Thunder Bay co-7

by William Kent Krueger

  “What now, Uncle?”

  Woodrow drew a tobacco pouch from his shirt pocket. “First we give thanks.” He turned in a circle, sprinkling a bit to the north, west, south, and east, and finally dropping a little in the center of the circle. “Now I’m going into the lake and wash away the smell of the white men.” He leaned toward Henry and sniffed. “And you, Nephew, you could outstink a skunk.”

  Woodrow walked to the lake. Henry stood a little longer looking in the direction the truck had gone. Kitchimanidoo had saved the white men. Why, Henry couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. He was rid of them. He would never have to see them again.

  Or so he believed.

  TWENTY-THREE

  For the next two years Henry continued to live with his uncle on Crow Point, growing well into his manhood, strong in body and spirit, and strong in his resolve to live the old ways. He saw unhappy changes continue to creep onto the reservation. Some Shinnobs managed to purchase automobiles, and the dust they raised could be seen above the trees, like smoke from a spreading fire. In Allouette there was electricity and plans for a telephone line. There were radios and, in Aurora, access to movies. He sometimes ran into young Shinnobs who’d graduated from the boarding schools and they told him about jazz and Charlie Chaplin and dances like the Charleston and the shimmy. He heard that the Ojibwe on the Red Lake Reservation had created a lucrative commercial-fishing industry and were selling tons of netted walleye to retailers in Minneapolis and St. Paul and Chicago. White people had always believed that what they had was what the Ojibwe should aspire to. That seemed to be the growing sentiment among Shinnobs on the rez as well. As more and more whites crowded the forests, the Ojibwe, in the things they wanted and in the dreams they had, came more and more to resemble them.

  There was another change, this one more personal. In the summer he turned eighteen, Henry fell in love. It was Woodrow’s fault.

  “There’s a girl,” his uncle said one day when he’d returned from town. “She lost her folks years ago and went to a government school in Wisconsin. She knows your sisters there. Her name is Broken Wing.”

  “Dilsey,” Henry said. He remembered her from long ago. She’d already gone to the boarding school at Hayward, Wisconsin, before he was sent to Flandreau. She was younger than he, and Henry remembered her as scrawny and silly.

  “She has come back to teach on the rez,” Woodrow said. “She is staying with her mother’s uncle.”

  Henry was concentrating on cutting strips of birch bark to use in making a torch for spearfishing that night. Without looking up he said, “So?”

  “Go to Allouette, Nephew. See her.”

  Henry couldn’t imagine why he’d want to see the girl, but he did as his uncle suggested.

  He didn’t find her in town; he was directed to the mission. It was late afternoon when he arrived. The shadows of the trees at the western edge of the clearing were growing long, turning the meadow grass a brooding blue. Henry approached the clapboard building. He heard her voice first, high and beautiful, singing words to a song he didn’t know.

  “ ‘Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today…’ ”

  He stepped through the open door into the one-room building. He was startled to find not the scrawny, silly girl he remembered, but a woman with long coal black hair and smart brown eyes. She was arranging books on a shelf along one wall of the mission. His shadow slid into the room ahead of him, and seeing it, she stopped singing and turned.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Dilsey?”

  “Who are you?”

  What Henry wanted to say was, The man you’re going to marry. What came off his tongue was, “Uh… uh…”

  The rest of his efforts at courting weren’t much better. For all his skill in the forest, his knowledge of the plants and the animals, his legendary prowess with his rifle, he was an awkward suitor. Dilsey seemed amused by him, but not moved in the same way as he. When, in the spring of the following year, a white teacher from Chicago named Liam O’Connor came to Allouette to open a real school on the reservation, Dilsey’s true affections quickly and obviously settled on the newcomer, whom she soon married. This left Henry cold and bitter.

  “You sit and scowl like an old badger,” Woodrow declared not long after. “Get up, Nephew. It is time to build.”

