seems.

  There’s a whole honeycomb quality about the ice. It changes from within. On the surface it goes from white to silver to slate gray to black.

  Black ice.

  That’s your warning sign.

  1

  February 3, 1922

  OUTSIDE THE WHITE TURTLE CLUB, OWEN JENSEN reached inside his mackinaw jacket. The check was still there, tucked safe inside his shirt pocket. He couldn’t believe it. The loan had come with a few strings, but the check was his.

  It could change everything.

  Owen pulled on his leather mitts and filled his lungs with frigid air. Reluctant to go home, he walked around Ranier in temps well below zero. His breath formed small ice clouds. At the edges of his eyes, moisture froze his lashes together. Snow squeaked under his boots as he passed the bank, shops, and squat houses.

  Lights flickered in the second story of the candy store, now closed. Outside taverns, horses with thick winter coats were tethered, heads low, waiting to be hitched up or ridden home. Model T cars and trucks waited, too. It wouldn’t be too long before automobiles replaced horse-drawn wagons, sleighs, and carts. Owen had seen an opportunity, the chance to make something of himself, and he’d seized it.

  Selling cars couldn’t be much harder than selling rats, could it? Nine years back—a kid of only ten—he’d used his brains to bring in extra money. When his pet white rat, Salty, gave birth to a big litter, Mom said, “Find homes for them, or else.” With the help of his best friend, Jerry, Owen toted Salty from bar stool to bar stool around town. Salty, with her pink eyes and pink tail, became a Hollywood starlet. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jerry began in a big voice—at least for a kid—and with a grand flourish of his cap. “Here, you will see the likes as you have never seen!” Then Salty emerged from Owen’s sleeve. “Stand!” Salty stood on her back legs, her tiny front legs reaching upward and revealing puffy teats. Owen rewarded her with a peanut. “Kiss!” Salty raced up his arm and touched his cheek with her warm nose and whiskers. Customers applauded. When the grand finale came—“Hide!”—Salty scurried into Owen’s sleeve, tunneled up, and peered out from his collar. Customers offered to buy her. Instead, the boys built interest, and when Salty’s babies got bigger, the boys took them around town, sold them to the highest bidders, and made a kid-sized killing. Owen gave his earnings to his mother. She, in turn, put more food on the table.

  He’d been resourceful then, same as now.

  When he could no longer feel his toes, he headed across the railroad tracks back to a one-and-a-half-story house a block from the lake. A light glowed through the frosted kitchen window. Owen braced himself, turned the knob, and stepped in.

  Dad—who rarely slept more than a few hours a night—sat at the table with his Bible open, his hair sleep-rumpled. “It’s past two.”

  “I know,” Owen said as he hung his cap and plaid wool jacket on pegs behind the door. In the small wall mirror, compliments of the local grocery, Owen’s cheeks were wind-chapped, eyelashes frosted. His hair was cedar-colored, like Mom’s—but as unruly as Dad’s.

  Tipper, a golden dog with one white paw, sat at Owen’s feet, dusting the wood floor with his feathered tail. He pressed his wet nose into Owen’s palm until Owen gave him what he wanted: a good scratch under the chin.

  “Dad,” Owen said. His heart banged around in his chest, but he kept his voice down. “I have something to tell you.”

  Dad nodded. “After enough booze, a fellow gets lots of ideas.”

  “I haven’t been drinking,” Owen said, standing tall, as if to prove it. “Not much anyway. I made a decision. A car dealership. It’s the future and I want to get in on it. I’ll start small, then eventually, if things go well, I’ll expand.”

  Dad frowned, hands clenched on the faded floral tablecloth. “That’s hogwash, Owen. You’re nineteen. What with my heart giving out on me, you gotta be more responsible.” He pushed up from the table and crossed his arms over his red union suit and barrel chest.

  An inch short of Dad’s six feet, Owen met his pale blue eyes. “I am being responsible. I can still help out at the creamery. Just not all the time.”

  “Shhh, you two,” Mom whispered from the bedroom off the kitchen. “The boys are sleeping.”

  The past year had been a roller coaster. Dad’s chest pains would come, then go. When Dad took to his bed, Owen covered for him at the family business. He hoped Dad would be around long enough for Erling and Knut to eventually run things.

  “Why isn’t this enough?” Dad stretched his arms wide, indicating the kitchen, the living room with a cast-iron woodstove. This included Jensen Creamery, the village of Ranier, International Falls, the paper mill three miles downriver, and the nearly hundred-mile expanse of Rainy Lake, which formed the border between Minnesota and Canada. This meant the lift bridge joining two countries and the Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific Railroad that linked Ranier with the rest of the world.

  The water kettle shrieked on the cookstove. Owen grabbed a hot pad, lifted the kettle by its wooden handle, and then filled two white ceramic mugs with steaming water. He pulled a small flask of brandy from his shirt pocket and added a splash to his mug. He handed the other to Dad. Plain hot water, the way he liked it.

