Only the Dead

by Vidar Sundstøl

  “That very evening, he went over to the lake to throw the knife into the water. But just as he was about to do that, he had a sudden feeling the knife was not merely a dead object. It felt like . . . like a friend. And now he was supposed to throw it into the lake so it would never be found again? He couldn’t make himself do it. But his wife would refuse to have it in the house if she found out he hadn’t done as she asked, so on his way home the man hid the knife in a hollow tree he knew about. Every evening he would go over to that tree and take out the knife. Whenever he held it in his hand, he would get the same feeling that this was more than just a knife. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he thought it had to be magic, because it had come sailing toward him in a little canoe on the big lake, and it felt like it was alive. So he thought, just as his wife did, that the knife had some connection to the spirit world. And yet he couldn’t make himself give it up.

  “Soon he became so obsessed by the knife that his wife thought he was going out to the woods to be with another woman. She asked her husband if that was what he was doing, and she said she refused to accept a simple no as an answer. The man told her she was right, he was going to the woods every evening to see another woman. After that, his wife left him and went to live with the family of one of her brothers. The man was happy because finally he was alone in the house. Now he could bring the knife home. It would no longer have to live in the hollow tree in the woods. He tore out a piece of the lining in his jacket and used it to make a fine bed for the knife next to his own on the earthen floor. Then he went to the woods to get it. When he neared the hiding place, he caught sight of the back of a man disappearing among the trees.”

  Lance thought about what he’d seen at the creek a few hours earlier. As if somebody had quickly retreated so he wouldn’t be seen.

  Willy breathed hard as he straightened up in his chair and slowly reached for the glass of water on the table. Once again Lance saw how the old man’s hand shook as he raised the glass to his lips. Some of the water spilled over the side, running down his wrist and under his shirtsleeve, but Willy didn’t seem to notice. When he finally managed to get the glass into position, he tilted his head back and emptied it in three big gulps. Then the glass had to travel in the opposite direction, back to its place on the table. Lance realized that all his muscles had tensed up while the whole drinking ritual was under way. Willy straightened up and pressed one hand to his stomach. Then he proceeded to belch for several seconds. Lance could smell it from the other side of the table. Finally the old Indian exhaled audibly and sank back against his chair.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now where were we?”

  “The man was approaching the hollow tree where he’d hidden the knife,” said Lance. “But someone was there.”

  “Yes, he saw the back of a man disappearing among the trees. He got worried, but when he looked inside the hiding place, the knife was still there. That night he was finally able to keep the knife at his side, and the next day he attached it to his belt and began using it, which was what he’d always wanted to do. Even though the knife was magic, it was still a knife. And it was a good one. He used it every single day. He cut off slices of moose meat, gutted fish, and whittled splinters of wood that he could use to light a fire in the hearth. But at night he would place the knife on the soft bed he had made for it. And there they would lie, stretched out next to each other like any other married couple.

  “One day when he went down to his canoe at the lake, he again saw a man disappearing among the trees. And even though he saw him only from the back, he felt sure it was the same man he’d seen near the hollow tree. He followed him into the woods for a short way, but the man was gone. He wasn’t happy about this, because he thought it had something to do with the knife. He wondered if the man might be a spirit who was looking for it. For a moment he even considered throwing the knife into the lake, but when he held it in his hand, he felt as if he were about to kill a friend, and he couldn’t do it. He continued to carry it with him in the daytime, and placed it beside him when he slept at night.

  “Until one day when he went over to Hat Point again to set out his nets. That was when he noticed a canoe drifting nearby. He had no idea where it had come from, because he hadn’t seen or heard anyone. When the two canoes were only a stone’s throw from each other, he realized the man in the other canoe was Swamper Caribou. He knew the medicine man had disappeared several months earlier. Everyone knew about it. He’d also heard that Swamper had been killed and eaten by an ice giant, a so-called windigo. Now he understood that it was Swamper he’d seen earlier, and it made sense that the knife belonged to the spirit world. Swamper Caribou’s spirit had come to take it back.