  For the rest of that summer and into the early fall, Henry labored with his uncle to cut and lay the logs for a one-room cabin on Crow Point. The logs were cedar, and the roof was cedar covered with birch bark. Woodrow arranged for floor planks to be cut at the mill in Brandywine, which was owned and operated by Shinnobs.

  When the first snow fell in early November, the cabin was finished. It was a blessing because, in the depth of the winter that followed, Woodrow fell ill. There were no doctors on the reservation. Henry turned to Dollie Bellanger, who was a Mide, a healer, to do what she could for Woodrow. The winter was long and harsh, and life slipped further and further from his body, until all that was left one overcast day in April were a few ragged breaths and his final words to Henry:

  “My life with you has been good, Nephew. Do not be alone now.”

  Henry buried Woodrow in the cemetery behind the mission. Despite his uncle’s advice, he remained alone in the cabin on Crow Point. There were relatives across the rez, uncles and aunts and cousins, but Henry kept away from them all. He tried to disappear into the forest, but it seemed an empty place without Woodrow. Finally he simply settled into the cabin and did not leave.

  In the early fall, more than four months after Woodrow died, as Henry fished from the rocks along the shore of Iron Lake, he spotted a canoe gliding toward him from the south. In a few minutes, he could make out that it was Luukkonen, the outfitter. Although he’d had offers to guide after his uncle passed away, Henry had turned them all down. He had no need of money, and going into the wilderness without Woodrow was still too hard.

  Luukkonen pulled up to shore. “Anin,” he greeted Henry, formally and cordially.

  “What do you want?” Henry replied.

  The outfitter stepped from his canoe and, though he hadn’t been invited, sat down near Henry. He smoothed his walrus mustache and watched Henry’s fishing line in the water.

  “A man come looking for your uncle dis morning,” he finally began. “I told him Woodrow had gone to his reward and he asked about you. Wants to hire you.”

  “I don’t guide anymore.”

  “I told him dat. He’s pretty stubborn, dis one.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I know it’s hard for you in dese woods. I imagine everywhere you go reminds you of Woodrow. But dis is different, Henry. He wants to go way up nort. Canada.”

  Henry began to reel in his line. He was tired of talking to the man.

  “I don’t want to go to Canada.”

  “You ever been in a airplane, Henry? Dis man, he’s going to fly you up dere. Sounds pretty good.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  Luukkonen leaned nearer. “Henry, I’m tinking it would be good for you. I’m tinking you need to get away for a while.”

  Away.

  Away hadn’t occurred to Henry. Away meant the boarding school in Flandreau. Or for Dilsey and his sisters, the school in Wisconsin. Or for his parents and Woodrow and so many others on the rez, away simply meant death.

  “Dere’s nutting for you here right now, Henry. Go away for a while. Maybe when you come back, tings will be different.”

  The outfitter was right. What was there for him here? What he loved had passed or was passing. Go away, Luukkonen advised. The Finn was offering him a different kind of away than he’d thought of before, one that suddenly and powerfully appealed to Henry.

  “All right,” he agreed.

  “One ting I didn’t tell you,” Luukkonen said. “Dis man who wants you. You know him. His name is Wellington. Leonard Wellington.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Wellington had changed little. He didn’t seem as tall to Henry, who�
�d grown several inches since their last meeting. His hair was thinner. But he still had a hatchet blade for a nose and a too proud look in his eyes.

  Wellington stared at Henry with astonishment.

  “Christ, you’ve filled out,” he said. “Left that boy you were a good distance back, eh.” He offered his hand. It was tanned and rough. “I was sorry to hear about your uncle, but awfully glad to have you on the expedition. Luukkonen told me you understood the terms.”

  They had been simple. Henry agreed to sign on for as long as necessary at five dollars a week. He was to maintain camp, provide fresh meat and other native food to supplement the supplies, and see to the safety of the expedition members, meaning Wellington and his partner, Carlos Lima. “As long as necessary” was vague, but Henry wasn’t concerned. He didn’t care how long he was gone. And he could already feel fall in the air and knew that it wouldn’t be long before winter closed the door to any expedition far to the north.

