Thunder Bay (20 page)

They waited patiently. In ten minutes, the figure emerged and headed back to the block. This time Henry could see the face clearly, and he was surprised. The skin was very dark, mud brown. He glanced at Maria, who gave him a look of puzzlement. The man gathered an armload of wood to add to the stack against the wall. Henry made his move.

He strode forward before the man could unburden his arms and said, “Stop.”

The man dropped the wood, spun toward Henry, saw the rifle, and looked poised to run.

“Don’t move,” Henry said.

The man held himself tense, ready, but he didn’t move.

“Maria,” Henry called.

She came from the underbrush and stood beside him. The man’s eyes shifted from Henry to Maria. Something changed in them, but Henry couldn’t tell what that meant.

“Who are you?” Henry demanded.

The man didn’t respond.

“Maybe he doesn’t understand English,” Maria suggested.
“Bonjour,”
she said.

The man waited, then nodded tentatively to her.
“Bonjour.”

“Votre nom?”
she asked.

“Maurice,” he replied.

“Je m’appelle
Maria Lima,” she said. She touched Henry. “Henry Meloux.”

For the next couple of minutes, while Henry held the rifle and the man did not move, Maria carried on a conversation with him. At the end, she said to Henry, “He didn’t mean any disrespect by watching me. He was just curious about who’d come to his land.”

“His land?”

“That’s what he called it.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I came with my father and my father’s friend.”

“What about me?”

“I told him you were my husband.”

Henry looked at her.

“He saw me swimming naked and you watching. I thought it was best. He’s apologized. I think you can put the rifle down, Henry.”

Henry studied the man’s face. It was old in a way that couldn’t be pinned down in years. A face worn by the wilderness and what the wilderness required. Henry had seen the same weathering in Woodrow’s face.

“He’s a Negro,” Henry said.

Maria laughed. “That’s very observant, husband, but it’s no reason to keep holding a gun on him.”

Henry and the man locked gazes. Henry indicated that he was going to lower the rifle. The man nodded. Henry pointed the rifle barrel toward the ground and shifted the weapon to his left hand. If the man attacked, it would be difficult—probably impossible—to swing the rifle up in time to be of any use. Both men understood that.

Maurice spoke to Maria, who translated for Henry. “He’s asked if we would eat with him.”

Henry said, “We should accept.”

She smiled. “I already have.”

Inside, the cabin was spare but neat. It was a single room, like Henry’s cabin on Crow Point, with a floor of hewn pine. Maurice had built a hearth and fireplace of stone. There was a bunk in one corner with a wool-blanket covering. In the center was a small table with two chairs. The man, Henry thought, had not always been alone.

They shared a meal of venison stew and, while they ate, Maria and Maurice talked.

“He has been here twenty winters,” Maria told Henry. “He came with his wife whose name was Hummingbird.”

“Hummingbird?”

“She was Odawa, he says.”

“Odawa?”

Kin. Long ago the Odawa, like the Ojibwe and other Algonquin people, had migrated west to the Great Lakes after their enemy the Iroquois drove them from their land near the eastern sea.

Henry addressed Maurice.
“Anin,”
he said, in formal greeting.

“Anin,”
Maurice replied. In the language of the Odawa, which was very nearly the language of Henry’s people, Maurice and Henry talked.

“I am of the Iron Lake Anishinaabeg,” Henry told him.

“I am from Quebec,” Maurice replied. “I married an Odawa woman and lived with her happily for twenty years here.”

“Where is she?”

“She died five winters ago.”

“Your children?”

“We had none. Only each other.”

“What is he saying?” Maria asked.

“He is a widower. A man, I think, who still misses his wife.”

Maria spoke to Maurice, who smiled and said,
“Merci.”

“Why did you come here?” Henry asked.

“Because I was a black man in a white world. Here the color of my skin doesn’t matter.”

That was something Henry understood well.

“We need to go back,” Henry finally said.

“You will come again?” Maurice asked eagerly.

“He would like us to return,” Henry told Maria.

She smiled at Maurice and said,
“Mais oui.”

T
he days passed quickly. Henry and Maria often visited Maurice, who proved to be a wonderful and grateful host. Over time, they learned his story.

His father came from Haiti, where he’d been a carpenter, working on a sugar plantation. One night he got into a fight with the plantation owner’s son over a woman and he beat the white man badly. He was forced to run. He took the woman with him and she became his wife. They fled to Canada, to Quebec, where a small colony of black Haitians was already established. Maurice was their first child.

His mother was white, and Maurice grew up with the names
half-breed, mule,
and
mongrel
thrown at him like stones. All his life he dreamed of rising to a place where he could look down on those who’d taunted him. Money, he’d believed, would be the way. He’d grown up with stories of wealth waiting to be discovered in the great, unexplored wilderness to the northwest. As soon as he was able—when he was seventeen—he left home and set out to find that wealth.

For the next fifteen years, he spent summers exploring rivers and streams he suspected no man had ever followed. Winters, he worked as a hand in a mill in Fort William owned by a French-speaking Quebecois.

One summer day he came across a village of Odawa where a young woman named Hummingbird lived. Love, he told Henry and Maria, struck him with the force of a bullet in his heart. All his loneliness leaked out and what filled its place was happiness. Hummingbird left her village and they traveled far into the wilderness, to the place beside the stream, where they’d built the cabin and lived together for twenty years. There was an Odawa village three days to the
south where they traded for things they could not hunt or trap or gather—coffee, molasses, flour—which the villagers got from the government.

“It has been lonely since Hummingbird died?”

“Yes,” Maurice admitted.

“Why did you stay?”

“I came here looking for gold. I found something better. These hills, this forest, the lakes and streams, the memories of Hummingbird, all these are worth more to me than gold.”

