Manitou Canyon (17 page)

C
HAPTE
R
31

F
or hours, they'd traveled north, following the shoreline of a long, winding lake. At midday they disembarked on a small patch of open ground that fed into the next portage. The kid, when he tried to get out and stand, collapsed and fell. This time Cork steadied the canoe and it didn't tip.

“I don't think I can walk, Uncle Aaron.”

“Unbuckle your belt and pull your jeans down,” the tall man said.

The kid did as instructed. The whole area around the knee was inflamed, purple-red and swollen. Dark lines like evil tendrils extended upward from it under the skin. When the tall man touched the leg, the kid winced in great pain.

“Something really nasty must've got in there,” the woman said.

“We'll rest here awhile.” The tall man reached into his pack and came out with a small pill bottle. He tapped out several tablets and gave them to the kid. “Swallow these with some water. It'll help the pain.”

“I feel real hot, too.” The kid's eyes looked vacant, lifeless.

“Probably running a little fever,” the tall man said.

The others unloaded the gear from the canoes, and they all sat on the ground with the weight of the overcast sky once again heavy upon them. The kid lay down fully, his head cradled on a pack. He closed his eyes. In a short while, he was asleep.

The woman said, “We should leave him.”

“We leave no one,” the tall man said.

“You left Flynn.”

“Flynn was dead.”

She looked at the kid as if his fate was certain and the same. Then she studied the gray sky. “We're running out of time.”

“We're not leaving him.”

“Let me take the girl and go on ahead, then. If we push it, we could be out of this wilderness by tomorrow night.”

“We go together.”

“You're risking everything we've planned for.”

The tall man's eyes swung to Cork, who hadn't missed a word. “We won't discuss this anymore.”

The kid mumbled something in his sleep, gibberish.

The woman eyed him as she might a pile of trash. “I told you from the start we shouldn't bring him.”

“What's done is done,” the tall man said. “Enough.”

Lindsay Harris spoke up. “What about a travois?”

“A travois?” the tall man said.

“You know what that is,” Lindsay said.

“Yes.”

“We could cart him on the portages. It would slow us down a little, but we'd still make distance.”

Cork gave her a quick, puzzled look, and she said, “He's just a kid. And he's sick. He needs a doctor. The sooner the better.”

“A travois,” the tall man said and nodded.

Mrs. Gray held the rifle while the others worked. The tall man cut saplings and branches with a hatchet. He and Cork and Lindsay put the travois together, using duct tape in place of rope or twine. In a short while, they'd constructed a decent frame for the litter. The tall man stretched a wool blanket across the frame and tied it at the corners. He stood back and looked pleased.

They woke the kid and ate a meal of trail mix and jerky. The tall man took an orange from his pack and gave it to the kid.

“Are we going make it in time, Uncle Aaron?”

“We'll make it.”

“I'm sorry about my leg.”

“Not your fault.”

“Clumsy oaf,” the woman said.

“We're going to carry you across the portages,” the tall man said. “Think you can still paddle?”

The kid smiled gamely. “I can do that.”

They prepared to move on. The tall man double-packed, one on his back and one in front. Cork lifted a canoe onto the tall man's shoulders. Lindsay Harris took the other canoe on her shoulders. The woman hefted the third pack and carried the rifle. Cork grasped the travois by the sapling ends and lifted, and they began along the portage.

He tried to reckon where they might be now. From Mrs. Gray's comment about being out of the wilderness by tomorrow night, he guessed they were near the Canadian border, if not already across it and now into Quetico Provincial Park. He thought about the tall man's comment that a border was just a line on a map. The wilderness was the same on both sides of that line, and a man on the ground couldn't tell the difference. That was one of the things he loved about the North Country. A map, though useful in some ways, told nothing. It couldn't give in the least way a sense of the land itself, its size, which was measured truly not in square miles but in days paddling and portaging. It gave no sense of the thousand moments when a man's breath was taken away by some sudden, unexpected beauty. It offered no warning of the dangers—severe storms that blew out of nowhere, high waves that could founder a canoe, falling trees, forest fires, broken ankles, heart attack, giardia—that might await the unwary. It was untamed land, and there was not much of that left anywhere. It felt sacred to him.

The portage was more than a mile and had never been well traveled. Any earlier in the season and the ground would have been nothing but the suck of mud. As it was, the cold had hardened the muck. Which made the slog only slightly easier. They were all heavily burdened, and when they finally arrived at the next lake, they dropped their loads and sat a good while without speaking.

