They watched the Goose take off, then Maureen led the guests to their cabin and Brian waited with Joe Loon for Simon’s return. Simon jogged back to the dock, passing Maureen along the top of the beach. He stopped at the storage shed at the foot of the dock, grabbed a knapsack he’d stuffed with food and drinks, trotted down the dock’s length, and settled into the bow seat of Joe Loon’s boat. Joe Loon cranked the engine, Brian pushed off from the dock, and they motored across the cove out into Rainbow Lake as the Grumman Goose disappeared across the far ridge, headed southeast.
A fresh wind was just stirring up a light chop on the open water of the River’s lake as Joe Loon steered the boat in the same direction the Goose was flying.
The two Jameses sat in their cabin, assembling fishing tackle. The homebuilder was threading the line through the rod ferrules.
“So we agreed how we’d start?”
“Did we?”
“I think so.”
“Jigging for walleyes?”
“I bought a bunch of the same sort of yellow jigs our Indian was recommending.”
“Our guide. Not our Indian.”
“Pretty cool, don’t you think. Having an Indian guide.”
“Definitely….Let me see your jigs… I think I bought some like that except a size or two bigger.”
Their rods assembled, the reels mounted, line threaded, they tied on metal leaders as Brian had instructed. They’d changed from travel clothes to fishing clothes and were ready to leave the cabin to meet Albert at the dock, when the lawyer decided it was time to review the situation.
“With Burke gone for the day I’m thinking we should deliver the package to her right now.”
“If Kevin’s right and she’s still not told Brian of her IRA ties, then maybe we’re better off talking to her when he’s in camp. If she’s gonna get angry that we’re here, his presence keeps her under control.”
“I think we act now. The sooner we give her the package the more chances we have to talk it over with her during our trip. Kevin gave us plenty of angles for convincing her… She said she was headed to the Lodge if we needed her for anything.”
“Then let’s go.”
The lawyer removed a large sealed envelope from his suitcase, folded it, and stuck it in his back pocket. The two Jameses stepped out of the cabin with their tackle boxes and fishing rods in hand but headed up the path that led to the Great Lodge.
Ernest Hemingway sat in the co-pilot’s chair. The pilot pointed out the first glimpse of the dam on the horizon, at one o’clock. Power lines ran south and vanished at the horizon.
“Those power lines head where the pulp mills have been expanding. I’m sure Brian told you about how he and Maureen tried to stop it.”
“They slowed it down. When the other side has all the money and all the political power, that’s no small accomplishment. ”
“All they really did was cost some folks a lot of money and make a whole lot of other people angry at them.”
Behind the dam the wide River forest valley was now flooded by a long narrow lake that widened in the middle.
“You don’t sound particularly impressed with your employers’ efforts.”
“Their efforts? No, I’d have to say I was very impressed by their efforts. No one ever questions their efforts. It was their decision to get involved in the first place.”
“You wanted the dam to be built?”
“Everyone wanted the dam to be built, are you kidding? My job is important to me and to my family. Lumber company jobs, those are important to everyone. When the pulp mills are expanding, every business is growing, everyone’s working. And the Burkes, well, they’d only been around for a couple of years and had already fought against the building of a mill and then right away they go after this dam. That’s them standing in the way of lots of jobs, so that’s lots of anger.”
“Weren’t they acting for good reason, their care for the Ojibway?”
The dam was in clear site, the concrete wall, the buildings on either side, bright white slabs and surfaces in the green wilderness.
“The beaver didn’t die. They didn’t drown in the flood. Habitat changes all they time. They just moved.”
“I understand there was an Ojibway burial ground flooded as well?”
“They blew that way out of proportion. Four graves, from who knows when. I been told they were all grown over. That no one ever visited them.”
The pilot flew over the dam compound, then corrected his course to head to Kenora.
