As his perception cleared, he was aware that Bigby’s weight no longer held him down. He opened his eyes and rolled his head to the side and saw Bigby trapped in a hammerlock, his thick upper arms useless and his chin forced down to his chest. The kid who’d put him in this precarious position was every bit as large and powerful as Bigby, and he was a stranger.
“Stay back or I’ll break his neck,” the kid ordered Specs and Novak, who stood looking ready to jump in.
“You goddamn son of a bitch!” Bigby cried and tried in vain to shake himself loose. The kid gave Bigby’s head a further nudge, and Bigby grunted painfully and went slack.
“Are you through bothering people?” the kid asked.
When he got no reply, the kid bent Bigby’s neck so sharply that even Cork was afraid he’d break Bigby’s neck.
“Yes,” Bigby shouted. “I’m through.”
The kid released his grip and shoved Bigby away, all in one fluid motion. Bigby stumbled, and his pals caught him. He shook them off and straightened up, but it was clear to Cork that the move was painful to him.
“I’m not finished with you,” Bigby said.
The stranger opened his arms as if in welcome. “Anytime,” he said.
“Let’s go.” Bigby turned and walked away, trying to square his shoulders in a last-ditch effort at some dignity.
Cork finally noticed Winona, who stood with her arm around Willie, and who was not watching Bigby and his cohorts at all. Her eyes were on the stranger, and what was in them was something Cork would have sold his soul for.
“You okay?” the big kid said to Winona and Willie.
Willie nodded, and Winona said, “Yes, thanks.”
The kid looked at Cork. “You’re going to have yourself a shiner.”
Cork felt his left eye and winced at the tenderness there. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Little,” the huge kid said.
Cork laughed. “You’re kidding me.”
“Jubal Little.”
“I’m Cork. This is Winona and Willie.”
Jubal nodded at them but seemed to take no significant notice.
“You’re new,” Cork said.
“Just moved here,” Jubal replied.
“What grade are you in?” Winona asked.
“Seventh.”
Cork was astonished because the kid was like no other seventh grader he’d ever seen. “How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Is that like in elephant years or something?” Cork asked.
Jubal shrugged easily. “I’ve always been big for my age.” He looked where Bigby and the others were exiting the park. “You have any more trouble with those guys, let me know.”
“We’re heading to Sam’s Place for something to eat,” Winona said. “You want to come?”
Jubal shook his head. “No, thanks. Got things to do.” He turned to leave.
“See you,” Cork said.
“Yeah,” Jubal replied, without any particular enthusiasm. He didn’t even look back, just lifted his hand in a brief farewell.
As Jubal Little walked away, Cork had a realization. This new kid had just stepped in to save his ass and Winona’s and Willie’s, and yet it wasn’t especially significant to Jubal Little in any way. It was as if such an action was perfectly ordinary for him.
They didn’t talk much after that. There was a darkness in Willie’s face, and Cork figured he was fuming at the things Bigby had said. Winona stared into the distance, preoccupied, Cork was pretty sure, with thoughts of Jubal Little. In his own thinking, Cork was divided. On the one hand, because he’d been totally useless at handling Bigby, he was glad Jubal Little had intervened. On the other, his pride had taken a hard beating, and Jubal Little was a part of that.
After she saw his face, his mother gave him an ice pack but didn’t press him for answers. When his father came home that night, he asked, “What’s up with the eye?”
“Accident,” Cork told him.
His father said, “The kind where your face falls into somebody else’s fist?”
“I can take care of it.”
His father considered, then nodded. “Something like this can get taken care of in a lot of ways. You won’t let it get out of hand?”
“No, sir.”
“All right.” He’d removed his leather jacket with the Tamarack County Sheriff’s emblem on the right shoulder and hung it in the closet. “I was thinking maybe we could toss the old pigskin before dinner. What do you say?”
