I wasn’t thinking only about Meloux, however. Jenny was heavy on my mind.
Sure, we would help her make a life for herself and her baby, but it wouldn’t be the life we’d dreamed of for her or that she’d dreamed of for herself. That made me sad. I had no doubt she would love her child fiercely and be a great mother, but I knew that there would always be the demon of if only harping away in the back of her mind. Every life lived fully is going to have some regrets, because every risk is not worth taking, but you don’t always see that in time. Or if you do, you convince yourself that you’ll be the one to beat the odds. Jenny and Sean had gambled, and it wasn’t that they’d lost exactly. The dealer had simply swept all the chips off the table and placed them in the hands of an unborn child.
The tyranny of love. Love demands all, everything. Jenny was up to the challenge. Sean, it seemed, was not. I wasn’t angry with him. I didn’t think any of us were. We were just disappointed. I figured that in his own life, no matter how he played it, when Sean looked back, Jenny and his child would be one of his regrets. And that made me sad, too.
I slept off and on. Every time I woke, the pattern of moonlight on the floor of my room had shifted. I looked at the clock on the stand next to my bed. Three A.M. I got up, used the toilet, and went to check on Meloux. His room was empty. I slipped my pants on and went downstairs. The house was dark, except for a light under the door of the study where, earlier that day, Wellington had greeted us and Meloux had told his story. I listened at the door and heard the rustle of a page being turned. I considered knocking, but decided against it. I didn’t think Meloux would be reading.
I had another idea. I went out onto the rear deck where I could see the lake, a great pool of silver poured out from the moon. I also saw what I thought I might see: the silhouette of Meloux standing alone on the dock. I walked across the yard, carefully because I was barefoot. The ground was cool against the soles of my feet. I coughed as I approached so that I wouldn’t startle the old man. His head half-turned, but he didn’t speak.
“Mind if I join you, Henry?”
“Your company is always welcome, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“Get some rest?”
“Yes. I was tired.”
“No wonder. Long, hard day. Hungry?”
“The morning will come soon enough. I will eat then.”
I put my hands in my pockets and stared up at the stars the moonlight hadn’t swallowed. “I’m sorry, Henry.”
“Why?”
“I hoped, I don’t know, that Wellington would be the son you wanted.”
“How do you know he is not?”
“He hasn’t been what I would call enthusiastic about seeing you.”
“He has also not turned me away.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Henry, but you set your sights awfully low.”
Meloux didn’t reply.
“What do you want to do now?” I said.
“I want you to smoke with me,” he said.
He took a pouch from his shirt pocket and sprinkled a bit to the four points of the compass, acknowledging the spirits that governed each, then he sprinkled some in the center. We sat down on the dock. He took papers and, in the moonlight that bleached his old hands white, he expertly rolled a cigarette. He lit it with a wood match that he struck to flame on his thumbnail. For the next few minutes, we smoked in silence. On the lake, two loons called back and forth, but I couldn’t see them. In the woods on either side, tree frogs and crickets chirred. The surface of the water was so still and shiny that it could have been made of polished steel. All this felt little different from any lake I’d ever sat beside on a Minnesota night, and I was aware that the vast wilderness, which began near the border of Canada, still ran relatively unbroken to the other side of the Arctic Circle. We were in the middle of a great, enduring beauty, and despite the danger and confusion involved in our being there, I couldn’t help but feel a profound sense of gratitude. Probably, that was exactly what the old Mide had hoped I might feel when he asked me to share the tobacco and the moment.
I heard the deck door open and close. I saw Meloux cock his head slightly, as if he’d heard, too, but he didn’t turn. Half a minute later, I felt the dock shiver under an added weight.
“I have seen you,” Wellington said at our backs. “In visions. I’ve had them all my life. I never understood them or understood why they came to me.”
Meloux spoke toward the lake. “You are my son. You have a gift.”
“I isolated myself here years ago to try finally to understand that gift. It’s been lonely and difficult. I was about to give up.”
“Perhaps that is why I’m here.”
“Mother never told me about you. She believed you were dead.”
“Why?”
“She came back with Leonard the next spring and went to Maurice’s cabin. She found the remains of two bodies, which the scavengers had cleaned to mostly bone. She thought one was Maurice and the other was you.”
“She married Leonard Wellington.”
“That was part of the bargain she struck with him. When her father died, she agreed to marry Leonard and give him access to her father’s money. In return, he promised not to tell the police about your part in the death. She had no idea he’d already been here or what he’d done.”
“How do you know these things? Did she tell you?”
“She wrote them in her journals.”
Wellington walked to where we sat. He held out a book bound in soft leather. Meloux took it and opened it. Glancing, I saw that it was written in thin, precise script that would be difficult to read by moon-light.
“There are more than a dozen like it,” Wellington said. “She left them to me, in the care of her attorney, not to be read until I turned twenty-one. I was a fighter pilot in Korea when I turned twenty-one and had no interest in reading them. I didn’t get around to it until after Leonard died.”