  “The man paddled for shore as fast as he could go, but the whole time he could hear the oar strokes of the other canoeist coming closer. When his canoe scraped bottom, only a few yards from shore, he jumped out and began wading toward land. But he was worn out after paddling so hard, and he slipped and fell. As he lay on his back in the shallow water, hardly able to move, he was certain the end had come. With the last of his strength he propped himself up enough on his elbows so he could look behind him. But no one was there. Nor did he see any canoe other than his own, which was several yards away.

  “After that the man stopped going outside. He would lie on his bed all day long, staring at the knife that lay next to him on its own little bed made from the scrap of cloth from his jacket lining. He couldn’t stop looking at it. If he tried to do something else, his mind would remain focused on the knife, and he was no longer capable of accomplishing anything. He felt himself more strongly connected to the knife than to any human being, even his own mother. He didn’t understand it, nor did he have any wish to understand it. He just wanted to feel it. That was his only wish.

  “But one day something occurred that he had long expected would happen. He was lying there looking at the knife when the door opened and Swamper Caribou stood in the doorway. The man was as frightened as anyone would be when confronted by a spirit. He lay there next to the knife, staring at the figure in the doorway. Swamper Caribou came over to the man, who could feel the blazing eyes of the medicine man on him. He knew that now he was going to lose the knife, the only true friend he had. The medicine man squatted down, picked up the knife, and studied it closely. He looked pleased and nodded to himself. Then he said, ‘You have taken something that does not belong to you.’ The man was so terrified to hear the spirit speak that he couldn’t muster a single word in reply. ‘This knife belongs to someone else. He needs it where he is now,’ said the spirit. Then the medicine man stood up and calmly left the house.

  “The man had survived an encounter with the spirit world, but he was completely changed. Friends and neighbors hardly recognized him. He never smiled anymore, and they soon forgot that they’d ever heard him laugh. He grew thin and his hair turned gray. Over the course of only a few weeks he had become an old man. One day in the fall he was standing on the wharf here in Grand Portage, waiting for the steamboat from Duluth. A big crowd always gathered for the arrival of the boat. Some came to meet family members or acquaintances who had gone to town; others were waiting for supplies. But most people just came to see the boat and the crowd. The man was standing there with his uncle. Neither of them had any special reason for being there. They were just watching the boat pull into the dock. That was when he caught sight of Swamper Caribou’s spirit up on the deck, together with a group of passengers about to come ashore in Grand Portage. His uncle could tell something was wrong because the man kept pointing as he gawked and tried to say something, but not a word came out of his mouth. When his uncle asked him what was the matter, the man finally managed to whisper in his ear that he could see a spirit standing on the deck of the steamboat. And it wasn’t just any old spirit, either. It was the spirit of Swamper Caribou. It stood alone, just to the left of the group of passengers, and it was smoking a pipe.

  “But his uncle laughed loudly. ‘That’s
Swamper Caribou’s brother you’re looking at, you miserable fool,’ he said. ‘Do you really think spirits travel by steamboat?’ It was the brother that he’d seen all along. He was the one who had crept around in the woods, and he was the one who had come to get the knife so that the other medicine men could once again send it out onto the lake. Even though the whole mystery was finally solved, the man never returned to his former self. And he didn’t get his wife back, either.”

  A few seconds passed before Lance realized that this was the end of the story. He had a feeling Willy was trying to tell him something about Mary, about their marriage. Maybe even something about what he’d done wrong. But what had happened had simply happened, and he was not solely to blame. That was just how things had turned out. And in the end Mary no longer wanted to live with him. She probably realized she’d chosen the wrong man. Suddenly Lance felt terribly tired. He’d been out hunting all day and had to get up early in the morning too. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was five to eleven.