“It must be a hard life here,” Henry said.

“It is hard.” Maurice nodded. “But I decided long ago that life among white people would be harder.”

Lima and Wellington continued to return at day’s end tired and discouraged. In the evening, they drank by the fire and discussed the next day’s plan. One evening, Maria asked why they’d even bothered to come to this place anyway.

Wellington, whose tongue was loosened by drink, said, “We heard a story.”

“Leonard,” Lima cautioned and gave him a dark, warning look.

Wellington ignored him. “We heard a story from a man named Goodkin who canoed up here on the Pipestone River two years ago. He spent a night in an Ottawa village. While he was there, he heard a story about a Negro who dressed in buckskin and came a couple of times a year to trade for goods. The Indians said the Negro always traded gold. Goodkin didn’t believe them, but they showed him a deerskin pouch covered with the residue of what looked like it could be gold dust. Goodkin bought the pouch and brought it back with him to have it tested. Sure enough, gold dust.

“A few months ago, Carlos and I flew up to the village. The Ottawa people didn’t know exactly where the Negro lived. He was always clever in his coming and going and they couldn’t follow his trail. But they told us it was generally up this way. We flew over the region and I liked the look of this lake. I did a brief preliminary survey and took samples of the sediment on the lake bottom. The results were extremely
promising and we decided to return and spend more time before the snows came.”

“Promising? Hell, you said you were certain,” Lima snarled at Wellington. “So far we have found nothing.”

“It’s here, Carlos.”

“How can you be so sure?” Maria asked.

Wellington stood up and paced restlessly as he spoke. The firelight ran the length of his body, so that he seemed to be a man in flames. “Gold is found in the oldest rock on earth, Maria. Usually that rock is too deep beneath the surface to get at the gold, eh. But where the rock has been pushed up through the surface—by volcanic action, for example—that’s a good place to look. Also in a place scraped clean by glaciers in the Ice Age. Like the Quetico-Superior wilderness area north of where Henry lives. Or here. Those ridges across the lake are volcanic in origin. And the rock that underlies all this area is some of the oldest exposed rock on earth, the Canadian Shield. When I heard the story of the Negro’s gold and saw this place, I knew it had to be true.”

Maria spoke up. “But it is, as you said, the Negro’s gold.”

“Not if he hasn’t filed a claim,” Wellington said.

“And if he has?”

“Then we’ll strike a deal. It’s just a question of figuring out what a man like this Negro would want.”

“What if there’s nothing he wants?”

Wellington looked at her as if she were hopelessly naive. “There’s always something, Maria.”

That night, Henry lay with Maria in his arms. They no longer made love at night; it was too difficult to be quiet, and Henry was afraid of what would happen if the white men knew. With Maria’s head on his chest, her hair soft against his cheek, her breath rolling warm across his skin, Henry had never been so happy.

“They know about Maurice,” Maria whispered.

“They’ve found nothing. Maybe they will give up.”

“Maybe,” Maria said. “What are we going to do about us?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t ever want to leave you, but when my father’s finished here...”

Henry hadn’t thought beyond the moment, beyond the happiness beside that wilderness lake. Which was unusual for him, in a way. His life depended on looking forward, reading the signs in autumn that would tell him about the winter to come, watching the skies in spring for the return of the birds, whose timing and number revealed much about the summer ahead.

“We could live here,” Maria said. “Like Maurice and Hummingbird. They were happy.”

Henry understood how hard that life would be. For the woman who’d loved Maurice, it was different. She’d been of this country and knew the hardship. Maria had lived another life.

There was something else to consider: Henry didn’t know about love. He didn’t know if love would always be enough for Maria.

He kissed her hair. “Sleep,” he told her. “Just sleep.”

He woke in the morning later than he’d intended. The tent canvas already glowed faintly with dawn. He slid away from Maria, who was still deep in sleep, her face relaxed and so beautiful he risked a kiss, a touch of his lips to her eyebrow. She stirred but didn’t wake. He crouched at the tent entrance and reached out to open the flap. From outside came the cough and spit with which Carlos Lima greeted most mornings. Henry heard the crackle of fallen leaves as Lima made his way to his toilet. Henry waited a minute before leaving the tent, to be certain Lima had settled into his business. He eased the flap aside just a slit and peeked out to check the campsite. It looked clear. Quickly, he slipped from Maria’s tent. As he stood and turned toward his own tent, he spied Leonard Wellington standing ten yards away, urinating into the underbrush. Wellington spotted Henry at the same time. The white man’s eyes held on him, slid to Maria’s tent, then crawled back to Henry.

“Appears that wolves aren’t the only nocturnal predators up here. Carlos!” he called.

“I’m busy!”

Wellington buttoned his trousers. “Finish up, compadre. You have family business to attend to.” He circled, watching, as if Henry were an animal about to bolt. “Carlos, get your Cuban ass over here.”

Though there was menace in the white man’s voice, Henry wasn’t afraid of him. He was afraid for Maria because he didn’t know what
Wellington and Lima might do to her because of this sin. He kept his position blocking the opening to her tent.

Lima appeared, hiking up his trousers as he came. “There you are, Henry. Where’s the fire, damn it? And hell, boy, where’s the coffee?”

“Henry’s been busy with other things, Carlos. I just caught him sneaking from your daughter’s tent.”

Lima, as he walked, had been concentrating on the buttons of his pants. When he heard Wellington’s words, he stopped. His eyes rolled up and he took in Henry and the tent where his only daughter slept. Rage flared on his face.

“You savage son of a bitch,” he spat. “I will kill you.”

He ran at Henry. Lima wasn’t a big man, but he was powerfully built, especially in his upper body. He raised his arms and lowered his head. He reminded Henry of a charging moose.