Detective Cork O'Connor & Family: "Northwest Angle" and "Trickster's Point"

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I'm catching up with author William Kent Krueger. I've written about books 1-10 in his series of novels featuring detective Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor [see Still Growing (07/2022).] Now I've enjoyed books 11 and 12.

Book 11: Northwest Angle

Before there's even a crime, Northwest Angle involves us deeply in Krueger's favorite themes of family, spirituality, and nature. Cork has brought his children, their Aunt Rose, and her husband Mal to a houseboat on a lake, beautiful and remote.

It's not just a vacation. Cork's eldest daughter Jenny is expected to become engaged to a man Cork doesn't trust. Before the suitor joins the party, Cork takes Jenny to the secluded island where, in his teens, he had his vision quest. Rock drawings there represent the importance of children to the tribe. She gets the message that he wants her to consider her future more carefully, and she resents it.

That's when a strong fast-moving windstorm called a derecho separates everyone. Jenny finds shelter in a lone cabin where, inside, an infant boy cries, a woman lies dead, and the rooms have been ransacked. Jenny realizes that the killer, who must have been looking for something particular, is likely nearby. From then on, the baby is in Jenny's care.

Just the adventure of Jenny and Cork finding each other and evading a stalker, while shielding the child, makes a satisfying story in itself.

But then there's the murder investigation. There's an emotional surprise when our perception of a certain character flips 180 degrees, and there's a contest of spiritual strength -- both harrowing and hilarious -- between the vicious matriarch of a hateful Christian sect and Cork's mentor Henry Meloux with his Ojibwe traditions. Then there's Jenny's decision.

A rich read for a detective novel? Just the rich read I've come to expect from Krueger.

Book 12: Trickster's Point In the first pages of Trickster's Point, we read about two events decades apart that set the poles for this novel. Everything derives from these events.

First, at age 60, Cork watches his old friend Jubal Little die slowly from an arrow to the heart, evidently one from Cork's own quiver. Jubal is a politician, and was expected to become the first indigenous governor of Minnesota. It happens at Trickster's Point, an island with a rock formation hundreds of feet high, where they'd hunted many times since high school. Naturally, Cork is prime suspect.

The other is a memory from sixth grade of how Cork first met Jubal. Cork was with his friend Willie Crane, a kind boy hindered in gait and speech by cerebral palsy, and Willie's sister Winona, Cork's secret crush. A notorious bully, Donner Bigby, with his entourage, comes up to mock Willie, and Cork considers what to do:

As the son of the Tamarack County sheriff, Cork felt on his shoulders the onerous weight of doing the right thing. Which meant taking on Donner Bigby who was a head taller and thirty or forty pounds heavier and who probably knew more about how to beat the living crap out of a kid than anyone Cork could think of. He considered simply trying to talk his way past Bigby, and hustling Willie and Winona along with him. (12)

But then Winona punches Donner. Young Cork is struggling when a stranger, Jubal, comes up from behind, puts Donner in a headlock, and orders the entourage away "or I'll break his neck."

It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but there's trouble. Jubal develops a relationship with Winona over the years that wise man Henry Meloux describes as "two halves of a broken stone," marked by a pattern of crackups and reconciliations. Jubal and Cork remain close friends through their years together on the high school football team, but then, Cork explains, "He grew into someone else, the man he always believed he was meant to be, a guy destined for something great. And greatness takes up a lot of space" (181).

While a hostile state official directs the investigation of Cork by his old police friends, Cork tracks down leads among old classmates, all related to that seminal boyhood incident.

On this track between past and present, themes emerge. There's that theme of the effect that "greatness" has on relationships. There are a lot of confessions, not least of which is Jubal's admission to Cork, "I envied you" (181). And nearly every male character is struggling for the approval of his father, even years after the parent's death (207).

Along these lines, Krueger continues to develop Cork's relationship to his son Stephen. With mentoring from the old wise man Henry, Stephen is becoming a healer. In conversation about why a shooter aimed at Cork, Stephen hears Cork say the man was "protecting someone he loves." Stephen picks up the theme:

That's the point. Someone he loves...[S]omeone was ready to kill you, but that doesn't seem to matter to you. You just keep doing what you do. And me and Jenny, we're just sitting around waiting for the time we get a call and some stupid voice on the other end of the line tells us you're dead. (293)

The scene ends in tears - Cork's, Stephen's, mine.

