Trickster's Point

by William Kent Krueger

  He turned out the lamp on his desk, left his office, and slowly climbed the stairs toward bed, hoping he could sleep.

  * * *

  He didn’t, not much. After a few hours of restless napping, he rose in the dark, showered, dressed, left a note for his children, and headed out. He pulled up to the curb in front of Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler at 5:30, which was half an hour before the front door was unlocked and the place was officially open for business. On the other side of the big plate-glass windows, the restaurant was only dimly lit, but he could see Heidi Steger moving fast back and forth behind the counter. Heidi was somewhere in her thirties and three times married. No children though. She was always doing something to look younger. Her hair, for example. At the moment, it was a neon green that made her look a little like a Chia Pet. It was also on the wild side that morning, and Cork figured she’d overslept and was frantically trying to get the place ready for customers. He slid from the Land Rover, went to the Broiler door, and knocked on the glass. Heidi turned toward him, looked bewildered, pointed at her wristwatch, and shook her head. Cork beckoned her to him. He could tell she wasn’t happy to be interrupted, but she came and unlocked anyway.

  “I don’t care how hungry you are,” she said, “I’m not putting in any orders before six.”

  “This isn’t about eating, Heidi.”

  “No? What’s it about then? And make it quick, Cork. I’m running late as it is.”

  “The day before yesterday, the day Jubal Little was killed, when we came for breakfast, do you remember who else was here that morning?”

  “Oh, Jesus. That was Saturday. You have any idea how many people come here for breakfast on a Saturday? You think I’m going to remember them all?”

  “Just take a moment, Heidi. Relax and think. This was very early Saturday, first thing after you opened. Anybody come to mind?”

  “Cork, I’ve got so much—”

  “Please. It’s important.”

  She took a breath and closed her eyes. Then she squeezed them together, as if it hurt her to think deeply. At last she said, “Gus Sorenson and Davey Klein and Mack McKenzie were at the counter. Two Greek omelets and one short stack with a side of link sausage. Cora Hubik was at table six. Eggs over easy and a waffle. Lester Bigby in booth three, right behind you and Jubal Little. Oatmeal and raisins. Jasper Davis in booth five. His usual—”

  “Lester Bigby? He was here?”

  “I just said he was. In the booth right behind you.”

  “I don’t remember him.”

  “You probably didn’t see his face. He’s usually got it hid behind a newspaper.”

  “Bigby,” Cork said.

  She mentioned two more names, but they weren’t anybody Cork had reason to be concerned about, especially after he’d learned that Lester Bigby had been there. He thanked Heidi and started away.

  “Be back for breakfast?” she asked.

  “I’ll probably have something at home.”

  “Give that grandson of yours a big hug for me. And bring him in for a cinnamon roll sometime. On me, okay?”

  “Will do, Heidi.”

  Cork didn’t, in fact, go home. He drove north out of Aurora, along the lakeshore and back roads until he reached the double-trunk birch. Soft blue morning light was sifting through the tree branches as he set out along the path to Crow Point, and he realized the cloud cover that had hung heavy for days was gone, and the sun would break against a clear heaven. That idea alone lifted his spirits.

  The sky had turned the color of a peach when he stepped from the trees and entered the meadow at the end of the point. He saw no smoke rising from the stovepipe on either of the cabins. He walked to Rainy’s door, knocked lightly, and opened it.

  “Rainy?” he called softly.

  “Cork?” She rose in bed, propped herself on an elbow, and gave him a quizzical look.

  “Would you like some company?”

  She smiled and lifted the blanket for him. “I’d love some.”

  Later, they lay together, a braiding of arms and legs and moist flesh.

  “I don’t know what brought this on, but I’m glad it did,” Rainy said in a breathless whisper.

  “I spoke with Camilla Little last night, and then tried to see Winona Crane. They both seem to me to be crippled women. It’s helped me realize how lucky I am to have you in my life, and I just wanted you to know that I know that.”

  In reply, she kissed his shoulder gently.

