Thunder Bay (9 page)

Now what was I going to tell him? What kind of son was I offering him? I was afraid of what the truth might do to the old man. But if I hedged in any way, Meloux would know.

It was nearly midnight when I pulled onto Gooseberry Lane and turned into my driveway. Jo was waiting up. The kids had gone to bed. She kissed me and settled on the sofa beside me.

“You look tired,” she said.

“And sore.” I told her about Morrissey, the kidney punch and the kick.

“Let me see.”

I lifted my shirt, and she checked my back.

“Oh, Cork, there’s an ugly bruise forming. Do you think you should have it checked?”

“A handful of ibuprofen before I go to bed and I’ll be fine.”

“These men, they sound perfectly awful.”

“How do I tell Henry?”

“Be straight with him. Anything else and he’ll know you’re not being truthful.”

“It might kill him.”

“I don’t think so. I think it was the not knowing that hurt him. But how a good man like Henry could have fathered a son like this Wellington, I don’t know.”

I looked around the living room. “Where’s Walleye?”

“In the backyard, sleeping in the tent with Stevie.”

“Stevie knows Walleye will be going home tomorrow?”

She nodded. “He took it pretty hard, poor little guy.” Everywhere I looked, nothing but disappointment.

“So,” I said. “Jenny.”

“She’s confused, Cork.”

“How long has she known?”

“A few days. Her period is usually regular as clockwork. When it was overdue, she did one of those home pregnancy tests.”

“No chance the test was wrong?”

“She repeated it. Different brand, same result.”

“Does Sean know?”

“Yes.”

“What does Jenny want to do?”

“Go back in time and make different decisions would be my first guess.”

“Don’t we all. Really, what’s she thinking?”

Jo hesitated. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I heard.

“When she and Sean went for that drive to Lake Superior yesterday, it wasn’t a pleasure trip. They went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Duluth.”

“An abortion?”

“She didn’t do anything, Cork. She just wanted information.”

“Oh, Jesus, Jo. This has got to be so hard for her.”

“I’m glad you understand that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I looked at her, didn’t hide that I was hurt. “She poured all this out to you because she’s afraid of me, is that it?”

“She’s not afraid of you, Cork. But she is afraid of what you’ll think of her. You have no idea how much your respect means to her.”

I felt exhausted and empty. I laid my head against Jo’s shoulder. “I have to talk to her.”

“She knows that.”

“And we have to talk to Sean. His folks, too. Do they know?”

“He was going to tell them tonight. We’ll probably be calling them tomorrow about the same time they call us.”

“Guess this is the end of Paris.”

“It doesn’t mean their dreams will end, Cork.”

“No, but it’s one hell of a detour off the yellow brick road. What do we do?”

“What can we do? We tell her how we feel, we listen, we pray, we hope, and whatever she decides, we’re there for her.”

“Couldn’t I just spank her and send her to her room?”

“You never spanked her.”

“Maybe it’s not too late.”

She kissed the top of my head. “Ready for bed?”

“Let me check on Stevie and Walleye, then I’ll be up.”

I wandered out to the tent in the backyard. My son was in his sleeping bag, snoring softly. Walleye lay beside him. The old dog lifted his head when I peeked through the flap, and his tail brushed the tent floor.

A boy and his dog. Only, the dog belonged to someone else and would be going back when the sun came up.

I wasn’t looking forward to morning. To wresting from my son his very good friend. To telling Meloux the truth about his own son. To listening while my daughter and the father of her baby tried to sort out what the hell their future might be.

I stood there in the dark of my backyard thinking that sometimes life sucks and that’s all there is to it.

I
was up early. Stevie walked into the kitchen from the backyard while I was making coffee. He rubbed his sleepy eyes.

“Hungry, guy?” I asked.

He nodded. “But I should feed Walleye first.”

