Desolation Mountain

by Krueger, William Kent

  The woman accompanied Stephen to his Jeep and waited while he got in and turned the engine over. Before he drove away, he gave her a long, deep look. “Craig? Is that your first name?”

  She didn’t respond for a long time, but just when Stephen thought she never would, she said, “Sandi.” From the look on her face, he could tell that she believed he was powerless to use the name against her.

  He put to her more or less the same question he’d put to Gerard: “Who are you, Sandi Craig?”

  A smile crossed her lips, one as cruel as Stephen had ever seen. The answer she gave him was much more succinct than Gerard’s had been. “Your worst nightmare, kid.”

  It all felt otherworldly to him. As if Tamarack County had been invaded, occupied, and no one could say why. He returned to a deserted house. Daniel and Rainy were at work and Waaboo at preschool. He figured Jenny was at Sam’s Place, preparing to open. Maybe his father was with her. In half an hour, Stephen was supposed to be in class, Introduction to Philosophy. He was also on the schedule at Sam’s Place that day, from three to closing. If he skipped class, he calculated, there would be plenty of time to do what he believed needed to be done before he went to work.

  * * *

  When he broke from the trees and stepped onto Crow Point, he could see Henry Meloux sitting cross-legged in the middle of the meadow. Only the old man’s head and shoulders showed above the tall grass and timothy and wildflowers. The Mide faced him, as if he’d been waiting for Stephen to appear. The sun hung almost directly overhead, and Meloux sat on his own shadow. As he drew nearer Stephen could hear the old man singing softly. At first, he thought Meloux must be singing a prayer, but when he came very close he discerned the lyrics: Where seldom is heard a discouraging word . . .

  Meloux smiled broadly. “Sit,” he invited with his hand held out.

  Stephen settled beside him in the grass, which, when he was seated, reached nearly to his chest.

  “It is a beautiful moment, is it not, Stephen O’Connor?”

  “Henry, we need to talk.”

  “There is time. For the moment, enjoy this.” The old man opened his arms, embracing the beauty of the meadow.

  Stephen knew the old Mide would listen only when he was ready.

  “Who among us knows how many of these moments we have left? I try to gather them, like a squirrel preparing for a long winter.”

  Meloux closed his eyes, lifted his lined face to the sun, breathed deeply.

  In his presence, in this old man’s vast enjoyment of a simple moment, Stephen felt an easing of the tightness in his chest. He breathed, closed his eyes, and like Meloux lifted his face to the warm sun.

  “That is all of life,” the old Mide said quietly.

  “What?” Stephen asked.

  “Letting go of the questions. Letting go of the fear that there will be no answers.”

  “Will there be answers?”

  “What we believe we want is like knocking on a closed door. Better to open ourselves to what we have and what we know. The beauty of this moment.”

  Stephen understood the truth in Meloux’s words. But his brain continued to knock at closed doors.

  At last the old man gave in with a sigh. “What is troubling you?”

  “My vision, Henry. And Dad says you’ve sensed something bad, too.”

  “They are different, what you have seen, what I have sensed.”

  “The vision terrifies me. Dad told me what you sensed frightens you.”

  “It has concerned me.”

  “My vision keeps coming back, Henry. I thought with the crash it would stop, but I’ve had it twice since.”

  “Is it the same?”

  “Exactly. The boy, the bird, the beast at my back. The terror at the end. They have to be connected, what I see and what you sense. Here’s another thing. I saw the boy. I saw him on Desolation Mountain.”

  Stephen related the events of that morning.

  “Was he flesh and blood?” the old man asked. “Or like a vision?”

  “He was there, then gone. Like a vision, I suppose. But he seemed real enough.”

  “Have you told anyone this?”

  “Only you.”

  “You should tell your father. And then we will do a sweat.”

  “You and me?”

  Meloux had passed the century mark. Sweats were hard on his body, so Stephen wasn’t certain it was a good idea.