  He said, “Some people, love just seems to sweep them up like a big wave, and then leave them stranded. I think that’s the way it was with Winona and Camilla where Jubal was concerned.”

  “What about you?” Rainy said. “From what you’ve told me, Jubal left you kind of stranded, too.”

  Cork rolled onto his back and stared up at the boards of the ceiling. Rainy put her hand on his chest over his heart.

  “He wasn’t always like that,” Cork said. “It wasn’t always all about Jubal.”

  * * *

  After Jubal left for college, Cork didn’t see him for several years. Summers, Jubal worked in Cedar Falls at jobs arranged for him by the Athletic Department. They communicated occasionally through letters, but neither of them was particularly responsible in that way. It wasn’t difficult for Cork to keep track of Jubal’s football career, however. The University of Northern Iowa’s team was Jubal. He became the starting quarterback in his freshman year, and in every year thereafter, he set new school records and new conference records. Although he played for a small school in a midwestern state that most of America associated with dumb cows and tall corn, Jubal’s exploits excited national attention. Because of his Minnesota roots, he was often featured in the sports columns of the newspapers in the Twin Cities. His senior year warranted a full two-page article in Sports Illustrated, and that same year, he was profiled in Time. Part of it, of course, was his incredible athletic ability, but part of it was his unique history. The summer before his senior year, Jubal’s father died, stabbed to death in the prison yard at Deer Lodge. Because of who Jubal was, the incident became a national story. By then, the sentiment in America had changed and being Indian was a unique, even honorable thing. Once the truth was known, Jubal seemed to embrace his heritage. On the football field that final year—and in the pros afterward, for a while—he took to calling himself the Wild Warrior and let his hair grow long. Off the football field, he often wore a beaded headband and sometimes a feather. He didn’t return to Aurora until the following spring, when his mother died, and by then Cork was long gone, off to Chicago, training to wear the blue uniform of a cop. Cork didn’t learn about Jubal’s mother until later. When he did, he sent a letter of condolence, which Jubal never answered. Cork understood. Gradually over the years, he and Jubal, like most high school friends, had eased into their adult lives and had drifted apart.

  It was Willie Crane who brought them together again. It happened in the spring.

  Cork worked third-shift patrol, the late shift, and had just arrived home at eight a.m., ready to get some shut-eye, when his telephone rang.

  “O’Connor,” he answered.

  “Hello, Cork. It’s Willie Crane.” LoCor. IsWillieCrane.

  “Willie? My God, it’s been forever. How are you?”

  “Okay. I’m in Chicago. I was wondering if I could see you.”

  It had been a long time since Cork had heard his voice, but in the interim, Willie had improved his speech a little, and Cork had no trouble understanding the words.

  “Sure, Willie. How long are you in town?”

  “Not long, I hope. It kind of depends on you.”

  “Why?”

  “When we talk, you’ll understand. It’s important. It’s about Winona.”

  “What about her?”

  “I’d rather talk in person.”

  “All right. How about breakfast right now?”

  Willie was staying at the Congress Hotel on Michigan Avenue, and Cork met him there. He still walked with the s
huffling gait Cork remembered well, but even that seemed to have improved a little. They sat at a table near a window that looked east toward Grant Park. Cork hadn’t seen Willie in almost six years. Winona’s brother had grown tall and lean and handsome. Cork had heard that Willie was making a name for himself as a wildlife photographer and a nature writer. Anyone looking at Willie who didn’t know him would have been surprised. But from very early, Cork had seen the strength that was at the heart of Willie Crane.

  “I hear you’re doing well,” Cork told him. Willie looked surprised, and Cork explained, “The rez telegraph reaches all the way to Chicago.”

  “I’ve worked hard. And I love what I do. You, too, I bet. I’m not surprised at all that you’re a cop. Just that you’re a cop here.”

  “My father’s family are all from Chicago, Willie, and a lot of them are cops. It’s not Aurora, but it feels comfortable to me.”

  “I hear you’ve met someone.”

