Leech Lake Laundry-Chapters 3–8
This is the continuation of my thriller novel about a former Military Policeman and LAPD Missing Person’s detective and his brilliant but troubled 19 year-old estranged half-sister who team up to resolve a family member’s disappearance on Minnesota’s most beautiful and unfortunately named lake.
Chapter’s 3–8 take Ollie through dealing with his parents and more “aggrieved” than “grieving” uncle in Minneapolis to the shores of Leech Lake. Along the way, Ollie takes a walk down memory lane that reveals both the nature of his childhood relationship with his missing cousin, Kyle and what drove Ollie away from Minnesota and into the nomadic life he’s chosen.
As always, thank you for reading and I’d love to hear what you think!
If you’d like to start from the beginning, below is a link to the first installment, LLL Prologue-Chapter 2:
THREE
After a day of light meeting and trainer session cancelling and light packing, Oliver made the crucible-like surface-street pilgrimage from Hollywood to LAX. He then hopped on the 3 and a half-hour flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport. The car rental company had assigned Oliver a more conspicuous than expected forest green Dodge Charger (is this “mid-size standard?”), which he could have rejected and asked for something more modest, but since no one has ever done that once ever when presented a temporary muscle car, Oliver hopped in and headed to his mom’s house.
It had been two Christmases and a handful of months since he’d been back. Despite the reasons he was hesitant to return, Oliver couldn’t help but feel like he had once again come home.
On a clear day in LA, if there are no forest fires burning anywhere, Southern California has its own brand of gloriously distinct air. A mixture of hot and cold somehow staying separate but both present, a hint of salt coming off the ocean. It can be equal parts exhilarating and exotic. But for a Minnesota born kid returning, there is no substitution for the immediately crisp, clean air that reboots and re-calibrates the system within seconds of arrival. Especially after rain, which is the atmospheric circumstance in which Oliver found himself. For better and worse, Oliver wasn’t ten minutes off the plane and long hidden pieces of who he was and where he came from were already finding their way back to the front of Oliver’s consciousness.
To that end, his first stop was the easy one. His parents’ divorce became official when Oliver was already out of the house (and the country, for that matter), but his mother worked harder to remain in Oliver’s life and keep him in hers. It was no easy feat for Becky Johnson (formerly Kirkland), because Oliver was out of country and still righteously pissed off at both her and his father. Becky e-mailed and called and worried and tried to get through to him. His father did considerably less. Eventually, a couple of wars and a brief homecoming later and Oliver had finally softened to Becky. By then he had seen enough families torn apart by something way worse than divorce. He had also found, somewhat to his own shock, that his mom had transformed herself during his time away. She was more self-assured and while she had always been direct, he recognized in her a formidable pride and inability to be anything other than exactly who she was without self-consciousness.
Even if he still felt deceived by his parents for how they broke up his family, he couldn’t deny the independence suited his mom. His father was another story, but as Oliver got out of the car in the driveway of the South Minneapolis house off the River Road that he never called home, he had more pressing matters and didn’t have to think about his dad for at least an hour or two.
FOUR
Between the never-ending curiosity and quirky, sarcastic sense of humor that always danced in her eyes (Eyes that Oliver had inherited) and her hummingbird like perpetual motion, there seemed to be a limit to how much Becky Johnson could age. At 66 she looked like a fit 58. As he gave her a hug and then sat down at the table in the kitchen, Oliver supposed she would look older had she stayed married to his dad. He felt a pang of guilt for resenting her that freedom for as long as he had. Alas, Becky was in a “down to business” mood and Uncle Kurt, who was already at the kitchen table when Oliver walked in, wasn’t in much of a mood to reminisce either.
“Don’t get too comfortable, Ollie.” Becky started. “We need you to get up to Walker as soon as possible.”
“No fuckin’ way that boy drowned, Ollie.” Was Kurt’s greeting.
“Language aside, I agree with your uncle.” Becky chimed in. “You remember all those family reunions up at the lake, Ollie. Kyle would swim all day and never get out of the water. Just like you.”