Through his open window that night as he lay in bed, Cork heard his parents talking as they rocked in the porch swing. Although he couldn’t hear most of the words, he could tell from the tone of her voice that his mother was concerned. His father said something about Cork’s “raccoon eye” and sounded reassuring. Cork didn’t want them worrying about him. And the truth was that he believed there was nothing for them to be concerned about. Jubal Little had made certain of that. The problem was Cork couldn’t decide exactly how he felt about it, particularly when he recalled the look in Winona Crane’s eyes as she stared at her rescuer. He went to sleep that night hurting in a lot of ways that had nothing to do with his shiner.
CHAPTER 3
Although science said otherwise, Cork knew absolutely that the human heart was enormous. Inside that organ, which was only the size of a man’s fist, was enough room to fit everything a person could possibly love, and then some. Cork’s own heart held more treasures than he could easily name. But one that always stood in the forefront was Sam’s Place.
The old Quonset hut sat on the shore of Iron Lake, at the end of a road that ran from the edge of the small town of Aurora across an open meadow and over a long, straight hillock topped by the railway bed of the Burlington Northern tracks. To the north stood the abandoned BearPaw Brewery. A hundred yards south grew a copse of poplar trees that surrounded the ruins of a small foundry built more than a century before. The meadow stretched nearly a quarter mile, and terminated at Grant Park. Except for Sam’s Place and the half acre around it, the land was held in trust by Tamarack County, given as a gift by a wealthy developer named Hugh Parmer, with the stipulation that all the undeveloped property be left in its natural state. Parmer had meant it as a memorial to Jo O’Connor, Cork’s beloved wife, who’d been gone from their lives three years now.
When Cork pulled into the parking lot of Sam’s Place, there was only one other vehicle: the Subaru that belonged to his daughter Jenny. It was evening, and the sky was charcoal with overcast. The weather forecast was for snow flurries, and Cork, when he got out of his Land Rover, felt the cold kiss of a flake against his cheek. The sheriff’s department had kept and bagged as evidence his hunting jacket, which was stained with Jubal Little’s blood. Even though he was chilled, he stood awhile before going inside, staring down the shoreline of the lake into the gloom of descending night. Well beyond the poplars stood the tall pine trees of Grant Park, black now in the dim light, brooding sentries looking down on the place where he’d first met Jubal Little.
In all that had occurred that day, Cork hadn’t allowed himself to feel the loss of the man who’d been his friend since boyhood. He’d been intent at first on simply comforting Jubal as he died. Then he’d been involved in explanations. Now, alone, he tried to understand how he felt. Frankly, he was confused. Jubal Little was an easy man to like, but anyone who’d been close to him knew that he was a difficult man to love. The reason was simple. In the end, in Jubal’s heart, there was room enough only for Jubal.
“Dad?”
Cork broke off his reverie and looked toward the Quonset hut, where his sixteen-year-old son, Stephen, stood in the open doorway, framed by the warm light from inside.
“You okay?” Stephen called.
“Yeah,” Cork replied. “I’ll be right in.”
The Quonset hut had been erected during the Second World War, and when the war ended had sat idle for some time, until it was purchased by an Ojibwe named Sam Winter Moon. Sam
had divided the structure into two parts. In the front, he’d cut serving windows and installed a propane grill, a deep-fry well, a walk-in freezer, an ice-milk machine, and a food prep area. In the back, which was separated by a wall that Sam had constructed himself, was a living area, complete with a small kitchen and a bathroom with a shower. In the summer, Sam lived in the hut and ran his burger operation. Over the years, he developed a following of both locals and returning tourists, for whom a visit to Tamarack County wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Sam’s Place. Summers in high school, Cork had worked for Sam, and much of what he knew about what it was to be a man he’d learned from this friend and mentor. On Sam’s death, the property had passed to Cork, who’d done his best to honor Sam Winter Moon’s legacy. Now Cork’s children were involved in the enterprise as well.
He stepped into the Quonset hut and found Stephen entertaining Waaboo, Cork’s grandson, who was nearly two.