I'll confess that I've already forgotten who did it or why. It seemed sensible to me at the time I read it a couple of weeks ago. But I'll remember the relationships and how it felt to be in Cork's world.

[See my responses to other Krueger books]

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London Homecoming

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Scott Smoot and his bike at Trafalgar Square, virtually

After the Queen's funeral last Monday, I took some time away from the bike. I got back in the saddle this weekend with two rides, 56 miles, enough to take me from Oxford to London on my virtual tour of the world. In the selfie, I'm resting my other arm on the seat of my bike while I rest myself in Trafalgar Square.

This is a place I lived and loved in my imagination long before I first visited in 1980. From Mary Poppins in grade school to practically all the dead white guys I read for my English major, my memory was packed with London images and incidents, so much so that I burst into tears coming up from the Marble Arch station, as if it were a homecoming, not my first step on a London street.

On great advice from my mentor Frank Boggs, I first toured London's National Portrait Gallery. From the top floor where I saw Alfred the Great's crude likeness on a ship's plank, to the basement, where I recognized Henry James from across the room, I strolled through a thousand years.

In a room dedicated to massive framed portraits of 18th century writers, I found my favorite portrait on the back of an envelope. From several feet away, I saw the sketch of a gentleman with a hunched back and bowed legs disproportionately short, and knew that it must be the refined but feisty poet Alexander Pope. He fought to have no likeness made of what he called his "misshapen" body. Portrait artist Joshua Reynolds drew him surreptitiously while the poet gestured in conversation. I was amused and touched.

During six weeks of studying literature at Oxford, I reserved weekends for London theatre. I saw first London productions by some of my heroes that summer: Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, Harold Pinter's The Hothouse, and, my favorite of the summer, Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, much more fun than the movie. Another highlight was a Samuel Beckett double-bill at the Old Vic theatre, Krapp's Last Tape and Endgame, the author directing inmates from San Quentin.

I had London all to myself at sunrise on my last day in England. Walking to Paddington, I sang "London Pride," learned from a recording by Cleo Laine. Noel Coward's wartime benediction for the city expressed what I was feeling:

Gray city,
stubbornly implanted,
taken so for granted
for a thousand years.

Stay, city,
smokily enchanted,
cradle of our memories,
our hopes and fears.

Every blitz,
our resistance toughens
from the Ritz
to the Anchor and Crown.
Nothing ever can override
the pride of London town.

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Remembering Terry Strecker

Terry Strecker, C; as Santa with Scott Smoot; w/ Kitty, grandson, and Goofy

At Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in West Palm Beach September 10, those in attendance heard tributes to Terry Strecker from his grown son Andrew Strecker and from Carole Drew, sister of Terry's wife, my friend and longtime colleague Kitty Drew.

We heard how Kitty had calmed Andrew's nerves, telling him, "Don't worry about trying to be clever, or funny, or deep -- just be yourself." Big laugh. Then Andrew was clever, funny, and deep, taking us through his perspective on his father. Andrew made sure that we knew how Terry lived out a favorite quote from Johnny Cash: "All your life, you can choose love or hate. I choose love."

Like Andrew, Carole recalled Terry's gruff side, but left us with memories of his great generosity to everyone and great love for his own family.

The Rev. R-J Heijmen told us that Terry had bypassed the usual Gospel readings recommended for the occasion in favor of Luke 10.25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan. "Terry lived that story," the priest said.

My own memories are mostly from social situations, as he and Kitty frequently hosted get-togethers at their own home or at a local wine bar. For my sake, he steered clear of sports to involve me in conversation about some of the things he knew I loved: great singers, literature, and martinis. I treasure the metallic martini chalice he gave me, unbreakable and always chilled.

