He couldn’t blame Angie for feeling the way she did. The case was crawling in between them—the first time something like this had happened in the year and a half that they’d been married. His hours weren’t always great at the best of times, but they’d always worked around them and made plenty of time for just the two of them. The Slasher case wasn’t allowing them that luxury.
He frowned as he drove, deep furrows wrinkling in his brow. But as the landscape slowly changed around him—from the crowded city streets to blocks of industrial warehouses, factories, shopping malls, fast-food outlets, the suburbs and finally farmland—he felt the tension begin to ease from his shoulders, his brow smoothing. Once he crossed under the Interstate and headed up into the hills that backed onto the reserve, it was as though a great weight had been lifted from him.
Life on the reserve hadn’t been what he wanted, but he still loved the land. Every time he left the city behind, following the curves of Highway 14 as it wound through the granite-backed hills heavy with pine, cedar and hardwoods, was like being reborn. By the time he reached the dirt turnoff that led into the reserve, he was a different man: relaxed, alive, awake.
His brother was waiting for him in the parking lot that stood between the Longhouse and the general store. John Morningstar was a tall, dark-skinned man. His face was broad, his long black hair pulled back into a single braid that hung almost to his belt. He wore a sweatband with an eagle’s feather in it, hanging low over his right ear, and was dressed in fatigues, flat-heeled boots, a plain white T-shirt, and a bush jacket. He had a hunting knife strapped to his belt; a rifle sat on the rack in the cab of his pickup, behind the seat.
He walked over to Thomas’s car, offering his hand once Thomas was standing on the pavement beside him.
“It’s good to see you, Tom. Been a while.”
“Too long,” Thomas replied, clasping his brother’s hand. He looked around. “Where’s Whiteduck?”
John smiled. “Back in the bush. I’ll drive you out to where he’s staying.”
“Thanks. Do you have any idea what he wants?”
“I think I should leave that for him to explain. A word of advice, though.”
Thomas’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“Don’t call him Jack Whiteduck. The name he uses is the one he was given when he was born, not the one the white men gave him in school. Call him Naganggabo, or Grandfather.”
Naganggabo, Thomas thought. It meant “man leading” in Kickaha.
“I’ll remember,” he said.
John filled him in on the local news as they followed a road that was just two dirt ruts, with undergrowth pushing against the pickup on either side.
“I didn’t tell Niga you were coming,” he said at one point. “I wasn’t sure if you’d have time to come by the house when we’re done.”
“I appreciate that.”
Thomas had hoped to get by to see their mother before he drove back to the city, but he wasn’t sure how long this meeting with Whiteduck was going to take. And since he had to get in early tomorrow morning …
“How’s she doing anyway?” he asked.
John smiled. “Talks about you all the time. She clips out the articles every time you’re mentioned in the paper with that big case you’re working on. Keeps them in a big folder and shows them to all the aunts when they come by.”
Thomas laughed.
They drove on in silence for a while, until what passed for a road finally died out. John shut off the engine and the lights. The only sound for a long time was the tick of the engine cooling. Finally John turned to look at Thomas.
“Do you ever miss the reserve?” he asked.
Thomas nodded. “Every time I come back. But—you know how it is.”
“Yeah,” John said. There was regret in his voice. “I guess I do.”
He opened his door and stepped outside, waited for Thomas to join him.
“It’s not far now. Mico’mis is camping at that place where we used to take Linda and Gabrielle.”
“Jesus,” Thomas said, as he followed John into the bush. “I haven’t thought of them in years. How’re they doing?”
“Did you know Linda got married to that friend of Paul’s?”
“Yeah, I think you told me about that.”
“Well, she’s still living with him, over on the east side of the reserve. They got three kids now.”
“And Gabrielle?”
When he replied, John’s voice was flat. “She’s teaching up north on an Algonquin reserve near Maniwaki.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Thomas asked.
“We need teachers here, too.”
Like if you were going to be a cop, why not join the Tribal Police? Thomas thought.
He and John had only argued about Thomas’s decision once. Unlike their father, John was willing to respect the choice that Thomas had made—or rather that he had made it. It didn’t mean he agreed. Like the other activists, John believed in keeping the band’s resources on the reserve. They both knew that further discussion was a fruitless endeavor if they wanted to keep their friendship. John, at least, realized the importance of family ties, even if their father didn’t.
Their conversation lagged as they continued on to their old trysting spot. Thomas found old memories stirring as they finally reached the place.
A campfire burned near the overhang of granite that sheltered the little glade. The same little stream ran nearby, hurrying on its way to join the Kickaha River. The trees were mostly pine here—tall giant white spruce. To one side of the overhang, where they’d spread their blankets in the old days, a small sweat lodge had been built—it was a simple affair, just saplings woven together and covered with hides. Between it and the fire, shadows playing across his features, Jack Whiteduck was waiting for them.
No, Thomas corrected himself. Naganggabo.