“Where’s Jenny?” Cork asked.
Stephen nodded toward the door in the room’s back wall. “Closing up,” he said. “I offered, but she told me she’d do it if I kept this little guy occupied.”
Waaboo was not the child’s legal name. Legally, he was Aaron Smalldog O’Connor, but his Ojibwe name was Waaboozoons, which meant “little rabbit,” and he was called Waaboo, for short. He was a wonder of a child, whose Ojibwe blood was apparent in his black hair and dark eyes, in the shading of his skin and the bone structure of his face. He bore a clear scar on his upper lip where surgery had closed a terrible cleft, a genetic defect. He was not Jenny’s by birth, but in her heart, in the hearts of all the O’Connors, he took up a great deal of real estate.
Waaboo smiled when he saw Cork, and he said, “Baa-baa,” which was his word for “Grandpapa.”
Cork lifted his grandson and swung him around, much to Waaboo’s delight.
“You’re home early,” Stephen said.
“You haven’t heard?” Cork put Waaboo down, and the child toddled toward a big stuffed toy bear that lay on the floor.
“Heard what?”
Cork was relieved that word of Jubal Little hadn’t spread. Dross and her people had, for the moment, done a good job of containment. But it wouldn’t last long. Something like this, it would go public quickly, and the jackals of the media would quickly gather to feed.
“Jubal Little’s dead,” Cork said.
“What? How?”
“Someone killed him.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
The door to Sam’s Place opened, and Jenny came in, bringing with her the smell of deep-fry. She was twenty-five, a willowy young woman with white-blond hair, ice blue eyes, and a face in which the cares of motherhood were just beginning to etch a few faint lines. She’d become a parent through extraordinary circumstances that had involved the brutal death of the child’s birth mother. Jenny’s intervention had saved Waaboo’s life, and little Waaboo had, in a way, saved hers. She’d been trained as a journalist but had chosen to put her career on hold while she adjusted to these new circumstances. At the moment, she helped manage Sam’s Place, wrote short stories, and devoted the rest of her time to Waaboo.
“Thought we weren’t going to see you tonight,” she said, heading toward her son, who’d wrapped his arms around the big bear and had rolled the stuffed animal on top of him. “Thought you and our next governor were going to hang out and do manly things together.”
“Jubal Little’s dead,” Stephen told her.
She stopped in bending to lift her son and shot her father a startled look. “How?”
Cork explained what had happened.
“You sat there for three hours while he died?” Jenny had the same look that Cork had seen on Dross’s face and Larson’s, a look void of comprehension. “Why didn’t you go get help?”
He was tired of explaining, and he said, “At the time, staying with Jubal seemed best.”
“Was it an accident?” Stephen asked.
Cork shook his head.
Jenny said, “Why so sure?”
“Because what the sheriff’s people don’t know but will figure out pretty soon is that the arrow that killed him may well have been one of mine.”
“How do you know that?”
“I make my own arrows, Jenny. My fletching pattern is unique. When I saw the fletching on the arrow in Jubal’s heart, I knew where it came from. Or where it was supposed to look like it came from.”
“Somebody’s what-trying to frame you?” Stephen asked.
“That’s sure how it looks.”
“Does the sheriff think you did it?”
“At the moment, I’m the only suspect on the horizon.”
Jenny said, “Do you have a lawyer?”
“I called Leon Papakee. He got there in the middle of my interview with Ed Larson. I’m afraid he was a little late for damage control.”
“You let them question you without a lawyer?” Jenny seemed astonished.
“I know,” Cork said. “It’s strange how, when you’re on the other side of things, you’re not as smart as you think you’ll be.” He shrugged. “Maybe I was still a little in shock, I don’t know. I said more than I should have, and unless I can figure out who fired that arrow, I’ll probably regret it.”
Stephen had dark almond eyes, the eyes of his Ojibwe ancestors, and they were hard with concern. “What are you going to do, Dad?”
