Chapter 6 - The Sunday at Lake Macatawa
Sunday morning arrived without a sound.
The lake had frozen over during the early hours, a vast sheet of pale, milky ice that stretched three miles toward the lighthouse at Holland Harbor. The snow had stopped at dawn, leaving sixteen inches of dry, powdery Michigan white piled against the foundations of the cottage, weighing down the hemlock boughs until they touched the drifts.
Inside, the cast-iron woodstove was humming with a steady, crackling heat that smelled of dry ash and coffee.
Ellis was at the stove, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, frying thick cuts of slab bacon in a cast-iron skillet that had belonged to his grandfather. Beside him, Ivy was buttering slices of sourdough toast on a wooden board, while Grandma sat at the head of the long table with a magnifying glass, working through the Sunday crossword in the Grand Rapids Press.
Nobody mentioned Kenowa Avenue.
Nobody mentioned Harrow Lake Lodge.
The blue envelope sat on the corner of the dry sink, weighted down by a clean glass salt shaker, its torn edge resting against the legal pad where Ellis had documented every dollar from the walnut box.
At nine-fifteen, a car turned down the long lane from the county road.
It wasn't a Buick.
It was an eight-year-old dark green Ford F-150 with a dented tailgate and a rusted rear bumper, its chains rattling against the wheel wells as it ground through the fresh snow.
"Uncle Ray," Ellis announced, glancing through the steam of the skillet.
I walked to the front door, pulling on my boots and throwing an old wool chore coat over my shoulders.
Uncle Ray climbed down from the cab of his truck with the slow, stiff deliberate movement of an old tool-and-die man whose knees had survived thirty Michigan winters on concrete floors. He wore an insulated canvas barn jacket, a knit watch cap pulled down over his ears, and carried a two-gallon galvanized steel bucket covered with an oilcloth.
"Mornin', Essie," he said, stamping his heavy boots on the porch runner to knock the snow from his treads.
"Morning, Uncle Ray."
He looked at my face. The welt had settled into a dull, yellowish-purple shadow that stretched from my cheekbone down to the corner of my jaw, but the swelling had gone down.
His jaw tightened, the white stubble on his chin bristling, but he didn't ask how it felt. Men like Ray didn't ask about wounds they had already seen delivered; they looked to see if you were standing on your own feet.
"Your father spent the night in the lockup in Hastings," Ray said, handing me the heavy bucket. "They picked him up off the shoulder of M-37 around three in the morning. He had run the truck into an irrigation ditch behind the grain elevator. Wasn't hurt, but he blew a point-one-four on the roadside."
I took the bucket. Inside were two dozen fresh whitefish fillets, packed in crushed ice and coarse salt.
"Is he still there?" I asked.
"Was when I called the desk sergeant at seven," Ray said, pulling off his heavy leather mittens and tucking them under his arm. "Beverly tried to bail him out with a credit card, but the machine kicked it back. She’s sitting in the waiting room at the county jail with Bridget. Bridget’s got her head in her lap, won't talk to nobody."
Ray stepped into the kitchen, taking off his cap to reveal a head of thick, cropped white hair that looked identical to my grandfather Sanford’s.
Grandma didn't look up from her crossword.
"Fourteen across, Ray," Grandma said, her pencil poised over the newsprint. "Seven letters. 'A formal accounting of assets following a default.'"
Ray walked to the table, pulled out a pine chair, and sat down with a heavy, creaking sigh.
"Liquidation, Marin," Ray said.
"Too many letters," Grandma replied, not missing a beat. "It’s auditing."
Ray let out a short, dry bark of laughter that ended in a cough. "Yeah. That’ll do it."
Ellis set a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast in front of the old man, accompanied by a heavy ceramic mug of black coffee.
"Eat, Uncle Ray," Ellis said.
Ray looked at the plate, then looked up at Ellis. His eyes were small, gray, and sharp behind his thick spectacles, studying the younger man with the slow, diagnostic scrutiny of an old master craftsman checking an apprentice’s joinery.
"You’re Sanford’s kind of people, son," Ray said softly.
"I try to be, sir," Ellis answered, setting the skillet back on the iron trivet.
"Don't call me sir. Makes me feel like I’m standing in front of the plant superintendent." Ray picked up a piece of bacon, took a bite, and looked at me across the table. "I went by Kenowa Avenue this morning, Esther."
The room went quiet. Even Ivy stopped the scrape of her butter knife on the board.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the sheriff had a deputy parked in the driveway," Ray said, chewing slowly. "They posted the execution notice on the front door at dawn. The bank’s taking the inventory on Tuesday. Everything that ain't nailed down is going to auction on the twenty-eighth to satisfy the mechanics' liens from the shop."
Ray reached into the breast pocket of his canvas coat and pulled out a small, flat brass key attached to a piece of faded red plastic tape.
"I went around the back before the deputy got out of his car," Ray said, laying the key on the table beside Grandma’s pencil. "The side cellar door was still unlocked. I pulled this out of the rafters above Sanford’s old workbench."
Grandma’s pencil stopped moving.
She lifted her head, her bifocals catching the morning sun, her eyes fixed on the small brass key.
"You found it, Ray?" she whispered.
"Found it right where Sanford put it in ninety-eight, Marin," Ray said, his voice dropping into that deep, reverent quiet old men use when speaking of brothers who have been in the ground for ten years. "In the old electrical junction box behind the fuse panel. The one with the false face."
"What is it?" I asked, looking from Ray to my grandmother.
Grandma set her pencil down on the crossword puzzle. She reached out with two trembling fingers, picked up the brass key, and held it against the palm of her hand.
"That," Grandma said, "is the key to the master safety deposit box at the Old Kent Bank on Pearl Street in Grand Rapids."
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She looked at me, her eyes shining with an ancient, unassailable fire.
"The box your grandfather set up the year you were born, Essie. The box that only opens when Sanford Stark... or Esther Stark... walks through the vault door with their birth certificate."
