“Aaron thinks I’m crazy.”
“I think he’s just afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of what’s in your face when you look at this child. Because it’s not what’s in your face when you look at him.”
“What I feel for Aaron is different.”
“I don’t think he understands that.”
“Come on, Aunt Rose. He’s a grown man. This is a baby.”
“A baby you’ve fallen in love with in just one day. How long did it take you to fall in love with Aaron?” When Jenny didn’t answer, Rose asked, “Are you in love with him?”
“I thought so. I don’t know now.”
Rose smiled gently. “And you wonder why he’s afraid?”
She ran her hand down her niece’s hair, smoothing wild strands in the way Jenny’s mother might have had she been alive and a part of this conversation.
“Are you afraid?” Rose asked.
“Of what?”
“Losing him.” She nodded at the little face staring up at Jenny. “He has family somewhere who have a legal right to him.”
“I know.”
The words sounded like acceptance, but what Rose heard in her niece’s voice was something more like a faint trumpet of defiance.
The baby was asleep again when they heard the cut of an engine over the sound of the wind outside. Rose went to the window and saw Babs Larson’s boat drawing up to Bascombe’s dock. Everyone piled out and walked to the lodge. They were talking in loud voices as they approached.
Rose stepped to the door and put a finger to her lips. “The baby’s asleep,” she told them.
“We’ll just stay out here then,” Larson said. “Everyone give a hand, and we’ll get these things to the cabins.”
The others headed away carrying duffel bags, but Lynn Belgea came in. Her dog was with her. He went to the basket and sniffed at the baby.
“Careful, Teddy,” Belgea said.
The dog backed away and lay down in an alert pose.
“He looks like a watchdog,” Rose said.
“He’s a good boy.” Belgea petted him fondly. “I just stepped in to check on the baby. How’s he doing?”
“He’s fine,” Jenny answered. “I wish I knew his name, though. It’s getting awkward always calling him ‘the baby’ or just ‘him.’ ”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a name yet,” Belgea said. “Did I tell you how Ted got his name?”
Jenny and Rose both shook their heads.
“I’d been alone for quite a while, and everyone on the Angle knew I was thinking of getting a dog. It was a pretty popular topic of conversation. Everyone began referring to the pet I’d get as The Eventual Dog. TED. I got so used to thinking of him that way that, when I finally brought him home, that was his name.”
Jenny said, “Wouldn’t work for this little guy. Two days ago, I had no idea I’d have a baby on my hands.”
Belgea looked at her and at the child, and she smiled gently and said, “Could have fooled me. If there’s anything you need for him or for yourself, you be sure to let me know.”
“I will.”
Outside the others returned. Belgea said good-bye, and the good women of the Angle went back to Larson’s boat and headed away.
“Clean duds,” Anne said, as she came into the lodge. She held up a folded stack of clothing for Jenny.
Jenny still wore the things she’d had on when the storm threw her onto the island. The idea of cleaning herself up was wonderful. She said, “Would someone watch him while I shower and change?”
Rose and Anne replied almost in unison, “We’d be happy to.”
“You’ll let me know if he cries or if he needs me.”
“Go,” Rose said. “He’ll be fine with us.”
Jenny took her clothing and started to leave but at the door turned back and glanced at the basket with concern.
“Go!” Anne ordered.
Jenny left.
Mal, when he’d come in, had sat at the table, and now he gingerly rubbed his damaged ankle. “If she has trouble leaving him for a few minutes, it’s going to be hell on her when she has to give him up for good.”
They all looked at the baby, and then at the empty doorway through which Jenny had disappeared, and no one had a thing to say.
When Cork and the others returned, the sun was behind the trees on Oak Island, and Bascombe’s lodge lay deep in the shadows of evening. As they approached the lodge, Cork’s mouth began to water at the aromas drifting outside. When they stepped in, he saw that the table was set, and he could hear the clatter of activity in the kitchen.
“We’re back,” he called.
