Duluth
First thing she did when she made Duluth was to buy a shotgun. The ad was pinned to the laundromat cork-board and the ink didn't look too faded, so she called and used her mother's fast-talking growl and showed up at the guy's place out west of the city that same day.
It was a new-ish Remington 20-gauge, not much wear on either stock or barrel. She asked for the kit and pushed a patch through the bore. No marks.
"First customer?" she asked, sighting down the barrel. Guns got a local rep sometimes; last thing she needed was to cozy up to somebody's guilty conscience, not that he'd tell her about that. He looked mean and middle-aged but his hands were twisted up and scarred, older by about a century than he was. He ignored the question, watching her settle the stock against her shoulder.
"Takes up the recoil real nice," he said. And, as she unscrewed the choke, "You shoot skeet?"
She held it up, checking for rust in the threads, and answered, "Sure do." She'd clubbed back her hair and shoved it up under an old watch-cap and damn did her scalp itch. She ignored it. He'd kept the gun really nice, even though this model was pretty much a dime a dozen. "I'll give you three hundred if you include the case and kit," she told him. Asking price was five-fifty. He laughed like he was surprised.
"You're crazy, girl," he said, but nicely, the way Ash talked to her sometimes. She ended up paying four, cash, and he threw in a couple boxes of steelshot loads, enough so she could repack most of the shells and still have a stash of the real thing. Something about how careful he was as he recased the Remington made her say, "You sure about this?" Wasn't like she needed this particular weapon, after all. Somebody always had a gun to sell.
He didn't laugh that time, just looked at her and hell, she'd really overdone it with the layers; she was sweating even with her breath hanging in a cloud like it was. "Got my favorite inside," he said. So they shook on it. She kept it gentle because those hands looked like they might hurt, it was so raw and damp out here on his freezing-cold screen-porch.
She'd muddied up the tags on the truck before she'd come, which was a good thing because her mirror showed how he watched her tail as she bounced down the track, all the way to the dogleg that took her back to the highway.
It wasn't like she'd said, "Hot damn, Duluth." Her father'd had stories, though, done a couple trips and come back talking about the lake big as an ocean, the big ships, the city spread out on the hill by the water. Good people there, he'd said. She'd wanted to see it, even if a cold-weather road-trip wasn't exactly what she'd planned, thinking about it this last year and more. Duluth in midwinter was ice clear through. No way could she sleep in the truck till she found her feet and no way was she dicking around with credit cards, not yet. So the second thing, after the Remington, was a job.
She'd had this idea that sailors might be sort of like hunters, but it turned out the Sandpiper didn't get many crews off the big vessels. It was belt-monkeys and drivers, roustabouts from the ore terminals, mostly; second- and third-shift guys who shouted a lot and drank more beer than she'd ever seen anybody put down. The women, too. But they weren't bad.
Annoying, though, sometimes, and Arvi Lund must've had a good day because he was yelling marriage proposals from across the room to a woman sitting alone at one of the small tables against the back wall. She wasn't up for it, Jo could tell, though she didn't seem really mad, either. But it crossed a line. Customer who wanted a quiet beer should be able to have one.
Jo headed over to Arvi's table and leaned a hip on the edge next to him, inviting him to grope, which he did. He was about three yards square, Arvi, solid as a plank, but slow-moving, and Gordon Walker had showed her this really nasty hold years ago. A grab and a half-turn and she had his drinking hand all but breaking off at the wrist.
"I'd hate to mess up your hand, Arv," she said. "You're gonna need it for that poker game later, right?" She leaned into it a little more.
"Haah!" he said. "What—aaah! Damn, woman!"
"The poker game," slow and simple, "where I kick your ass and take your money."
He yelped again, half playacting. "Hell! Dane, man, what the fuck!" appealing to the owner, behind the bar, who shrugged but threw her a look. Wouldn't hurt to let him see how lucky he'd been to take her on. She let go of Arvi and slapped him on the shoulder, hard. He snickered.
"Later," she promised. And, to the table at large, "Bring your paychecks, people."
General hooting and hollering as she turned away, and Arvi yelling, "See that? Does she want me, or what?" Dane had already pulled a cold draft and nodded at her when she collected it. She delivered it to the quiet drinker at the table near the wall, who'd gone back to reading the newspaper.
"On the house," she said. The woman looked up at her and for a minute Jo had the crazy idea that maybe she was a hunter, with that stare that sized you up for quarry, bait, or somebody else's damn problem. Wasn't likely. She put on a grin.
"Nora, did he call you?"
"It's Lenore, actually," said the woman. Jo stuck out her hand.
"Joanna," she said, and shook the woman's small, strong hand, still cool from her beer glass.
Third thing was, she stole a notebook from the office supply store near the Duluth public library, saddle-stitched, with a fake leather cover and pages thick enough so she could write on both sides. When she'd used up the pages she could tape stuff in. It would last awhile.
There'd been werewolf sightings clear into Wisconsin going back a hundred years and more, she knew, but werewolves were human, kind of, and she figured she'd stick with the dead at first, till she got the feel of things. The old central high school had a couple of well-documented haunts, and she listened close enough to the chatter at the Sandpiper to pick up rumors of a ghost at Dock No. 6, where they'd demolished the bridge cranes a few years back. Nobody'd be digging up anything till the ground thawed but that gave her time to do her research.
Good people, her dad had said. A few sessions at the library, she could probably figure out exactly what jobs he'd done here, maybe even find some of the ones he'd helped. Not till she got a few of her own jobs done, though, and it wasn't like she was looking for friends, exactly; it was just, she'd found out yesterday about the thousand-ton pile of rock-salt waiting to ship from the CLM warehouse up in west Duluth, and it hit her that nobody else knew how damn funny that was.
Good people. Trust like that got you killed for sure—
She braked for a light and wondered if the lone woman at the bus-stop up ahead had frozen solid, she was standing so still. There'd been a foot of snow two days ago and the wind off the lake was just ice without the water, and it looked like she'd lost her hat somewhere. Jo put down her window and rolled through the green light and said, "Hey!" twice before the woman turned to look at her.
"You headed down to the port? C'mon, I'll give you a lift." Freezing air streamed into the cab with the open door. "Joanna, from the Sandpiper. You're Lenore, right?" The woman smiled.
—But maybe, Jo thought, and she smiled back for real. Maybe.
March 19, 2007