Chasing a Blond Moon(136)

Bartoletti got a ladder and they climbed up into the boat. The aft deck was small, but below decks was deep and there was plenty of room for a four-by-six cage. There were four holes in the floor. Bartoletti saw him looking at the holes and said, “U-bolt holes. The bolts probably got lost.”

Service called Pyykkonen as he drove west. “The boat’s not registered, but there are serial numbers. Maybe the owner didn’t know about them. The boat’s a 1995 Miltey Commander.”

“Blue?”

“As a pretty girl’s eyes,” Service said.

“Miltey Boat Company?” she said. “So we’ve circled back to where we started, eh? Joe Miltey’s daughter was the one who found Harry Pung. You want me to visit him?”

“Let’s both go. I’m going to see my kid tonight. We’ll go over there in the morning. Pick you up at Shark’s at eight.”

“Works for me,” she said.

He called Walter’s dorm room and Karylanne Pengelly answered. “Is the hockey player there?” he asked.

“At the rink,” she said. “He’s always at the rink.”

“Seems late for practice.”

“Not hockey. He goes over there every night with that fly rod.”

Service laughed inwardly. His old man had given him his first rod, just as his old man had gotten his first one from his grandfather. “This is his father,” Service said. “I’m going to be there in seventy minutes. Thought I’d pick him up, see if he wants a late-night snack. Would you like to join us, Karylanne?”

She laughed. “I never pass up food. My mom always tells me to eat now while I’ve still got my metabolism.”

“I’ll pick you up in front of the dorm and we’ll go fetch him,” he said.

The girl had an infectious laugh and a soft voice, gentle but strong. Probably Walter and the girl would not last as a couple, but at least he had picked a good one for now. Or she had picked him. In his own day, his picks had been anything but stellar. “There in sixty-seven minutes,” he said.

Later he passed the Shrine of the Snowshoe Priest. Father Frederick Baraga had been a Slovenian member of the powerful Hapsburgs, who had sworn off wealth and power for a life of the cloth—and in the bush. Baraga had come to the U.P. in the nineteenth century as a priest for an Austrian missionary society and had founded missions as far south as Grand Rapids and west to the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin. Baraga was known as a priest who would always be where he was needed, and there were plenty of stories of him snowshoeing a hundred miles in snowstorms. What Service liked about the priest, who eventually became the U.P.’s first bishop, was his total dedication to his work. In recent years a movement for his canonization had been organized to find and document two miracles in the priest’s past. News reports said the group was having a hard time—that while the priest’s life had been filled with good works, miracles were still in question. It was a classic case of seeing trees and missing the forest. Baraga had traipsed the entire U.P. and into Wisconsin, almost always on foot and alone, and he was a great model for the horseblankets, the old COs who had blazed the trail for him. As he drove under the monument, he flipped a salute, said “Father Fred,” and smiled.

The L’Anse-Baraga area south of Chassell had seen a lot of history—Indians battling Indians, priests, fur traders, loggers, Lake Superior fishermen. Much of the area had been settled by Finns who had married Native Americans, their offspring called Finndians—as resolute a cultural blend as he had encountered.

On the way into Chassell he saw a new house being built. Floodlights from the driveway lit it up to show the Finnish roofing style called walmdach, which featured a distinct and different angle in every quarter, helping to spread the weight of the snow pack and shed snow as it melted.

Come Christmas he could take Walter up to Pequamming where Norwegians lived, surrounded by Finns, Swedes, and French Canadians, and treat the boy to sweet rye bread and lutefisk. Nantz would have a week off from the academy, and the three of them could use some of the time to see and do—if he could get her out of bed. The thought made him laugh out loud.

Karylanne was waiting on the sidewalk and waved as he pulled up.

“He was supposed to be back by now,” she said.

“Is he late a lot?”

“He just gets interested in things and loses track.”

In the bloodline, Service thought.

McInnes Arena was still open. Intramural teams played all night, while classes, the varsity, and the public used it at more convenient hours.

They found Walter in a yellow hallway. There was a red rubber donut about forty feet away and he was flicking a tag of fire-pink yarn at the target. Using reach casts, which Service had not taught him. Where the hell had he picked that up? The casts were near the target all the time, the technique designed to throw a mend into the line to help the fly drift parallel to an obstacle with little drag. Many fishermen never learned to do it correctly. Walter looked like he had control of it.