For as little as he could recall much of his cousin, Oliver did remember even when he was a little kid, Kyle was a helluva swimmer. He also remembered some other things about Kyle and his general disposition that this wasn’t the time to bring up.
“Why don’t we start with what you know of the trip up to Leech Lake, Uncle Kurt.”
Kurt Johnson was a short man, 5’8” with a big barrel chest and a shaved bald head. Dressed in a white T-shirt and cargo pants, he basically looked like Mr. Clean in a funhouse mirror. Strong from a life of labor as a construction foreman and then a hands-on general contractor, weathered skin and eyes set on perma-squint completed the picture of a man who had worked hard his whole life. He also had never lost his junkyard dog demeanor. As Kurt spoke, Oliver assumed it was Kurt’s inability to bring grief to the surface that made it sound more like grievance.
“The goddamned kid never ran off on bullshit trips like this until he met that pussy wrapped in a person suit…”
“Kurt!” Becky shot.
“I’m just calling it like I see it. Kyle was a reliable son and business partner until he met that nurse. Next thing you know, he’s late for work, making mistakes on bids, causing me grief every goddamned step of the way. And every time we were supposed to pick up time on a job over the weekend, it was ‘Deena wants us to go here’ and ‘Deena needs me to do this’. Disgusting.”
Ollie took a beat to filter the necessary from the editorial before responding. “What I’m hearing is Kyle and Deena went on a trip and you think their disappearance has something to do with Deena?” Oliver asked, trying to steer the conversation in any kind of useful direction.
“I don’t know what the fuck I think.” Kurt said, “Except that if she wasn’t messing up his head, he wouldn’t have gone running off on some fuck around trip just as our building season was getting cranking.”
In Minnesota, the hyper-cold winters grind home building, road construction and everything else that needs to be done outside to a complete halt. Hockey, snowmobiling, ice-fishing and no small amount of drinking get everyone through the long, slow winter months. When spring hits, the jobs tend to pick up speed and keep everyone busy long enough for the Twins to lose to the Yankees in October.
Starting to feel his witness interviewing skills coming out of hibernation, Oliver continued with Kurt. “Did Kyle tell you the purpose of the trip to Leech Lake? Was it strictly vacation, work related in any way?”
“He just called me from his truck on the way up to Walker and said he and Deena needed some time away. Said they were headed up to Leech Lake, renting a cabin and chilling out. Just left me holding the Goddamned bag on three job sights. He called me twice from up there. The first time a couple of days in checking on the jobs. As if he fuckin’ cared. If he cared he’d have been on the job and not balls deep in some fake French Canadian skank…”
“Kurt, Ollie flew all the way here from Los Angeles to try to help. Can you please spare us both the crassness.” Becky always looked out for her younger brother, but she did have a threshold for how much sex, race or any other “ism” he was allowed to bring in her kitchen.
Kurt shot a look that painted the space between he and Becky in petulance before looking back to Oliver. “The second time he called was to say he’d be home in two days. That didn’t happen.”
“When and how did you find out he was missing?”
“When Kyle didn’t show back up, I called the police station up there and said I wanted to report someone missing. When I told them Kyle’s name, the police chief got on the phone and told me they were investigating Kyle and Deena’s disappearance. That was June 29th. Ten days ago. They found the boat a day later, but Kyle and the bimbo weren’t on it, so they just assume they drowned. No way. At least not Kyle. No fuckin’ way.”
In Oliver’s estimation, everything that had happened since was textbook Minnesota summertime tragedy. Somehow, someway, these two people had gotten separated from their boat out on a very big, deep lake, not made it back to the boat and now they were at the bottom of the lake. But good luck telling Uncle Kurt that, Ollie thought.
“I’m happy to make the trip Up North and do whatever I can to try to help find out what happened, but I don’t honestly think there’s much I’m actually equipped to do here. It’s been a long time since I’ve been up in that neck of the woods. I don’t know anyone up there. The local police would maybe extend the courtesy of obliging my questions if I was still a cop in LA, but I’m not. And frankly, I don’t really know anything about how to search for a boat or a drowning victim.”