He and I both had been drama teachers. He loved that work, but traded it for a business career to provide more for his family. With Kitty, we saw professional shows and dissected them. After Kitty's sixth graders performed in her annual "wax museum," the three of us would meet at a restaurant to compare notes. Terry could get very enthusiastic about those who cared about what they were doing, and pretty pointed skewering those few who blew off the project. He took me out for drinks after many performances by my own students and was always discerning in his appreciation.

Gruff as he was, Terry's tender side is what I remember best. I remember Terry at a party, crying as he talked about his old dog. He cared for his parents and parents-in-law through their old age. He also got to know my parents, who, like him, had graduated from Walnut Hills High, a unique public school they all loved, with its top-notch college prep program and tradition of diversity. Mom and Dad graduated in 1954; Terry was class of '64. When my dad died, Terry and Kitty drove the hours down to Valdosta for the memorial.

So I could not miss driving down for his. I'll miss you, Terry. Love to Kitty.

What Put the "Dead" in the Dead Sea?

Our rector Fr. Roger Allen elaborated the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus by making another parable from the Dead Sea. He detailed just how lifeless it is, even though a huge quantity of fresh water pours into the lake every day. "Life-giving water pours in," he explained, "but just evaporates away, leaving behind mineral residue -- because the lake has no outlet." Perfect image for anyone who takes without giving, whether it's the material wealth that we all have -- "if you have more than one pair of shoes and you eat more than once a day, you're rich by the world's standards" -- or it's love given to us, we're the Dead Sea if we don't get out of ourselves on behalf of others.

This sermon was a companion to last week's exploration of the difficult parable of the Crooked Manager. Though the manager in the story is fired for skimming his employer's funds, the employer ends the story commending the manager for shrewdness in reducing what debtors owe to his ex-employer. "Using what he had at his disposal," Fr. Roger said, "he was creative: he made friends and ensured a future for himself." Fr. Roger also cited the creativity of the men in Luke 5 who lowered their paralyzed friend through the roof of a crowded home to reach Jesus. Likewise, Fr. Roger advised us all, "Use what you have, use it now, and use it for something eternal."

Oxford Revisited

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Scott Smoot at New College, Oxford, virtually

Since September 13, I've biked 223 miles on bike trails around Atlanta. On the map of my virtual tour of the world, that distance takes me from Dublin to Oxford. In the photo, I'm riding past the campus of New College -- "new" because it was founded so recently, in 1379.

I lived there during the summer of 1980 in a "new" dorm, built around the time of America's Civil War. Below is a photo I took from my room. Across the way is a segment of the old city wall, one of the oldest structures in the city.

There to study works by Woolf, Beckett, Joyce, Lawrence, Eliot, and Yeats, I put my heart into it. My classmates -- like me, A.B. Duke scholars from Duke University -- met once every week in small seminar groups and twice with a tutor. The tutorial sessions were much more intense. Fellow student Chichi and I took turns presenting papers aloud for our "tute." We had to defend our ideas with evidence from the text. It was good training for the work I would do on Henry James that year. But maybe it backfired: I declined my nomination for a Rhodes scholarship. Dad couldn't believe I refused the offer, but my feeling was, been there, done that.

Some highlights and firsts:

• My first experience of social drinking: sherry with classmates and teachers
• The song of a lark that told me I'd worked through the first all-nighter of my school career -- and the last
• A run on trails around town that I thought was two miles, but was really eight. My running companion Tom Robey concealed the truth until the end. There's a lesson about expectations and endurance -- and ignorance.
• Research at the Bodleian Library, where the earliest librarian wore a suit of armor for his official portrait. Its outstanding building "the Radcliffe Camera" is a family heirloom. So said my grandmother, Harriet Radcliffe Smoot.
• Virginia Woolf's fiction didn't do much for me -- except the last gesture in To the Lighthouse -- but her personal essays introduced me to a genre that would become central to my teaching and, since I started this blog, central to my life.

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the tour from the start.

Prep Kid in a Factory: What a Multi-Cultural Experience Gave Me

Race by itself is not a culture. Race was, however, a starting place for me in my teens to see limits of my own cultural experience. The gateway was Dad's chemical factory near downtown Atlanta, where I worked summers during high school and college.