  Owen warmed his hands on the mug. He’d felt low for a few days after Sadie Rose returned last month to St. Peter, seventy-five miles southwest of St. Paul. He missed the way they talked about anything and everything; the way she
felt in his arms, pressed against his flannel shirt, her head tucked under his chin. He’d always wanted to make something of himself—but now he knew why. Heck, she was the daughter of a state senator. But that only made Owen more determined to make a future worth sharing.

  Silence stretched.

  The new electric light flickered above the table. “She wasn’t born upper crust,” Dad said, as if reading his mind. “I’ll bet the moon she’d be happy joining you here to help run things someday.”

  “Dad, she’s getting an education. She wants to teach music, not get stuck—” He stopped himself. It was like talking to a cow. If Dad just once heard her play the piano, saw her shelves filled with books, maybe he’d understand she was meant for more. He exhaled in frustration and stared at the shelf above the drain board and hand pump. Grandma had painted six wooden plates in Norwegian rosemaling designs, one for each grandson. It’s what she left behind. Well, he wanted to leave something behind, too. Something bigger than plates. So he’d started thinking up his own business.

  Last year was up and down for the Ford Motor Company. On the heels of their five millionth Model T, Ford lost the guy with the brains behind their production to Chevrolet. Studebaker, on the other hand, had been strong for a decade. They made a range of vehicles and were priced right, too, from under $1,000 up to $2,500. Sure, they weren’t as cheap as Fords, but “Studeys” made up the difference in quality.

  “I’ve done my research. I even asked Ennis for advice.”

  “E. W. Ennis?” Dad scoffed. “That’s reaching mighty high. When was that?”

  Owen waved away Dad’s question. “I couldn’t get a loan anywhere. I tried the two banks in the Falls. Then the Ranier Bank.” Owen pulled out his empty trouser pockets as proof. “I wasn’t about to ask you to put up the creamery as collateral.”

  Regret played at the corners of Dad’s eyes, as if he might start crying. “Someday, things will turn around for us.”

  “I can’t wait for someday,” Owen said. “That’s why I talked to Mr. Pengler.”

  Dad stared at him. “Owen, no.” He slowly wagged his head and squarish chin. “You get tangled up with that bootlegger, it’ll come at a price, I’m telling you.”

  Owen swallowed past his Adam’s apple and pushed ahead. “He agrees the time is now. He likes my ambition. In fact, he used to be the head chef at the Palmer House in Chicago. He took a big leap, a big risk, coming here to start the White Turtle.”

  “You don’t think starting up the creamery was a leap?” The bridge of splotchy skin across Dad’s nose flushed deep red. “Long as you didn’t sign anything—”

  “I signed an agreement.” Owen pulled the check from his shirt pocket. “Soon as I deposit this, I can order inventory, decide on location, how to advertise—all of that is still to come.” The more he talked, the more his dream took on a life and energy of its own. “We could take Sunday drives. Free advertising! Mom would love that and—”

  “It’s Prohibition, Owen. The country’s changing damn fast. It’s getting crazy out there.” Then his voice hit the ceiling. “How could a smart guy like you be so blasted foolish? Don’t you know Pengler has connections to Chicago? They use submachine guns now! You want to bring that kind of trouble here?”

  Owen groaned. “Jeez, Dad. It’s a business deal. Nothing to do with Chicago or gangs or ‘tommy guns.’”

  “You think your girl wants you getting involved with—”

  “Leave her out of this!” Owen flung his mug to the floor. It toppled, clunked, and then shattered against a leg of the cookstove. “I want to offer her a future, not one that chains her to me—especially here!”

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it, Dad, if it’s what I choose. I just don’t want to feel stuck here, without options. Sadie’s getting a college degree. Maybe she’ll want to return, but maybe she’ll want to live somewhere else, too. Maybe I’ll want to live somewhere else someday, that’s all.”

  Dad worked his mouth, like a horse evading a bit. Finally, he said, “Nothing’s free, Owen. Everything—every damn thing comes at a price.” Then Dad’s voice softened. “I know I wasn’t always the dad you wanted. I know you dreamed of college. But I did the best I could.”

  Owen bent down and picked up the pieces of the mug, avoiding Dad’s sudden confession. What difference would it make now? Owen was doing the best he could, as well. What he wouldn’t say was that before he could deposit Pengler’s check, he’d agreed to help unload a truckload of sugar sometime soon. Everyone knew sugar was a key ingredient in making alcohol, but Owen couldn’t see anything wrong with unloading it. Also, Owen agreed to sell Pengler a half dozen “Whiskey Sixes,” specially rigged Studebakers designed to carry heavy cargo over rough roads. He couldn’t say no. Those sales would help launch his dealership and help pay down his loan.

