Northwest Angle co-11

by William Kent Krueger

  “Who’d be watching for him?” Mal asked.

  Bascombe laughed, not a funny sound. “Besides Smalldog? Could be half the Angle for all I know. This whole business has me looking at all my neighbors in a different way. And frankly, I don’t like it.”

  Rose said, “They grope in darkness with no light; he makes them stagger like drunkards.”

  “What’s that?” Bascombe said.

  “From the Book of Job,” Mal replied. “A book about trust in God and patience in the face of adversity.”

  Bascombe cast them both a cold eye. “Religion,” he said, as if spitting.

  Anne brought the coffeepot around to refill cups. “What do you have against religion, Seth?” she asked.

  Bascombe lifted his cup to his thick lips. Before sipping, he replied, “Seen way too much bad to believe there’s anybody up there trying to do any good. Or if there is, they don’t know their ass from applesauce.” He paused, and a modestly contrite look came over his face. “I know you folks are religious, but that’s the way I feel.”

  “No need to apologize,” Mal said.

  Bascombe drank his coffee and fell into a brooding silence.

  Rose picked up her mug and walked to the window of the lodge. Outside, the lake was calm at last and so white under the moon that she thought it resembled a great meadow after a snowfall. In the room at her back, she felt an uncomfortable tension that came from Bascombe. She understood the big man’s despair of religion and his doubt of God, and she thought that maybe she ought to say something to take the thorns out of his thinking, but honestly, she had her own doubts.

  Then she heard the sound of an engine, and across the lake appeared a long, dark trail of disturbed water, which Rose discerned was the wake of a boat. Running lights came on, and she turned back to the others. With a clear note of relief, she said, “They’re here.”

  * * *

  “These folks are deadly serious about End Times,” Mal said after Cork and Kretsch had told their story.

  “I don’t understand why Smalldog would be there,” Anne said. “What does he have to do with their beliefs? Is he one of them?”

  Cork said, “I’ve been thinking about that.” He had his hands wrapped around a mug of freshly brewed coffee, and on the table in front of him sat a couple of Rose’s good sugar cookies. “Judging from the casings Tom and I found on that firing range, I’m guessing they have some kind of arsenal out there. They had to get the hardware from someone, and from what I understand about Smalldog, he might be just the ticket. A man with a military background, already involved in smuggling.”

  “Match made in hell, you ask me,” Bascombe said.

  “Is there anything you can do about all those weapons?” Rose asked, directing her question toward Deputy Tom Kretsch.

  Kretsch looked uncomfortable. “We didn’t find anything solid, really, and what we did find was because we were trespassing. I don’t imagine any judge would look kindly on that in considering a search warrant. And for all I know, they may have a license for all those firearms.”

  A look of incredulity leapt to Rose’s face. “A license for a fifty-caliber machine gun?”

  Bascombe said, “The sale of machine guns among private individuals is regulated by ATF, but not banned, provided the weapon in question was manufactured prior to 1986. The process is complicated, but not particularly difficult. So Tom’s right. It’s entirely possible that what they’re shooting out there is completely legal.”

  Rose gave a snort of disapproval, to which Bascombe responded, “I understand your personal feelings here, but there’s a constitutional amendment that gives those folks the perfect right to bear arms. I believe strongly in that amendment myself.”

  “Surely a fifty-caliber machine gun in the hands of a civilian wasn’t our founding fathers’ intent,” Rose shot back.

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, there’s a lot of case law says otherwise.”

  Cork broke in on an argument he knew was pointless at the moment. “Tom’s right. We can’t approach a judge with what we have, but I’d sure like another opportunity to talk with the faithful of the Seven Trumpets. See what I might be able to shake loose.”

  “How about in daylight this time,” Kretsch suggested. “First thing in the morning?”

  “That’ll do,” Cork said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m bushed.”

  “You’ll be able to sleep?” Anne asked, nodding toward the coffee mug that Cork cradled.

  “Sweetheart, a stampede of wild horses couldn’t keep me awake.”