Anne came out and said, “Wash up. I’ll call the others.”
Over the best meat loaf Cork swore he’d ever tasted, he recounted the events on Stump Island.
“What did you think of them?” Rose asked.
“They were friendly enough,” Cork replied.
“But?”
“I got a hinky feel from the place.”
Bascombe shrugged and said, “Religious folks always give me the willies. I figure they’re okay, just a little lopsided in their view of human nature.”
Cork looked at his brother-in-law. “Mal, you ever hear of a group called the Church of the Seven Trumpets?”
“Can’t say I have.” Mal worked his tongue over something stuck in a back tooth. “But if it’s a biblical reference, it probably refers to the seven trumpets in the Book of Revelation.”
“Mr. Hornett told us to read Revelation,” Stephen said. “What did he mean?”
Mal said, “Basically, Revelation states that at the end of the world angels will blow seven trumpets. The first six will bring devastation and death to the earth with a lot of fire and bloodletting and plagues and things falling from the heavens and eventual darkness. The seventh will signal the second coming of Christ, and the defeat of Satan’s armies and the Antichrist, and the final judgment.”
“They’re certainly firm believers in the Apocalypse,” Kretsch said. “Rumor is that they’re stockpiling supplies on the island in preparation.”
“Hornett called their camp the Citadel,” Cork said. “Which sounds sort of like siege mentality, but I didn’t see any evidence of huge stockpiles.”
“Stump Island’s a big place,” Kretsch said. “You could hide an army there.”
Bascombe said, “I don’t see what that has to do with the Smalldog girl.”
Cork shook his head. “I don’t know either. Except that everything Hornett said rang wrong. I don’t like to go on hunches, but I’ve got a hunch they weren’t being exactly forthcoming with us.”
“That may have nothing at all to do with Smalldog or Jenny’s baby,” Bascombe pointed out.
Jenny’s baby. Cork realized it was the first time anybody had used that term, had spoken it, anyway. It didn’t please him. The child wasn’t Jenny’s responsibility, wasn’t the responsibility of any of them. Though it wasn’t the baby’s fault, he was dangerous. Death shadowed him, and that shadow had fallen across Cork’s family. Cork was determined, as soon as was humanly possible, to get the baby into the hands of the proper authorities. But he tabled that issue for the moment and returned to the matter at hand.
He said, “If you’re looking at one thing that’s amiss and you stumble onto another, in my experience, it pays to look for connections.”
Kretsch said, “I agree. But how do we take a closer look?”
“Do you have access to the Internet here, Seth?”
“Yep,” Bascombe said, “but it won’t do you any good. My computer crashed a while back, and I haven’t had any reason to get it fixed. I kind of like not being connected with all the craziness of the world outside the Angle.”
Cork swung his gaze to the window. Beyond, the lake was growing pale in the dying light. A few stars were already twinkling in the eastern sky. He thought for a moment about asking Bascombe to take him to the mainland, where he might find what he wanted. But t
he wind was still blowing strong, and waves galloped across the water like wild horses. And he was dead tired. They were all tired, he could see.
“Why don’t we get a good night’s sleep,” he suggested. “We can tackle all this again in the morning. And maybe we can figure the best way to get the child to where he ought to be.”
He glanced at Jenny, expecting an objection, but all he got from her was a stone-hard stare.
Bascombe said to Kretsch, “You probably want to get back to the mainland, Tom.”
Kretsch must have heard the weariness in the other man’s voice. “If you’ve got an extra bunk, Seth, I’d be fine sleeping here tonight. That way we can get an early start tomorrow.”
“You can have the last cabin,” Bascombe said and sounded relieved. “I’ll get some bedding.”
“If you’ve got a sleeping bag I could throw on the bunk, that’ll do.”
“I have, but it smells of woodsmoke.”
“I’m so beat it could smell of skunk and I wouldn’t care.”
They all laughed and, quiet and tired, rose from the table to get ready for the night.