  “We are the ones who have seen and sensed whatever the spirits of these woods are offering,” Henry told him. “Perhaps what they are trying to tell us will become clear. Or we can wait and perhaps time will do the same.”

  Stephen’s chest grew taut again. Time didn’t feel like an ally.

  “A sweat,” he agreed. “But maybe just me.”

  The old man smiled. “You are afraid my spirit might abandon my body. Let go of that fear. I am not ready yet to walk the Path of Souls. Maybe what I sense and what you see are the same. Maybe they are different. The answer is a closed door now. Maybe a sweat will open it.”

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  “A dead dog and a few drops of blood,” Marsha Dross said. “That’s not enough to launch an official investigation, Cork.”

  They were on their way back from Ned and Monkey Love’s cabin. Cork burned with a sense of outrage. “The Loves didn’t shoot Cyrus.”

  “It could be the FBI finally sent someone out to interview them. They’re off hunting. Only Cyrus is there, and Cyrus does what a good watchdog does. The agent or agents feel threatened and shoot.”

  “And dump the dog’s body in the lake? Come on, Marsha.”

  “We’ve both seen stranger things. All I’m saying is that I’m not going to throw a lot of resources at this right now. I’ll get those blood samples I took from the dock tested. If they’re human, that’s different.”

  “It’ll take a while to get results. I’m not waiting.”

  She leveled a gaze on him, coldly professional in its scrutiny. Her voice was all law enforcement. “What exactly do you intend to do?”

  Cork offered no answer. Partly it was because since he’d given up wearing a badge his methods hadn’t always been within the letter of the law. But also partly because he wasn’t sure how to answer her question.

  “When I know about the blood, I’ll let you know,” she promised, when she got out in the parking lot of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Office. “And if you find out anything, you’ll let me know. Right?”

  He didn’t look at her. “I’ll see what turns up.”

  * * *

  He drove directly to Allouette, the largest community on the Iron Lake Reservation. When Cork was growing up and hanging out with relatives and friends on the rez, Allouette had been a mixed bag. Like in a lot of reservation communities, unemployment was high, there was poverty and the ills that came with it. Most of the roads in town were still gravel then. The majority of the housing was BIA built, or trailers. Cheap, flimsy. Water and sanitation systems were not always in good operating condition. Tourism was nonexistent. White people kept their distance from Allouette and the rez in general, and complained about old treaties that gave the Ojibwe greater access to fishing on Iron Lake and oversight of areas that still had first-growth pine.

  When the tribe built the Chippewa Grand Casino, things changed a good deal, both in Aurora and on the rez. The casino hotel and golf course made Aurora a destination for people who weren’t just looking for a gateway to the Boundary Waters. The tribal coffers filled with gambling money. The roads in Allouette were paved. Updated water and sewer systems were laid. A new tribal office complex and a clinic were built. New stands were erected for the powwow grounds. A modern marina was constructed on the lakeshore at the edge of town, and because the cost of mooring was set a good deal less than at the marina in Aurora, a lot of white folks dock their boats there in season. A café had opened, the Wild Rice, with a view of the marina and the lake and the islands. There was a coffee shop in town, the Mocha Mo
ose, and a couple of galleries that offered pieces by Native artists.

  The revitalization of Allouette didn’t mean that everyone cut their grass regularly. There were still cars up on cinder blocks and some trailers that looked as if a perpetual yard sale was going on, but most folks on the rez seemed to feel a sense of pride in their town, their sovereign nation, and the future they were creating for their children and grandchildren.

  On the way, he’d tried the phone number for Beulah Love, Ned’s sister, but got only her voice mail greeting: Hello. This is Beulah. I can’t answer the phone, so just leave a message and I’ll get back to you. Have a wonderful day and remember that the good Lord’s grace and my name end in the same way—with Love.

