Thunder Bay (2 page)

S
am’s Place is an old Quonset hut on the shore of Iron Lake just north of Aurora. It’s divided by an interior wall. The back has a small living area—kitchen, bathroom, table, bunk. The front is set up for preparing food and serving it through a couple of windows to customers outside. I’ve got a griddle for burgers and hot dogs and such, a hot-oil well for deep fry, a shake machine, a carbonated-drink dispenser, a large freezer. Pretty simple fare. In season, I do a fine business.

It’s called Sam’s Place after the man who made it what it is—Sam Winter Moon. When my father died, Sam gave me a hand in a lot of unselfish ways. I grew up working summers at Sam’s Place, advised and gently guided by Sam as I stumbled my way into manhood. When Sam died, he passed the place to me.

The Quonset hut houses my livelihood, but it also holds part of my heart. So many good memories from my adolescence involve the smell of a hot griddle coupled with the drumroll of Sam’s easy laugh. Several years into my marriage, when my wife and I were having serious trouble and my life was at its darkest point, I lived at Sam’s Place. It was a haven. In recent years, my children have worked beside me there, earning their spending money, learning lessons about business and people that I believe will serve them well.

I’ve been sheriff of Tamarack County twice. The first time was for seven years, at the end of which the constituency removed me in a recall election that resulted both from my own inadequacies and from things beyond my control. The second time it was for thirteen weeks, and I stepped down of my own accord. People who don’t know me well wonder that I’d give up my badge for an apron, thinking that flipping burgers is a big step down. If they asked me, which they
don’t, I would tell them that when a man stumbles onto happiness, he’d be a fool to pass it by. It’s as simple as that. Sam’s Place makes me happy.

North of the Quonset hut is the Bearpaw Brewery. South there’s nothing for a quarter mile except a copse of poplars that hides the ruins of an old ironworks. The road to Sam’s Place is a couple hundred yards of gravel that starts just outside town, crosses a big vacant field, then humps over the Burlington Northern tracks. It isn’t particularly easy to get to, but people seem to find it without any problem.

In season, from early May, when tourists begin to flock north, until the end of October, when the fall color is gone, I arrive for work at ten
A.M
. I spend an hour getting ready for business. Turn on the griddle, heat the fry oil, get the ice-milk machine churning, restock the rack of chips, double-check the serving supplies, put cash in the register drawer. A few minutes before eleven, help arrives. In the summer months, it’s one of my daughters, either Jenny or Anne.

That morning after I fished with Schanno, as I was getting ready to slide open the serving windows, I saw Anne jogging up the road to Sam’s Place. She was sixteen, very Irish with her wild red hair. She was an athlete hoping for a scholarship to Notre Dame.

“Where’s Jenny?” I asked when she came in. “She’s on the schedule this morning.”

“She had kind of a hard night.” She reached into the closet for a serving apron. “She wasn’t feeling well. We traded shifts. She’s coming in this afternoon.”

The night before, Jenny had been out on a date with her boyfriend, Sean. I’d heard her come in. Sean had finished his first year at Macalester, a small, elite college in St. Paul, and was home for the summer, working in his father’s drugstore. Jenny had graduated from high school in June. Most of the past year, their relationship had been long distance. Sean was a bright kid. Like Jenny, he wanted to be a writer. One of the places, Jenny often said, where their spirits connected. They’d been out a lot together that summer.

“A hard night?” I pressed her. “Something happen between her and Sean?”

She concentrated on tying her apron. “What do I know?”

“You’re answering a question with a question. What’s going on, Annie?”

She gave me the look of a runner caught in a squeeze between third base and home.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

“Define bad.” She caught my scowl. “Not really bad. Worrisome, I’d say.”

“Just tell me, Annie.”

“Dad, I promised.”

“I’m going to find out anyway. The minute Jenny walks in here I’m going to grill her.”

“Talk to Mom first.”

“Does
she
know?”

“You know Mom and Jenny. They talk about everything.”

“So everybody knows what’s going on except me?”

Behind Annie, the window opened onto the parking lot, the long gravel road to Sam’s Place, and the distant town bright in the morning sun. She turned away and watched a car raising dust on the road to the Quonset hut. “We have customers,” she said, sounding greatly relieved.

Just before the lunch rush, Kate Buker, one of Annie’s friends who worked for me part-time, arrived. When the rush was over and the girls were handling things up front, I slipped away to call my wife, Jo. It was Saturday, so she was home. When she answered, I could tell by the shuffle of papers on her end that she was working in her office. She’s an attorney.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Quiet. Getting lots done.”

I could see her, black reading glasses perched on her nose, ice blond hair probably roughed from running a hand through it, her blue eyes sharp and focused. On weekends, she usually works at home, overseeing the rights of her clients. She often represents the Iron Lake Ojibwe. Long before they had their own staff of attorneys, she was legal counsel for the reservation, and they still rely on her expertise in a number of areas.

“What’s Stevie up to?” I said, asking about our young son.

“Playing with Dumbarton in the backyard.”

Dumbarton was a big sheepdog that belonged to a couple on our block. Sometimes he’d wander down to our yard, much to Stevie’s delight. At our house, the only pet was a turtle named Clyde.

“Jo, is Jenny there?”

“Upstairs getting ready for work,” she said.

“Is there something I should know? Something about Sean and her?”

“What makes you think that?”

There it was again. I was being answered with a question.

“Just tell me, Jo.”

“Look, Cork, it’s not a good time to talk right now. Let’s sit down tonight, okay?”

“How about I just talk to her this afternoon when she comes to work?”

“Don’t do that. Let me talk to you first.”