“He was a good father?” Meloux asked.
“We fought all the time. I could never please him. He was a man too absorbed in his own affairs. Finally I gave up trying. Poor Rupert, though, he worked so hard to be noticed. The man treated him badly, but Rupert just kept coming back for more. When I read the journals and finally understood that Rupert was his real son, it made me sad. Me, I just came with the contract, but my brother was truly his son, and Leonard still treated him like a dog.”
In front of us, a small fish jumped, creating a circle of ripples that widened until they captured the reflection of the moon.
“I used to come here with her, just the two of us, and she would tell me stories about an Ojibwe hunter, very brave and handsome and noble. She called him Niibaa-waabii. She said it meant Sees At Night. She died when I was ten. After that, whenever I felt alone, whenever I felt that Leonard was a dense, unfathomable fog, I would imagine that the hunter was my father and that he was pleased with me.”
Meloux said, “I am pleased.”
He sat beside the old Mide. “After all these years, why did you come looking for me now?”
“My heart told me it was time.” The old man laughed. “It gave me a good kick in the ass.” He went quiet again, then asked a question that must have been heavy on his mind for seventy years. “Leonard Wellington said it was your mother who told him about Maurice and the gold. I never wanted to believe it.” He turned his head and looked to his son. “Do you know the truth?”
“No,” Wellington said. “I’m sorry.”
I stood up. “I think I’ll call it a night.”
I left them on the dock. Inside, I looked back through the clear glass of the sliding deck door, toward the lake. Against the reflection of moonlight off the water, the two men stood talking. It had taken seven decades for this to happen. For a lot of people, that was more than a lifetime. I had the feeling that for Meloux and his son, a new and remarkable kind of life had just begun.
I went up to bed and lay there thinking that sometimes stories did have happy endings.
FORTY-EIGHT
I woke to Schanno pounding at my door. The sun was up, already high. A cool breeze lifted the curtains on the window. I figured I’d opened my eyes to a good day.
“We’re waiting for you downstairs,” Schanno said when I swung the door wide. He was dressed in clean khakis and a white short-sleeved shirt with a button-down collar. He looked very Ivy League and refreshed.
“We? Meloux’s up, too?”
“He says he never went back to sleep after you left him alone with Wellington. He spent the night talking with his son, then reading Maria’s journals.” Schanno’s face held a look of warm affection. “He’s something, that guy. Wellington’s brother is here, by the way.”
“Rupert?”
“Does he have another I don’t know about? Yeah, Rupert. And Benning’s fixing us up some breakfast, so get your ass down there, son. Time’s a wasting.”
I splashed my face with cold water, ran a toothbrush across my teeth, threw on the clothes I’d worn the night before, and joined the others downstairs. They were gathered in the shade of the umbrella table on the rear deck, drinking coffee that smelled like it came from caffeine heaven.
“Mr. Wellington,” I greeted Rupert, who accepted the hand I offered. “This is a surprise.”
“Mr. O’Connor,” he responded cordially. He wore jeans, a light blue polo shirt, and expensive Gore-Tex hiking boots. He appeared tired, especially around the eyes.
Meloux sat next to his son. I thought he’d look happy, but in the Ojibwe way, his face betrayed no emotion.
“Sit down, Cork.” Henry Wellington indicated the empty chair. “Would you like some coffee?” He poured me a cup from the white ceramic pot on the table. “Breakfast should be ready soon.”
“You flew up?” I asked Rupert. I used my cup hand to wave toward the floatplane tethered to the dock.
“I did.”
Henry Wellington flicked a deerfly from the table. “In his younger days, Rupert was quite a bush pilot.”
Rupert shrugged off the compliment. “It didn’t compare with being an honest-to-god war hero like Hank, but it had its moments.”
“When are you going to let go of that, Rupert? How many times do I have to tell you I don’t feel any glory in what I did.”
“Right,” Rupert said. He gave his brother a little smile, tight-lipped and unpleasant.
“Let’s not get into any of that sibling stuff in front of guests, all right?”
“Sibling?” Rupert’s tone was one of mock surprise. “We have different mothers. And according to your mother’s journals, we have different fathers as well.”
“Come on, Rupert, we’re brothers. We were raised that way.”
Rupert shot him an obviously angry look. “You knew, what, forty years ago that my father wasn’t your father? When exactly did you plan on telling me? A deathbed confession?”
Wellington took a deep breath. “I didn’t see any reason to tell you. What difference would it have made?”
“You always made decisions without talking to me.”
“I’m ten years older than you. Sometimes decisions had to be made, and you simply didn’t know enough to be able to contribute.”
“Do you think I know enough now?”
“I would never have turned the reins of Northern Mining over to you if I didn’t think so.”
“Northern Mining,” Rupert snarled. “Do you ever read the correspondence I send? Do you even care?”
“I’m finished with that part of my life.”
“Right. You live the pure life of the ascetic now. How utterly noble. So tell me, since you’ve stepped back from any responsibility for the company, do I get to make the decision about what to do with the information Mr. Meloux has offered us about Dad?”