“That’s not gonna be an issue.” Kurt spat back. “Because the fuckin’ kid didn’t drown.”
Becky walked over to her son. “People will talk to you, Ollie. It’s one of your fathers few good qualities and you got that gift in spades. Find out what you can and see if you can’t come back with something that helps us understand what happened to Kyle.”
FIVE
Oliver left Becky’s house still dubious of his ability to help, but if trying gave his mom some sense of comfort then he was supposed he was doing his job as a son. It was a strange sensation, engaging in family matters this way. The distance put between Oliver and his parents wasn’t just geographical. His tight three-person family had splintered in a million ways when his parents got divorced and even though he remained closer to Becky, there was still an emotional distance that even eighteen years and three chapters of an adult life somehow didn’t fully erase. Given that, his next destination may as well have been Pluto.
It was a two story plus basement, five-bedroom McMansion built in the late 1980’s in Eagan, Minnesota. Roughly 12 miles from Becky’s 1960’s Minneapolis River Road rambler, Oliver Kirkland, Sr. (“Big Ollie” to everyone, even the people who didn’t know he had a son) had found his post-divorce life in suburban splendor. The neighborhood was fifteen blocks of the same three houses (advertised when they were developed and sold as the “Malibu”, the “Redondo” and the “Santa Barbara”), with slightly different garage placements and locations of second floor step-out terraces.
Big Ollie’s house was tucked away at the end of a cul de sac. Behind tall pine trees, with an Escalade and a sporty Lexus IS in the driveway, it was the epitome of the part of the American dream that still existed if you were willing to leave the city proper to find it. As Oliver parked in the street, the garage door opened slowly revealing the imposing 6’3” frame of Big Ollie Kirkland. An aging oak tree of a man with a greying “old-dude refusing to grow old” mullet, he was draped in Tommy Bahama. More tan than a Minnesotan should be, even in July, with a bleached white salesman’s smile. In his face, the resemblance to his son was striking. The same lively green eyes and stronger-than-average jawline. A greying, windswept look at Oliver’s future.
“There’s my namesake!” Big Ollie yelled as he wrapped his son up in a hug that Little Ollie wasn’t sure how to return. “Goddamn, kid. About time you showed your face around here again.”
“Hi, Dad.” Oliver returned. “Thanks for letting me use the cabin.” He didn’t want to delve into the issues behind how infrequently he visited. They had somehow made it this far into Ollie Jr’s adult life without opening the windows in their relationship and letting in some air. In traditional Minnesota family style, when it came to sharing feelings, discretion was the better part of valor. Oliver would never let go of the issues he had with his father, but if he could get in and out without a confrontation, he would be just fine working those feelings back down to their proper place on his own time with his own bourbon back in LA.
“Mi lake casa es su lake casa, kid.” Big Ollie said with the big, winning grin that a much younger Oliver had once felt was the smile that would shield him from any pain in his life. Now, having both learned his lesson the hard way and used the genetic gift of that big smile to have his own insincere ways in the world, he was internally impervious to its powers.
“You wanna come out back and have a beer before the drive? I’d ask you to stay for dinner, but Janet only bought two steaks.”
The mention of Big Ollie’s wife had little bearing on Little Ollie. “Stepmother” wasn’t a word he used. She had no discernable presence in Little Ollie’s life except as a person who would make rare appearances at gatherings when Ollie made rare appearances in Minnesota. Although, if Big Ollie knew he was coming to town and expected him, wasn’t it a little rude to not buy enough food for three?
Irritation started building in the veins of Oliver’s neck, but he fought it off. Big Ollie had played an integral part in Little Ollie forming an adult ability to not expect anything from anyone. Ever. Might as well choke down the anger one more time and get out while the getting was still mostly good.
“No, Dad. I’d better get up to the Lake and start trying to figure out what happened.”
“I don’t think one beer will make those two kids any less drowned. Come on, take a half-hour and catch your old man up while I heat up the grill. Call it rent on the cabin.”