  “What exactly does this story have to do with your dream?” he asked.

  “I forget now,” replied Willy.

  “You forget?”

  Willy threw out his hands in apology. “I’m an old man,” he said. “My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

  “But why was it so important to tell me all this?”

  Willy looked as if he didn’t quite understand the question. “Well, you were so preoccupied with Swamper Caribou the last time you were here,” he said.

  “Sure, I guess so . . . ,” said Lance.

  “You asked me whether I knew any old stories about him. You even showed me a photograph. Or did I dream that too?”

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “A picture of his brother,” Willy went on.

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “Didn’t you say that one of your ancestors killed Swamper?”

  “I did say that.”

  “Why?”

  “Er, because . . . because of the coincidence of time and place. Swamper Caribou disappeared in March 1892, around the time of the full moon, which was on the sixteenth of the month.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s mentioned in an issue of the Grand Marais Pioneer from that year. I have the Historical Society archives at home, you know. Joe Caribou, Swamper’s brother, had gone to see the editor to report his brother missing. And that’s where it said the full moon was on March 16.”

  “And what about this ancestor of yours?”

  “Thormod Olson, a relative on my mother’s side of the family. He arrived alone, at the age of fifteen, in March 1892. He walked across the ice at night, in the moonlight, the whole way from Duluth to where Tofte is today. In my family the story goes that he fell through the ice and then survived a long cold night in the woods.”

  “But you don’t believe that?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Lance hesitated a few seconds before replying.

  “In the historical archives there’s an old diary that was written by one of my great-grandmothers. My mother’s paternal grandmother. Thormod Olson finally made it to their cabin, and they nursed him back to health. But in the diary she writes that he had two deep wounds in his right arm. To me it sounds as if he had tried to defend himself from being stabbed, or something like that.”

  “Stabbed by Swamper Caribou?”

  “Maybe.”

  Lance didn’t mention what else he’d discovered in the diary—the fact that his great-grandmother Nanette, whom everyone had always described as French Canadian, was actually Ojibwe. Not necessarily full-blooded, but still. Andy and Lance Hansen both had Ojibwe blood in their veins. This was something that Lance hadn’t told anyone.

  “Then maybe it’s not really so strange that I thought you should hear this story, is it?” said Willy.

  “No. You did the right thing to call me.”

  “Besides, it’s Sunday tomorrow, so you can sleep in.”

  “No, I can’t. I’m going hunting.”

  “Oh, right. Because you didn’t shoot anything today?”

  “I chose not to shoot.”

  Lance looked down and noticed that the legs of his pants were spattered with tiny drops of blood.

  “I ran over a cat. Had to kill it.”

  “You should wash up before you leave. You’ve got some blood on your face too.”

  “And you didn’t say anything until now?”

  “It doesn’t bother me. But in case you stop at a gas station or something . . . You look like you murdered somebody.”

  Lance went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Blood was sprinkled on his forehead, his nose, and his right cheek. It looked like he had freckles. How long had he pounded on that poor animal? It was as if the blows had been inside him, just waiting to get out, and he hadn’t even stopped when the cat lay still. He turned on the faucet, and as he was about to put his hands under the stream of water, he saw that they, too, were spattered with blood. Fortunately nobody had seen him like this. Only Willy. He was sure about that. But then he remembered the other car, which had stopped right next to him. He had kept on bashing the cat, and after a few moments the car had driven off. Was it possible someone had recognized him? So what? He’d run over a cat and had been forced to put it out of its misery. Any responsible person would have done the same.

  In the hall he put on his boots and jacket. Then he opened the door to the living room and stuck his head inside. Willy was still sitting in the same easy chair, with his hands clasped on his stomach.

  “I’ll be off now,” he said.

  “No, sit down,” said Willy.

  “But . . .”

  “Just for a moment. You come here so seldom.”

  Lance went into the room and sat down again, this time wearing his jacket and boots.

