“But the graves would have remained intact, right?”
She eyed me curiously. “Actually, given the incredible heat, I suppose six feet under was the only safe place to be. But afterwards, they were lost along with everything else. And when the families rebuilt, they moved here, away from the devastation.”
“But if the bodies were lost, why build crypts?”
“They were remembrance, to honor the departed, so their names wouldn’t be forgotten. There have been a few burials over the years, but I don’t know of any that are occupied by the original barons. Their markers were lost, so were they.”
“I see,” I nodded, though I really didn’t. “And you have no idea where the original graves were?”
“None. Logging was a massive enterprise in those days, Sergeant, and the cuttings covered hundreds of square miles. During the Depression, Lansing claimed most of the burned ground as state land, eighty thousand acres, give or take. The original home sites could be anywhere out there, lost in a forest bigger than half the countries in the United Nations. What brings all this on, anyway?”
“This,” I said, handing her the picture of the staring girl. She glanced at it, then back at me, waiting for further explanation. Didn’t get one. Then looked at the photograph more closely, frowning.
“When was this taken?”
“I don’t know. From the clothing, eighteen eighties or thereabouts, but that’s a guess. Why?”
“I think I recognize this boy,” she said, indicating the lad standing beside his father in the photo. “Can’t swear to it, of course, but I think he might be one of the Cavanaughs. We’re second cousins. My aunt had her family tree displayed in her library. In the photos I’ve seen, he was a much older man, but there’s a definite resemblance.”
“How sure are you?”
“Not very, it’s been years since my aunt passed, but he does seem familiar.”
“You’ve got an amazing memory.”
“You need one to survive as a teacher. And if any tombs in my neighborhood have been vandalized, I’m sure I’d hear of it, but I can’t imagine why anyone would do such a thing. There’s nothing to steal. No one from those days is buried here, and they never were.”
I mulled her words over as I drove deeper into the back country beyond Sugar Hill. If the lady of the manse was right, the lost graves wouldn’t be on the current estates. They were all built years after the fires that devastated Michigan.
Payback.
The timber barons harvested the virgin forest like a field of wheat, and paid a terrible price for their arrogance.
And now it looked like somebody was harvesting them, looting the valuables they took to their graves. Maybe there was a trace of poetic justice in that, but it was still an ugly crime.
But if the barons abandoned the forest that made their fortunes, not everyone did.
With land dirt cheap, working men, loggers, immigrants, veterans of one war or another settled in the back country. I grew up in these hills.
In school, they called us wood-smoke kids. It’s a nicer term than white trash, and there’s some truth to it. Our homes were heated with wood scavenged from the state forest, and the smoke scent lingers on us like musk. I’m proud of my roots, but in Vale County, if you call somebody wood-smoke? You’d better smile.
If the back country has a queen, it’s Emmaline Gauthier, mama to seven boys, grandmother to a roughneck militia that could give the Mafia lessons in organized crime, north-shore style.
Her clan owns small holdings scattered around the state forest, mostly subsistence farms, twenty acres here, forty there, but total them up and they cover a lot of country.
Generations back, wood-smoke folks grew truck gardens and hunted year round, living off the land as they had for two hundred years. Not anymore. The DNR is tougher on poaching now, and cooking crank or growing weed pays a lot better than raising rutabagas.
Tante Emmaline’s farm rests atop a long rise, with a magnificent view of the rolling, forested hills, with a silvery sliver of the big lake glinting on the horizon. From her front porch, she can watch the morning sun rise out of the waves, and see it settle into the big pines at end of day. She can also see anyone approaching a half-hour before they pull into her yard.
She’d been watching me come, knitting on her porch in a white pine rocker hand carved by one of her sons. Or perhaps her great grandfather. Time is marked differently in the back country.
She appeared to be alone as I strolled up, but I noticed the hayloft door of her barn was ajar and I guessed someone was watching me from the shadows. Maybe had me in his cross hairs. Welcome to wood-smoke country.
I kept my hands in plain sight as I walked up the steps to her broad front porch. The rambling clapboard cabin could have been teleported from the great plains, along with its owner.
Tante Emmaline Gauthier has one of those timeless faces you see in tintypes: weathered, hawkish, carved from an ancient oak. Her ice-blue eyes look right through you. Her clothes were vintage Goodwilclass="underline" faded flowered dress, a threadbare sweater, work boots.
“Good afternoon, Miz Gauthier.” I nodded as I reached the top step, “I’m—”
“Claudette LaCrosse’s boy,” she finished, glancing up from her knitting. “Dylan, right? How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine, ma’am.”
“Yes, she is. Some folks in town ain’t kind. Store clerks pretend I’m invisible, snotty brats snicker at my brogans. But when I visit your ma’s shop, she offers me coffee, shows me some nice pieces. We chat about the old days. I buy a trinket now and again, but not often. We both grew up in the back country, your ma and me. She ain’t wood-smoke no more, but she ain’t forgot her roots neither. Have you?”
“No, ma’am, but I’m not here to talk about my ma.”
“Should I call my lawyer, Sergeant LaCrosse?”
“It’s certainly your right, ma’am. If you feel the need.”
“I expect I can handle any static you brung, sonny. Is this about them black birds?”
“Birds?” I echoed, baffled.
“Lotta locals been jawin’ about aliens and black airships and the like. I’d write it off to meth-head nonsense, except even churchy folk been seein’ them things.”
“What things?”
“Can’t rightly say. They only fly at night, so nobody sees ’em good. Air machines of some sort is all I know. I thought it might be you fellas.”
“No, ma’am, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“DEA then. Or FBI. One of them alphabet posses.”
“Why would the DEA be interested in you, Tante Em?”
“You’d have to ask them. Feds don’t need no reason to snoop. Won’t be long till a drone bee tails you to the privy when you take a dump. But if you ain’t here about them birds, what is it you want?”
“I came to ask about this,” I said, handing her the photograph. Her eyes widened, then she all but threw it back at me.
“Is something wrong, Tante?”
“That’s vile, that dead child. Why show me a thing like that?”
“It came up in an investigation, looted from a grave. Ever seen anything like it?”
“Hell no. Why would I?”
“Because you’re kin to Arlon Hatfield. His name came up too. What’s he into these days?”
There was a long pause. Tante Em and I have a complicated relationship. She’s a shirttail relative of my dad’s, so we’re technically kin, and relationships matter in the mixed-blood Metis community. But it doesn’t outweigh self-interest. We work opposite sides of the street, so Tante will chat with me, but we seldom talk business. I’m not sure where the line is, but apparently my question was within bounds. Emmaline gave a curt nod of approval.