“I think what we do is obvious, don’t you?”
“Enlighten me.”
“I think, at the very least, there’s a lot of restitution to be made.”
“Restitution?” Rupert seemed genuinely surprised. “To whom?”
“For starters, the families of the two men who died up there at the ruins of the old cabin. And we need to check the documentation on mineral rights to be certain Leonard didn’t actually jump a claim.”
“Ancient crimes, Hank. It’s like giving the descendants of African slaves restitution for what was done to their ancestors. It solves nothing. It absolves no one. But, hell, it’s easy for you to propose, I suppose, considering that Leonard Wellington wasn’t your father. Think of me for just a moment, Hank. For once, think of someone besides yourself.”
“You’re proposing what? That we ignore the truth and go on as if nothing ever happened?”
“Hank, how do you know that what he’s said is true? You told me not half an hour ago that there’s nothing in your mother’s journals that corroborates what he accuses Dad of doing.”
“I didn’t tell you everything, Rupert. Yesterday, he showed me irrefutable, fourteen-carat proof. Look, I understand that this is going to be hard, especially for you, but we don’t have a choice. I mean, these men here, they all know the truth. Even if I agreed with you, what would you propose to do about them?”
Rupert swung his eyes slyly across Schanno and me. “It’s my firm belief, gentlemen, that everyone has a price. Am I correct?”
It was Schanno who broke the embarrassed silence that followed. “You may know business, Mr. Wellington, but you’re no judge of men.”
Rupert settled his gaze on me. “He speaks for you?”
“He took the words right out of my mouth,” I said.
“Very well.” He offered that unpleasant smile again. “I think you’re about to find I’m not such a terrible judge of men after all, Mr. Schanno.” He lifted his hand and gave a little wave toward the house.
Benning stepped out, and he wasn’t alone. Dougherty was with him. They didn’t bring us breakfast. They carried a couple of high-caliber automatics.
“Dougherty?” Wellington said.
“He flew up with me,” Rupert said. “I dropped him off on the other side of the point before I taxied here. He hiked in.”
Wellington addressed Benning and Dougherty. “What’s the idea with the weapons?”
“You’ll have to ask the other Mr. Wellington,” Benning replied.
“I’m asking you.”
“As their employer?” Rupert laughed. “I told you everyone has a price, Hank. I bought these men from you a long time ago. Morrissey, too. In fact, they haven’t really worked for you since almost the beginning.”
Wellington again addressed the two men from Manitou Island. “Is that true?”
Benning shrugged. “He says shoot, we shoot. Nothing personal.”
Wellington faced his brother. “And are you going to say ‘Shoot’?”
Rupert drummed his fingers on the table, as if considering. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”
I was trying to figure out a move, some way of distracting Benning and Dougherty. Without obviously turning my head, I checked the field of fire from the deck. If one of us was able to make it to the ground and run for cover, could he reach the woods without being cut down by the automatics?
Rupert laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Wellington asked.
“You thought all those years that you were protecting me from the truth. Hell, Hank, I learned the same time you did that we had different fathers. You told me you didn’t read your mother’s journals until after my father died. Well, your mother wasn’t the only one who kept a journal. My father started his as a way of recording his prospecting expeditions, but he ended up including just about everything in his life. After he died, I found them in his personal safe. All these years, I’ve actually known more than you because not only did I know he wasn’t your father, I also knew about what happened at that cabin in the hills. Those journals your mother wrote? My father read them, or at least one of them. When Carlos Lima was in the hospital dying,
Maria left the journal out and open. Leonard took a look, read about the Negro, and went back north where he did what he had to do to get what he wanted.”
I saw a look of relief cross Meloux’s face. An important question had finally been answered. From his hospital bed, he’d told me Maria’s beauty was a knife. Now he knew the truth.
“And so you sent Morrissey to take care of Meloux,” I said to Rupert Wellington.
“You can understand it’s not a story I’d like people to know. It’s not just that there are legal ramifications that could shake Northern Mining, but the entire legacy of my father would be rather horribly sullied.” He drilled his brother with a sudden, angry look. “You never cared for him, Hank. You made that clear. Me, I loved my old man.”
Henry Wellington shook his head sadly. “Enough to kill for him?”
“Love and money, Hank. What else is there of importance?”
I thought it was time for a desperation punch here. “Other people know Meloux’s story,” I said.
He dismissed it with a quick wave. “The ramblings of an old man who had no proof. And who, by the way, won’t be around to defend his claims.”
“How do you intend to work that?” Schanno asked in a rather disinterested tone.
“You, O’Connor, and the Indian will just disappear. There are so many lakes up here, nobody’ll find your vehicle or your bodies. As for Hank, well, everyone knows how bizarre his behavior has become. His suicide, when it’s discovered, won’t be a great surprise.”
“My children know the truth about me, Rupert.”
The younger Wellington grinned coyly. “The perception of family is unreliably altered by love.”
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