  “Well then.” Wellington rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Let’s get started.”

  Henry had canoed past a floatplane tethered to the dock behind the outpost. He’d seen a few such planes. Sometimes men used them to reach lakes deep in the Northwoods without having to paddle and portage their way in. It struck Henry as not only lazy but disrespectful to the spirits of the deep forest.

  Yet here he was throwing the propeller to help Wellington start the plane and then climbing afterward into the belly of the beast with the same purpose in mind. Wellington had observed that the boy Henry had been was far behind him. As he felt the plane glide across the surface of Iron Lake and lift free of Grandmother Earth, it seemed to Henry that he’d never been so far from who he’d thought he would become.

  To see the earth as an eagle would, what magic. The lakes like puddles of rainwater in deep grass. The high, formidable ridges no more than wrinkles. The great woods a green sea stretching away as far as he could see. Once inside the plane, Wellington didn’t speak to Henry. He sat at the controls and seemed deep in thought. The plane had only two seats and Henry wondered where he would sit once Lima was aboard. There was an empty area in the rear that Henry suspected was waiting to be filled with supplies. He also suspected he’d end up there, too. He didn’t care.

  Near noon, a great shining water appeared ahead of them. The plane began its descent.

  Wellington finally spoke to Henry. “Lake Superior.”

  Kitchigami, Henry thought. He’d never seen the big water, though it was well known to him.

  As they flew over the squat buildings of a town below, Wellington spoke again. “Fort William. And up there across the river, that’s Port Arthur.”

  Canada, Henry understood.

  The plane landed smoothly and motored to a dock where Henry saw two people waiting. One he recognized. Carlos Lima. The other was a woman about Henry’s age.

  “Damn,” Wellington swore under his breath then cut the engine.

  Lima tied the plane to the dock. Wellington opened his door and stepped down. Henry followed him. Lima had changed, grown visibly older. He’d put on weight and his mustache was thicker, with a dullness to it that made Henry think of a little gray mouse. Lima looked on him with the same disdain he’d had in the summer Henry saved his life.

  “Where’s the other one?” Lima said to Wellington.

  “Henry’s uncle died last winter. Henry has agreed to work for us.”

  Lima’s dark, distrustful eyes did a long assessment of Henry. “You’ve grown,” he finally said and gave a nod as if he grudgingly approved.

  Wellington said, “What’s Maria doing here? I thought we agreed.” Lima shrugged. “You know her.”

  “This isn’t a trip for a girl, Carlos.”

  “She’s strong, Leonard. And pigheaded.”

  “You’re her father.”

  “You’ve never been a father. You don’t know.”

  The girl was near enough to hear the talk about her, but she seemed not to notice. Or maybe she simply didn’t care. What she did was to look frankly at Henry, who burned under the gaze of her dark eyes.

  “All right,” Wellington said, finally giving in. “Let’s get loaded. We have a long way to go.”

  Lima called to a man in a truck parked at the end of the dock. The man hopped from the driver’s seat and dropped the gate on the bed that was covered with a canvas tarp. He threw back the tarp, lifted a box, and headed toward the plane. Wellington went about refueling from metal barrels on the dock while Lima and Henry helped load supplies. Maria also stepped up to lend a hand, and at the back of the truck her shoulder brushed against Henry. He felt it as deeply as if she’d burned him with a hot coal.

  They organized the cargo area in such a way that there was a small space for Maria and Henry, who sat facing each other, seated on rolled tents. The plane was heavily loaded and seemed to struggle to rise off the lake. Once it did, it headed directly into the afternoon sun for a few minutes, then curled toward the vast green wilderness waiting to the northwest.

  They’d been introduced on the dock in a perfunctory way by Wellington. Maria Lima. She’d smiled, but not like her father, whose smile was a snake’s grin. Hers was genuine, though there was something hidden in it that Henry couldn’t decipher. To her chipper “How do you do?” he’d mumbled a reply.

