“You were out there to pick a fight with him, weren’t you?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Buzz, please,” Mrs. Bigby pleaded.
“I’m going to keep at this kid and the other one,” Bigby snapped at his wife, “until I know the truth.”
“Clarence,” Cork’s mother said evenly, “I know you’re upset, and so I’m going to overlook your tone and your accusation, but I don’t want you bothering my son about this. Cork’s told everything he knows, and that’s that.” She gave Mrs. Bigby a nod in parting and said, “Alice, I think we’d best be going.”
Cork glanced at Lester, who was staring up fearfully at the towering figure of his father, and he felt an immeasurable sadness for all the Bigbys, alive and dead.
They left the church basement, which had grown crypt quiet during Buzz Bigby’s outburst, and went upstairs and out into the bright October afternoon. Cork looked up, and the sunlight blinded him in much the way it had at Trickster’s Point when he’d tried to see what was happening on top of the monolith. He felt sad to the point of tears, although he didn’t actually cry, thinking especially about Donner’s mother, whose suffering seemed great and was not just about the loss of her son. He felt his own mother’s arm around his shoulders, and she said, “He’s always been an angry man, Cork. And now he’s hurting as well. I think you just do your best to forgive him, and leave the rest to God.”
* * *
Although he’d told the Jaegers he was headed home, that wasn’t true exactly. Cork had a stop to make first. He headed to the Iron Lake Reservation. As he approached Allouette, he turned west off the main road onto a narrow dirt lane that ran between poplars to a modest house on the lakeshore. He pulled to a stop, got out, and climbed the steps to the porch. Although the house was completely dark and appeared empty, he knocked anyway, waited, then called out, “Winona? It’s Cork O’Connor.”
He left the porch and walked around to the back, down a worn path to a small dock, where an aluminum boat fitted with an old outboard was moored. Across the lake, which in the growing dark and under the heavy cloud cover had taken on the look of a deep, empty hole, he could see the lights of town. Normally, the glimmer would have warmed his heart because it was a reminder of home, but that night it seemed like a kind of watch fire built against some nebulous threat.
In Allouette, which felt mostly deserted, he pulled up before an old wooden storefront that had been refurbished. The gray, flaking wood had been sanded and slapped with coats of white paint, and the broken windows had been replaced with new plate glass. Above the door hung a brightly lettered sign: IRON LAKE CENTER FOR NATIVE ART. It was an enterprise owned and operated by Winona and Willie Crane. Like the house Cork had just visited, the center was dark and empty.
When he drove past the Mocha Moose, however, he saw that he was in luck. At the counter inside the coffee shop, two men stood talking with Sarah LeDuc. One of the men was Isaiah Broom, a member of the Tribal Council and a Shinnob with a long history of activism on behalf of the Native community. His was also a name on the list that Henry Meloux had given Cork, the list of those whom Sam Winter Moon had taught to hunt in the old way. The other man was Winona’s brother, Willie Crane. Cork parked at the curb and killed the engine.
He didn’t go in immediately but sat for a couple of minutes watching. Sarah LeDuc was the widow of George LeDuc, who’d been an old and good friend to Cork before he was killed by the same people responsible for the death of Cork’s wife. Cork sometimes dropped by the Mocha Moose, and he and Sarah talked in the way of people who shared an understanding others did not. Isaiah Broom, an enormous Shinnob, towered over her. He was nearing fifty and wore his hair in two long braids that hung down his chest. Beside him, Willie Crane seemed fragile. Willie had grown into a tall man, but slender and with a softness in his face and his voice. He still walked with the awkward gait that was one of the legacies of his cerebral palsy, and when he spoke, he spoke carefully in order to be clearly understood. In addition to running the Iron Lake Center for Native Art, he was a well-known wildlife photographer and nature writer.
The conversation the three friends were involved in was clearly a lively one. Broom’s mouth worked in an exaggerated way, and he threw his arms about dramatically. Sarah put her hands close together, as if framing a picture she was trying to make Broom see. Willie just seemed to listen intently.
