“Tell you what. When we’ve finished with the dishes, we’ll go into the backyard and I’ll throw you the football.”
He smiled, as he knew she intended, but shook his head. “Work to do.”
“Cop work?”
“I’m going to talk to Mary Margaret.”
“Alone?”
“That’s what I’m shooting for.”
“Will Duncan allow that?”
“If I’m lucky, he won’t be there. When I talked to him in the guest cottage, it looked to me as if that might be where he’s spending his nights now.”
“If you ask me, after what he did to Mary Margaret, he should be spending his nights in jail.”
“I’m doing my best to put him there.”
“Does that mean you think Oscar Manydeeds is in the clear?”
“In the clear? You’ve been watching too many cop shows. But no, that’s not what it means. Just following up on all the possibilities.”
She paused in her work, her hands deep in the soapy water, and looked at her husband steadily. “Liam, you’re not from here. You’re a wonderful cop and that’s why you’re our sheriff. But there are forces at work in this place that you can’t possibly understand, emotions that run deep and go back to forever. You’re walking a thin line. And…” She took a wet hand from the sink and put it to his cheek.
“And what?”
“There’s a fire here that’s raged for generations and you’re walking right into the middle of it. I’m wondering what will be left of you when you come out on the other side.”
Her wet hand was still held against his face, and drips of water crawled down his cheek with the same feel as tears.
CHAPTER 24
It was going on seven-thirty that evening when Oscar Manydeeds pulled into Grant Park in his 1945 Ford pickup. Like a lot of vehicles on the rez, it was a patchwork of salvaged parts—the body pale green, the cab doors brown, the hood cherry red. Manydeeds had pieced it together himself. In his wild youth, he’d spent a good deal of time in a juvenile detention center south of the Twin Cities and had learned the basics of auto mechanics there. Back on the rez, he’d continued to learn on his own, tinkering with vehicles suffering from all kinds of mechanical issues, until he’d acquired a reputation as a Shinnob with a knack for machines. Unlike so many other Frankenstein vehicle creations on the rez, his truck ran with a smooth hum.
Oscar said, “Find your own damn way home tomorrow. I got a job to do.”
Billy hopped out, lifted a bike from the bed of the truck, and his uncle took off.
Cork and Jorge had been standing behind the framework of the park’s picnic pavilion. When Billy was alone, they stepped into plain sight.
“Did you tell him who you were hanging out with tonight?” Cork asked.
“That would’ve got me nowhere,” Billy said. “Just told him and my mom it was some friends.”
“Let’s get started,” Cork said. “We should be there before dark.”
Cork lifted his backpack, onto which he’d tied his sleeping bag and a canteen of water. Jorge had a sleeping bag, too, bound with twine to the carrier on the back of his bike. He also shouldered a knapsack. Billy Downwind had brought only a blanket, rolled and tied with a long leather cord that looped over his shoulder. They mounted up and headed north out of Aurora.
By the time they reached the meadow, a gentle blue twilight had settled over Lightning Strike. The air in the Northwoods had cooled after sunset, and the clearing was quiet and inviting. On the far side was a small bared circle filled with char and ash and outlined with stones in a ring, the place Billy and his uncle Big John and Cork, when he was with them, had built fires when they’d spent nights at Lightning Strike. The boys laid their bicycles down in the tall grass there.
“Let’s gather wood,” Cork said.
Ten minutes later, they were back at the fire ring, each with an armful of dead branches. Cork built a tepee of twigs and small limbs over a bed of dry pine needles, lit the needles with a kitchen match, and slowly added wood while the fire grew. By the time white stars began popping through the ink of the night sky, a good blaze was burning.
“Now?” Jorge said.
“Let’s wait awhile,” Cork said. “There’s no hurry. How about something to eat?”
He’d brought Fritos and Oreo cookies. Jorge had brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apples. They chowed down, then sat for a while, staring into the fire.
All his life, Cork would love the magnetism of a campfire, as did anyone who’d spent nights outside the glare of a city’s lights. There was something elemental in fire, which warmed the heart as well as the body, mesmerized the eyes, cleared the brain of worry, let in a healing peace. He’d experienced this many times with his father and mother and Grandma Dilsey and Henry Meloux around the fire ring on Crow Point. Grandma Dilsey had told him that Nanaboozhoo, the trickster, had stolen fire and given it as a gift to human beings. Cork thought it was a generous gift.
“I’m not going back,” Billy Downwind said out of nowhere.
“To the rez?” Cork said.
“Los Angeles.” Billy stared at the fire and his eyes blazed. “I hate it there.”
“You told me it was a great place.”
“I just said that. It’s noisy and it stinks and everyone hates us.”
“But your dad has a good job, right?”
“Another promise they didn’t keep. He doesn’t work every day, and when he does, it’s some shitty job. Pushing a broom or washing dishes or something. He could barely scrape together the money for two train tickets to get Mom and me here. There’s no way he has the money to bring us back. I don’t want to go back anyway. Out there, they think we’re Mexican, call us Beaners.”
“What’s wrong with being Mexican?” Jorge said, sounding stung.
“Nothing. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying they don’t know who the hell we are. And out there, I wonder about that, too. Here, I know who I am.”