“I need some time to think, and I need a little advice. I’m heading out to talk to Henry Meloux. Look, I don’t think things will blow up tonight, but if they do, we’ll be getting calls at the house. Don’t talk to anyone, okay?”
“Sure,” Jenny said. “We’ll see you later tonight?”
“Morning, more likely,” Cork said.
To which Jenny smiled. “While you’re out there, say hello to Rainy for us.”
CHAPTER 4
Cork drove north out of Aurora, along the shoreline of Iron Lake. Dark had fallen completely. At the edges of the headlight glare, the trees-pine and spruce and birch and poplar-were like stark walls hemming him in. Although he’d tried his best to hide it from his children, he was worried. Not only had someone killed Jubal Little but they’d also done their best to make it look as if Cork was guilty of the crime. The evidence was slight at the moment, and nothing that would convict him, if it came to that, but he had no idea how carefully the murder had been planned and what other evidence might have been created or planted that would point his way.
After several miles, he turned off the main highway onto a gravel county road, which he followed until he came to a double-trunk birch tree off to the right. The tree marked the beginning of the long trail that led to Crow Point, where Meloux’s cabin stood. Cork parked his Land Rover, pulled a flashlight from his glove box, got out, and locked the doors. If there’d been any kind of decent moon, he could have seen his way without the flashlight, but the overcast was solid and the night pitch black, and he flipped the switch and followed the bright, slender beam into the woods.
The hike was less than two miles, much of it through the Superior National Forest, on a footpath worn over the years by the feet of many who, like Cork, sought out the old man for advice and healing. Henry Meloux was a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. Although in his nineties, he was a tough old bird full of wisdom, compassion, humor, honesty, and, very often, gas. Cork had been in the old man’s company when Meloux let loose farts that could have felled a moose.
Cork had been along the footpath hundreds of times in his life, and it was always a journey he made with a great deal of expectation. Meloux knew things. He understood the complexities and conundrums of the human heart. He had his finger on the pulse of all that occurred on the rez. He knew about the natural world, what healed and what harmed. And he was in touch with the realm that could not be seen with the eye, the realm of the manidoog, or spirits, who dwelled in the vast forests of the great Northwoods.
What exactly Cork hoped to receive from Meloux on
this trip, he couldn’t say. But in the past, whatever the old man offered had almost always turned out to be pretty much what Cork needed. And that was one of the reasons he was making his way through the woods on that dark night.
The other reason was Rainy Bisonette.
Rainy was Meloux’s great-niece, a public health nurse who’d come to Crow Point more than a year earlier to care for the old man during a mysterious illness. She’d come hoping as well to learn the secrets of healing that had been revealed to Meloux across his lifetime. She was headstrong, and she and Cork had had a rough time of it at first. That had changed. These days, Rainy was usually the reason Cork made this journey.
The air smelled of late fall, the wet-earth odor of leaves decomposing. This time of year always reminded Cork of death, and not just because winter was hard on the horizon. Autumn was the season in which his father and, much later, his wife had been lost to him, both taken through violence. Now, in this same season, Jubal Little was gone and, like the others, gone violently.
Cork was deep in thought and thoughtlessly following the beam of the flashlight when he became aware of a tingling at the nape of his neck and along his spine. He snapped back into the moment and had the overwhelming sense that he was being tracked. Someone was following him, or perhaps pacing him on one side of the trail or the other. He couldn’t say why he felt this. Had he heard the tiny, bonelike crack of a foot snapping a twig on the ground, or the sound of a body sliding through brush? He stopped and swung the light into the woods all around, then shot it down the path behind him. Nothing. He listened intently, but that, too, proved useless.
He wondered if his imagination was running wild, if he was simply being paranoid. On the other hand, someone that day had tracked him and Jubal in the woods without either of them knowing. Someone had been able to commit murder and slip away without being seen or heard. Was this person right now watching Cork from some dark vantage? Was another arrow, soundless in its flight, about to hit its mark?
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