From the pantry, he took the bag of dried dog food we’d bought and went back outside. Through the kitchen window, I watched him fill the bowl—he’d insisted we buy a special dish for Walleye—then he sat in the grass and petted the dog while it ate. I saw his lips move, talking to his friend. When Walleye was finished, Stevie returned to the kitchen and put the dog food back in the pantry.

“After breakfast, you want to go with me when I take him to Henry?” I asked.

He looked dismal. “Okay.”

We had raisin bran and orange juice I’d made in a pitcher from a can of frozen Minute Maid. I drank coffee. We were rinsing our dishes in the sink when Jo came in, wearing her white robe.

“We’re off to see Meloux,” I told her.

“We have to take Walleye back,” Stevie explained, sounding brave. Jo sat down and motioned Stevie to her. She hugged him. “I’m sure Henry misses him. He’s all alone out there.”

“Yeah.”

You could tell he understood, but it didn’t make him want to do cartwheels.

“How about you get Walleye into the Bronco,” I said to him. “I’ll be right there.”

When he was gone, Jo looked up at me and said, “I didn’t realize this would be so hard on him.”

I poured her a cup of coffee. “He’ll be fine.”

“You know, a turtle’s not much of a pet.”

“Don’t start, Jo.” I handed her the coffee. “I thought I heard Jenny upstairs.”

She took a sip. “She’s throwing up in the bathroom. I think she’ll go back to bed for a while after that. As soon as you get home, we should all talk.”

I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll come back in a gentle mood, promise.”

Stevie was quiet in the Bronco. He kept his arm around Walleye, who sat between us, tongue hanging out, watching through the windshield. Walleye had always seemed to possess much of the same reasonable sensibility and patience as Meloux, but I’d never had much experience with dogs and didn’t know whether it was common for pets to resemble the personalities of the people who kept them.

We drove north along Iron Lake past cabins and small resorts nestled among pines and spruce and stands of paper birch. At the north end of the lake, we turned off the paved highway onto the gravel county road that serviced the last of the resorts before the reservation began. It had been a dry summer, and the Bronco kicked up a thick tail of dust that hung a long time in the still morning air. A quarter mile along, I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw an SUV swing off the highway and plow into the cloud I’d raised. I felt a little bad throwing up all that dust, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Another mile and I pulled to the side of the road and parked near the double-trunk birch that marked the trail to Meloux’s cabin. Stevie opened his door and Walleye leaped across him eagerly. The dog’s tail was going crazy, and it was clear he was happy to be in his own territory again. Stevie saw it, too, and he sighed.

I opened my door just as the SUV behind us shot past. It was silver-gray, but coated everywhere with the red-brown dust of the county road, except for a couple of streaky arcs on the windshield
where the wipers had tried to clean. I yanked the door shut, glad I’d pulled far off to the side. Whoever was driving the SUV couldn’t have seen the Bronco in time to avoid hitting it. As it was, I almost lost the driver’s door. The SUV sped past and kept heading northeast.

Stevie and Walleye trotted ahead. I trailed behind, noting my son’s slumped little shoulders. I found myself agreeing with Jo. A turtle was no kind of pet for a boy.

We broke from the trees amid the buzz of the grasshoppers still infesting the woods. On Crow Point, smoke drifted up from the stovepipe on Meloux’s cabin. Walleye loped ahead, barking. Meloux opened the door and stepped into view. He smiled at the sight of his old friend, bent down, and his ancient hands caressed the dog.

Looking up at us as we approached, he said in formal greeting,
“Anin,
Corcoran O’Connor.
Anin,
Stephen.” He stood up.
“Migwech,”
he finished, thanking us.

He had on a pair of worn khakis held up with new blue suspenders. The sleeves of his denim shirt were rolled above his elbows. He wore hiking boots, much scuffed about the toes. His long white hair fell over his shoulders. His eyes were clear and sharp. He looked healthy. He looked very much like the Meloux I’d known all my life.

“I have made coffee,” he said, inviting us in.