  Now they sat facing each other in the belly of the plane, legs drawn up like two babies in the same womb. The machine bounced and shook and noisily rode the currents. Up front, Lima pulled a rolled map from a tube, spread it out before him, and he and Wellington talked. Henry caught snatches of their conversation, but not enough to follow the thread.

  To keep from staring at the young woman, Henry pretended to sleep, but he kept his eyes open a slit. He watched her take a notebook bound in leather from her canvas bag and spend a long time writing with a fountain pen.

  The plane dropped suddenly. The supplies in back shifted with a bump. Henry’s eyes flew open.

  “Air pocket,” Wellington said over his shoulder, shouting to be heard above the noise of the engine and rattle of the fuselage. “Happens sometimes, eh.”

  Maria put the notebook and pen back into her bag and took out a book. Henry couldn’t see the title. She opened it, then looked at Henry. She said something Henry couldn’t quite hear. He held up his hands in question.

  “Do… you… read?” she said, louder this time and speaking slowly.

  “I can read,” he answered.

  She laughed. It was odd that he could hear it amid all the other noises. It was a sound both beautiful and disconcerting. “I figured that. I asked do you read.”

  Henry hadn’t looked at a book since boarding school. With Woodrow, there’d been no need.

  “Listen to this,” she said. “It’s about bullfighting, about a matador named Pedro Romero, who is fighting a bull to impress a woman.” She spent a moment finding the right page, then read aloud, enunciating carefully.

  “ ‘Never once did he look up. He made it stronger that way, and did it for himself, too, as well as for her. Because he did not look up to ask if it pleased he did it all for himself inside, and it strengthened him, and yet he did it for her, too. But he did not do it for her at any loss to himself. He gained by it all through the afternoon.’ ”

  She finished and looked hard at Meloux, in a way that made him uncomfortable. “He is killing the bull for her. For himself, too, yes, but it is also for her. Does that make sense?”

  Henry tried to think about it, but his brain was too full. Full of the young woman-her smell that was clean and flowerlike, her eyes that were like black bullets, the bones that fiercely shaped her face, the notes that made her voice sing. Her nearness, too, their knees almost touching.

  “It’s by a man named Ernest Hemingway,” she went on. “Have you heard of him?”

  Henry hadn’t. But he wished he had.

  “What I wonder is, do men really believe that that kind of brutality is impressive to a woman?”

  Henry stared
at her, feeling dumb as a cow.

  “It takes place in Spain and in Paris, a city in France. I was there last summer. It’s a fine place, but…” She stopped and her eyes went to the window at the front of the plane. “I like it here much better. I think what people build can be very beautiful, but what God builds goes beyond beauty. You stand outside Notre Dame, say, and you marvel at the accomplishment, but you can’t really connect. It’s artificial, do you see? It’s only a representation of something. Spirit, holiness, maybe even God. But it’s not the thing itself. Out here, it’s all there before you, around you. You’re steeped in it, the real thing. Spirit. Holiness. God.”

  She was Lima’s daughter. Henry could see traces of the father in her-the slight shadow of the skin, the black hair, the slender nose- but Henry thought her mother must have been terribly beautiful. She didn’t speak like Lima. There wasn’t the odd roll to her language. She sounded little different from the whites Henry had known all his life. He wondered about that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said suddenly. “Sometimes I go on and on. You’re tired, I’m sure. You probably want to sleep.”

  Henry wasn’t tired, and he liked hearing her talk. But he felt tense and awkward and had a pressing need to escape for a while.

  “Yes, I am tired,” he said. He closed his eyes.

  He did, in fact, sleep. He woke as he heard the engine throttled back and felt the plane descending. They landed on a lake surrounded by forest, and Wellington guided the plane to shore, where a small cabin and dock had been built. The men got out, then Maria and Henry. A scruffy man who looked Indian in his features greeted Wellington, and they talked briefly, then set about refueling the plane from a metal barrel. Maria spoke to her father, who pointed toward an outhouse near the cabin. Henry walked into the woods and relieved himself. In a few minutes, they were in the air again.