  Her house was small and yellow, with marigolds still blooming along the foundation. Almost nobody in Allouette had a fence around their yard, but Beulah did, built of little white pickets. Beulah had a head for numbers and worked in the accounting department of the Chippewa Grand Casino. She spent every Wednesday night and most of every Sunday inside the old Cenex building south of Aurora, which had become the Church of Holy Fire, where she was the organist. She had never married, but there had been rumors about her relationship with Rev. Alvin Doyle, the pastor at Holy Fire.

  Beulah Love was among the last children from the Iron Lake Reservation to be sent to a government-run boarding school. Cork, who was only a year or two older, could still remember what she was like before she left—a quiet girl, pretty, with a long black braid and fluttery eyes, helping her grandmother make fry bread at tribal gatherings. She’d returned years later, hard, cold, with coiffed hair and a head for calculations. She didn’t talk about her experience at the boarding school, but Cork had heard enough horrendous stories from others who’d been torn from their families and forced to go to such places that he understood what her silence concealed.

  He stood at the front door and could hear her playing the piano inside. He didn’t know much about classical music, but he recognized the Moonlight Sonata and hesitated a moment or two before knocking, reluctant to interrupt the lovely, quiet flow. When he finally put his fist to the door, the music stopped. She opened up and stared at him with eyes like black beetle shells.

  “Morning, Beulah.”

  “Cork.” A cold greeting.

  “Wonder if I could talk with you a minute.”

  She checked the watch on her wrist. “I have to be leaving for work soon.”

  “Like I say, just for a minute.”

  She stood aside and let him enter.

  The unofficial credo of the Indian boarding school system was “Kill the Indian, save the child.” Beulah’s home reflected nothing of her Native heritage. The paintings on her walls were pastel and pastoral, exactly the kind someone might find in a room at a Comfort Inn. She wore nothing beaded, didn’t go to powwows. He believed she was the only Native member of the Church of Holy Fire. As he stood in the sanitized atmosphere of Beulah’s home, Cork couldn’t help thinking sadly that, in the first part of its mission at least, the boarding school had succeeded.

  “What is it?” She crossed her arms over her chest, reminding him of a schoolteacher impatient with a child.

  “Have you heard from Ned or Monkey in the last couple of days?”

  “I never hear from my brother. I haven’t spoken to that wild man in years. Since he took Jameson away from me.”

  In Cork’s understanding, this had worked the other way around. So he assumed Beulah was speaking of Monkey’s decision, once he was grown and sober, to move back in with his uncle.

  “What about Monkey? Have you heard from him?”

  “I hate that name.”

  “Jameson then.”

  “Not since Sunday dinner, after church.”

  “Sunday dinner with you, is that a regular thing?”

  “Yes. We eat, we pray.”

  “Monkey—Jameson—prays with you?”

  “I do the praying.”

  “Has he talked to you this week?”

  “No, but he doesn’t need to. We both know he’ll be here.”

  “He might not be here this Sunday.”

  “Oh?”

  Cork explained what he’d found at the cabin. Beulah’s face went from dour, its usual cast, to deeply concerned. She sat in a hard, straight-backed chair, staring at one of the pastels on her wall, thinking.

  “It’s got to be that wild man.”

  “Ned?”

  “When we went to the boarding school, they couldn’t keep him there. He’d run away, return to the reservation. They’d send him right back. He’d run away again. We weren’t allowed to speak our language. But Ned did anyway. They beat him. Made no difference. He became like an animal. Wild.”

  But Cork thought the word free.

  “When Jameson was a boy and I saw that Ned was making him just as wild he was, I took him away, tried to give him a Christian upbringing. But the wild was already there, too deep.” For a moment, Cork thought she was going to cry. Instead, her face turned hard. “That wild man has finally gone crazy. Killed his dog and done Lord knows what to Jameson.”

  “Ned didn’t kill Cyrus.”

  “Who then?”

  “I can’t answer that, at least not at the moment. Listen, Beulah, if Ned or Jameson contacts you, tell them it’s important that I talk to them. Will you do that?”