  Willie was talking about Jo McKenzie, a law student at the University of Chicago, whom Cork had met on a routine burglary call and had fallen for. It was serious, although they weren’t talking marriage yet. He was amazed that Willie knew.

  Willie apparently saw his surprise and grinned. “The rez telegraph.”

  “What about Winona?” Cork finally said.

  Willie’s aspect turned grave. “She’s in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Serious. She’s in Oregon, hooked up with some people who aren’t good people, and I need to get her away from them.”

  “What do you mean ‘not good people’?”

  “For one thing, the man she’s with abuses her.”

  “Beats her?”

  “That. And other things, I’m sure.”

  “Why doesn’t she leave him?” Which was a natural question, although Cork had been on plenty of domestic disturbance calls in which the woman, clearly abused, refused to leave her abuser.

  “At this point, I believe that, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t. He won’t let her.”

  “She’s being held against her will? That’s kidnapping. The Oregon authorities should be involved, Willie.”

  “It would be hard to prove, and there’s another reason the authorities shouldn’t be involved. These people she’s with, they grow marijuana for a living. It’s a pretty big operation.”

  “And you’re afraid of what might happen to her because of her part in that?”

  “It would just be better if we could get her away on our own.”

  “Ah,” Cork said, suddenly getting it. “You want me to help you rescue Winona.”

  “I can’t do it alone,” Willie said.

  “Just you and me? My guess is that, if those people are involved in drug trafficking, they’re armed. And even if we got to her, there’s no guarantee she’d leave with us.”

  “Jubal Little,” Willie replied.

  “What?”

  “She would leave if Jubal asked her to.”

  “Jubal and her, that was a long time ago, Willie.”

  “Henry Meloux told me once that they’re like two halves of a broken stone,” Willie said. “The last time I saw her, all she talked about was Jubal. To her, it’s like yesterday.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

  Out of college, Jubal Little had been drafted by the Los Angeles Rams. He was on their roster for two seasons, but his style, which network commentators tended to characterize as “undisciplined,” relied enormously on his ability to scramble and make something out of a broken play. He had trouble working within the rigid professional system, and he’d been cut. He was picked up by the Denver Broncos but lasted only a season. The Kansas City Chiefs gave him a shot, but there, too, he’d proved a disappointment, and after two years of mostly sitting on the bench, he’d been let go. No one had shown any interest in him since. Cork wasn’t even certain where Jubal was living at the moment.

  “I don’t know what else to do, who else to ask,” Willie said.

  Cork looked at his watch. “Tell you what. Hang tight in your hotel room today. I’ll see if I can track down a telephone number for Jubal, and if I’m lucky, we’ll give him a call.”

  Willie looked relieved and grateful. He reached out and took Cork’s hand. “Henry Meloux asked me to tell you something. He said, ‘Remind Corcoran O’Connor that I named him well.’ I don’t know what that means.”

  “Henry gave me my Ojibwe name,” Cork said. “Mikiinak.”

  “Snapping turtle?”

  Cork shrugged. “Tenacious, I think, is his point.”

  Willie thought about it. “And dangerous. A big snapper can take your finger right off. Thank you, Cork.”

  He didn’t exactly go by the book, but Cork got the private telephone number for Jubal Little, who was living in Durango, Colorado. The La Plata County deputy Cork connected with told him Jubal worked for a company that custom-built expensive log homes.

  “Yeah, this is Jube.”

  Jube? Cork wondered. When did that happen?

  “Jubal, this is Cork O’Connor.”

  There was a long pause, then, “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  “God’s truth. It’s Cork.”

  “Well, son of a gun. Where are you? Chicago still? Last we talked, you were going to try to get yourself into a cop’s uniform.”

  “Yeah, still in Chicago. And, yeah, I got the uniform.”

  “No kidding. I could’ve told you fifteen years ago that’s exactly what you’d end up doing. You always were the poster child for truth, justice, and the American way.” Jubal laughed and asked, “What’s this about?”