“Look, don’t get me wrong. I admire Brian and Maureen, and what they’re building up here is amazing. Folks flying home after just a couple of days at Innish Cove claim they’ve been changed, like they’ve seen what Heaven might be. I see that. But I don’t think they understand how many people around here, folks who don’t know them as well as I do, well, their first impression of Brian is that he is a self-serving bully and, well, to be honest with you, around here it doesn’t help that they’re both so…so Irish.”
“And I’ll toast you the next chance I get when you assure me that you are quick to show your loyalty and set the locals straight.”
The two Jameses stood on the porch just outside the front doors of the Great Lodge. They set their tackle boxes on a bench and leaned their rods against the wall. The lawyer removed the envelope from his pocket and turned to the homebuilder.
“You want to give it to her?”
“You want me to give it to her?”
“No, I’m asking if you want to give it to her. Why don’t you just go in there and give it to her.”
The homebuilder took the envelope just as the door opened and Maureen stepped out, Grace O’Malley holding her right hand, Little Stevie her left.
“Oh, hey, we’re on our way to check on you. You need somethin’?”
“Hello, yes, well, we needed to do something. We need to see you… It’s our mission.”
Maureen stepped up and collected the children in behind her.
“Your mission? Sounds like you’re at work in the fields of the Lord.”
“I’ve heard some speak of it that way, yes.”
She turned to the children.
“Stevie, take Gracie back to your mother, in the kitchen… Mary… Mary, I’m sendin’ the children in to you so keep an eye on them ‘til I fetch them,” and she nudged the children on their way to Mary who was coming for them, then stepped outside and closed the door behind her.
“It’s Kevin who sent us on our mission.”
“Kevin?”
“Yes, Kevin.”
“You must mean St. Kevin.”
“Who?”
“St. Kevin. After St. Patrick, none’s more revered.”
“Kevin Coogan asked us, as his friends, as your friend, to give this to you.”
He held out the envelope for her to take; Maureen didn’t reach for it but instead extended both her arms slowly, out to her sides.
“It is said St. Kevin’s prayer was so intense, that his prayer was so rich…” With her arms straight out to at her sides now she dropped to her knees in front of the two men. The homebuilder held the envelope out in front of him as he took a step back; the lawyer was frozen in his tracks. “…that one day St. Kevin got down on his knees to pray his love for the Great Creator God an’ he became so consumed by his prayer and so transfixed by the power of holy love, he was captured by the fullness of his communion…” She closed her eyes. “Kneeling there, St. Kevin became one with the whole of Creation. He could feel the earth breathing beneath him an’ the River was flowing through him, an’ the trees were rooted in him, an’ he was rooted like a tree in God’s love; he could feel it, all of it, pulsin’ with the life an’ the power of the Great an’ Most Holy Spirit as he knelt there, his arms out, lost in prayer, trapped in prayer, as the hours passed, as night came an’ then day, an’ still he prayed, day after day St. Kevin prayed, out in his hermitage, in his little stone hut he built for prayer, a shelter so small his arms extended out
the windows on either side, an’ as time passed birds came to perch on his arms an’ sang their songs of Creation an’ still St. Kevin stayed there, in a deeply blessed communion of the most sacred.” Maureen turned her palms up and cupped her fingers. “One day a bird began to build her nest in his hand. Over the days she completed it an’ still St. Kevin didn’t move, so this mother bird laid her eggs in the nest an’ still St. Kevin stayed locked in his inspiration an’ his ecstasy an’ his deep connection to all that is, an’ all that will be ‘til finally the baby birds fledged an’ flew away an’ that’s when St. Kevin was released from his holy state to return to his human life a changed man, changed deep, changed forever.”
The two Jameses stood quietly as Maureen slowly got to her feet. The homebuilder tried to hand the envelope to her again, and when she wouldn’t take it, he tossed it at her feet. She didn’t look at it but at them when she spoke again.
“Your Kevin claims he’s my friend? You’d think friends was friends because they kept their part of a bargain with their friends. Especially this bargain with this friend.”