The old shaman didn’t seem any different from that time Thomas had seen him on the playing field behind the school all those years ago. He still wore his buckskins with their quill and beadwork designs. His hair was perhaps a little grayer, though that might only have been the light. He didn’t appear to have aged at all.
John and Thomas sat cross-legged on the other side of the fire from Whiteduck. For a long while no one spoke. Whiteduck looked into the fire. His gaze didn’t appear to be focused on the burning wood so much as on something that lay much more deeply hidden within the flames. Finally he looked up.
“Wabinose,” he said, using Thomas’s Kickaha name by way of greeting.
Thomas nodded respectfully. “Hello, Mico’mis,” he said.
“Thank you for coming.”
Thomas made no reply, only waited.
“Do you remember when we spoke before?” Whiteduck asked.
“Behind the school,” Thomas said.
Whiteduck nodded. “I told you then that I knew the war that was waging inside you—do you remember that as well?”
“I do.”
“I went to the white man’s school once,” Whiteduck said then. “I went to the white man’s college. I graduated and lived in the white man’s world, thinking I was a white man, but I was always searching for something—a thing that would fill a hole I felt inside me. For all my years in the white man’s world, what I finally learned was that this”—his arm moved to encompass the dark forest that surrounded them—“is my place. So I set all I had aside and became a student once more. But this time I studied not the white man’s books, but the way of the Kickaha.
“My teacher’s name was Tabobandung—He Who Sees Far.”
Thomas thought he could see where this was leading to now. Frank had been right.
“I’m sorry, Mico’mis,” he said, “but I’m not coming back to the reserve.”
“That is your choice.”
Thomas frowned. “We’re not here so that you can try to talk me into it?”
Whiteduck shook his head. “We are here to discuss the chieftainship of the band.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t understand.”
“We are a people who hold to tradition,” Whiteduck said. “A Morningstar has always been our chief.”
Thomas shot his brother a glance. “You never said anything about Dad being—”
“There’s nothing wrong with Nos,” John told him.
Whiteduck nodded in agreement. “Times are changing. Your father was a good band chief in his time, but we need a leader today who can make decisions quickly. A man who isn’t afraid of offending the white man should the betterment of the band lie in such a direction.”
Thomas looked at his brother again. “Someone from the Warrior Lodge,” he said.
“Exactly,” Whiteduck said.
Thomas shook his head. “I don’t understand what this has got to do with me. I thought the aunts picked who would be elected.”
Tribal politics weren’t quite governed by democratic principles. Candidates for positions of office could only be elected after the Council of Elders had given the individual in question their stamp of approval.
“It’s true that the elder mothers make such decisions,” Whiteduck said, “but they have still been known to listen to advice given by an old man such as myself.”
Whiteduck grinned as he spoke, teeth flashing white in the firelight.
“I still don’t understand what it’s got to do with me,” Thomas said.
“After Nos,” John said, “you’re the eldest male Morningstar.”
Now Thomas understood. Both he and John were older than any of their cousins.
“I won’t interfere,” he said, “if that’s what’s worrying you. I made my choice years ago.”
“Men change their minds,” Whiteduck said. “I did—once I learned to see the truth.”
Thomas shook his head. “Even if I was to come back to the reserve, I still wouldn’t want to be chief. That’s probably one of the things that made me leave, the way everybody just assumed that I was going to take over from Dad.” He glanced at his brother. “I’d be proud to know that my brother’s the band chief.”
Though, he had to admit to himself, it gave him cause for worry. The Warrior Lodge was always pressing for more immediate solutions to the problems the band had with the white government. Something Whiteduck had said earlier returned to mind. The band needed …
. a man who isn’t afraid of offending the white man should the betterment of the band lie in such a direction.
Jesus, he hoped they weren’t planning something crazy.
“You would have made a good chief,” Whiteduck said to him.
“Thank you,” Thomas said. I think, he added to himself. He turned his attention back to his brother. “What does Dad think of this?”
“He’s been wanting to step down for some time,” John replied. “He was holding off because he kept hoping that you’d …” Rather than finishing the sentence, he just shrugged.
There were things that Thomas could say in response to that. It wasn’t his fault that his heart lay elsewhere. He hadn’t asked to be the oldest son. He had his own life to lead.
But he kept silent. It had all been said before.
“Thank you for indulging an old man and coming so far out of your way to speak with me,” Whiteduck said, breaking the silence.
Thomas smiled. Humility didn’t suit Whiteduck, but then Thomas caught the fire in the shaman’s eyes and realized that the old man was just being polite. He was also indicating that their meeting was over, but Thomas wasn’t ready to go. It surprised him that he even wanted to bring this up in front of John, considering how it was one of the main sources of contention between them, but he realized that he’d never have a better opportunity than the present moment to ask what he wanted to ask now.
“Before I go,” he said, “I was wondering, Mico’mis, if you could help me with something that’s troubling me.”
Whiteduck nodded for him to continue.
Thomas cleared his throat. He glanced once at his brother, then fixed his attention on the old man sitting across the fire from him.