Lindsay finally stood and nodded toward a stand of birch. “I'm going to take care of business.”

The sour woman got up and said, “I'm not letting you out of my sight.” She followed Lindsay into the trees.

The tall man stood. “I'm stepping over there.” He pointed toward a tangle of underbrush that made a kind of screen. “I'll be watching you, O'Connor.”

“Going nowhere.” When the tall man had walked away, Cork said to the kid, “You need to get up and go?”

“I'm okay.” Then the kid said, “I'm sorry.”

“What for?”

“This.” He swept his hand down the length of the travois. “And everything else. You're a decent guy.”

“I get the feeling you are, too. What's this all about?”

“I can't . . .” He closed his eyes, and Cork didn't know if it was against the pain in his leg or against another kind of discomfort. “It's important.”

“I figured.”

The kid seemed to be involved in some kind of inner struggle. Finally he said, “Have you ever heard of Manitou Canyon?”

Mrs. Gray hurried from the woods. “Shut up, you stupid little blabbermouth.”

“I was only—”

“I said shut up.”

The tall man came from the tangle of underbrush. “What's going on?”

“Your little nephew was about to blab his head off to O'Connor.”

The tall man said, “You really think it would make a difference now?”

“If he knows nothing, we don't have to worry whether it makes a difference, do we?”

Lindsay Harris emerged from the trees. The woman turned to her. “You'd better be worth all this trouble.”

Lindsay cocked her head and said, “Or what?”

Cork smiled, impressed by her bravado.

“You'll find out,” the woman said.

“I'm so tired right now I don't really care,” Lindsay said. She looked at the lake, which was so large that the far shore was invisible. A cold wind blew out of the northwest, strong enough to lift the water in waves that carried a little white along the crests. “Are we paddling across that?”

“Afraid so.” The tall man drew himself up straight, but not without some effort, and said, “We'd best get started.”

They reloaded the canoes and positioned themselves in them as they had before. They started across the big lake. As he paddled, Cork thought about what he knew. The kid and the tall man were family. Family was something Cork understood. It trumped almost everything. Mrs. Gray wasn't family. He began to consider if there might be a way to use this to widen the divide between his captors, enough that there might be room for him and Lindsay to make a break for it.

Patience,
the voice in his head advised.

C
HAPTE
R
32

T
his was her country and not her country. Rose had spent nearly two decades in Tamarack County helping to raise her sister's children while Jo had struggled to put together a law practice and Cork had gone about his duties as deputy and then sheriff. But even in those years, this was never a place that had felt to her like home. In a sense, she'd always been a stranger in a strange land. Until she met Mal and married him. Then she'd found home, which could be anywhere now, as long as it was with Mal. Driving out to Crow Point, a place she understood as sacred, she felt its familiarity, appreciated its beauty, but at the same time understood that, because she would always be a stranger, it would always contain mysteries she couldn't fathom. She knew it was different for those whose ancestry there went deep, as it did with Cork and with the Anishinaabeg.

Leah Duling said not a word, just stared out the window of the crew cab in Daniel's truck. Maybe visions did that, inspired reflection. Rose didn't know; she'd never had a vision. Because of Stephen's experiences and Henry Meloux's, she believed in them absolutely, but her own experience was of a different kind. No apparitions or omens or images delivered with startling suddenness. Hers had always been a prayerful existence, a steady journey on her spiritual path.

Daniel parked his truck on the old logging road beside Rainy's Jeep. They got out, all of them, and began to walk the trail along the shoreline of Iron Lake toward Crow Point. The day was cold
and overcast, and a wind had risen out of the northwest and bit at their faces. Leah walked hunched in her wool jacket. Rose suspected that it wasn't only the chill wind that made her bend so, but also the weight of her own misgivings and uncertainty. Rose had always been especially sensitive to the pain of others, and she couldn't help but feel kindness toward this woman who'd been such a vexation.

Long before they reached Crow Point, Rose smelled woodsmoke on the wind. When they came in sight of the cabins, she saw thick gray coiling up into the air from the fire burning near the sweat lodge. They went directly to Henry's cabin. He opened the door to them as they approached.

“
Boozhoo,
Rose,” he said warmly. “And
boozhoo,
Leah.”

