The William Kent Krueger Collection #4

by William Kent Krueger

  “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.”

  “You didn’t turn your back, Cork.”

  “I didn’t exactly open my arms to her either.”

  “You mean to the child.”

  “I’m afraid she’s going be hurt again.”

  “And if she’s hurt, you’ll be hurt again, too.”

  Which was the truth at the bottom of it all, he had to admit.

  “She’s strong, Cork. She’ll survive. And so will you.”

  She looked nothing like her sister, but in Rose’s advice, Cork heard Jo speaking. He nodded, and then he leaned to her and kissed her cheek in gratitude.

  “I’m going to do my best to make sure we all survive,” he said.

  The morning was still and warm. Even so, Rose hugged herself as if she were chilled. “So what do we do now?”

  “I think today we flush out a snake or two.”

  “Noah Smalldog?”

  “And maybe some of his cohorts.”

  “The Church of the Seven Trumpets?” She shook her head in a deeply troubled way. “If they’re involved in this, what a sad thing for Christian folks.”

  “Anyone can call themselves Christian, Rose. Doesn’t make it so. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Probably every religion has its crazies.”

  “To invoke God’s name in such cruelty,” she said. “It’s enough to break your heart.”

  “Or make you really pissed.” Cork glanced down at Bascombe’s Marlin gripped in his left hand.

  Rose saw his look. “Answering violence with violence, Cork? You told me a couple of years ago that you’d never lift a firearm against another human being again.”

  “Any person who’d do what was done to Lily Smalldog or condone that kind of cruelty isn’t, in my book, a human being, Rose. Any person who might do that to a child of mine, I would kill without remorse. I’m funny that way.”

  She reached out, and her hand was cool against his cheek. “I’m praying it won’t come to that.”

  From the lodge door, Anne called out, “Come and get it.”

  “So,” Bascombe said with a bit of egg caught in his beard, “we make an assault on Stump Island today?” He sounded eager.

  “No assault, Seth,” Cork replied. “Just a lawful inquiry. And it’ll be only Tom and me going to Stump.”

  “Whoa.” Bascombe lifted his head abruptly from where it had hovered over his plate as he shoveled his food in. “Wait a minute. I want a piece of this action.”

  “I need you to do something else.”

  “Yeah? What?” He didn’t sound happy.

  “Your computer doesn’t work, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is there somewhere on the Angle that you can get access to the Internet?”

  “I guess lots of folks would let me use their computers if I asked.”

  “Good. I’d like you to head to
the mainland this morning while Tom and I are at Stump Island. Get onto the Internet and find out anything you can about the Church of the Seven Trumpets and the Hornetts.”

  “Hell, that doesn’t sound like much fun.”

  “It’s important. I’d like to know everything I can about these folks. Where they came from, if they’ve been in trouble before. It’s exactly the kind of thing you probably used to do in your work for ATF.”

  “Yeah, but I always preferred being out in the field. And how is that going to get us to Smalldog?”

  “That’s the second part of what I want you to do,” Cork said. “I want you to go over to Windigo Island and talk to Cherri Allen and Amos Powassin. See if any of the Ojibwe who went out yesterday found anything that might help us track down Smalldog.”

  Bascombe’s eyes lit up at that. “Okay. But if we go hunting him, I’m not sitting that one out.”

  “It’s a deal,” Cork said. “Mal, are you okay sporting a rifle on the home front here?”

  “Like I did last night, I’ll hold the thing and make sure anyone who might be watching knows that I’ve got it. But, Cork, if it comes to having to shoot, I won’t promise.”

  “I can’t imagine Smalldog would try anything in broad daylight. But I don’t know the man, so I can’t say for sure.”

  Mal said, “I’ll do what I can.”

  Near the end of the meal, Kretsch excused himself and went to his cabin. He came back dressed in the khaki uniform of a Lake of the Woods County sheriff’s deputy—badge, duty belt, and all.

  “I don’t often wear it,” he admitted, “but I kind of like the feel of authority it lends.”

  “You look magnificent,” Rose said.

  When they’d finished breakfast, they headed to the dock. Cork and Kretsch got into the deputy’s boat, and Bascombe got into his launch.

  “Be careful, Dad,” Anne said.

  “I’ll be the picture of diplomacy,” Cork told her, and he hugged her for good measure.

  Kretsch and Cork headed off first, then Bascombe. When Cork looked back, his daughter and Mal and Rose were still on the dock, huddled together, shielding their eyes against the strong morning sun as they watched the boats grow distant.