Henry stood up, certain now that he hadn’t been the only one enjoying the sight of Maria swimming.
His inclination was to begin tracking immediately, but he had no idea how far that would take him or how long he would be gone, and there was still the evening meal to prepare. He held to the patience Woodrow had taught him. When he returned to camp, Maria had finished swimming and was dressed.
“Where did you go?” she asked and kissed him.
“I saw something.”
She looked at his rifle. “What?”
He told her. She didn’t seem frightened.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“We will find him,” Henry said.
“Him?”
He didn’t think a woman would be alone in this deep wilderness, but Maria was right. He had no idea.
“When will we find him?” she asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“What about tonight? What if he-or she-comes back tonight while we’re sleeping?”
“I won’t sleep.”
She smiled. “I’ll help you stay awake.”
Wellington and Lima came back arguing. Henry could hear their angry voices across the water. When their canoe touched shore, they stepped out and continued throwing words at each other.
“The geology’s right,” Wellington insisted. “And don’t forget, Carlos, you heard the same story I did.”
“I am not an impatient man, but I am also not a man without limits, Leonard. That goes for my money, too. And remember what happened in Ecuador.”
“Ecuador was a lesson for both of us.”
“An expensive lesson,” Lima said.
“Education doesn’t come cheap, eh?”
Lima moved close to the other white man. “You think that was funny? A joke?”
“The hell with you, Carlos. I need a drink.” Wellington brushed past him and stomped to his tent.
That night after the meal, Lima went to bed. Wellington continued the drinking he’d begun on his return. Like Maria, he spent time every evening by the fire, filling the blank pages of a leather-bound notebook with writing. In the shifting light of the fire, Henry watched the man’s eyes, which that night stayed dark and brooding as they lifted from his writing and held for long moments on Maria.
“The good daughter,” Wellington finally said.
Maria looked up from her notebook. “I try to be.”
“That’s why you’re here? To be the good daughter? You’re only making him nervous, you know that?”
“Nervous?”
“He wants to get you back to civilization as soon as he can.” He drank from the tin cup into which he’d poured his liquor. “A girl doesn’t belong on something like this.”
“I’m not a girl,” she replied coolly and went back to her writing. Wellington made a sound that might have been a laugh but came out more like a grunt. “I’ve noticed.” His glare shifted to Henry. “What about you, Henry? Bet you’ve noticed, eh.”
Henry burned. Wellington’s tone spoke disrespect. Henry had lived with that tone much of his life and had learned to ignore it, but when Maria was included, that was too much. He’d been sitting near the fire, stirring the embers with a long, thick spruce stick to keep the flames alive for Maria’s writing. Now he stood with the stick in his hand, the tip glowing, an angry red eye at the end of his arm.
Wellington didn’t see. He stared at the fire and drank his liquor. Maria saw, however. She shook her head at Henry, her eyes afraid of what he might be about to do.
Wellington took a final long swallow. “Fuck it,” he said and stumbled to his tent.
Soon afterward, they heard his snores join those of Lima. Henry let the fire die. Maria went to her tent. Henry gathered dried leaves and sticks from the woods and spread them around Maria’s tent. Then he picked up his rifle and joined her.
That night clouds blocked the moon, but Henry knew Maria’s beauty without light. The down of her cheeks, the wet oval of her lips, the curve of her breasts, all of it soft as dreaming. He fit himself to her until he couldn’t feel a separation, couldn’t feel the place where his own body ended and hers began. They were one skin, one breath, one heart.
Her lips brushed his neck. “I wish…”
“What?”
“I wish you’d been my first.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Later he said, “What were they like?”
“Rich. Sophisticated. Spoiled. Weak in ways you’re not.” She laughed quietly. “I guess I’m like that, too. Everything I have I’ve been given. I’ve never had to make my own way. All my friends are like that.” She nestled deep into his arms. “You’re different from anyone I’ve ever known, Henry. I felt safe with you from the beginning. Here we are a thousand miles from everything and I’ve never felt so safe.”
He felt the same. She was like nothing he’d ever known. That they shared their bodies so quickly, so easily, so completely didn’t surprise him. He had the deep sense that being together this way had always been meant for them.
Maria fell asleep with her head against his chest. He was tired, too, but he lay awake, listening. With the dry leaves and the sticks surrounding the tent, even a careful man could not approach without Henry hearing.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Henry rose with the sound of the first birds. The clouds that obscured the moon had passed, leaving the sky clear and full of stars. A faint glow along the eastern horizon suggested dawn.
He built a fire, filled the pot with lake water, and began coffee brewing. He made oatmeal and flapjacks. A few minutes after the sun came up, Wellington emerged from his tent. He went immediately toward the woods to do his morning business. When he returned, he poured himself coffee and stood staring at the lake. Henry had seen men hungover, and Wellington looked hungover.
“What do you do all day?” Wellington said.
“Cut wood for the fire,” Henry replied. “Fish. Hunt. Gather things to eat from the woods.”
Wellington was silent and sipped his coffee. He blinked against the morning sun. “What about Maria?”
Henry stirred the oatmeal. “She reads her books.”