We stepped out of the sunshine into the cool shade of his cabin. He closed the door, but not before a couple of grasshoppers slipped into the cabin with us.

There were three chairs around his table. Stevie and I sat down. Meloux went to his black potbelly stove where coffee sat perking in a dented aluminum pot. He poured dark brew into three cups already placed around the table, as if we’d been expected. Stevie looked at the coffee then at me. I nodded okay.

Walleye had padded quietly back and forth with Meloux. When the old man finally sat down, Walleye settled at his feet. Stevie watched the dog dolefully.

I sipped the coffee, which was hot and strong. “Henry, I was more than a little surprised to hear that you’d left the hospital.”

The old man shook his head. “The surprise for me was finding myself there. I did not realize the weight I carried on my heart, it had been there so long. Tell me about my son.”

Wisps of steam rose from our speckled blue cups. Stevie blew across the surface of his coffee and lifted his cup. He jerked back from the touch of the hot brew against his lips.

“He’s a sick man, Henry.”

I explained as simply as I could what I had observed. The old man listened without showing any emotion. As I talked, the two grasshoppers explored the cabin. When they took to the air, their wings made a sound like the rattle of tiny dry bones. They hit the wall a couple of times, small, dull thuds. Meloux didn’t seem to notice.

When I finished, the old man said, “He would not come?”

“No, Henry.”

Meloux nodded and stared for a little while out the small window at the sunlit meadow beside his cabin.

“It may be that the weight I felt on my heart was not mine alone. It may be that I felt his, too.” He touched his chest.
“Miziweyaa”
—which meant wholeness—“is here. The way is always here. But sometimes a man needs help in understanding the way.”

The coffee had cooled. Stevie took a polite sip and squeezed his eyes against the bitter taste.

“We will return to the island called Manitou,” Meloux declared. “We will see my son together, and I will show him the way toward
miziweyaa.”

I started to object, but Meloux cut me off.

“If my son is ill in the way you say, we need to leave today, this afternoon.”

Twice over I owed Meloux my life. And what was he asking for, really? In the decades I’d known him, I’d experienced things that had no rational explanation, and I felt the rightness of what he was pressing for now. Still, I was a man with obligations of my own.

“Tomorrow, Henry,” I offered. “We’ll go tomorrow. I have things to do first.”

“What things?”

“I have a business to put in order. I have a wife to explain this to.” I didn’t mention Jenny. “Give me a day, Henry. One day. Please.”

He seemed to realize what he’d asked. “I’m sorry, Corcoran O’Connor. I was being selfish.”

But I was the one feeling selfish, knowing that if it were Stevie in trouble, sick in the way Meloux’s son was sick, I’d want to leave immediately.

“First thing in the morning,” I promised.

I reached into my shirt pocket and drew out the watch. I handed it to Henry. He opened it and spent a moment staring at the photograph inside.

“Come on, Stevie,” I said, standing.

Stevie leaned over and patted Walleye. “Good-bye, boy.”

Meloux got up, and the dog with him, and they saw us to the door. The meadow was full of grasshoppers. They jumped around in front of the cabin, climbed the log walls. A big grasshopper lit on Meloux’s arm. He eyed the bug, and the bug eyed him.

“What do you make of all these insects?” I asked the old Mide.

He thought a moment. “The lakes and rivers are full of grasshoppers. The fish who eat them are fat. The bears who eat the fish are fat. If our people still ate the bear, we would all be fat.” He grinned, plucked the bug off his arm, and put it on the ground, rather gently I thought. “Tomorrow, Corcoran O’Connor. When the sun comes up, I will be ready.”

We crossed the meadow and entered the woods. Stevie kept in step beside me without a word. In that heavy silence, the walk back to the road felt long.

We found the Bronco covered with grasshoppers. They flew off the doors as we reached for the handles. The grill was full of the insects we’d plowed through on our way there.

When we were inside Stevie asked, “Are there grasshoppers everywhere?”