  “We ought to keep somebody on guard,” Bascombe suggested. “In case Smalldog comes sniffing around again. Maybe switch off at hour intervals. I’ll be happy to take first watch.”

  “And I’ll take second,” Mal said.

  “I’ll relieve you,” Kretsch volunteered.

  “Then I’ll stand the last watch,” Cork said, “which should take us to dawn.”

  “I’ll give a hand in any way I can,” Rose offered. “But I won’t carry a firearm.”

  “Same here,” Anne chimed in.

  “How about you fix us a hearty breakfast in the morning,” Mal suggested. “And keep the bed warm for me.”

  Anne said, with a note of disparagement, “Women’s work.”

  Rose put her hand on her niece’s arm and smiled. “We asked.”

  Despite what he’d told Anne, Cork couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the caffeine. He just couldn’t get his brain to shut down. He went over the events of the last couple of days in his head again and again, and no matter how he juggled things, nothing made sense. He couldn’t wrap his thinking around a man like Smalldog, a man who may well have abused and then tortured and killed his own sister. A man who hated white people yet smuggled arms to a group of white religious zealots. A man who’d been raised by a father whom the Ojibwe of Windigo Island admired but had, nonetheless, turned into hate on two legs. What caused a man’s soul to be so misshapen? He wished Henry Meloux were there so he could ask his old friend that very question. If anyone could understand Noah Smalldog, it would be Meloux. And if anyone could tell Cork what he ought to be doing about Smalldog, that was also Meloux. But Henry was in his cabin on Crow Point, which was a good thing, because Jenny and Stephen and the baby were there with him, and as long as that was the case, Cork knew they were safe.

  He finally got up from his bunk and pulled on his clothes and walked outside. It was Mal’s turn on watch, and Cork spotted his brother-in-law sitting on the bench at the end of Bascombe’s dock. Mal wasn’t alone. Rose was with him, her head laid against his shoulder. In the quiet that had come that night with the end of the wind, he could hear them talking, though so softly that he couldn’t make out words. It was a scene of intimacy, of two people whose separate lives were braided together into a single strand. Cork was happy for them. And at the same time, the sight of them made him feel empty and alone. He stood in the shadow of the cabin cast by the moon and let himself, as he sometimes did, remember his wife fully. He could see her face, which had been beautiful, her eyes, which had been deep blue and sharp with intelligence, her hair the color of corn silk. He could hear her voice murmuring his name in the way she’d sometimes done after they made love, which had been like the whisper of a secret. And he felt her body shaped perfectly to his, as it had often been when he held her in the cool quiet after the heat of their passion.

  The truth, he knew in his rational thinking, was that his marriage had not always been so perfect, but at that moment it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was happy for Mal and Rose, and that he hoped, if Jenny and Aaron chose to work things out, they would find a way to braid their two lives together with love, and that, although he was himself alone now and lonely, he hadn’t always been.

  He turned and went back into his cabin and lay down thinking that if he, a man who’d known great love, felt lonely, what must a man like Noah Smalldog feel? Was there any limit to how alone a human being could be?

 
FORTY-ONE

  The child woke at first light. Jenny lifted him from the bedding inside the ice chest that had cradled him all night and walked away from where Aaron and Stephen still lay in their sleeping bags, dead to the world. From the stovepipe atop Meloux’s cabin, smoke rose white against the faint blue of the dawn sky, and Jenny could smell biscuits baking. She saw light through an open window, heard the whisper of quiet conversation inside, and thought about joining Rainy and Henry, who were clearly awake. For a little while, however, she wanted to be alone with Waaboo.

  There was a path that led away from the cabin, across the meadow, and through an outcropping of tall rocks. On the other side was a fire ring full of the ash of many fires and surrounded by sections of tree trunk cut to serve as stools. Jenny had been there on many occasions with her father and Stephen, while Henry Meloux fed sage and cedar to the fire in the ring. It was a place sacred to the old Mide. She sat on one of the makeshift stools, and stared at the water of Iron Lake not more than a dozen feet away, smooth and gray as smoked glass. Somewhere on the lake a loon cried and another answered.