He brought them in. Leah handed Daniel her coat, and Henry led her to a chair at his table.

“Sit,” he said.

She did.

He put a mug of cool water in front of her. “Drink.”

She drank.

He sat down beside her and looked deeply into her eyes. “The gifts we are given sometimes come like lightning and burn us. What is left can feel like only ashes. This is true especially with a gift meant to change us.”

“I didn't ask for this, Henry. I don't want this.”

“The lightning has struck. You cannot ignore it.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“I . . . I'm not like you, Henry.”

The old Mide waited.

“I don't believe in spirits or visions. I believe in medicine.”

“That is your brain talking. Speak to me with your heart.”

For a long time, she said nothing. Then the little jewels of her tears appeared on the rims of her eyes, and she said, “I'm so lonely, Henry. And I'm so afraid.”

Henry reached out and put his old hands over hers. “You have
a beautiful heart, Leah. It is strong and it is good.” He looked up at Rainy. “She is ready. The two of you will sweat together now.”

They'd called ahead and had spoken to Stephen, and everything had been prepared. Rainy gave Leah a light, loose dress to wear during the sweat instead of the jeans and flannel shirt she'd come in. By the time they walked from Rainy's cabin across the meadow, Stephen had placed the heated Grandfathers in the lodge. Rainy offered prayers and tobacco. Leah did the same, though she spoke quietly and haltingly. Then she and Rainy entered, and there was nothing for the others but to wait.

Everything had moved so quickly since Stephen's arrival that Rose had had almost no time to talk to him about anything except the business of finding his father. He'd gone to the desert in search of answers. A huge question was the strength of his body. It had been nearly a year and half since the great wounding that had left him crippled, and Stephen wanted to test himself in a significantly physical way. Rose knew he was also seeking the answer to the why of that wounding. Stephen firmly believed that the hand of Kitchimanidoo was at work in all things. In the vast desert of northern Arizona, he hoped to understand what the Great Mystery had in mind for him and to find the courage to accept it.

It wasn't Rose, however, who broached the subject of his sojourn.

“What did you find in that desert?” Meloux asked out of the blue.

“Nothing at first, Henry.”

“Do you know why?”

“I think so. I was looking way too hard, looking for something momentous. I got frustrated. And I was in a lot of pain.”

“Body or spirit?”

“Both, Henry. But I'd set out to get to the top of that holy mesa, and if I wanted to do it, I had to accept the pain. That's when it came to me. Not a huge epiphany but an important one.”

“What was it?” Rose asked.

“Everybody hurts, Aunt Rose. That was it. Everybody hurts. And
if I want to be a Mide, I need to quit thinking about my own pain and think more about all those whose pain is greater than mine.”

Henry's face didn't change, but he gave a nod, almost imperceptible.

The sound of Rainy singing prayers inside the sweat lodge continued, and then the first round of the sweat ended. The two women emerged drenched and steaming into the cold air outside. They were given water, and Stephen took the cooled Grandfathers from the sweat lodge and added newly heated rocks. Leah Duling looked drained, and Rose wondered if she should return to the sweat lodge for the next round. She said, “Are you all right, Leah?”

“I'm strong,” the woman replied. “I can take this.”

Henry said, “You have always been strong, Leah, but a sweat is not about enduring. It is about yielding.”

After the new Grandfathers had had time to heat the lodge again, the two women reentered and Rainy resumed her prayers.

“What do you think, Henry?” Stephen asked.

“I do not think anything. I wait.”

* * *

“Somebody's coming,” Daniel said, a short time later.

Rose followed his eyes and spotted two figures walking toward them across the meadow. As they came nearer, she recognized one of them as Ernie Champoux, whom she knew from her earlier years in Aurora. He was a relative of Henry Meloux and worked, she believed, at the Chippewa Grand Casino. The man with him was a stranger.

“Boozhoo,”
Champoux greeted them all.

“
Boozhoo,
Nephew,” Meloux replied.

Champoux nodded toward the sweat lodge. “Who's inside?”

“Aunt Rainy and Leah Duling,” Daniel replied.

“Yeah, I heard about that woman showing up for the wedding.”

“What's up, Ernie?” Daniel said.

“Got word on the rez you were out here. This here is Porky,” he said.

The man who'd come with him was short, overweight, broad-faced, maybe forty, Native.

