He had
spent much of the evening waiting:
Waiting
at the casino for the storm to pass, waiting for the ferry driver at Big
Island, who did not have the courage to brave the rough waters.
It had
been an exceedingly slow drive through the downpour from Excelsior to Saint
Anthony.
Now
he was waiting again…and the evening was getting late.
Ivan,
who people called “The Wolf,” was pensive.
He
didn’t like waiting. He was a man of action, but he never questioned the boss’s
orders; whatever else he was, The Wolf was a good dog. He was obedient to his
master.
Karl Thorrson had told him to retire to the
house in Tangletown, a sleepy neighborhood with lovely cottages on the
southside of St. Anthony. The home was on the banks of the narrow rivulet named
for the maiden Minnehaha, made famous by the poet Longfellow in his epic The
Song of Hiawatha.
The Wolf was fond of reciting it.
His Norwegian grandfather had taken an Ojibwe
bride when he came to Minnesota, and he believed the blood of hero’s flowed
through his veins.
The Wolf was a killer; he inspired fear in
others, but there were few people who would have called him heroic…none in fact,
but a wolf did not concern himself with the opinion of sheep, he told
himself when the disparity came to mind.
The Wolf sat in the parlor peering
into the dark, watching the deluge drench the city.
The
storm was chaotic, and he didn’t like it. Weather like this was not good for
business, it gave the pimps and hustlers who worked under him an excuse to
cheat, he knew that business would be down, but revenue would be down even
more.
Tonight his patron had sidelined him, telling him
that he would go alone to the Round-Up to conclude his business with the owner.
The one-eyed giant told him that he wanted to take
care of the matter himself, that he would not even bring his ordinary
muscle, the Ingelson brothers with him.
The
Wolf never questioned Karl Thorrson, and he knew that his patron did not
require anyone’s protection, it was the appearance that mattered. Even a man like
Karl Thorrson benefitted from the projection of force. Both he and the Ingleson
brothers represented that force, along with the dozens of other gunmen that did
their bidding throughout the city, and they all benefitted from appearing with
their patron in public, it bolstered their authority as well. But there was nothing
to be done about that now, so he sat in the parlor watching for a break in the
clouds or some hint of the moon...waiting for the rain to stop.
The Wolf was pensive; he didn’t like waiting,
he was a man of action.
He looked out of the windows, out toward the
creek; he could not see it through the rain, but he focused on his breathing
and allowed his mind to hover over the flowing water, to enter the stream and
flow with it: from Tangletown up-to its headwaters at Lake Minnetonka, then
down-stream over the great waterfall, to the Mississippi river, to New Orleans,
to the Gulf of Mexico and the wider world beyond.
He found a place of stillness in the current, and quietly recited Longfellow’s poem.
By the shores of Gitche Gumee
By the shining big-sea water
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O'er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset…
The Wolf waited for his patron’s call.
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