  Cork explained the situation, and Jubal said nothing the whole time. For a while after he’d finished, Cork heard only the hiss of the static across the long distance.

  Then Jubal said, “When do we leave?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Although Cork had often watched Jubal Little play football on the television screen, in the flesh, his old friend was startling to behold. Jubal had grown. Not just in height but also in mass. His football career had dictated that he create a body that could take brutal beatings week after week, pounding from men as big as rodeo bulls. And a magnificent body it was, broad and towering. But there was something that diminished his presence, an air of uncertainty, of defeat that Cork had never seen in him when they were kids. In high school in Aurora, when Jubal walked the halls between classes, the sea of bodies would part for him. It was subtle, but now Cork thought he saw in Jubal’s eyes a look of desperation, the look of the lost.

  They used Willie’s American Express Gold Card and rented a Jeep at the Portland airport, then drove east down the Columbia River Gorge. It was early April, and Cork had never seen air so gray or mist so viscous. He had a sense of mountains rising up almost from the roadside, but a hundred yards above him, everything was swallowed by cloud and drizzle. The great river on their left looked as cold as water could get without becoming ice. On their right, waterfall after waterfall unspooled long, loose threads of liquid that hung down the face of wet black rock. It seemed like a world in which moss and rot reigned.

  They passed through Hood River, a dismal-looking little town squatting among the hills. They had breakfast, and Jubal flirted with the waitress, a pleasant woman who easily told him her name was Johanna Sisu. He asked, “So, Johanna, when will we see the sun?”

  She laughed, didn’t bother to look at her watch, but simply nodded instead toward the calendar on the wall. “ ’Nother month, give or take a week.”

  Cork and Willie tipped her well. Jubal left her with only the golden memory of his smile.

  Twenty miles later, they hit The Dalles and turned south into great hills that were soft and green with winter wheat. At Madras, they veered east again and eventually entered a desolate area of plateaus and canyons carved out of thick layers of old lava flow.

  “The Great Oregon Desert,”
Willie said. ThGreOrgnDeser.

  “You came out here alone?” Jubal asked, clearly astonished.

  “I go everywhere alone.”

  There was no resentment in Willie’s voice, but the statement saddened Cork. As kids, Willie and Winona had been inseparable, and her leaving must have been a terrible blow.

  “What have you been up to, Willie?” Jubal asked.

  “School mostly. I got my B.A. from the U of M in the Twin Cities, then did graduate work at Yale.”

  “Yale?” Jubal said. “You went to Yale?”

  “For a while. I missed the North Country and came home after a year. I have a studio near Allouette now, but I go all over doing shoots for magazines.”

  “Willie’s work has been in National Geographic,” Cork said. He was driving, with Jubal riding shotgun. Willie was in back.

  “National Geographic? I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Jubal said. “My hat’s off to you, Willie.”

  “I’ve been lucky.”

  Cork knew there was more than luck involved. There was something at the heart of Willie Crane immeasurably strong and immensely admirable. He’d seen it sometimes, great adversity shaping great character. It could work the other way as well, killing everything in the human spirit. What made the difference, maybe only Kitchimanidoo or God alone knew.

  “You’ve done pretty good, too,” Willie said to Jubal. “I’ve watched you play on television. But you didn’t play last year.”

  “I couldn’t find an offense where I felt I fit in,” Jubal said, with a note of defensiveness. “I’m in talks with the Dallas organization. I expect to hear from the Cowboys any day now.”

  “What are you doing in the meantime?”

  “A friend of mine, guy I know from my days with the Broncos, he and I build luxury mountain homes.”

  Which, as Cork understood it from his discussion with the La Plata deputy, was an exaggeration at best. But he said nothing.

  They reached a river called the John Day and then drove through a small town called Furlough, which wasn’t much more than a grid of a dozen streets lined with cottonwoods, a grocery store, two bars, and a gas station, everything dusty-looking. A few miles beyond, they turned onto a dirt road that followed a rocky creek, and they began to climb in altitude. After five miles or so, Willie said, “Stop at the crest of this hill ahead.”