“Kevin said you’d bring up the bargain and told us to tell you this isn’t what you think.”
She looked down at the envelope for the first time.
“He says to tell you last year’s package was for you but this may be his final plea and our last chance.”
With the toe of her boot she flipped the envelope back towards them.
“You can return it to Kevin, the seal intact. Tell him I burned the first, unread, an’ sent the ashes to the wind.”
The lawyer turned to leave and touched the homebuilder by the arm for him to come too, leaving the envelope on the ground at her feet.
“I’m sorry but our loyalties are with Kevin. So there it is. We’ve delivered it to you. We’re here for three days if you have any questions about what’s in there, or if you have any messages you want us to send to Kevin for you.”
“I’d have you on a plane in two hours if I wanted you out of camp, an’ you’d best be clear about that. An’ if I ever have anythin’ to say to Kevin, I’ll be deliverin’ it meself.”
Maureen followed the path towards her house but kept going, climbing the narrow path behind the house up a short, steep slope to a rocky lip of a ledge that looked over the whole scene; over their home and the Great Lodge, and the cabins and office, and storehouses and sheds, and ice house and bunkhouse, and beach and dock, and Innish Cove and the narrow finger of land that protected the cove and separated it from Rainbow Lake and the River.
At the small cleared ledge Brian had shaped a bench from a fallen log and it sat just back from the edge of rock. Maureen passed the bench and kept climbing, forging her own path another ten yards up the slope, where she stopped to kneel at a gnarled pine whose twisted roots created a hollow hidden from the bench. She pulled from inside her shirt the large manila envelope the two Jameses left with her, then reached into the hollow to remove a similar envelope. She returned to the bench with both of them and broke the seal on the first, one she had hidden unread when it was delivered late last season by a guest from Boston, who also claimed to be Kevin’s friend and hers. She hadn’t been ready for that one.
She spread the contents of this first envelope over the bench. An extract of a University study, comparing the increase of Protestant economic success with the continued Catholic poverty in the Northern Counties, proved to be the thickest portion. “Last 30 years the Gap’s widen” was written on the cover of the study in the thick pencil strokes Maureen thought she recognized as Kevin’s hand.
There was a newspaper article from The United Irishman, reporting on Operation Harvest and quoting IRA leaders’ call for support for this campaign, at home and abroad. One bit of the article had been circled in that same thick pencil and Maureen felt the cool dark lead with her fingers. She read some of it, and her lips moved, and soon she was reading softly aloud.
“….so what gave rise to feelin’s of hope about the Ebrington Barracks raid was not the capture of some guns, though that was important, it was not to make the British Army look foolish, though that was most grand, it was not merely a spectacular operation, though it was certainly that. It was the illumination of the indisputable fact that the British Army of Occupation is still in Ireland, that it still holds Irish territory by force of arms long after the case has been made that armed occupation is an act of war, an’ every international authority agrees with the citizens’ right to defend his country against acts of war.”
Stuck inside the envelope she found a personal letter from Kevin; the pencil strokes confirmed the others had been his. He was hoping to find her well and asked about Brian and Grace O’Malley. He told her that the leadership she could provide was badly needed, and asked her to consider joining Operation Harvest. At the end of the letter he wrote:
“I’ve long warned you against seeking revenge. We should pursue a measured justice, that’s been my view, though I find it harder and harder to rally others to it. My dear Maureen, I mention this last for I feel I must tell you we have an informant who promises he can find us the name of the Black and Tan who pulled the trigger on the pistol that killed the Irish hero and true Fenian Donovan O’Toole, may he rest in Peace. Please get word to me soon, as the lead is most fresh, for if you wish us to pursue with diligence, discovering the identity and location of the man who killed your father, we shall.”
Maureen’s hands began to shake as she read this last paragraph again, and again, then one more time. Her eyes watered while she looked out to the East, this time past the far ridges; she looked all the way East to Ireland as she said a prayer for her father.