THIRTY-ONE
Jenny couldn’t sleep. Her body vibrated. From exhaustion, probably, but also from something else, something that felt to her like vigilance. It was much the same feeling she’d had the night before, stranded on that island. But she was safe here, wasn’t she?
She lay in her bunk listening to Anne’s soft, steady breathing from the other side of the small cabin, listening to the great breath of the wind outside. Before lying down that night, she’d drawn aside the curtains over the eastern windows so that the moon would light the room and she could see the baby. He lay in the wicker basket on the floor within easy reach of her hand.
Aaron slept in another cabin with Stephen. It was odd, having him so near but not sharing her bed. Odd but not unpleasant. The moment she’d seen the look of horror on his face at the sight of the child’s cleft lip, something had changed in her. Something, she knew, had died. It wasn’t a whole thing but an essential. As if her love for Aaron had lost its heart. She couldn’t hide it from him. He’d gone to the cabin with Stephen walking like a man to a prison cell.
The baby began to fuss. Jenny had already prepared a bottle, and Bascombe had insisted she take a hot plate and saucepan to her cabin so that she could heat the formula easily in the night. She got up and, in her preparations, woke her sister.
“Go back to sleep. I’m just seeing to the baby.”
“You’re a good mom,” Anne said drowsily, and she rolled over and faced the wall. In only a moment, she was breathing deeply and steadily again.
Jenny took the bottle and the wicker basket with the baby inside and left the cabin. Moonlight silvered the island and the lake, and she had no trouble making her way to the end of the dock, where she sat on the bench. She lifted the baby and gave him the bottle. She gently pressed her finger to the cleft in his lip, and still mostly asleep, he began to feed.
She loved this aloneness with the child, this sense that, for the moment, the whole world was just the two of them, and the only thing that was important was seeing to his safety and his need. How blessedly simple her life could be, she thought.
Except this baby wasn’t hers. Maybe as soon as the next morning, she would have to give him up. She tried to accept the idea, but everything inside her went rigid in protest. She was angry, and her anger was directed mostly at her father, who seemed not to care in the least and whose only concern was how quickly he could get the child off their hands. She couldn’t understand him and didn’t want to. If it were possible, she’d have fled the Lake of the Woods herself and taken the baby with her.
The wind made the night restless. The lake surged and retreated against the dock pilings. The leaves of the poplars along the shoreline shook with a sound like a thousand rattlesnakes. The moon was nearly full and cast the island in a sharp contrast of silver light and black shadows that shifted in the wind.
And among those shadows Jenny saw something move.
At first she thought it was only a trick of the changing patterns of light and dark. Then she realized the motion was independent of the erratic way the wind made the trees sway. It was steady and directed toward the cabin she’d left only a few minutes before. She thought at first it might be Aaron, coming to check on her, and she felt a sad kind of gratitude. But when they came fully into the apron of moonlight in front of the cabin, she realized there were two figures and one of them held a rifle.
As the figure in front neared the cabin door and reached for the handle, Jenny let out a bloodcurdling scream. The figures at the cabin turned and fled toward the woods that backed the cabins and disappeared.
Jenny leaped to her feet. Lights went on in the cabins and in Bascombe’s lodge, and everyone spilled outside into the night.
“Jenny!” Anne called.
“Here!” she cried back.
They ran to the end of the dock and huddled around her and the child, who seemed oblivious to all the activity.
“Christ, Jenny, are you all right?” Aaron asked.
“Yes.”
Her father said, “What happened?”
“The baby was hungry. I came out here to feed him. I saw someone creep out of the woods and go to my cabin. There were two of them, Dad, and one of them had a rifle.”
Bascombe stood at the edge of the gathering. He gripped a rifle in his hands. “Was it you, Seth?”
“Not me. I just grabbed this on my way out.”
“Where’s Tom?” Mal said, because Kretsch wasn’t among them.
“Maybe he’s still sleeping,” Rose offered.
“Through this?” Bascombe said. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ll check his cabin,” Stephen said.