“It's really Abner,” the man said. “Abner Porkman. Everybody just calls me Porky. Kind of fits,” he said, looking down at his portly girth. Then he said,
“Anin.”
Which, like
boozhoo,
was an Ojibwe greeting.

“Porky works security at the casino. He's got something you might want to know, about that Harris guy who seems way too lucky at the blackjack table. Tell 'em, Porky.”

Porkman scratched his head and seemed less than eager to proceed. “You've got to understand, this is all kind of risky for me. I could lose my job.”

“What do you want from us?” Daniel said.

“Just that whatever I tell you, you didn't hear from me.”

Daniel said, “It's a promise.”

“Okay. So.” Porkman shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, as if they hid something he didn't want seen. “It's like this. I work upstairs in the casino surveillance room. We've got cameras all over the place. It's my job to monitor activity, gambling or otherwise, looking for anything that seems, you know, questionable. So one of the things we watch is someone who's winning big. We take a good look to see if they might be cheating somehow. Counting cards, maybe, or maybe in cahoots with the dealer, that kind of thing. So this Harris guy comes in a few weeks ago.”

“Before or after he and his family went into the Boundary Waters?” Daniel asked.

“Both,” Porkman said. “And right away he starts winning. Not every single time he sits at a table, but enough that I can't help but notice. And it's always the same dealer he wins with. So I go to Trudeau.”

“The casino manager,” Daniel clarified for Rose.

“I saw you on one of our cameras, talking to him yesterday,” Porkman said. “Then Ernie and me got to conversing this afternoon. Why I'm here.”

“What did Ben say when you told him?”

“He said not to worry about it. He was on top of it.”

“That's what he told us, too,” Daniel said.

“In the time I've been monitoring Harris, I figure he's won like twenty-five grand. That doesn't sound to me like anybody's on top of it. Then my shift schedule gets changed all of a sudden so that I'm never working the hours this Harris guy gambles. I think there's more going on here than meets the eye, is what I'm saying.”

“Have you talked to anybody else about this?”

“I've got a family to support. This is a good job. I'm not looking to get fired.”

“But you talked to Ernie,” Daniel said.

“Ernie and me, we go way back. And he pointed out that if something fishy's going on and I say nothing, that could be bad, too. So I'm kinda caught here between a rock and a hard place, you know?”

“What do you think of Ben Trudeau?”

“He knows about running a casino. Things are good there, really. And he's been real good about trying to get himself involved in the rez community. I heard he goes to all the OED meetings.”

“OED?”

“Office of Economic Development. They oversee all the business initiatives on the rez. And I see him at a lot of the gatherings at the community center in Allouette. But I'm thinking now that he's always asking lots of questions, you know. About the Shinnobs around here. I didn't think much about it, but now I'm thinking maybe there's more to his questions than just, you know, friendly curiosity.”

“Any idea what?” Daniel asked.

Porkman shrugged. “Got me.”

“Who's been dealing the winning hands to Harris?”

“A woman named Krystal Gore. New to the casino. Not from around here. When I figured what was going on, I talked to LuJean in the personnel office. She told me Krystal came here from New York. Her last job was working a casino there. An Indian casino.”

“Did LuJean know why she left?”

“I could be getting us both into big trouble here.”

“All this is off the record,” Daniel said.

“Okay, LuJean told me her application said she wanted to be closer to family. But she's from New York State. The casino here's kind of like a small town, you know. We all get to know each other pretty well. So I asked around, and she's got no family here. Just her and her kid, a little girl.”

“What about her background check?”

“Another red flag. It's missing from her file.”

“Any idea who might have access to her file?”

“LuJean, of course. And Erica Feather. She's director of personnel. But we all know Erica. She's on the up-and-up.”

“Who else?”

“Trudeau.”

“Do you know where Krystal lives?”

“That apartment complex just south of Aurora, I think. The Pines. You going to talk to her?”

“I think that would be a good idea, don't you?”

“Like I said, keep me out of it.”

“We never talked,” Daniel told him.

The flap over the sweat lodge lifted, and Leah came out followed by Rainy. Leah stood uncertainly, wavering just a little, strands of wet black hair stuck to her forehead like leeches, her face drained of blood. Rainy held her up.

Henry said, “What is it, Leah?”

The woman looked at him, her eyes huge holes filled with horror.

“Oh, my God, Henry,” she said. “It's the end of the world.”