“In the name of St. Patrick, an’ of St. Kevin, an’ of St. Brendan, I pray for the Lord’s sword of justice for me da, Donovan O’Toole. In the Lord’s right hand may it be swift an’ true.” She paused a long moment, then continued in prayer. “An’ if it must be that I am that sword, well, that seems a true sort of justice to me, in accordance with Your will, Amen.”
She returned the contents to the envelope, then picked up the second, folded both envelopes together, and with them tucked in the top of her pants at the small of her back she climbed back down the slope to her home.
After riding most of the morning, Joe Loon turned the boat to the shore where his trap line led along the ridge to the dam. Simon carried the knapsack, hung over one shoulder, and followed Brian, who followed Joe Loon, through the trees on a diagonal climb up the low ridge. They hiked for most of an hour, stopping when Joe Loon examined a fresh wind fall or hollow tree as a marten trap site, and they spoke very little as they walked on until they crested a second taller ridge and looked down on the new dam and the powerhouse, and the flooded forest valley behind it.
At the top of the ridge, at the best viewpoint, This Man stood watching and waiting. He was dressed and painted as Raven Master, the top half of his face black, the bottom half yellow with white stripes, black feathers fanned flat on the top of his head; he wore a beaded buckskin shirt and black and white leggings.
Joe Loon stood next to This Man and Brian and Simon joined him. The lake that formed behind the dam changed the valley so completely that Simon did not recognize it; he knew the abandoned burial site was flooded somewhere on the far side of the lake but didn’t know where. Brian had little familiarity with this River valley; it was far enough from Innish Cove that he had only visited it once, with Maureen and Simon, and Albert Loon, as they mounted their last ditch effort to slow down the construction; Albert wanted them to see the old burial site with its four graves.
When Brian compared the nearly completed dam with the broken down grave markers, he knew their efforts were futile.
After a few moments, and in the same instant, Joe Loon and This Man began soft low chants, but to very different purposes. Joe Loon’s was a farewell song and when Simon heard this he joined his Grandfather. But This Man sang a song that beckoned. His was a song of greeting; he was waiting for visitors still to come.
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After Joe Loon said farewell to the world that was gone, he listened for any word of where the big beaver were, now that the River shore and feeder creeks and forest shelf where they had lived was flooded by the newly formed lake. He stood there a long time, silently. They were all quiet, but Joe Loon did not hear any whispers from the spirits or from his ancestors about what was happening here now.
They were hungry. Simon removed sandwiches and apples and cookies and cold broiled chicken breasts and two bottles of beer and a bottle of Coke from the knapsack. They ate, sitting together, This Man sitting off a bit, chanting his welcoming prayer, holding a large eagle feather in his red-painted hands and pointing it to the East, then the South, then the West, then to the North, presenting his bag of magic to the Four Directions when the prayers called for it.
After his meal Joe Loon stood at the edge of the ridge top, his back to the others, facing the dam. Simon told Brian what Joe Loon said.
“I understand this now. The white man is also a trapper. He traps the fire power from the River…”
He looked at the power lines that cut through the forest, snaking their way south.
“…The fire power of this River is mighty. The white man is smart. He has learned how to trap this fire to shoot its power through these lines to their villages and to their homes.”
He turned to the north, to watch the River’s course below the dam.
“The power of Gitche Manitou is great. When the River rounds the first bend below the dam the water power of the River has returned.”
He turned to study the lake again but a sudden horn blast, a loud round sound coming from the dam, interrupted him, and then it blasted again, then again. Simon and Brian stood at the horn blasts, and as the last one faded they watched the dam’s spill gates open and a massive surge of four waterfalls poured out into the River below the dam.
Simon turned to his grandfather to gauge his reaction. Joe Loon was concerned.
“Grandfather. The shore line behind the dam will move now.”
Worlds Between Page 3