“All day?”
“I can’t leave her. She comes with me when I go after food.”
“She doesn’t scare away the game?”
“She takes well to the forest.”
“She swims,” Wellington said. “I’ve seen her hair wet. But I haven’t seen wet clothes.”
“She dries her things over the fire.”
The flap of Lima’s tent swung open and the man stepped out. He coughed and spit. He went into the woods, and the noise of his business was loud and unpleasant. He came back and took the coffee Henry held out to him.
“Let’s go over the maps,” he said to Wellington.
They sat together looking at their charts, drinking their coffee, eventually eating the food Henry had prepared. After passing an hour in this way, they climbed into their Folbot and headed southeast across the lake.
When they were out of sight, Henry slipped into Maria’s tent. He kissed her forehead. “Wake up.”
Her eyes, brown like acorns, fluttered open. “What is it?”
“Time to go hunting.”
She dressed. They ate and started off. The morning was crisp, and at first their breath popped out in gray-white puffs. The sunlight sharpened the edge of everything, gave fine definition to color and shape. Henry had shown her how to walk in the forest on the outside of her feet to reduce the noise of her passage. He’d instructed her to keep silent, explaining how sounds in the woods carried far. They made their way to the place where Henry had found the moccasin tracks.
He eyed the western ridge that curved around the end of the lake. He pointed, indicating to Maria that that was the way.
The trail was a day old now, but Henry had little trouble following it. Whoever had left it wasn’t concerned about being tracked. Henry wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but hoped it meant the watcher
didn’t think he’d been seen and was careless. The trail led them along the bank of a creek that edged the base of the ridge and curled into the folds of the land to the south. After an hour, the tracks joined a deer trail that angled up another ridge. When they reached the far side of that ridge, Henry paused and pointed toward a white patch of haze in a hollow below.
Maria whispered, “Smoke?”
Henry put his finger to her mouth to silence her. He nodded.
The next mile they moved at a crawl. With Maria behind him, he took no chances. He paused frequently to listen. Eventually he heard the chunk of an ax biting into wood. They came to a path through the undergrowth along a small, fast-running brook. The path led in the direction of the chopping. Henry debated following it. A path that well used was a danger. On the other hand, it would reveal to them quickly who held the ax, and with Maria, who still did not move with Henry’s stealth, it would mean a quieter approach. He chambered a cartridge and moved ahead.
He glimpsed the cabin fifty yards through the trees. He signaled Maria to drop into a crouch. They crept forward this way, low to the ground. The chopping stopped. Henry stopped. He listened. Suddenly the sound of whistling came from ahead. Henry spotted movement, then saw a figure carrying a load of split wood in his arms. The figure was dressed in buckskin britches. Long gray hair flowed over a buckskin tunic. Henry also saw moccasins on the feet. The figure stepped through the cabin door and disappeared. Henry signaled Maria, and they moved forward again and slipped into brush that edged the small clearing where the cabin stood. Henry lay on his belly. Maria did the same beside him.
The brook flowed behind the structure, which was a log construction similar to the cabin Henry and Woodrow had built on Crow Point, but looked much older than theirs. A winter supply of wood lay cut and stacked against the west wall. The cut wood occupied almost as much space in the little clearing as the cabin did. Fifteen yards away was another, smaller structure that Henry recognized as a smokehouse. A cleaned deer hide was stretched across the smokehouse wall. A chopping block stood a dozen yards from the cabin door, an ax blade sunk into the scarred, flat top. Split wood and wood chips lay strewn about the base like bone fragments. Whistling came from the cabin, but it was too dark inside for Henry to see anything.
They waited patiently. In ten minutes, the figure emerged and headed back to the block. This time Henry could see the face clearly, and he was surprised. The skin was very dark, mud brown. He glanced at Maria, who gave him a look of puzzlement. The man gathered an armload of wood to add to the stack against the wall. Henry made his move.
He strode forward before the man could unburden his arms and said, “Stop.”
The man dropped the wood, spun toward Henry, saw the rifle, and looked poised to run.
“Don’t move,” Henry said.
The man held himself tense, ready, but he didn’t move.
“Maria,” Henry called.
She came from the underbrush and stood beside him. The man’s eyes shifted from Henry to Maria. Something changed in them, but Henry couldn’t tell what that meant.
“Who are you?” Henry demanded.
The man didn’t respond.
“Maybe he doesn’t understand English,” Maria suggested. “Bonjour,” she said.
The man waited, then nodded tentatively to her. “Bonjour.”
“Votre nom?” she asked.
“Maurice,” he replied.
“Je m’appelle Maria Lima,” she said. She touched Henry. “Henry Meloux.”
For the next couple of minutes, while Henry held the rifle and the man did not move, Maria carried on a conversation with him. At the end, she said to Henry, “He didn’t mean any disrespect by watching me. He was just curious about who’d come to his land.”
“His land?”
“That’s what he called it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I came with my father and my father’s friend.”
“What about me?”
“I told him you were my husband.”
Henry looked at her.
“He saw me swimming naked and you watching. I thought it was best. He’s apologized. I think you can put the rifle down, Henry.”