I hesitated before asking about the concern that came most readily to mind. “She’s not pregnant, is she?”

Jo laughed. “Heavens no.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“Look, we’ll talk this evening. But promise me you won’t say anything to Jenny.”

“Annie says it’s worrisome.”

“Promise me, Cork.”

“All right. I’ll talk to you first.”

I put the phone down just as Anne stepped into the back of Sam’s Place.

“Dad,” she said. “George LeDuc is outside. He says it’s important.”

George was waiting for me in the parking lot. A big gray bear of a man seventy years old, he was the Iron Lake Ojibwe tribal chairman. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt with a bolo tie, jeans, boots. He’d been staring intently at the lake, but when I came out he swung his gaze toward me.

“Boozhoo,
George,” I greeted him. “What’s up?”

In the Ojibwe fashion, his face betrayed nothing, though the news he brought was deeply troubling. “It’s Henry Meloux, Cork. He’s dying.”

H
enry Meloux was the oldest man I knew. He’d had white hair ever since I could remember, which was well over four decades. His face was heavily lined. There were age spots like patches of rust on his skin. His eyes were brown and soft and deep, and you couldn’t look into them without feeling Henry saw all the way down to some dark room in your soul where you kept your worst secrets locked away. And you understood that it was all right that he knew. He was a Mide, one of the Midewiwin, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. He’d spent his life following the path of Ojibwe healing.

When Sam Winter Moon died, Meloux filled the void in my life left by Sam’s passing. I’m part Anishinaabe—what most people know as Ojibwe—on my mother’s side. Not only had Meloux’s good advice guided me during a lot of confusing times, but also, on several occasions, his intervention had actually saved my life.

Now he was dying.

And the Iron Lake Reservation had gathered to keep vigil.

LeDuc and I made our way through the crowd in the lobby of the Aurora Community Hospital, greeting everyone we knew as we went. On the way there, George had explained to me what happened.

LeDuc owned a general store in Allouette, the larger of the two communities on the rez. That morning Henry had walked into the store to buy a few groceries. Meloux lived on Crow Point, an isolated finger of land on Iron Lake far north on the reservation. There was no road to his cabin, and no matter the season, he hiked to town, a good five miles, mostly over forest trails. LeDuc and Meloux passed some time talking, then the old man paid, put his things in a knapsack he carried on his back, and went outside. A few minutes later, LeDuc
heard a commotion in the street. He rushed out to find Meloux collapsed on the pavement and people crowding around. LeDuc called 911. The paramedics took Meloux to the hospital. The old man had been conscious when he arrived. He was weak, barely able to speak, but he’d asked for me.

Meloux was in intensive care. They weren’t going to let me see him. Relatives only. But Ernie Champoux, Meloux’s great-nephew, put up a stink, and the doctor in charge, a young resident named Wrigley, finally relented.

“Do you know what’s wrong?” I asked.

“His heart,” Wrigley said. “I suspect an occlusion, but we need to run tests to be sure. Only a few minutes, all right? He needs his strength.”

Meloux lay on the bed, tubes and wires running from him every which way. It made me think of a butterfly in a spider’s web. I’d never seen him looking so frail, so vulnerable. In his day, he’d been a great hunter. Because he’d saved my life, I also knew him as a warrior. It was hard seeing him this way.

His brown eyes tracked me as I came to the bedside.

“Corcoran O’Connor,” he whispered. “I knew you would come.”

I pulled up a chair and sat beside him. “I’m sorry, Henry.”

“My heart.”

“The doctor told me.”

He shook his head faintly. “My heart is in pain.”

“The doctor suspects an occlusion. A blockage, I think that means.”

Again he shook his head. “It is sadness, Corcoran O’Connor. Too heavy for my heart.”

“What sadness, Henry?”

“I will tell you, but you must promise to help me.”

“I’ll do what I can, Henry. What’s the sadness?”

Meloux hesitated a moment, gathering strength. “My son.”

Son?
In the forty-some years I’d known him, I’d never heard Meloux speak of a son. As far as I knew, no one had.

“You have a son? Where?”

“I do not know. Help me find him, Corcoran O’Connor.”

“What’s his name, Henry?”

Meloux stared up at me. For the first time I could ever recall, he looked lost.

“You don’t know his name?” I didn’t hide my surprise. “Do you know anything about him?”

“His mother’s name. Maria.”

“Just Maria?”

“Lima.”

“Maria Lima. How long ago, Henry?”

He closed his eyes and thought a moment. “A lifetime.”

“Thirty years? Forty? Fifty?”

“Seventy-three winters.”

Seventy-three years. My God.

“It’s a big world, Henry. Can you tell me where to begin?”

“Canada,” he whispered. “Ontario.”

I could tell our conversation, spare though it was, was draining him. I had three pieces of information. A mother’s name. An approximate year. And a place to start looking.

“Have you ever seen your son, Henry?”

“In visions,” Meloux replied.

“What does he look like?”

“I have only seen his spirit, not his face.” A faint smile touched his lips. “He will look like his father.”

“He’ll look like his mother, too, Henry. It would be nice to know what she looked like.”

He motioned me nearer. “In my cabin. A box under my bed. A gold watch.”

“All right.”

“And Walleye. He will be alone and hungry.”

“I’ll take care of Walleye, Henry.”

Meloux seemed comforted.
“Migwech,”
he said. Thank you.

Outside the room, LeDuc was waiting.

“What did he want, Cork?”

“He’s worried about Walleye,” I said. “He wanted me to take care of the dog.”

The rest had been told in confidence, and I couldn’t repeat it. Nor could I say what I really thought. That what Meloux was asking was nothing short of a miracle.