Cork got out of the Land Rover and went inside. The talk stopped immediately, and three faces with shaded skin turned his way.
“Boozhoo, Dead-eye,” Isaiah Broom said.
“Not funny, Isaiah.” Cork crossed the floor, where the old wood boards creaked under his weight.
“Not meant to be. It was spoken with respect.”
“I didn’t kill Jubal Little.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“Don’t mind him, Cork,” Sarah said. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better. It’s been a tough couple of days.”
“We were just talking about that,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry. Being with Jubal Little while he died, that had to be awful.”
“Another body up there, we heard,” Willie said. Although he spoke it carefully, it still sounded something like Nother bauee up ere, weeard.
“Yeah,” Cork said.
Sarah pulled a mug from a stack back of the counter, filled it from one of the big urns, and handed it to Cork, who said “Migwech.”
“Do you know who it was?” she asked.
“They ID’d the guy. Nobody I know. His driver’s license says he’s from Red Wing. Maybe just a hunter. They were still working the scene when I left.”
“Heard Stephen was there with you,” Broom said. “Grisly sight for a kid to see, I imagine.” There wasn’t much real concern in his voice.
“He’ll be okay,” Cork said.
“You must be used to dead bodies by now,” Broom said. “Two in as many days.”
“Leave him be, Isaiah,” Sarah said.
“That’s okay.” Cork gave Broom a long, steady look. “Where were you yesterday morning, Isaiah?”
Broom shrugged. “At home.”
“Witnesses?”
“Why would I need witnesses?”
“Because a long time ago, Sam Winter Moon taught you how to hunt in the old way. I’m thinking that Jubal Little was killed by someone who knew the old way. And it’s clear that you’re not unhappy he’s dead.”
“Personally, I don’t care one way or the other,” Broom said. “But as a Shinnob, I’m relieved. He might’ve tried to pass himself off as Blackfeet, but that man was no friend to the Native community.”
“So if I were to mention your name to the sheriff’s investigators as someone who has both the ability and motive, and maybe even had the opportunity, to kill Jubal, you’d have no problem?”
“Oh, the chimooks would just love that,” Broom said, using unkind Ojibwe slang for whites. “Indians pointing fingers at each other.”
“Rainy Bisonette told me it was you who brought the news to her and Meloux out on Crow Point. How’d you hear about it?”
“Maybe the wind told me,” Broom said with an enigmatic grin.
Sarah said, “Smiley Black’s got a police radio scanner. He came roaring into town spouting the news to everyone in earshot. By the time you and the sheriff’s people got back to Trickster’s Point, pretty much the whole rez knew.”
“Why are you here?” Willie asked. Whyouere?
“Actually, I came looking for you, Willie. Mind if we talk a minute? Alone?”
Cork carried his mug, and they stepped outside. He walked slowly to accommodate Willie’s laborious locomotion. They stood in the light that fell through the window of the Mocha Moose.
“I just stopped by Winona’s house,” Cork said. “She’s not there. I need to talk to her.”
“Why?”
“You know that list I mentioned, the one with names of Shinnobs who Sa
m Winter Moon had taught how to bow-hunt? Winona’s name was on it.”
“She didn’t kill Jubal,” Willie said with great care. “God knows she had reason to, but she didn’t do it.”
“Where is she?”
“When she’s ready, she’ll let you know.”
“Is she hiding, Willie?”
“She’s grieving. Just let her be.”
“Will you tell her something for me?”
“Sure.”
“Tell her that Jubal gave me a message for her.”
“What message?”
“It’s for Winona.”
In the drizzle of light on the empty sidewalk, Willie Crane’s face became unreadable, stolid in the practiced way of the Anishinaabeg. At the Food ’N Fuel down the street, an old pickup pulled away, its bad muffler roaring like a wild beast. When the sound had faded into the night, Willie said, “Dead, and he still can’t leave her alone.” Then he said, in a voice vacant of all emotion, “I’ll tell her.”