  “Waaboozoons,” she said aloud. She brushed his fine black hair with her fingertips and stared down into his dark eyes, which stared right back at her. “What are you thinking, Little Rabbit?”

  “Not much,” came the reply, but it didn’t come from Little Rabbit. It was Henry Meloux who’d spoken.

  Jenny looked up as the old man walked slowly toward her from the opening in the rocks. He wore overalls and a long-sleeved flannel shirt, though the day was warm already and promised to be hot. He wore no hat, and his long white hair hung down and framed his face, which was like sandstone fractured by time and the elements. His old dog, Walleye, came with him, padding softly at his heels. Meloux seated himself on a sawed section of tree trunk next to Jenny. Waaboo’s eyes swung toward him briefly, then back to Jenny’s face.

  “He does not think,” Meloux said. “He only feels. And what he feels is comfort and love. What every child should feel, but some do not. This one is lucky.”

  “His mother was killed, Henry. How lucky is that?”

  “But he is alive. And he found you, and you found him.”

  Walleye had taken an interest in the child. He put his wet, black nose near Waaboo and sniffed, and his tail thumped the ground. Then he walked in a circle twice and lay down near Meloux.

  The old Mide watched the baby in Jenny’s arms, his eyes warm with affection. “I don’t claim to understand the Great Mystery that is Kitchimanidoo, but I believe that nothing happens without purpose. This child has been given to you for a reason.”

  “He’s not mine, Henry. I’m sure the authorities will find someone else they’ll say he belongs to.”

  “Belongs.” Meloux seemed to consider the word. “I believe no one belongs to anyone else. You, me, Waaboozoons, we are all dust borrowed for a little while from Grandmother Earth. And even that dust does not belong to her. She has borrowed it from all creation, which is the Great Mystery, which is Kitchimanidoo. And if you ask this old man, I would say that another way to think about Kitchimanidoo is as a great gift. Kitchimanidoo is not about keeping. Nothing belongs to anyone. All of creation is meant as a giving.”

  “I’m not sure that a white court would see it that way, Henry.”

  The old man smiled. “Think big.”

  Rainy appeared between the rocks and came toward them. In one hand she held a bottle prepared for the baby, in the other, a steaming mug. She brought them both to Jenny.

  “What’s this?” Jenny asked, taking the mug.

  “An old Ojibwe brew,” Rainy replied with a sly smile. “Henry taught me how to make it.”

  The old man nodded. “I have seen it help a woman make milk. If you are going to be mother to this child, it would be a good thing to be a mother in all ways.”

  “What’s in it?”

  Rainy said, “It’s safe, Jenny. Don’t worry. And it’s really rather good.”

  Jenny sipped and found that Rainy was right. It tasted of blackberry and honey and something that she couldn’t identify but that wasn’t at all unpleasant.

  “It may help,” Meloux said. “But I believe there is something powerful at work here that will help you more.”

  “What, Henry?”

  “I will let you think about that,” he said. “I am going back to the cabin. Come on, old dog. You are probably hungry. I know I am.”

  Walleye eased himself to his feet.

  Rainy said, “I’ll be there in a minute, Uncle Henry.”

  “I can butter and jam my own biscuit, Niece,” he replied, a bit churlish.

  He walked away slowly, and Walleye followed at a pace that kept him easily at the old man’s side.

  When he’d gone, Rainy explained, “He’s generally okay with me being here, but he sometimes gets resentful of my nursing.”

  “What do you do for him?”

  “Mostly the heavy work. His washing and the cooking and the cleaning. I go into Allouette for groceries,” she said, speaking of the larger of the two communities on the Iron Lake Reservation. “I charge my cell phone while I’m there.”

  “You walk?”

  “My Jeep’s parked on a logging road a couple of miles from here. Henry, if he could, would walk the whole way into town and back. He’s done it all his life. Until now.”

  “He has to be well over ninety,” Jenny said. “Isn’t it about time he slowed down?”

  “Try telling that to Uncle Henry.”