“You can’t just leave your dad there alone,” Cork said.
“Mom says he can come back if he wants to. Me and her, we’re staying.”
Cork couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live separate from his father. But Jorge said, “My mom and me, we do all right. You would, too, I bet.”
“I could get a job,” Billy said.
“Doing what?” Cork said.
“Anything.”
“You gotta finish school first.”
“Uncle Oscar could teach me to fix cars and stuff. I don’t need school for that.” Billy threw a stick on the fire. “At least I’d be here.”
“People call you names here,” Cork said. “Injun. Redskin. Worse. Being Ojibwe isn’t exactly easy.”
“Off the rez, it’s hard. But on the rez, I’m with my people. We may not have much, but we’ve got each other. That’s more than I can say for L.A.”
They were quiet after that, listening to the crackle of the fire. Finally, Cork said, “It’s pretty dark now. Let’s give it a try.”
Jorge reached into his knapsack and brought out a Ouija board, which he laid on the ground. The board glistened in the wavering firelight.
“You know how this works, right?” Jorge said.
“Not sure,” Billy said.
“Okay, see this triangle thing here? It’s called a planchette. I’m going to put it down on the board, then we’re all going to put our fingertips on it, and you’re going to call to the spirit of your uncle, ask him to talk to you. If he’s here, the planchette moves to different letters and spells out what he wants to say. Got it?”
“Does it really work?” Billy said.
“Donna Markle used it to talk to her brother.”
“The one got killed in a motorcycle crash?” Cork asked.
“Yeah, him. Okay. Put the tips of your fingers on it, like I said, but real light, so when it moves, it’s Big John doing it, not one of us.”
They all did as Jorge instructed.
&nb
sp; “Now, Billy,” Jorge said. “Talk to your uncle.”
Billy looked beyond the small circle of light cast by the fire, looked into the dark where the ruins of the old logging camp lay. “Uncle, are you here?”
The planchette didn’t move.
“Are you here, Big John?” Billy tried again. “Will you talk to me?”
Slowly, the planchette began to creep across the board and settled itself over the word YES. The boys exchanged wide-eyed glances of amazement.
“You didn’t walk the Path of Souls?”
The planchette inched its way to the word NO.
“Why not?”
The planchette moved to the letter Y, then O, then X and paused.
“Yox,” Jorge said.
“I don’t understand,” Billy said. “What does that mean?”
But the planchette didn’t move.
“Ask who killed him,” Cork said.
Billy gave a nod. “Who killed you, Uncle?”
The planchette held still a moment, then began to sweep in broad circles around the board, until it slipped right off into the grass.
“Put it back on,” Jorge said. “Hurry.”
But as Billy set the planchette back on the board, they all heard the sound of an automobile engine approaching on the old logging road.
Cork jumped up, grabbed his canteen, and emptied it on the fire, dousing the flames.
“What’d you do that for?” Jorge said.
“Why’s somebody coming here this late at night?” Cork said.
“We’re here,” Jorge pointed out.
“Yeah, to talk to the dead,” Cork said. “Let’s see what they’re here for.”
The moon had climbed higher into the sky, the yellow of its early rising replaced by silver-white, the glow from it bathing the clearing in a milky iridescence.
Cork said, “Lie down.”
They watched the headlights crawl between the pines. The car stopped at the edge of the clearing and the engine fell silent. The door opened, illuminating for a brief moment the driver inside, a woman. She closed the door and afterward became a small, pale wisp moving through the meadow grass toward the burnt ruins at the center of the clearing. She stepped in front of the stone chimney and knelt there, as if before some kind of altar. From where they lay, the boys could hear her voice but not her words.
“We need to get closer,” Cork said.
On his hands and knees, he moved forward. When he was twenty yards away, he stopped and lay again on his belly. The other two boys had followed.
She was bent over, weeping so violently that it racked her whole body. Even without seeing her clearly, Cork knew who the woman was. He’d heard this same kind of crying from her only the night before. Her sobs were mixed with unintelligible words, but at last, she drew herself up and said clearly, “I miss you. I—I—” She lifted her face to the stars. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”
A powerful wind rose, and the night, which had been so quiet, suddenly filled with a terrible moaning as the tree branches swayed and limbs rubbed against limbs. The wind made the tall grass bend as if pressed down by the passage of a powerful presence. The woman looked left, then right, then directly at the gibbous moon. In the stark light, Cork could see her face clearly, could see that her eyes had widened and her mouth stood open in surprise. Or maybe it was fear. She leaped to her feet and fled back across the meadow to her car. The wheels spun and the car swung around and sped away down the narrow corridor between the trees, taillights like little red eyes staring back at what had sent the woman fleeing. Cork turned toward the glow of the moon, just as Mary Margaret MacDermid had done, and he saw what she’d seen: a black shape towering above the treetops.
“Look!” he cried out and pointed.
Jorge and Billy saw it, too. As they watched, the wind died, and the black shape melted back into the broad shadow of the trees, and all was quiet once more.
“We called him up,” Jorge said in a hoarse voice. “We really called him up.”
“No,” Cork said. “I think she did.”
