Mother Lode Read online

  Mother Lode

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART II

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  PART III

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 1

  The blizzard had obliterated the road. Jorie rubbed the snow from his lashes for the hundredth time. With the snow already a foot deep, and no town lights in sight, it was almost impossible to steer a steady course with the buggy.

  The sun had disappeared over the horizon of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, leaving the sky dark, but not yet black. With no lantern, Jorie knew he’d be lost in a frozen oblivion if he didn’t see some sign of civilization soon. Aiming for a mid point between the trees on either side of the road was the best he could do. One wrong move and the mare could slip into a ditch and break a leg.

  I need to get to the sheriff’s. I need to get there soon, or I’ll never get there at all.

  Like silent, moving pictures in a kinetiscope, the snow made its presence without sound. Autumn leaves, still blushing red, commingled with the falling snow.

  Recent memory bubbled up. Take my arm, Mother, and you won’t slip. A gust of wind, spinning the snow into a vortex around him brought him back from reverie. He must keep his wits about him if he was to get out of this alive; he dare not spend a moment on what lay behind. Not now.

  But for the plaintive cry of a wolf, the night fell into a terrible silence. The lap robe did little to warm him as spasms of cold ricocheted through his whole body.

  Where was he, how far from Hancock? Had he passed the big turn in the road yet? The otherworldliness of the situation left him without feeling for time or place.

  Finally, downdrafts of smoke from the towering stack of the Portage Copper Mining Company reached his nostrils. He was nearing town! Tears of relief turned icy before they’d run their course. Acrid odors of blasting powder filtered downwind from the smelting plant. Soon the exhaust of the Keweenaw joined that of the Portage, its fiery red glow throwing sparks from her towering chimney.

  As the sight of gas streetlamps beckoned him, he felt the loosening of his stomach muscles; his hands relaxed their grip on the reins. Then his stomach balled into an even tighter knot: In only minutes, he’d have to tell his awful story to Mr. Foster.

  He traversed the silent streets of town in solitude. So stiff with cold when he reached the sheriff’s house, he could barely grasp the knocker.

  Cora Foster peered out into the blizzard. “Who is it?”

  “J—Jorie.”

  The rounded woman stood back staring at the white apparition before her, blowing wisps of hair from her face. At last she found her voice. “Jorie Radcliff! What are you doing out in such a misery?”

  “I need to see—”

  “Come in, come in.” She stood back in amazement. “Just look at you, like a ghost from the other side! Lordy, I hardly know you.”

  She brought him in and closed the door. Unmindful of the snow he was bringing in, Jorie followed her dumbly into the parlor, where Mrs. Foster seated him by the fire and draped an afghan over his knees.

  She poked at the coals, and added more wood. “Who’d have thought, such a storm, and it not even November?” she said, although an October storm in these parts was not unusual.

  Jorie pushed his wayward thoughts aside, focused on the sounds: the rasp of metal against metal, the fall of cinders, and the thud of new wood placed on the grate. Cora Foster was making up the fire. He had been in this home many times; he would be all right now.

  From the kitchen, he heard, “Who is it, Cora?”

  “It’s the Radcliff boy, Earl.”

  Jorie heard the sheriff’s chair pushed back from the kitchen table. Mr. Foster came into the parlor, a large blue napkin tucked under his chin and extending over his broad chest. Earl Foster was a barrel-chested man, not tall, but making up for it in strength.

  “What brings you here, lad?” The sheriff pulled off his bib, wiped it roughly across his mouth.

  Whether it was his chattering teeth or the emotional shock, Jorie could barely speak.

  “In the forest . . .” He couldn’t finish.

  “What about the forest?”

  It seemed the sheriff was towering over him like Goliath. Jorie stared at the man’s trousers and noticed that a button on Mr. Foster’s fly was missing.

  “It started sn-owing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Let the lad catch his breath, Earl. He’s half froze. I’ll fix something to warm him up.”

  Mrs. Foster disappeared into the kitchen, beckoning the sheriff to follow.

  Briefly, scenes in the snow played around the edges of Jorie’s mind, but he couldn’t keep them stage center. He descended into numbness, only to be startled back to the dreadful events of the day, as Mrs. Foster placed a tray on his lap.

  When he finished the chowder and the chill had begun to wear off, he put his spoon down and let his lids fall.

  Mrs. Foster collected the bowl, and Mr. Foster returned to the room and sat down.

  “Start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”

  When Jorie opened his eyes, it was Mr. Foster’s eyebrows that caught and held his attention. He’d known they were bushy, but he’d never noticed before that the left one had several hairs almost an inch long curling up toward his brow.

  “What happened in the forest?”

  Jorie forced himself to put his thoughts where they least wanted to go. “It started out a sunny day. I took my m-mother . . .”