  “Talk to them about what?”

  “There’s a lot of strange things going on around here since the senator’s plane went down. I think Ned and your nephew might know something that other people want to know.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping Ned or Jameson might be able to tell me.”

  “They’re in trouble? Real trouble?”

  “They may be.”

  “Ned can take care of himself.” It was spoken with a grudging assurance. “But Jameson?” She looked up at Cork, her eyes soft and fearful. Family, he understood. Blood love. Even the white boarding school couldn’t kill that.

  “Let me know if you hear anything, all right, Beulah?”

  She nodded. “And I’ll pray for them.”

  He left her in that chair and, before he closed the front door behind him, could hear her supplication.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  The clinic was next to the tribal office complex, which housed a number of the enterprises of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, including the Department of Conservation Enforcement, out of which Daniel and the other game wardens operated. Cork dropped into the clinic first to see Rainy, but she was out making some home calls. In the Conservation Enforcement office, he found that Daniel was out, too.

  “He’s still trying to chase down them poachers,” Clyde Kingbird, the senior game warden, told Cork. “We keep getting reports, and them poachers keep slipping away.”

  “Native?” Cork was thinking of Monkey Love and his uncle Ned, who hunted on the rez year-round, even though there were restrictions.

  “White, nearly as we can tell.” Kingbird had a dark mole on his upper lip that had always reminded Cork of a fly, and he’d always had an urge to shoo it away. “But pretty damn smart for chimooks. They don’t leave nothing behind.”

  “Poaching deer?”

  “Like I said, don’t leave nothing behind, so hard to tell what they’re poaching.”

  “How do you know they’re poachers?”

  “Who else’d be skulking around out there?”

  “Where exactly is ‘out there’?”

  “East.” Kingbird waved a hand. “Other side of Devil’s Eye.”

  “Wildlife photographers, maybe. Beautiful, empty country.”

  “Maybe. They keep coming around, Daniel’ll catch ’em eventually. Good man, your son-in-law.”

  Cork wandered over to the Youth Mentor Program office, where Tom Blessing was the sole employee. The door was closed and locked, no lights on inside. He returned to the Conservation Enforcement office.

  “Seen Blessing this morning?”
r />   Kingbird looked up from his desk, where he was reading some kind of official notice. “Nope.”

  “As far as you know, has anyone interviewed him since the senator’s plane crashed?”

  “Haven’t seen any strange faces around here lately. Unless you count the guy who fills the Coke machine. Reminds me of a bigmouth bass, that one.”

  Cork had Tom Blessing’s number among the contacts on his cell phone. He tried the number, got the message that the user wasn’t available.

  Tom Blessing shared a house with his mother, Fanny, on a back road a couple of miles outside Allouette. Cork drove down the narrow gravel lane. Marshland lay on either side, full of cattails. Cork had a great respect for the reeds, which his Anishinaabe ancestors had used in dozens of ways—the fluff to line moccasins, waterproof mats woven from the leaves, marmalade made from the roots, bread from the pollen. He pulled into the dirt drive, parked, and waited. Like many folks who live rurally, the Blessings owned a dog, as much for security as for company. Cork expected Tornado, a bulldog, to come bounding out, woofing a warning. The dog never appeared.

  The morning was sunny, but with a few patchy clouds. As Cork sat waiting, the house and the ragged front yard were engulfed in shadow, and a wariness crept over him, a sense that things weren’t right. He listened to the red-winged blackbirds calling among the cattails, and he wondered where the hell Tornado was. Which was the same question he’d had about the bluetick hound at the Loves’ cabin, and he hadn’t liked the answer he’d found there.

  He went to the front porch, mounted the three steps, knocked at the door. He tried to peer through a window, but the curtains were drawn. Although Tom Blessing’s pickup truck was gone, his mother’s big black 1998 Buick LeSabre was parked near the garage.