As much as he’d like to get on the road, and not divulge anything about his life, he also couldn’t resist the deep-down urge to get a sense of the life Big Ollie had built for himself in the eighteen years since the divorce. Oliver’s subsequent migration from both Minnesota and any meaningful connection to his father had been by design, but his father’s implied consent to the situation had created another vacuum. He knew next to nothing about the man who raised him for eighteen years and that felt almost as wrong as it did right.
The Ollies, “Big” and “Little” walked around the side of the house to an idyllic upper-middle class backyard. A well-furnished patio sat beneath a well-furnished second floor deck overlooking a grassy knoll hallmarked by a lush, blooming flower garden in one far corner and an above ground hot tub in the other. With mature trees guarding and defining the property line on both the back and sides, there was no fence to keep the neighbors or anyone else at bay. In true Minnesota fashion, there was no need to prevent against unwanted intrusions, because no one would ever think to wander into someone else’s yard without calling first. Having spent the past ten years in LA, Ollie had become so conditioned to the walls, gates and fences that divided the homes, the lack of hardware on the border struck him as an unfortunate and unsafe oversight before remembering where he was.
Oliver sat down on a comfortable cushioned patio chair while Big Ollie went behind the bar in the outdoor barbecue kitchen and grabbed a couple of cold Corona’s. “How’s life as a hotshot Hollywood writer?” Big Ollie asked.
“Well, it turns out there’s no such thing as a hotshot Hollywood writer.” Oliver deadpanned. “For some reason most of the respect goes to the stars.”
“Well don’t tell anyone around here that. I’ll lose all my bragging rights here in the Cul De Sac”, Big Ollie joked. “We’re a little behind on watching the show. It’s not really Janet’s cup of tea. But a couple of the neighbors think it’s pretty good.”
Ollie brushed off Janet’s review of the show and looked for a way to appreciate the neighbors. After all, in the exercise of avoiding emotional display commonly known as “Minnesota nice”, “pretty good” is tantamount to a standing ovation.
“Well tell the neighbors I said ‘thanks’.”
“You make any time with any of those pretty actresses out there?”
“I date some.” Oliver didn’t have any interest in letting his father into his personal life more than that. “Mostly just working, though.”
“Well, don’t work too hard, kid. That’s what made me so miserable for all those years. Once I let go of trying to be so responsible, that’s when life really opened up.”
“You mean all those years you were married to mom?” Oliver asked not being able to hold back.
“Yeah, pretty much.” Big Ollie said, taking an oblivious sip of his Corona.
Oliver searched for something besides “FUCK YOU!” to say before landing on, “Well, I better hit the road. Can I get those keys to the cabin?”
“The door should be open. And I left you a little help getting around up there as well.” Big Ollie said with a strange grin on his face.
“What kind of help?” Oliver asked.
“It’s a surprise. Drive safe kid and don’t be such a stranger.”
“Yeah, ok. Thanks again for the cabin.”
“Least I can do, son.”
“Goddamned right about that.”, Oliver muttered to himself as he walked back to the driveway.
SIX
The drive from the Twin Cities up to Walker, Minnesota is a three-hour decompression chamber that, by virtue of the view out the windshield, naturally removes the intensity of the city and acclimates one to the slowed down vibe of one of those magical places where nature still holds sway on the human outlook.
With a Spotify playlist that took him back to all of his summers before his life crashed in around him, everything from the Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band that he would listen to in the backseat of his parents car, through the Pearl Jam that accompanied his high school road trips with his friends, Oliver briefly shed the edgy mood with which he stalked out of Big Ollie’s driveway. From Interstate 694 working its way around the Western Minneapolis suburbs, onto I94 that worked its way West all the way to Fargo, Oliver got lost in happier days. Growing up in Minnesota. Summers spent waterskiing and fishing with friends. That feeling as the brutal winter thawed and everyone had four months with the sun-driven right to play as hard as they could.