But just as he started away, a figure came from the woods, entered the light in front of the cabins, and walked toward the dock. He carried a rifle, too.
Cork nodded at the Remington in his hand. “What’s with the rifle, Tom?”
“I heard a scream and someone ran past my cabin. I grabbed this and tried to follow them. Whoever it was, they got away.”
From beyond a little wooded point to the north came the sound of powerful boat engines. A moment later, they saw a sleek launch shooting across the channel toward Birch Island. They watched it leap along the tops of the waves and curl to the north, leaving behind it a wake bone white in the moonlight.
“Cigarette boat,” Stephen observed.
Bascombe nodded. “Smalldog.”
“He wasn’t alone,” Cork said. “He had help.”
“They were after the baby,” Jenny said.
“But why?” Bascombe gave a shrug. “If you believe what some folks say about that child’s parentage, Smalldog was probably just coming for his son.”
They looked at the baby, his face aglow in the moonlight, unperturbed by the chaos that had erupted around him. He smiled up at Jenny. The divide of his upper lip parted easily, and the shape of his mouth was like a boat with a little sail.
Cork and Mal sat on the dock bench, facing Jenny’s cabin, their turn on watch. Cork cradled Bascombe’s Marlin on his lap. In the moonlight, the lake had become a great gray luminescence where whitecaps rose and fell.
“This Smalldog, he’s something else,” Mal said. “I’d like to see him.”
“I have,” Cork said. “We locked eyes when he was hunting us on the island.”
“Did you see the devil there?”
“I saw a man I knew absolutely was capable of killing us.”
“I’ve always believed that, even in the worst of men, there’s still some humanity alive. But I don’t know about Smalldog. If what Seth Bascombe says about him abusing his own sister is true, he’s a piece of work. It would be interesting to talk to him, find out his truth.”
“You can’t save every soul, Mal. It’s not even your business anymore.”
“I’m just talking about understanding someone, Cork. I think it’s the b
usiness of us all. Now soul saving, that’s something else.”
Cork stared at the angry lake and tried to make sense of Noah Smalldog.
The blood of the Anishinaabeg ran through Cork’s veins. He had an Ojibwe name, Mikiinak, which meant “Snapping Turtle.” The name had been given to him by the old Mide Henry Meloux, who’d seen the tenacity in him even when Cork was a small child. He loved the Ojibwe people, his people. But he knew the reality, which was that years of poverty on reservations and neglect by the agencies charged with helping them and misconceptions and prejudices deeply believed and perpetuated by whites had resulted in the misshaping of the spirits of far too many Indians. They drank to excess. They abused their women and their children. They abandoned their families. There was reason for their behavior, certainly, but that didn’t excuse their actions.
Smalldog, Cork decided, was a misshapen spirit. He wondered what Henry Meloux, in all his patient wisdom, might say about the man. Would he, like Mal, believe that even the most grotesque of spirits could be reshaped and brought into harmony? Did Meloux have a ceremony powerful enough to redeem Smalldog?
Maybe it wouldn’t matter, Cork thought, gripping the Marlin tightly. Because if Smalldog tried anything again, threatened Jenny or any of his family, Cork would shoot him down, shoot him down without a moment of hesitation or a measure of regret.
“What about the baby?” Mal said.
It was as if Cork’s conscience had spoken. In thinking about the safety of his family, Cork had excluded the baby.
“As soon as possible, we deliver him wherever it is he should be.”
“And where’s that?”
“I don’t know. The county authorities down in Baudette probably.”
“We get rid of him,” Mal said.
“That’s not how it will be.”
“That’s how Jenny’ll see it.”
“She’ll understand.”
Mal shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Look, Mal.” Cork spoke with an intensity that bordered on anger. “A very bad man is out there in the dark somewhere, and he’s threatening my family. Why? As nearly as I can tell, it’s because of that baby. If the baby’s gone, my family’s safe. It’s as simple as that.”
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