Cedarbones
Chapter 12: A Surprise Visitor
As the sun hid below the eastern horizon, the sky washed to a morning periwinkle. Shelley drove her dad’s truck to the work site through the Grand Marais back roads. Her Igloo cooler sat in the passenger seat. The Pixies played through the old cassette player. She lifted her travel mug to her lips and guzzled her coffee to offset her hangover. She felt bad for sneaking out in the morning and leaving Connor asleep in her bed, but he knew she had to work before they busted into all their shenanigans. But she couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. It felt like she had stepped back in time and dove headfirst into the old-old times, prior to all the bullshit in Minneapolis. Even when she moved the rear-view mirror to see her force a serious face, it lasted two whole seconds before the smile burst out again.
By the time she arrived onsite, the sun crept over the treeline and cast its glow across a large 180-acre swatch of cleared out forest. As the truck bumped through the logging road and past the trailer house masquerading as the site headquarters, Shelley peered through the windshield at the work. It both amazed her and saddened her to see the forest clean shaven from the rest of its fully bearded splendor. She goosed the truck over a couple larger ruts in the road, and approached the site manager, Ellie. Shelley rolled down her window, allowing the scent of freshly cut lumber—papery birch, loamy poplar, and citrusy pine—into the cab.
Ellie stepped up to her window with a clipboard and said, “Continue on the northwestern corner. Follow the blue paint marking as usual.”
Shelley leaned her elbow out of the opened window and said, “You still good with me taking the afternoon?”
As Ellie marked down Shelley’s assignment, she told Shelley without looking up, “Yep. We got filler coming in for your afternoon shift.”
“Great,” Shelley said. “I can cover someone’s shift next week.”
Ellie flipped pages on her clipboard, looked up at Shelley and said, “That works for me.” Then she thumped Shelley’s door and stepped away.
Shelley gunned the truck up the logging road and onto the northwestern spur. Once up the hill, the full superior sunrise cast a golden morning glow over the forest and inside her cab. Shelley shielded her eyes with her hand, slowed the truck and looked east, over the forest and to Lake Superior. As a child, she learned that morning often came quietly on the lake. Sometimes with a slow, solemn grace, as if the lake insists you earn the light. But other times it insists on marveling at its spectacle. In those times the horizon thins from iron brushstrokes to crushed violet petals, before it flares into bands of bright fire, skimming the surface still dark and ancient. And as she knew so many times being close to the shore, the waves breathed against the rocks in long, patient sentences, and the air tasted of cold slate and cedarwood. And even this deep in the forest, gulls wheeled overhead without urgency, their cries softened by distance as they made their way to find their breakfast. But above all of that, the sun lifted itself free at last, a copper coin held just above the waterline. In that moment, Shelley knows the lake feels less like a place and more like a presence—watchful, enduring, and indifferent to the smallness of her or anyone else lucky enough to stand before it.
After a deep cleansing breath, she gassed the truck further to the northwest corner. There, she hoisted her travel mug of coffee and stepped through the dewy moss and mulch around her skidder. She climbed into the machine, fired up its sputtering engine, and began her work. Around her the screaming blades of fellers whined through the 180-acres, and skidders rambled through the terrain. Before long, like any work, the routine of it all flew by. One cord of wood led to two and three and so on. By the time the lunch whistle and the cascade of lumber machines made their way to her, she turned her skidder around and brought it back to the logging road for her replacement.
On her way back down the road, she ate a salami sandwich from her lunchbox and guzzled down another Gatorade. In her head, she ran through the madness of the upcoming early dinner with the home health care aid. Would her dad flip out? She imagined him throwing pots and pans in a fit, and her and the aide having to gang tackle him. It wouldn’t go that badly, she reminded herself. Everything would be just fine. It had to. She needed help with him, so she could tackle the legal aspect of getting her son back. She bit off another bite of sandwich and ambled down the logging road near the trailer house HQ, when something odd appeared at the trailer.
Sheriff Vollen’s patrol car.
Shelley eased off the gas for no reason other than shock until she realized she was no longer a criminal. When she pressed the gas pedal, someone exited the passenger side of the patrol car. As she slowly drove by, she remembered the man who exited the patrol car.
Chet Nilsson.
The young man with the thin blue line cap.
The kid who threw the cinder block through Connor’s window.
Chet was her replacement for the afternoon.
When her truck bounced past the young man, he met her gaze and smiled. She didn’t think he recognized her but couldn’t imagine this kid being able to act this well. As he passed by, the truck ambled past the squad car, where Vollen dressed in his sheriff’s uniform tipped his hat to her. What the hell, she thought, pulling the truck out of the forest. Thoughts raced through her head as she sped up in the truck. Vollen + Nilsson. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Why did the Sheriff drive him to work? Were they close? Was Vollen one of the three and he was using disenfranchised youth to keep the story quiet? It sure appeared that way.
But, she thought. I need evidence. A paper trail. Something that proves all this. She couldn’t just get amped up at one coincidental thing and jump to conclusions. She had to be careful. Methodic. Perfect.
Once out of sight from the logging site, she checked her rear-view for the sheriff, then pulled out her burner phone and dialed up Connor.
“Hey,” he answered her. “I apologize for last night. I feel like it was too rough. I don’t—”
“Shut up,” she said. “You were fine. More than fine…listen I’m just leaving work and Sheriff Vollen just dropped off Chet Nilsson at the job site.”
“More than fine,” Connor said, pride dripping through the phone.
“Connor?!”