CHAPTER 17
When Cork arrived home, Waaboo was already asleep in his crib. Cork wasn’t surprised—it was well past the little guy’s bedtime—but he was disappointed. He enjoyed those evenings when Jenny let him put Waaboo down. There was an old rocker in the bedroom that had become the nursery where Cork loved to sit with his grandson on his lap, and he would read to Waaboo from one of the many picture books—Goodnight Moon or The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Chicka Chicka Boom Boom—until those little eyelids drifted closed, and then he would sit for a while longer with that small, warm body nestled against him, and there was nothing he could think of that made him feel more content.
That night he would have appreciated a moment of contentedness.
Cork had come through the backyard, as he had earlier that day, to avoid any media who might still be lying in wait. Stephen and Jenny were at the kitchen table, and when he walked in, it was clear they’d been talking. Stephen was drinking from a glass of chocolate milk he’d made with Hershey’s syrup. Jenny had a mug in front of her. They were both eating chocolate chip cookies that Cork knew had come from the cookie jar shaped like Sesame Street’s Ernie, which sat on the kitchen counter. The jar had been a baby shower gift when Jo O’Connor was pregnant with Jenny, and the cookies that had filled it had sustained the O’Connors through more crises than Cork could remember.
“There’s coffee,” Jenny said.
“No thanks.” Cork went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Leinenkugel’s beer. He lifted Ernie’s head, pulled a cookie from the jar, and sat at the table with his children. “How’re you doing, buddy?” he asked his son.
Stephen thought it over. “Okay, I guess. I just . . .”
“What?” Cork asked.
Stephen’s face tightened. “I just don’t understand why death seems to circle this family like some kind of, I don’t know, vulture.”
Cork said, “I don’t either. When I quit law enforcement, you guys were part of the reason. I saw the toll it was taking, and I wasn’t happy about it. I thought I could just step away, and that was that. I was wrong, I guess.”
Jenny lifted her coffee but didn’t drink. She said, “You’re a windbreak.”
“A what?”
“That’s what Mom told me once. She said trouble’s like this wind that blows and blows and there have to be windbreaks to keep it from sweeping everything away. She told me you’re one of the windbreaks. It didn’t make her happy, but it’s who you are.”
Cork said, “I don’t look for trouble.”
“Ogichidaa,” Stephen said.
“Ogichidaa?” Cork repeated the Ojibwe word, whose meaning he knew well. It was often misused, or misinterpreted, to mean “warrior.” Its true meaning, however, was “someone who stood between his people and bad things.”
“That’s what Henry told me once when we were talking about you,” Stephen explained. “He said you didn’t have a choice, that you were chosen. He said that when we come into the world we’re given responsibilities by Kitchimanidoo. Yours was to be ogichidaa.”
“I’d give it back if I could.” Cork took a bite of his cookie. “These are good.”
“Stephen made them,” Jenny said.
“Did Meloux say your responsibility is baking?” Cork smiled.
“Nanaandawi,” Stephen said seriously. “Healing.”
“What about me?” Jenny asked.
“Nakomis,” Stephen said.
“A grandmother?” Jenny didn’t look pleased. “Like my skin’s wrinkled and my boobs are saggy? I need to have a talk with Henry.”
“He meant that your spirit is old and wise and nurturing, like Grandmother Earth.”
“I still think I’d better have a talk with him,” she said with a wry smile. She sipped her coffee and asked, “How’s Mrs. Little?”
“Distraught. But all things considered, she’s doing all right. She has her family around her for support.”
“Dad, how come she never came up here with Mr. Little?” Stephen asked.
“She did sometimes.”
“Not much. Whenever you got together with him, he was alone.”
“I think Camilla isn’t fond of the North Country, not like Jubal was. This was his home.” Then, to cut off this particular line of conversation, Cork said, “School tomorrow. You have homework?”
“A little math,” Stephen replied. “And an essay on Manifest Destiny. But I can do that in one word: Bullshit.”
A gentle knocking came from the dining room, from the door that opened onto the backyard patio. They all looked at one another with surprise and then irritation. Cork set his beer down and scooted his chair away from the table.