Billy Downwind continued to stare where the shape had been and finally said in a reverential whisper, “Son of a bitch.”
They were still sitting in a state of amazement when the second set of headlights approached Lightning Strike. The boys lay down in the meadow grass as the truck parked and someone got out. Whoever it was left the headlights on. A dark figure was silhouetted against that glare and slowly it walked toward them.
Billy Downwind pressed his cheek to the ground and whispered, “Oh, crap.”
The figure paused, and Cork held his breath, hoping the intruder would simply turn and leave. But in the next instant, he came on, and in ten more paces stood above them.
“Come on, boys,” Liam O’Connor said coldly. “I’m taking you all home.”
CHAPTER 25
His son sat on the far side of the cab seat, pressing himself against the passenger door of the pickup truck. Cork’s two friends and the bicycles were in the truck bed. Liam’s hands gripped the steering wheel as if he were trying to choke the life out of it.
“Dad—” Cork tried to say.
Liam cut him off. “We’ll talk about this when we get home.”
Earlier that evening, as he’d planned, Liam had driven to Glengarrow, hoping Duncan MacDermid was still isolating himself in the guest cottage and he could speak alone with Mary Margaret. When he rang the doorbell of the big house, Jorge’s mother had answered and explained that Mary Margaret had stepped out and had asked if she would keep old Mrs. MacDermid company. Mary Margaret hadn’t said when she’d be back.
Liam asked her one of the questions he’d intended to put to Mary Margaret: “Does she smoke cigarettes, Carla?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what kind?”
“Salems. Is that important?”
“I think so.” Then he’d asked the simple question that had turned the night fateful. “How’re the boys doing?”
Carla had given him a quizzical look. “Don’t you know? Aren’t they at your house?”
And it had become clear to them both. Cork had used Jorge as an excuse to be out, and Jorge had used Cork. And it didn’t take a mind reader to know where they’d gone.
“Dad,” Cork tried again.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“She was there, Dad.”
“Who?” It was more like the snap of a whip, and Cork fell silent. After a moment, Liam said more reasonably, “Who was there?”
Cork had turned his face away, so that he was looking out the window at the darkness streaming past them. “Mrs. MacDermid,” he mumbled.
“Mary Margaret?”
“You must have passed her on your way.”
“I passed a car on the county road. I didn’t know it was her. What was she doing there?”
“Crying mostly. And she was talking to Big John.”
“What?” Liam eyed his son, then had to pull the steering wheel hard to the left because he almost missed a curve in the road.
“You know, all sad and stuff. Like how much she missed him and how sorry she was.”
“Sorry for what?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Mary Margaret,” Liam said, thinking he’d been right about at least one piece of the puzzle.
“And something else, Dad,” Cork said.
“I’m listening.”
“I saw Big John again.”
This time Liam only glanced at his son. “His spirit?”
“Yeah. Big, Dad. I mean really big. Bigger than the trees even. Jorge and Billy saw him, too.”
In his own family when Liam was growing up, they talked about the “little people.” It was usually said in a joking way. Or if they wanted to give children a scare, they told stories of banshees. Nobody took these things seriously. The Ojibwe were different. Liam wasn’t sure how he felt about that, this willingness of his wife’s people to accept that they shar
ed a world with spirits of all kinds.
But he said, “All right.” Then again, more quietly, “All right.”
He dropped Jorge off first, then continued to the rez and delivered Billy Downwind to his mother’s place. At the door, she drilled Liam with a killing look, and after he’d given her a terse explanation, she gestured her son inside. She hadn’t offered Liam a thank-you before she closed the door against him.
It was a long, silent ride back to the house on Gooseberry Lane. Colleen was waiting up and clearly surprised to see Cork enter ahead of her husband.
“Something wrong at Jorge’s?” she asked, putting down the book she’d been reading and rising from the sofa.
Liam said, “The boys were out at Lightning Strike.”
She looked at Liam with confusion, then at her son. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you want to explain to your mother?” Liam said.
Cork looked down at the floor and took a moment to gather his courage. “I didn’t go to Jorge’s.”
“I gather,” his mother said.
“We met at Grant Park—”
“You and Jorge?”
“And Billy Downwind.”
“And?”
“We biked out to Lightning Strike.”
“For heaven’s sake why?”
Cork used his hands as if shaping something for her to see. “Jorge had this Ouija board and we conjured up Big John.” He looked at her with hope, as if that not only explained everything but justified it as well.
“So you lied to me,” Colleen said.
“Yeah, but we called up Big John’s spirit, Mom. And Mrs. MacDermid was there, too.”
Colleen’s surprise was clear. “Mary Margaret went with you?”
“No, she came later.”
Colleen glanced at Liam, who said, “I’ll explain it all in a bit. Right now, the important issue is that Cork lied to you. To us both.”
His wife continued to look to him as if expecting some guidance in what lay ahead.
“Go on to bed, Cork,” Liam said. “In the morning, we’ll talk about an appropriate punishment.”
Cork gave a nod, turned from them, and trudged upstairs. Jackson, who’d been with Colleen on the sofa and had sat patiently through the whole conversation, followed loyally behind him.
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