As he merged onto the smaller state highways that began to wind their trail north and west through St. Cloud, Brainerd and beyond, Oliver’s mind drifted forward to the last time he had taken this drive and for the first time, maybe ever, he reflected on the emotional luge run that had been the last 18 years of his life.
SEVEN
Big Ollie and Becky Kirkland, by all outward (and inward as far as Oliver had known as a child) appearances, had a happily uneventful marriage. They met in college at the University of Minnesota. Becky was a Political Science major from Blaine, a small suburb on the far northern outskirts of Minneapolis. She was raised in a traditional blue-collar family of four, with a father who worked for a builder of model homes and a mother who was a part-time cashier at Target and full-time raiser of her kids.
From her mother, who was voracious reader and possessed an intellect that was above her station in life, Becky was taught to never see herself as subservient to anyone, man or woman and to always live her life under her terms.
That outlook made dating hard for a young woman coming of age in an era and region that was still heavy on traditional roles for the sexes, even as the middle 1970’s turned in to the early ‘80’s when Becky was headed off to college. Most of the boys she knew were still looking for a girl who “knew her place.” After a couple of false starts with boys who captured her imagination but then tried to hold her captive, Becky, who had the same urges as any teenager, was willing to let those urges rage on unfulfilled until she met someone who could respect her independence. Back then, Becky put it more succinctly with a simple yet accurate, “Nah, teenage boys are full of shit.”
Enter Ollie Kirkland. A big, handsome man-child from White Bear Lake, just North of St. Paul. Ollie never met a party he couldn’t make better. As good looking, fun and funny as he was, the thing that got Becky about Ollie was that he walked the walk of respecting Becky (and everyone else’s) independence. At no point in the early stages of testing each-others’ personal waters did Ollie ever become possessive of Becky. He never tried to tell her when, where or who she needed to be. If a Saturday night plan came up for Becky that didn’t include Ollie, he found his own fun elsewhere and never once questioned her motives or tried to control her in any way. It wasn’t until she had married Ollie that Becky realized his greatest strength was also a damned big weakness.
Ollie, it turned out had always wanted companionship, but when it came to emotional commitment, he talked a great game but never was able to fully give himself to the bad times as easily as he could the good. And that worked out fine for quite a while because the only thing bigger than Big Ollie Kirkland was the golden horseshow that had spent his entire life lodged deeply and squarely in his ass.
As a relationship of free-thinking equals gave way to a young marriage and then became the long run of commitment, parenthood, employment, mortgages and responsibility in general, it became increasingly apparent to Becky that the driving force in Ollie wasn’t his belief in personal freedom so much as it was his fear of a bad time. Soon, Becky became the bearer of all hard things in their family, while Ollie was always there for a good time and absent whenever the rubber hit the road.
And so, somewhere along the line, Big Ollie and free-thinking Becky became roommates who raised a son together. For all intents and purposes it must not have been an awful existence. Besides the lack of true passion for each other. After all, they stayed together for all of Oliver’s eighteen years on the planet and only on the night after his high school graduation, did they tell their son they would be getting a divorce.
Eighteen-year-old Oliver Kirkland, Jr. was stunned. To his recollection, he’d never seen his parents so much as fight. And yet there they were standing in his bedroom, while he lay in bed trying to shake free of a beer buzz he’d acquired at a Senior Bonfire Party.
“Ollie Two, we’ve got something to discuss with you.” His father said in his usual cheerful, salesman-y way.
“I’m sleeping.” Oliver replied. “Can it wait ’til tomorrow?”
“Well, your dad won’t be here tomorrow.” Said Becky.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got my own place. Your mom and I are getting a divorce.”
“What?!?!” Oliver quickly sobered up.
Becky was matter of fact. “Well, Ollie, you’re 18 and we got you to adulthood and now we’re going to focus on our own lives. Separately.”
“We know you’ll be able to take this in stride.”