Before then, I was a child in the suburbs of midwestern cities -- Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago. Mom and Dad taught the word prejudice and said it was bad, but I got a different message from my experience, as I wrote recently in a poem, "Behind Prejudice" (from my online collection First Verse)

The few black men I ever saw
in my childhood were these:

men behind counters, mops, or mowers
in aprons or dungarees;

in darkness behind the gaping windows
where, driving, we locked our doors;

on TV, muscles gleaming behind
white coaches or explorers;

Cosby and Satchmo, behind wide smiles,
their comic drawls and whoops;

behind beleagured Doctor King,
men hurling bricks at cops.

So when a dred-locked thickset man
in shorts behind a stroller

grinned to see, toddling ahead,
his giggling little daughter,

behind what segregation taught me--
like bulls, they're docile or mad--

I confess I felt surprise that he
was just like a regular dad.

I first worked alongside black men in 8th grade when my father started his business and paid me by the hour. I worked mostly in the air-conditioned lab, but many times I was in the heat and humidity outback with black men Henry, Leroy, Zion, and others. The jobs involved heavy lifting, teamwork, 100-pound bags of powders that choked you if you breathed them, and 55-gallon drums of caustic liquids that burned when you touched them or breathed their fumes. We wore boots to walk slippery ground, rubber gloves, sometimes goggles and masks. When the work wasn't dangerous, it was tedious: to fill and cap hundreds of bottles, paste on labels, and box them up for shipping.

The men tuned the radio to R&B stations, so just a few seconds of anything by Al Green or The Stylistics takes me back to those days. I enjoyed the banter between the men, though I didn't understand much of it.

I worked mostly with Henry, a burly bearded man. I probably was in the way, but he always made me feel like he needed my help, and he hovered close to protect "Doc" Smoot's boy. So I was shocked when Dad told me Henry had done time for killing his co-worker at a previous job. "It's ok," Dad said. "The guy came at him with a knife." But I understood that all of the men had spent time in jail before Dad hired them, and sometimes Dad left work on a Monday to bail someone out.

I most admired Leroy, a veteran, straight-backed, broad-shouldered, soft-spoken. When he brought samples to me for testing in the lab, he stood "at ease," head up, feet apart, hands joined at the small of his back. I'd hand him the result, and he'd go back out into the heat. One time he paused at the door to say that he and the guys were all wondering, why did I add a little cross to the number 7? That's how Europeans do it, I said. Suddenly, I saw myself as this prep boy with affectations from book-learning.

After college and a year of teaching at a prep school, I visited Dad at work. He said the men were on lunch break and that they asked about me all the time. I found them playing checkers like I'd never seen it before, one move following the other, rapid-fire. Later, from memory, I sketched the scene.

(L-R) Zion, Leroy, and Henry, sketched from memory the day I last saw them, August 1982

Dad pinned the group portrait to the bulletin board. That's old Zion standing, by that time too rickety and blind to do much work, but Dad kept him on for the sake of the family Zion supported. There's Leroy. When he died a couple of years later, Dad made sure he got the full military honors that he deserved -- Leroy's daughter was stunned and grateful. And there's Henry, scowling at red powder scum on his fingers. That was my thank-you.

Through these workers, I got my first sense of life on the other side of town, of the kindness and family concerns of men whom I might have otherwise perceived as threatening, and a strong sense of my being sheltered from financial insecurity and from work so strenuous and sticky.

That's something I've carried with me to college and beyond. Other men my age never had such an experience. Once, I convinced Dad to give a week's work to a prep school friend of mine who wanted to earn some extra cash, but the guy lasted only one day. When I sometimes described my factory work to my middle school students, they'd ask, wasn't that child abuse? To them, hard physical labor is inherently demeaning.

I hated it at the time, but now, for that work, and for those workers, I feel only gratitude.

[Written in response to a prompt from the program Education for Ministry: "Share experience(s) with other cultures that have contributed to your sense of self." See my EfM class blog. For a related blogpost, see The Privilege is Mine]

The Team that Helped my Dog Find Home

My favorite part of Episcopal morning prayer is the Great Thanksgiving at the end. I go to my dog Brandy, invariably curled up on the sofa, and pet her while I say the prayer by memory, including these words, "We bless You [Father] for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life," thinking preserve this creature; she is a blessing. Yesterday morning, I was forlorn when I got to that part, because Brandy had been missing 36 hours.