Henry studied the man’s face. It was old in a way that couldn’t be pinned down in years. A face worn by the wilderness and what the wilderness required. Henry had seen the same weathering in Woodrow’s face.
“He’s a Negro,” Henry said.
Maria laughed. “That’s very observant, husband, but it’s no reason to keep holding a gun on him.”
Henry and the man locked gazes. Henry indicated that he was going to lower the rifle. The man nodded. Henry pointed the rifle barrel toward the ground and shifted the weapon to his left hand. If the man attacked, it would be difficult-probably impossible-to swing the rifle up in time to be of any use. Both men understood that.
Maurice spoke to Maria, who translated for Henry. “He’s asked if we would eat with him.”
Henry said, “We should accept.”
She smiled. “I already have.”
Inside, the cabin was spare but neat. It was a single room, like Henry’s cabin on Crow Point, with a floor of hewn pine. Maurice had built a hearth and fireplace of stone. There was a bunk in one corner with a wool-blanket covering. In the center was a small table with two chairs. The man, Henry thought, had not always been alone.
They shared a meal of venison stew and, while they ate, Maria and Maurice talked.
“He has been here twenty winters,” Maria told Henry. “He came with his wife whose name was Hummingbird.”
“Hummingbird?”
“She was Odawa, he says.”
“Odawa?”
Kin. Long ago the Odawa, like the Ojibwe and other Algonquin people, had migrated west to the Great Lakes after their enemy the Iroquois drove them from their land near the eastern sea.
Henry addressed Maurice. “Anin,” he said, in formal greeting.
“Anin,” Maurice replied. In the language of the Odawa, which was very nearly the language of Henry’s people, Maurice and Henry talked.
“I am of the Iron Lake Anishinaabeg,” Henry told him.
“I am from Quebec,” Maurice replied. “I married an Odawa woman and lived with her happily for twenty years here.”
“Where is she?”
“She died five winters ago.”
“Your children?”
“We had none. Only each other.”
“What is he saying?” Maria asked.
“He is a widower. A man, I think, who still misses his wife.”
Maria spoke to Maurice, who smiled and said, “Merci.”
“Why did you come here?” Henry asked.
“Because I was a black man in a white world. Here the color of my skin doesn’t matter.”
That was something Henry understood well.
“We need to go back,” Henry finally said.
“You will come again?” Maurice asked eagerly.
“He would like us to return,” Henry told Maria.
She smiled at Maurice and said, “Mais oui.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The days passed quickly. Henry and Maria often visited Maurice, who proved to be a wonderful and grateful host. Over time, they learned his story.
His father came from Haiti, where he’d been a carpenter, working on a sugar plantation. One night he got into a fight with the plantation owner’s son over a woman and he beat the white man badly. He was forced to run. He took the woman with him and she became his wife. They fled to Canada, to Quebec, where a small colony of black Haitians was already established. Maurice was their first child.
His mother was white, and Maurice grew up with the names half-breed, mule, and mongrel thrown at him like stones. All his life he dreamed of rising to a place where he could look down on those who’d taunted him. Money, he’d believed, would be the way. He’d grown up with stories of wealth waiting to be discovered in the great, unexplored wilde
rness to the northwest. As soon as he was able-when he was seventeen-he left home and set out to find that wealth.
For the next fifteen years, he spent summers exploring rivers and streams he suspected no man had ever followed. Winters, he worked as a hand in a mill in Fort William owned by a French-speaking Quebecois.
One summer day he came across a village of Odawa where a young woman named Hummingbird lived. Love, he told Henry and Maria, struck him with the force of a bullet in his heart. All his loneliness leaked out and what filled its place was happiness. Hummingbird left her village and they traveled far into the wilderness, to the place beside the stream, where they’d built the cabin and lived together for twenty years. There was an Odawa village three days to the south where they traded for things they could not hunt or trap or gather-coffee, molasses, flour-which the villagers got from the government.
“It has been lonely since Hummingbird died?”
“Yes,” Maurice admitted.
“Why did you stay?”
“I came here looking for gold. I found something better. These hills, this forest, the lakes and streams, the memories of Hummingbird, all these are worth more to me than gold.”
“It must be a hard life here,” Henry said.
“It is hard.” Maurice nodded. “But I decided long ago that life among white people would be harder.”
Lima and Wellington continued to return at day’s end tired and discouraged. In the evening, they drank by the fire and discussed the next day’s plan. One evening, Maria asked why they’d even bothered to come to this place anyway.
Wellington, whose tongue was loosened by drink, said, “We heard a story.”
“Leonard,” Lima cautioned and gave him a dark, warning look.
Wellington ignored him. “We heard a story from a man named Goodkin who canoed up here on the Pipestone River two years ago. He spent a night in an Ottawa village. While he was there, he heard a story about a Negro who dressed in buckskin and came a couple of times a year to trade for goods. The Indians said the Negro always traded gold. Goodkin didn’t believe them, but they showed him a deerskin pouch covered with the residue of what looked like it could be gold dust. Goodkin bought the pouch and brought it back with him to have it tested. Sure enough, gold dust.
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