Oliver didn’t exactly take it in stride. The next morning, he walked out of the house, noticing a the open closet by the front door missing all of his father’s coats. What in the hell is happening?!? Oliver thought as he lowered himself into the Ford Mustang his paretns gave him as a graduation gift. No wonder the great car, Oliver thought to himself. Thanks for the emotional bribe, Mom and Dad. Oliver slammed his foot down on the gas, caught the freeway a few blocks later and hightailed it north to the cabin on Leech Lake.
Throughout his early childhood, the cabin had been the place of his happiest family memories. Swimming, running in the woods, fishing and waterskiing. Trips in the evening into Walker for a round of mini golf, followed by pizza, arcade games and ice cream. And then his dad lighting a fire so they could sit overlooking the bay listening to the Loons and their distinctive wail to each other as the smoke from the fire pushed away the mosquitos to end the evening. It was the kind of time any kid who is lucky enough to have never forgets.
In high school, especially after Oliver got his driver’s license, the cabin became something else. The place he was allowed to go with his friends, sans parents for overnight mayhem. As the beer flowed, Oliver and his crew partied, wrestled and blew up fireworks with an abandon that would have been noticed in the St. Paul suburbs. They drove the boat too fast, bouncing anyone unlucky enough to be in the bay with them across a mesh of wake. They held insane waterski wipeout competitions that would have hospitalized men just a few years older and more brittle. And, of course, they went to town to meet girls who would later find their way to the cabin and they would take their best shot at becoming men.
Through it all and even with the element of danger in his teenage behavior, the cabin was the safest place Oliver knew. No piece of furniture or plate so priceless it couldn’t be replaced. No activity so pressing that a little rain could ruin it. When you needed a quiet moment, all you had to do was shut up and stop moving and the world that surrounded you presented the right setting.
After his parents’ graduation night bombshell Oliver needed more than a few quiet moments. He pulled up to the cabin at Leech Lake, went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and walked down to the dock. The whole drive up, his mind was on fire with anger, sorrow, betrayal and feelings he, at just over 18 years-old, was nowhere near developed as a person enough to identify. All he knew for sure was he was going to sit down by the lake and think. He didn’t know for how long.
Twenty-four hours earlier, his whole life had order and a plan. In August, he would be off to college at the University of Minnesota where he’d live in the dorms, swim on scholarship, make new friends, do all the things college kids do and have as much fun as a guy could possibly have doing it. Eventually, he would declare a major, meet a more significant girl than all the other girls and move into that next phase of life when it was time. In between he’d swing by his parent’s house to do some laundry, eat their food, make some small talk and borrow money. That was the plan. And now? What?
As Oliver sat on the dock, he realized that “the plan” would never be. He felt lied to and cheated by his parents. He had no desire to be around to hold up his end of the plan while watching their end disintegrate. He also knew they deserved no more fair warning or ability to weigh in on the new plan than he received on theirs. His thousand-yard stare out at the lake morphed into a thoughtful gaze toward the woods aside the cabin. He saw himself as a young kid jumping over the fallen trees, dropping to the dirt and crawling as silently as he could to sneak up on an enemy that only existed in his mind.
Ollie walked off the dock, grabbed a beer for the road before locking up the cabin, got back into his car and drove straight to the Army recruiting center in the Roseville Mall just north of St. Paul.
EIGHT
Twenty years and two and change full lifetimes later, Oliver Kirkland, Jr. returned to Walker, Minnesota. Coming in on Highway 371 from Brainerd, he skipped the turnoff to Christmas Point Road that would take him back to the cabin on Miller Bay, deciding first to go into Walker and reacquaint himself with the town and grab a much-needed bite to eat.
As the rented Charger traversed the mile-long stretch of highway that ran along the long, smooth waters of Shingobee Bay from much larger Walker Bay, how much had not changed almost immediately closed the time gap in the years since he’d visited. The summer sun was still high in the sky, not yet ready to give way to evening in the late afternoon. Some boats were floating above fishing holes, while others were making lazy journeys to fresh fishing holes or blasting across their respective bays pulling water-skiers, wake boarders and kid-adorned inner tubes.