A few hours later, she found home. I'm reflecting on the team of people who helped Brandy to reach that happy ending.

Professional dog sitters Diane and Renee had taken turns caring for Brandy while I was out of town. Visiting on Saturday evening, Renee challenged "a random guy" walking up my driveway who claimed he got lost in woods behind my home. That was plausible; there was a party nearby, and alcohol may have been involved. Renee spent quality time with Brandy and left. There was no reason to think that the man had climbed the privacy fence and opened the gate from inside. The next morning, when Brandy was missing, Renee descended to Brandy's playground where she found the gate ajar.

After Diane and Renee contacted me, they posted "LOST" signs all over the area. They posted her photo online. They put on boots and long pants to search the woods for signs of Brandy. On my front porch they put out Brandy's bed with water and food in case she came back when no one was home. When I arrived, we hoped my voice would draw Brandy out of hiding.

Phone tips indicated that Brandy had cut through the woods to the main road, one leg of a circuit she and I walk often. Because cars speed by on that road every minute, I always tell Brandy, "Look both ways." She does; we wait for any cars to pass, then trot across. I've always hoped, if Brandy ever got away, that she would follow that circuit all the way home.

Saturday, she evidently was doing just that when she ducked under the guard rail to follow her nose into another neighborhood.

Diane, Renee and I searched the woods behind homes where she had been sighted. Diane kept encouraging us with happy scenarios she imagined. She fearlessly rapped on doors, even in the sketchy compound of five homes where people seem to be raising chickens and growing something illegal. Diane's husband Dave brought us water and sandwiches -- talk about preservation and blessing! I hadn't eaten all day -- and we searched nearly to dinnertime.

David and Diane

After worrying through a rainy night, I cut short my morning routine. Donning shoes without Brandy's eager anticipation of the day, going to the kitchen without her running ahead, putting food out for the squirrels without Brandy snatching up the stray peanut -- these just made me sad. I skipped everything else to search instead.

An early search turned out to be a great idea. I left my car parked with a "LOST" poster in the window. Parents and kids passing by me on their ways to work or school saw the leash and empty collar as I called her name. I was a walking advertisement, and that paid off a little later.

Discouraged after nearly two hours, I was heading back to my car, planning to search the county dog pound, when a young woman in a car stopped to take me where she had seen Brandy not half an hour earlier.

Now I knew that Brandy was still in the vicinity, great news. But the woman had seen Brandy run southeast. Two blocks east was the familiar two lane road and our neighborhood; but two blocks south was a busy six lane highway.

I received three calls in rapid succession. Brandy had exited the subdivision; she had re-crossed the two-lane road; she was trotting along the right side of the road going north, the direction of our neighborhood. I texted the news to Diane. Far from my car, I was running -- not my forte -- when the best tip of all came from a man whose property Brandy has watered many many times. She'd gone through his yard towards our street.

I called her name from the top of the cul-de-sac where we live at the bottom of the hill and she came out into the yard, ears perked. She ran to me, tail between her legs -- happy but sheepish? -- and Diane arrived with food.

Diane served Brandy her first meal, moments after recovery.

Diane did two things I wouldn't have thought to do. First, she took us to a DIY pet grooming salon for a bath. Brandy had somehow spent the night in the woods during a storm without getting wet or dirty, but Diane knew that mites and poison ivy oils might be in that fur. Then Diane set up an appointment for the vet to check Brandy for dehydration and any signs of injury. Renee, overwhelmed with joy and unable to speak when Brandy showed up, dropped in at the vet's to welcome Brandy back. The vet discovered that Brandy does indeed have an abrasion on one paw, now being treated with an ointment.

I'm glad that I took some time to send photos of the happy homecoming to the people who contacted me with tips. Many wanted more details; one person wrote that now her six-year-old was relieved, and another wrote, "You've made my wife's day!"

From them all, I've learned to snap a photo of LOST posters when I see them, so that I'll have the number handy if I can report a sighting.