“I was wondering,” he said. “Do you believe in evil spirits—not as analogies for the evil deeds of which people are capable, but as real things with an existence in their own right?”
The shaman’s features sharpened with interest.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“But—”
“You must understand,” Whiteduck went on. “You can carve yourself out a piece of the day and call it your own, but no one owns the dark. It has always been so. The night belongs to the windigo—do you know what I mean by this term?”
Thomas nodded. A white man might think of the windigo only as the monstrous cannibal said to haunt the forests; Whiteduck was using it to refer to all evil spirits.
“We are people of the day,” Whiteduck went on. “A council such as we hold now is rarely held after dusk.”
“So evil spirits exist.”
“Both evil and good,” Whiteduck agreed. “The evil are, unfortunately, usually stronger.”
“And ghosts?”
“There are two kinds of spirits who walk back to us from death,” Whiteduck said. “The very good and the very evil. It’s hard to be very good, which is why we have so few of such spirits. It’s not at all difficult to be evil.”
“But what brings them back?” Thomas asked. “Why do the evil spirits return?”
“Either they have been summoned, or they have unfinished business in the land of the living,” Whiteduck replied, echoing what Papa Jo-el had told Thomas over the phone that afternoon.
None of them spoke for a time then. Thomas took a breath. The way the darkness pressed toward them from beyond the fire and the deep silence of the forest, combined with the way Whiteduck discussed such things so matter-of-factly, had a pronounced effect on him. Here, now, it was easy to believe … .
Finally he cleared his throat and asked, “How do you send them back?”
“If such a thing were summoned,” Whiteduck said, “the one who called it forth must send it back. But if it returned of its own accord—then first it must complete its business. When its business is done, it will leave the land of the living by its own free will.”
“But you can’t force it?”
Whiteduck shrugged. “You can try. But unless its business is complete, it will only return once again. All creatures—even the spirits of the dead—are bound to their wheels. The best advice I could give in such a situation would be to stay out of its way.”
Stay out of its way, Thomas thought as he and John drove back to the parking lot where he’d left his car. Right. I’d love to stay out of its way.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
Growing in him all afternoon, he realized, was a kind of intuition. Jennifer Wilkes, the medical examiner, had felt it, too. He could sense it in how uncomfortable her voice sounded as she described how the Slasher appeared to be growing stronger.
They were both feeling the same thing: Something bad was heading their way, like a storm of violence. He could almost taste its coming. And if it did have a supernatural origin … then how the hell was he supposed to stop it?
“What was all that about?” John asked as he pulled the pickup in beside Thomas’s car.
“All what?” Thomas replied, but he knew what his brother was referring to.
“All this shit about evil spirits. I know how much you believe in them, Tom, so what gives? Were you just having some fun at Whiteduck’s expense?”
“I wish.”
John gave him a concerned look. “Something’s happening, isn’t it? Something bad?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s real. It’s just that you learn pretty quickly in my business that there’s no such thing as coincidence. Things connect because they’re connected, not because they just happen to be in proximity to each other.”
“What are you talking about, Tom?”
So Thomas told him. About the dead end he had on the Slasher case, about what
their witness had to say, about Papa Jo-el’s call and the autopsy findings.
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for it all,” he said as he finished up, “but I can’t shake this gut feeling that I’ve got to take all of this hoodoo seriously.”
“You’d better,” John said. “You don’t fuck around with that kind of an evil spirit.”
Thomas’s “Aw, c’mon” died in his throat. He’d brought this up, after all.
“And you watch your step,” John went on. “That spirit’s going to sense you’re messing around in its business and when it does, it’ll be coming after you. That’s the way it works.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s here for a reason,” his brother explained. “Spirits are very single-minded. It’s heading in one direction, aiming for who the hell knows what, and God help whatever gets in its way.”
Thomas could only shake his head.
“I know I brought this up,” he said, “but think about what you’re saying. Listen to us. We’re talking about this kind of thing as though it’s real, but it doesn’t fit in the real world. If it did, we’d be hearing about it all the time.”
“We do,” John said. “It just comes to us from what are basically bullshit sources like supermarket tabloids where it gets tangled up in a lot of other hysteria. But you do hear about it.”
Thomas opened his door. “I’ll think about it some,” he said as he stepped out.
John waited until he’d come around the side of the cab to where his car was parked.
“You be careful,” he said then.
“I will.”
“And if you need help, call me.”
Thomas regarded his brother for a long moment, then slowly nodded.
“I’ll do that,” he said. “Thanks, John.”
As he drove home, Thomas thought about what Frank would have to say about all of this and realized he’d better not tell his partner. Not until he had something more concrete. Hell, he wasn’t sure he believed in any of it himself. And until he did—
He’d just tell Frank later.
But the bad feeling that had started up after Papa Jo-el’s call this afternoon had just been fueled to a higher flame by his conversations with Whiteduck and his brother, and he found himself wondering if there’d even be a later for him to tell Frank.
From a Whisper to a Scream Page 11