Oliver considered his current circumstances. Up in the woods tasked with doing something about a shitty situation. He figured he may as well embrace it. He rolled down the window, got a wonderfully reminiscent blast fresh North Woods air. He began getting his head around the case. Starting with what he could remember of his cousin.
As kids, Kyle was a world-class troublemaker. He was directed, effective, well thought out and efficient. As a matter of fact, the most childhood trouble in which Oliver Kirkland had ever found himself was conceived of, coordinated and masterfully executed by his cousin Kyle Johnson about 250 yards from where Oliver was currently driving.
One Fourth of July, when Oliver and Kyle were 12 and 14 respectively, the extended Johnson side of the family all gathered at the cabin on Leech Lake to commemorate the nations independence by throwing themselves into a hard, long weekend of co-dependence. Like most family reunions, it started with everyone overly polite and nervous about what happened at the last family reunion. Then as the beers began to disappear from the coolers, the event turned into a glorious celebration of bygones being bygones, which ultimately gave way to an ugly incident that made another reunion seem like a terrible, terrible idea. Also, there were fireworks and swimming races in the lake.
The ugly incident of the year came courtesy of Kyle, but the blame was put on Oliver. As the two oldest of the children, they were mostly left to their devices on this trip. Sleeping in a tent outside the cabin itself, every night for Oliver had been spent absorbing the wisdom of his older cousin as it came to the finer art of being a teenage boy. Kyle had brought with him a backpack that seemed to have a bottomless supply of trouble. His dad’s Penthouse magazines, knives of increasingly menacing dimension and, of course, fireworks. And not just firecrackers, sparklers and bottle rockets. This was some hardcore stuff. A small arsenal of Roman Candles, A bevvy of skyrockets, a spinner…In the words of Kyle, “It was some hardcore shit.”
“Should we put on a show for everyone?” Oliver asked.
“Like, what, get them all together to watch us light it off?” Kyle said a tad incredulously.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s the fun in that? I mean, let’s give them a show, but not one they see coming.”
Two afternoons later, the adults and younger kids were preparing to hop onto pontoon boats and take a sunset cruise into Walker Bay. Once in town they would dock and grab ice cream for the younger kids and cocktails for the adults. Oliver and Kyle told their parents they wanted to stay back and play video games. Becky was annoyed at the lack of family spirit, but Big Ollie and Kurt, in rare agreement with each other, convinced her that it was better to let the teenagers be teenagers and so she begrudgingly caved.
As soon as the pontoon boats pulled off the dock, Kyle and Oliver jumped into Kurt’s Ford F150 and with an unlicensed fourteen-year-old behind the wheel, made their way to the bridge and boat launch in tiny Pumphouse Bay, which served as a passageway between Shingobee and Walker Bays. As they climbed out of the truck and hauled the backpack of festive explosives up on the bridge, they watched the taillights of the two boats carrying their family disappear into the channel from Pumphouse out to the much bigger Walker Bay.
Kyle unloaded half of the fireworks onto the deserted bridge, pointed them at a 45-degree angle between the lake and the sky, laid out the fuses and said, “OK, you’re going to wait here and when you see the boats coming back, as they get close enough in the dusk to see their faces, start lighting fuses.”
“Where will you be?” Oliver asked, wondering why he would be left alone on the bridge to shoulder the blame for the big surprise.
“I’m taking the truck to the other side of the bay. I’ll set up and watch for your fireworks display and cover your escape when I divert them with fireworks of my own.” And with that, Kyle started for the truck. Looking over his shoulder he said, “Don’t be a pussy when the time comes. Light those fuckers!”
Oliver sat in the encroaching darkness with no question in his mind what he would do. Kyle was his older cousin and as such was cooler and more in control. He had a kickass hockey mullet. He knew how to drive his dad’s truck. The night before he’d told Oliver about how he’d had sex with not one, but two girls. This was a guy who had the world by the balls and if Oliver was ever going to be any kind of a man, he would need the approval of his older cousin Kyle.