• See my page Loving Dogs for links to articles about Brandy, with pictures, along with articles about other dogs in literature and in my life.
• Accessible Poem (for Brandy) is my poem about one of Brandy's endearing peculiarities, finished the day Brandy was almost lost to me.

Diane filmed these first minutes after Brandy's homecoming.

Brandy's Aunt Susan brought a peanut-butter filled bone.

Poems from August

Every weekday morning for an hour, I descend to my basement workroom to read ten minutes of poetry by someone wonderful (lately, Derek Walcott) and then work to write a poem of my own. My dog Brandy settles into the poofy chair opposite me. Since July, I've managed to write two poems down there, adding them to my poetry blog First Verse.

By coincidence, the poem about Brandy was completed in the morning of the day she got out of the yard. (An intruder had forced the gate open while I was away.) Brandy survived 40 hours in the woods of a nearby subdivision before she found her way back home.

Accessible Poem (for Brandy)

I know my dog some day won't somersault.
For now, she stretches brandy-colored limbs
to the seat of a plush chair and hops to the center.
She kneads the cushion as if she's digging for bones;
her claws rake the linen zip-zip-zip.
She lowers her brandy face between her paws,
her body now a sleek black slope
from feathery tail to velvety upturned bat-ears.
Her eyes, glinting coffee black, find mine.
She yaps, as if to say, "Hey! Watch this!"
She tucks her chin beneath, flips belly up,
then kicks the air, and stops. Again, she kicks.
Breathing hard, she rolls to one side, at rest.
May she, by these lines, always be accessed.

Here's Brandy photographed by her professional dog sitters Diane and Renee.

On his birthdays, John Updike wrote sonnets to take stock of his inner and outer worlds. I emulated him on my birthday in July. But the form didn't fit the content; it needed something lighter, more like the rhyme-studded songs that Astaire made famous.

At 63

The neighbors up early might see Fred Astaire
by my kitchen sink tapping the spout to prepare
Mister Coffee. That set, he pirouettes
with plates he deals like cards, jetés
with kibble for the dog, then glides in the dark
to the deck where he stretches bird feed to its hook.

I pour the coffee and open my prayer book.
Later, the rounds of the market, the park,
the church, the Home to sing Mom Sinatra.
First, I read this morning mantra:
In You we move and have our being.
They think it's a lonely old dancer they're seeing.

Cyclin' to Dublin

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Scott Smoot at Dublin, Joyce's martello tower -- virtually

From Iceland to Ireland is a difference of one letter and 884 miles, Reykjavik to Dublin. I've biked those miles on trails around Atlanta since August 2. Now I pause to pose with a backdrop of old Dublin from atop a "martello" tower, one of many built to defend British territory from Napoleon.

Since my only time in Ireland was an hour in Shannon Airport, how can Dublin belong to my virtual tour of "places I've lived or loved?" I have two reasons: James Joyce and DNA.

What I love is the opening chapter of Ulysses. James Joyce begins his novel at this very tower after sunrise on June 16, 1904, as a covey of young men boarding there are variously cooking sausage, shaving, or sleeping in, full of literature and themselves. One of these is Stephen Dedalus. The novel follows him and his friend Leopold Bloom through this one day.

So I hear; I never finished reading the book. I used to try to read it every June 16, the day called "Bloom's Day" by fans worldwide who celebrate with staged readings of the entire novel. Chapter one was more a delight every time, but I've always bogged down before chapter 10. Finally, I just skipped to the last page (it's a good one!), wrote about what I appreciated, and put the book away. See Happy Bloom's Day (06/16/2007).

I also claim Ireland for my ancestral home. When I told my Aunt Harriet that Thomas Cahill's book How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995) made me wish I were Irish, she quipped, "Silly! You are Irish." She would know. In 1967, her Aunt Lucille Smoot's family history came to my dad from their father Dewey Smoot with this note: "This is not a complete history but maybe... it [can] satisfy your children. As for me, I couldn't care less in re: such matters." I'm with him; I'll take Aunt Harriet's word. [Family Corner tells more about the family.]

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