  When Owen stood again, he met Dad’s eyes.

  “Think you know everything about everything, son. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then Dad turned away and closed the bedroom door behind him.

  2

  WITH THE CONVERSATION RINGING IN HIS EARS, OWEN bundled up and trudged back into the cold. Someday he’d get a place with indoor flush toilet plumbing, rather than freeze his ass off in the outhouse every time Nature called.

  When he returned, the house was quiet, except for the fire crackling in the woodstove. Absorbing the warmth, Owen climbed the attic stairs. Tipper padded up behind him. Beneath the attic’s slanted ceilings rose soft, deep breathing. Five cots and five brothers were packed in like sardines in a can, from seven-year-old Jake, curled in a fetal position, to fifteen-year-old Erling, whose feet hung well beyond the end of his bed. Being oldest came at a price, but Owen considered himself lucky to have a room of his own, no matter how small.

  He turned on his lamp, undressed to his long johns, and climbed into bed. Tipper waited. Owen patted the edge of the bed and Tipper leapt up, circled at the end, and pawed at the wool blanket until it rippled.

  “It’s gotta be just so, doesn’t it, boy?”

  Tipper ignored him, pawed a few more times, then at last plopped down, off to the side from Owen’s feet.

  His mother had been off to the side for years. The first sixteen years of Owen’s life, he’d watched her fret to feed a family on the pennies left after Dad’s drinking sprees. And Dad would have kept on drinking, too, had Owen not stopped him a few years back. Dad had stormed in, all whiskeyed up. It was hardly the first time, but that night he’d gone snaky. He had Mom up against the kitchen wall, those big hands around her little neck, yelling and accusing her of unspeakable things. Owen was too small to take him on, so he’d grabbed the shotgun. “Dad! Let her go or I’ll shoot you!”

  When Dad crawled home the next morning, he asked Mom, “Where’d you get those marks on your neck?”

  Owen spoke up for her. “From you, Dad. You tried to kill her.” Dad cried like a baby, head in his hands. After that, to Owen’s astonishment—because drunks rarely give up their favorite pastime—Dad never took a drink again. He offered free buttermilk to drunks to help them sober up. He encouraged them to give up booze, too. Though Dad turned over a new leaf, Owen could never trust him. The family continued to pay a price. You don’t recover from a financial disaster in three years, not with a family of hungry boys. Money was always in short supply.

  Stirring up memories was like digging along the shore for arrowheads. Beneath top layers of sand were layers of dirt, clay, or granite. Once you started, you never knew what you’d find. Thinking of those early years never made him feel better. He rested his hand on Tipper’s ribcage as it rose and fell. Morning rounds would come soon enough; Tipper always joined him, greeting everyone with a full body wag as Owen loaded the creamery truck with cans of fresh milk and wood crates of fresh eggs. He should try to get some sleep.

  When Owen finally closed his eyes, all he saw was Sadie: dark waves cut boldly at her chin, eyes deep as the lake, her mouth wide
open in disbelief the time she’d cast her lure and snagged the back of his upper arm. She burst into tears. It hurt, but he’d cracked up laughing. He found pliers in the tackle box. You had to push it through. You can’t take a lure out backward or it’ll tear the flesh. That’s why they’re barbed, to hook and to hold. He’d intended to be all steely and do it on his own, but the angle was bad. He needed her help. “I can’t,” she’d said, crying. “You can,” he told her. And she did. Then, from the flask of brandy he kept on hand, she poured the alcohol straight into his wound. He yelped, but she wrapped her cotton scarf around his arm, then kissed him all over his face. The pain was worth every moment that followed.

  His thoughts drifted to last summer with her at Melnyks’ farm. Covered in dirt and grease, Jerry was bent over a tractor engine, stalled out with a wagon of fresh-cut hay. “Soon as I get it going for my old man and we finish putting up hay,” he said with a wink and a sly smile, “I’m finding me a gal half as beautiful as you, Sadie.”

  Owen snugged his arm around Sadie’s waist in mock ownership, and Sadie laughed, resting her head on Owen’s shoulder. “You’re a charmer, Jer. Hope you let the ladies down softly.”

  “Seriously, Sadie. I realize Owen wasn’t born with my good looks or brains—just so you know, I’m waiting in line.”

  At that, Owen tackled Jerry at the knees and pinned him in the grass until Jerry sputtered out a half-joking apology.

  He missed Sadie something terrible. He couldn’t wait for late May and the day she’d hop off the train for the summer. He’d fold her in his arms, then steer her toward a lot of Studebakers. “Pick one to test drive,” he’d say. Then he’d take the wheel, hit the gas, and she’d smile, her hair wind-tossed. But that was months away. Until then, he had a future to build, with or without Dad’s blessing.