  The baby pulled away from Jenny and began to fuss in a way that she had learned was all about his empty stomach. Rainy handed her the bottle. Jenny tested the warmth of the formula with a few drops against her wrist. Satisfied, she offered it to Waaboo, who took it immediately. Jenny gently sealed the cleft in his lip with her index finger. She looked up and saw Rainy watching, her almond eyes warm with what Jenny read as approval.

  “You told me last night we’d talk more about Henry this morning,” she said. “What’s going on with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Rainy said. “And for all his wisdom in the art of healing, he doesn’t either. He believes it has nothing to do with his age, and he may well be right. I’ve known Anishinaabe men and women who’ve lived a good life and worked hard well past a hundred. There’s no reason that Uncle Henry, who’s taken good care of himself all his life, shouldn’t be among them. But something’s threatening him, it’s clear. What that threat is, we just don’t know, either of us.”

  “The hand trembling, could it be Parkinson’s?”

  “It could be, but with Parkinson’s I’d expect to see more symptoms—the tremors spreading beyond his hands, a shuffling gait, a stoop, compulsive behavior, orthostatic hypotension—which I don’t. It could be a dozen other diseases, although the symptoms don’t really fit very well with any diagnosis I’ve tried on my own so far.”

  “He won’t see a doctor?”

  Rainy shook her head. “And I’ll respect his wish.”

  “Though it may kill him?”

  “There are so many things in life we have no control over. Dying ought to be one that we do. If it’s what Uncle Henry wants, that’s the way it will be.”

  Jenny said, “This can’t be easy for you.”

  The first bit of dawn sun finally inched above the treetops, a sliver of fire that made Iron Lake burn. Rainy stared out across the still, brilliant water and breathed deeply the clean morning air.

  “I love this place. I came thinking I could help Uncle Henry. I’ve found that being here has helped me as well.” She smiled at Jenny. “My children are grown and gone. For a long time, I haven’t had a clear direction in my life. Being here, though it’s not always easy, has been a blessing. The one demand I made was that we get a new woodstove so I could cook decently,” she said with a pleasant laugh.

  “Stephen said you want to become a member of the Grand Medicine Society.”

  “Uncle Henry has been teaching me. If I become a Mide as a result, that
would be good. But it’s his knowledge, his wisdom I’m after.” She laughed. “In this, there are no diplomas.”

  Waaboo finished his bottle. Jenny laid him against her shoulder and patted him until he’d burped. Then both women stood and turned toward the cabin.

  “Migwech,” Jenny said. “For what?”

  “For helping Henry. And for helping me.”

  Rainy hugged her and said, “Love is the only river I know whose current flows both ways.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Standing the last watch alone, Cork saw the sun rise over Lake of the Woods. Only the third dawn since the storm, but it seemed to Cork that in that brief period there’d been a whole lifetime of occurrence. The day came bathed in the color of blood, and he thought of the old rhyme: “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” He didn’t need the sky to make him vigilant. He’d been tingling all night, as if some radar in his nature was on high alert.

  He stood at the end of Bascombe’s dock and heard the door of the lodge slap shut. He turned and saw Rose approaching, a mug of steaming coffee in her hand.

  “Thought maybe you could use this.”

  “God bless you,” he said.

  She studied his face. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “No.” He could smell bacon on her clothing. “Working on breakfast?”

  “That was the bargain, wasn’t it? You men stand guard, and Annie and I feed you. She’s scrambling eggs even as we speak. Everything should be ready in a few minutes. So what kept you awake? General worry?”

  “That,” Cork said.

  “And?”

  He was tempted to shrug off her question, reluctant to confess. But he needed to unburden himself to someone, and he knew that, if Jo were still alive and with him, he would have told her the truth.

  He said, “I blew it, Rose.”

  “Blew what?”

  “This.” He opened his arms to the lake. “All I wanted was for us to be happy. And what did I do? Brought us to a place so far from everything even God’s forgotten it’s here. And when Jenny needs me most, what do I do? I turn my back on her.”