An hour later, when Oliver first heard the motors, laughter and chatter of two pontoon boats and saw them making their way toward him in the gathering dusk, there was no hesitation. He crouch/walked below the bridge wall, peeking through the crack between the wood slats that made the side rails of the bridge. When he could make out the full details of the first boat, his father’s 20-foot 10 seater, he lit the fuse for the first bottle rocket.
The fuse burned fast and before Ollie could get to the next fuse, the bottle rocket was moving skyward. The arc of the bottle rocket was nowhere near enough to detonate at a safe skyward peak. It rocketed upward for a brief second before turning downward on a horrifying collision course with the pontoon boat. A half-foot above the boat’s new carpet, the rocket completed its mission. Red, white and blue glaring lights revealed the terrified look on Grandma Johnson’s face as an incendiary device exploded between her legs.
There was screaming and splashing as aunts, uncles, parents and children dove from the pontoon boat. Oliver froze, not knowing what to do. He could see his grandmother standing in shock as his mom batted away at the embers around Grandma’s pants. He then heard the voice of his uncle Kurt driving in the trail boat.
“Who the fuck did that!?!?!?!!” was the scream and suddenly, a spotlight was sweeping the bridge.
“Oh shit! Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!” Ollie whispered to himself. He had no idea what to do. He couldn’t run off the bridge without risking the spotlight finding him. He remembered Kyle was going to give him a diversion out. Where was it? He must not have seen the bottle rocket go off. There was only one way to get Kyle to light off his arsenal. Oliver made the worst decision of his young life and started lighting the remaining fuses.
As the barrage of fireworks began to reign patriotic hellfire down on the two-boat Kirkland/Johnson flotilla, Oliver realized that even if Kyle’s distracting countermeasures were to start their skyward track, it would do him no good. Once fireworks are going off in your face and on the floor of your boat, it’s probably a little hard to notice any less immediate fireworks display off in the distance. He resigned himself to his fate and rather than run away from the scene, he climbed down from the bridge, got in the water and helped the overboard kids and elders find their way back to the boats.
Now, all those years later, as he drove past the Shingobee Channel, Oliver could still see the shit-eating grin on Kyle’s face as he waited on the dock back at the cabin when the boats returned. Until now, that image had been Oliver’s most lasting memory of his cousin. A kid who went to such elaborate lengths to set him up. Oliver made a note to not dredge up that old resentment as he was now tasked with resolving Kyle’s disappearance. If for no other reason than to make sure he was compassionate with his mom and uncle when he invariably needed to relay his inability to discover anything new, or worse, inform them of confirmation of Kyle’s death.
Because of two of his lives since those teenage years, Oliver was ever aware of the obligations of those who attend to news of death. As a combat soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver became used to death. It was his constant companion over there. Whether administering it or trying to avoid it, death was basically how way too many days ended.
After his military service transitioned to his time on LAPD, at first as a beat cop, death was less prevalent, but never too far away and then as a young detective, he no longer felt it breathing over his shoulder so much as it started his day. In a darkly funny way, Oliver reflected, death was what gave him something to do. It was no wonder, he supposed, that he quietly excelled at writing stories about death. He’d seen it from its most immediate and violent sides. He’d picked it up off the road. He’d studied the details of it lying on top of a blood-soaked bed. On two of what he viewed as necessary occasions, he’d delivered it. He’d long-since gone numb to deaths ugliest faces and now the great unknown to Oliver was what death looked like at the end of a long life well lived. But that was fine. Writers who write about that are trying to win Oscars. Oliver had his sights set on an Emmy.
As he approached the small town of Walker, Oliver had mused his way back into cop mode and his immediate plan began to present itself. He would belly up to a bar and start striking up some conversations. The locals will have been gossiping about a couple of missing tourists. Find out who met them, find out what they were doing up here, where they were hanging out. No need to press anyone. They’ll want to talk about it. He needed to store his moodier self and tap into that Big Ollie Kirkland charm. As much as Oliver could find out tonight would come to him. And then he could go to the cabin and kick it on the dock with a nice glass of bourbon.