“Right,” he said. “Vollen and Nilsson. I don’t think the kid has a car. He’s probably just dropping him off for work.”
“But he threw that brick through your window,” Shelley said. “And Vollen seems cozy with him.”
“You still think Vollen is one of the three?” Connor asked.
“Well,” she said. “I think it’s more of a possibility now!”
“Okay, okay,” Connor said. “I’ll do some digging.” He paused, then added, “So, want to have dinner tonight?”
“I have that home health care aide over tonight,” she said.
“Oh, that’s right. Sorry,” he said. “It’s just…I’ve never had—”
“Connor, I’ve been riding a skidder all day,” she said. “Give me a couple of days.”
“Really?”
Shelley shook her head and said, “Don’t get a complex over it. It’s…been a long time for me.”
And with that, she hung up the phone and drove home.
After a half hour of thinking of the possibilities regarding Sheriff Vollen and Chet Nilsson, Shelley turned the truck into her father’s driveway and navigated through the short run of woods to the circular drive in front of the farmhouse. And there sat a black BMW. But not just any black BMW. Her ex-husband’s black BMW. She pulled up behind it, killed the engine and leapt out of the truck. Her son, Vee sat on the porch steps. When he stood up, his stature stretched slightly too tall for his age. All elbows and long winters, with a face that still can’t decide if it’s the little boy she raised or the man he’s becoming. His thick brown hair, wavy, and cut too infrequently, pushed back by his hands too often. Freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks like evidence of time spent outdoors with little care for sunscreen. He still dresses the way he wants to. A battle she gave up on years ago. Hoodies even when it’s warm, sneakers worn thin at the heels, jeans that still smell faintly of skate parks and spilled soda. There’s a seriousness in his eyes that comes from watching adults talk when they think kids aren’t listening—parental arguments, work calls, family conversations that trail off when he enters the room.
He runs up to her and embraces her with gusto. At the moment, her son’s embrace replaced the horror of David being within ten paces of them. Her eyes melt and her breath catches before it changes into a simple sob of relief.
“I missed you so much, Mom,” he said, his head burrowed into the corner of her neck and shoulder.
“Me too, buddy,” she said. “But why are you here?”
“You didn’t get my message?” David asked from behind the screen door on the porch, holding up the latest, most expensive mobile phone.
Forty and carefully assembled, David stepped out onto the porch, and approached them both. His body had always looked less lived-in than maintained. His hair was an aggressively confident shade of brown, cut every three weeks on schedule, sculpted to suggest effortlessness while clearly requiring product and a mirror. He carries his weight in the places power settles: a slightly thickened neck, a torso padded just enough to suggest long lunches and short workouts. His suits fit impeccably, tailored, slim, expensive; but they wear him more than he wears them. There’s something about his posture that gives away his increasing douche-ness before he speaks: chin lifted a fraction too high and shoulders squared like a permanent negotiation stance. Even at rest, his body seems to perform: a practiced half-smile, eyes always scanning for advantage, as if the room itself were a committee he expects to win over simply by standing in it.
Shelley pulled out her burner flip-phone and said, “I must have missed it.”
David slid his hands in his pockets and said, “Well, I have meetings for a couple week in Duluth, so I figured, since Vee wanted to visit, I’d let him stay for a while. I can pick up when my business is finished.”
“Yeah,” Shelley said. She looked around at the crops, the farmhouse, the plume of smoke rising from her father’s lodge behind the house, and lastly her flip phone. “I think I can make it work.”
David squinted his eyes in disbelief. “What do you mean, you can make it work? What do you have to do here?”
Vee stepped in and said, “Dad! Stop it.”
“No, son,” he said. “I would just like to know what’s eating at her time here that she can’t spend time with you?”
Shelley stuffed her phone in her pocket with a violent thrust. Then she squinted her eyes too, and said, “Dad needs help with the farm. I have to wrangle mental health care for him. Find a lawyer.”
David jumped in on that. “A lawyer? For what? You’ll never win custody with your record.”
Her face red, Shelley took a breath and switched subjects. “I also have a story I’m working on.”
David laughed. “A story. Right. Did someone steal some fish? Local meth addict burns trailer down!” His laugh grew louder and filled with extra jackass.
“No!” she said. “It’s a missing person case. From over 50 years ago.”
David laughed harder. Too hard to make it look natural. “Well, maybe you should stop with all that nonsense and watch your son instead. All those stories of yours in Minneapolis only led to car damage and threatened litigation.”
“The paper paid for all that!”
David stepped to his car and unlocked it with his fob. “Well, I doubt whatever rinky-dink paper they got up here will cover your insurance here.”
“Just fuck off, David,” Shelley said finally. “We’ll be fine.”
David got into his car, fired it up, and rolled down the window. “Be good, Vee,” he said, nodding at the boy, then at Shelley. “I mean it. Don’t let that story endanger Vee. Drop it.”
And with that, the BMW shucked gravel as it rolled through the circular drive and through the woods to the nearby road. Shelley watched the car leave with her teeth clenched and her hands balled into fists. When the car was no longer visible, her breath exhaled like she had spent the conversation on a long cavern dive. Her heart slapped against her ribcage. And a bead of sweat formed at her hairline.
Vee reached out and held her hand. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Shelley took in a great cleansing breath, wiped her wet eyes, then wrapped her arm around her son. “No need to be sorry, kiddo. I’m glad you’re here! We could use the help. Make a few vegetable runs with Gpaw. Visit downtown. It’ll be great!”
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