  “Your mother? Where is she?”

  Jorie wet his lips. “I took her for a ride in the buggy, and a walk in the woods.”

  “In this storm? What the hell did you do that for?” The sheriff was on his feet again.

  “It wasn’t snowing when we started out!” Jorie buried his head in his hands.

  Earl Foster let out a long breath.

  “It was sunny, and then it started. . . ”

  The sheriff was pacing. If only he’d stay put, Jorie thought he could get his thoughts corralled.

  “It turned into a blizzard— very quickly. We got lost, and she kept slipping in the snow.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Then she fell—”

  Earl Foster leaned closer. “How’s that? I didn’t hear you.”

  “She fell— her ankle. She couldn’t walk.”

  It was difficult to keep focused. He was listening to the pendulum and the cinders fallings. Anything, to avoid reliving the afternoon.

  “She told me to find the trail and come back for her.” He took a deep breath. “I tried to make her comfortable.”

  “Go on.”

  Jorie swallowed a few times. Earl Foster was looking very agitated.

  “I, I left her then.” He wet his lips. “And tried to find my way out. By the time I got back to the road, I was losing the light. I was afraid
I’d never find her if I went back without a lantern.”

  “Did you have one in the buggy?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I—I didn’t expect to be out after dark.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “When?”

  “When you found the road, but had no lamp!” The sheriff was losing patience.

  “Oh.” A pained look came over Jorie as he was forced to remember. “I started down the road, hoping to find a house, and ran into a fellow in a wagon. I asked him if he’d help me. He had a lantern, and the two of us backtracked down the trail.”

  “The trail you’d just come off of.”

  “Yes, sir. But the snow had already covered my footprints. We searched for about an hour. It was getting dark in the forest. The man said he had to be getting home, and I’d better follow him out of the woods.”

  “So you left her there.”

  His agitation was increasing. “I didn’t see how I could help her by staying. Can you do something, Mr. Foster?”

  “We’ll get to that.” The sheriff paced again before sitting down. “Let me get this straight. You took your mother for a scenic walk in the forest with a blizzard on the way?”

  “It was beautiful when we started out.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around noon.”

  “I thought you were working at the newspaper.”

  Jorie nodded. “I set type, midnight to eight.”

  “You didn’t hear any forecast about the storm?”

  ”No, sir.”

  “What was the man’s name— the man with the lantern?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’d he live?”

  “He didn’t say. We just tried to find my m-mother.”

  “Why didn’t you carry her out with you? She can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds.”

  “We were lost. I had to find the trail first. Then I was going to—”

  “Come back and get her, yes.”

  Jorie nodded.

  “Had it started to snow when you went for your walk?”

  “No, sir.” Why did the sheriff keep asking the same questions?

  Earl poked around on his desk for his writing tablet, fussed with the nib of his pen. Finally he said, “October 22, 1900.” He looked up. “Is that right, Jorie?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, sir.”

  He wrote down the woman’s name. “Catherine—what was her middle name? Some goddess or other.”

  “Isis. She uses her maiden name now.”

  “MacGaurin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Earl Foster wrote her full name on the paper. “Catherine Isis MacGaurin Radcliff. Do you know her age? Thirty-five, is it?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “And how old are you, Jorie?”

  “I just turned eighteen.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “Didn’t I hear you moved out of the house awhile back, after a rough patch with your mother?”

  “Yes, for about a month.”

  “When you had that scuffle with her in your sister’s room?”

  God, had she told him about that? He wiped the perspiration with his sleeve. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why did you move back?”

  “My sister— needed me. She’s only four.”

  Jorie watched the sheriff snap the rubber band on his wrist. “What did you do last night?”

  “We played Flinch.”

  “Who did?”

  “My mother and I, after Eliza went to bed.”

  “Did you have any arguments?”

  “No, sir.”

  “After the game, what happened?”

  “My mother turned in.”

  “And you?”

  “I took a walk down by the lake.”

  “What for?”

  “I just wanted to think.”

  “What about?”

  Jorie turned toward the window, listening to the scraping sound the frozen birch tree branches made as they clawed the window pane.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Where’s your sister now?”

  “Oh, my God!”

  He hadn’t thought about Eliza since he’d left home with his mother.

  “She’s with the neighbors. I’m supposed to pick her up at suppertime.”

  “Why wasn’t she included on this outing?”

  “She was playing with her friend. Mother said to leave her there ‘til we got home.”

  Jorie’s eye caught the grandfather clock. The movement and sound of the chair, he noticed, was almost, but not quite synchronized with the pendulum. If he could just get them together, or stay with the pendulum.

  “Can you do something, Mr. Foster? Send some men to find her?”