  “When you and Mary got divorced . . .” Willy began, but then stopped himself. After a pause he continued. “I’ve always considered you to be a good man, Lance. But don’t you think you tend to get a bit . . . obsessed? Get totally lost in . . . well, one thing or another?”

  Lance realized that he had no desire to continue this conversation.

  “Isn’t that true?”

  “Obsessed? The fact that Mary and I got divorced was . . . But things are fine for everybody now, right?”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, I do. Isn’t everything fine? With Jimmy and Mary? They’re okay, aren’t they?”

  “Sure, but I don’t think anybody believes you’re okay anymore.”

  Instead of making a joke or brushing the remark aside, Lance simply sat there, looking around the room as if searching for a peg to hang it on.

  “I was wondering whether you might have become . . . obsessed with something again.”

  “I’m perfectly fine,” said Lance.

  The old man reacted with an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  Lance stood up.

  “Don’t go,” said Willy.

  “I don’t have time for this,” said Lance, and he left.

  3

  ONLY THE ROWANBERRIES, hanging in big clusters, shimmered in the gray light. Lance sat in his car, waiting for his brother. Taped to the middle of the steering wheel was a photograph of his seven-year-old son. The radio was on, but turned down too low for him to hear what was being said. A flock of waxwings was eating berries from the rowan trees that stood between the parking lot and the river. It was an annual sight in November.

  He took a heart-shaped Dove chocolate out of his jacket pocket, removed the thin foil wrapper, and placed the candy on his tongue. His mouth quickly filled with the sweet taste. As always, he smoothed out the wrapper to read what it said inside.

  “Your secret admirer will soon appear.”

  A second later Andy pulled into the parking lot. Lance got out. The air felt damp, but it wasn’t raining. He opened the back of the Jeep. There lay the wrench, with a big white t
uft of fur stuck to the dried blood. His rifle, a .243-caliber Savage with fiberglass stock, was wrapped up in a brown blanket. After casting a quick glance at his brother, who was still sitting in his Chevy Blazer, Lance unwrapped his gun. Then he hid the wrench under the blanket.

  Only when he heard Andy close his car door did he turn around.

  “Early, aren’t you?” said his brother. He had on dark green rain gear, just like Lance. And he was wearing a Minnesota Twins cap.

  “Not really,” replied Lance, slamming the magazine into place. Beyond the trees, where the waxwings were still stuffing themselves with rowanberries, he could see the froth on the river as it rushed past the steep slopes of the rocky section, just before the bridge. It looked like something between a waterfall and rapids. He could clearly hear the roar of the water. Below the bridge the river slowed and calmly traversed the last few hundred yards until it reached the lake down near Baraga’s Cross.

  “So where did you say you saw that buck in the summer?”

  “Right up here.” Andy opened the back of his vehicle. He took out his rifle and slung it over his shoulder. “But whether it’s still around . . .”

  “Is your cell phone fully charged today?”

  “It’s working fine.”

  “I sure hope so, since I can’t find the walkie-talkies.”

  Andy looked at his brother for a moment without commenting.

  “Your turn to drive?” he finally asked.

  Lance nodded.

  “I suppose it’s natural to divide it up into shorter drives, right?” Andy went on. “Because of the power line.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if nothing happens by the time you get there, we’ll make another attempt.”

  “Farther up, near the big bend in the river,” said Lance. “There should be some great posts in the hills over there.”

  He looked at his watch. “How much time do you need to get up to the power line?”

  “Shall we say half an hour?” replied Andy.

  LANCE MUST HAVE BEEN about ten at the time. Their father had taken the two boys along on a fishing trip, and they had borrowed a cabin. All these years later, Lance couldn’t recall where it was located, but he did remember that they’d caught some fish. He had a clear memory of frying and eating the fish in the cabin at night. But that wasn’t what he was thinking about as he sat in the car with his rifle beside him, waiting in the parking lot near the Cross River.