“No, Dad, let me,” Jenny said. “If it’s a reporter, I’ll say you’re not here.”
“And then tell him if he trespasses again, we’ll have him arrested,” Cork growled.
Jenny left and came back a few moments later. “It’s Mr. Crane.”
“At the patio door?” Then Cork understood. Willie had probably parked on Willow Street, just as Cork had, and come through the backyard to avoid any reporters who might still be lurking out front. He left the kitchen table and met his visitor on the patio.
Without preamble, Willie said, “She wants to see you.” Shewanseeyou.
“Where is she?”
“I’ll take you.”
* * *
Because he couldn’t trust his left leg to do what most people’s legs did naturally, Willie drove a Jeep Wrangler modified with hand controls for braking. Because he used it often to get himself into remote areas of the backcountry where he shot the photographs that had built his reputation, the outside of the Wrangler was layered with caked mud. Willie Crane was one of the most admirable men Cork knew. Despite his cerebral palsy—or maybe because of it, Cork sometimes thought—Willie had a long list of remarkable accomplishments to his credit. He’d written articles and provided photographs for National Geographic, Audubon, National Wildlife, Outside, and dozens of other periodicals. He’d produced several collections of his own essays with accompanying photographs. He had a small gallery in downtown Saint Paul, which, like the Iron Lake Center for Native Art, featured not only his own work but the work of many Indian artists. He was painfully aware of his speech difficulty and never spoke in public, but through his writings, he’d become a strong and respected voice for habitat preservation and wildlife conservation.
They headed toward Allouette, but half a mile outside town, Willie turned onto a narrow gravel road, and Cork knew they were going to his cabin. Years before, Willie had built a little place on the far eastern edge of the reservation, nestled against a small lake. The cabin was simple, built of logs and surrounded on three sides by aspens. When they pulled up, Winona’s Ford Ranger was parked in front, and light poured from the interior of the cabin. They got out, and Cork followed Willie inside. It was a cozy place, an open area that doubled as living room and kitchen, with a closed door off either end of the room. The place smelled of spi
ced tea and, more faintly, of photographic chemicals. When the photography world turned digital, Willie had stayed with film. He did his own processing in a darkroom behind one of the closed doors. Because Cork had been here before, he knew that the other closed door led to Willie’s bedroom.
“Nona?” Willie called. He received no answer and started toward the bedroom door. He said to Cork, “Wait here.” Waiere.
Willie kept the cabin neat, and he’d decorated the walls with framed prints of some of his award-winning photographs. Many were landscape shots that captured beautifully the dramatic interplay of light and wilderness. Others were of wildlife—moose and deer and bears and eagles and osprey and lynx and foxes—all caught unawares and in such a natural state and so clearly that Cork had the sense he was looking at them through a window and they were just on the other side of the glass, breathing.
Willie returned. “She’s not here.”
“Her truck’s here,” Cork pointed out.
“The fire ring, maybe,” Willie said.
They went out the way they’d come in and around to the back of the cabin. Because of the overcast, there were no stars, no moon, and the night was pitch black. But in the faint light that fell through the cabin windows, Cork saw a narrow path. He followed Willie’s clumsy feet along the path to the lakeshore. From there, he could see the fire, a small dance of light in the lee of a rock that stood a dozen feet back from the water and was as big as a buffalo.
When they reached the fire ring, only a few flames were still licking at the night air. A blanket that looked of Navajo design lay rumpled on the ground next to the ring, as if thrown there in haste. Winona was nowhere to be seen.
“Nona!” Willie called toward the woods. Then he turned and cried toward the lake, “Nona! It’s Willie.” He waited and finally turned to Cork. “She’s afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of whoever it was that killed Jubal Little.”
“Why?”
“She knows things, things about a lot of powerful people.”
Of course she did. No one was closer to Jubal Little than Winona Crane. They’d been lovers forever. He told her everything.
The William Kent Krueger Collection #4 Page 78