  “In this blizzard? It would take hours to get up there, and even with lanterns, finding her in the dark when you’re not even sure where you left her—” The sheriff paused. “I’m sorry, son. We’ll send a search party out in the morning.”

  There was something ominously final about that statement. If she wasn’t dead already, there was no way she could survive the night, with temperatures plummeting below freezing.

  Pictures started playing in Jorie’s head in jerky slow motion, like the ones in the penny arcade. He and his mother were walking through the woods and the snow was coming down in huge unstoppable flakes. It rose to their knees, then up to their necks. They tried to swim through it, but soon it was burying them both in its cold, merciless, resolve. They lay clutching each other beneath it, looking up through the small air space their breath had reclaimed from the snow.

  No, no! It wasn’t like that, he knew it wasn’t.

  At the same time his body was acting up. A tightening feeling in his throat spiraled down to his belly, turned around and spiraled back up, bringing the contents with it.

  He dashed for the front door.

  When he returned, he lay on the floor in a crumpled heap of sobbing flesh. Long tortured wails broke their dam and poured forth, wave after wave of unarticulated grief.

  He felt something laid over him, maybe the afghan. The only sound that reached his ears was the steady tock of the pendulum. He deliberately focused on its comforting predictability.

  Finally, he heard the sheriff say something about his sister.

  “What are you going to do about Eliza?”

  He blew his nose. “I have to get her.”

  “Will she be in school tomorrow?”

  He shook his head. “She’s only four.” He pulled himself together and got off the floor.

  “You’d better make arrangements for her then. Be here by ten. Let’s hope the road crew has rolled the road by then. You’ll show us where to look.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jorie’s stomach turned. He knew it was perfectly reasonable for the sheriff to ask him to help in the search, but he hadn’t anticipated it.

  The thought of coming upon his mother’s stiff body brought up more waves of nausea.

  Chapter 2

  Earl Foster drank his third cup of coffee while he waited for the men he’d rounded up to search for Catherine’s body. Kurt Wheeler was coming with his sleigh, and two others would join them. He hadn’t slept well last night, couldn’t get over what had happened to his old friend. He'd known the Catherine since schooldays up in Red Jacket, when this Scottish lass had captured his heart.

  Then in Hancock he’d become poker buddies with her husband, Thomas, the engineer for the Portage mine. Catherine had married a widower more than twice her age with two grown sons and a younger one who’d only lived with them a few years. He wasn’t sure why, but when the boy was about twelve, he’d been sent away.

  He remembered how awkward it had been at first to go to the big house on the hill and encounter the girl he’d longed to make his own. As the years passed he became more comfortable with Catherine; when there was an opportunity to talk,
it was usually about Jorie. He had watched the boy grow up in that house. On poker nights he remembered the kid asking him riddles until his pa shooed him away.

  And the lad had worked for him a couple summers back, gardening. Nice boy. Bright, too.

  The last time he’d seen Catherine she was as attractive as ever. Who’d have thought she’d end up this way, dead at thirty-six?

  He couldn’t help wondering if it was really an accident. No, it couldn’t possibly have been otherwise. Still, there were nagging thoughts. There had been serious trouble between the boy and his mother. Catherine had come to him about that, even shown him a bruise on her arm.

  “Do you want me to bring him in, Catherine?”

  “No. But I want it put down, for the record,” she’d said.

  And he’d been called to the house once to witness a locked door Jorie had busted down, before he ran off. She’d asked him to wait for Jorie to return, because she was afraid.

  “Promise to protect me, Earl,” she’d beseeched. “With Thomas gone, I feel so vulnerable.”

  Whether it was his sense of duty or her imploring green eyes which still mesmerized him, he didn’t know. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “He’s turned so violent.”

  But this was the same boy who’d nursed an injured wolf back to health when he was twelve. The same young man whose essays and poetry had occasionally graced the pages of The Copper Country Evening News.

  He slipped a rubber band over his hand. He did some of his best thinking when he snapped it against his wrist.

  Jorie and the men arrived more or less on time, and started off in the sleigh. There’d been about a thirteen inch fall, all told. The road workers with their huge rollers and teams of draft horses had not yet compacted the snow on the road leading north. The men in the sleigh found it slow going.

  No one else was about, and only the plodding sound of the horses’ hooves and their occasional snorts broke the stillness. At least it had stopped snowing; in fact, the sun was out today.

  Jorie thought the whole landscape had taken on an ethereal look, as unreal as the previous day’s events. Streams had been silenced overnight. Circling wind eddies had made whimsical sculptures of snow banks. Branches heavy with pristine snow caught the sunlight, transforming them into dazzling crystalline figures.

  He'd awakened this morning with Eliza jumping on his bed. "Isn't it grand, Jorie, staying all night at Henna's?"