Windigo Island (20 page)

Chapter 33

I
t had been a long time since Jenny and Henry Meloux had eaten. Rose reheated lasagna she’d made the night before and threw together a tossed salad. Rainy took a plate up to her great-uncle. She returned and reported that Raven was sleeping soundly. After they ate, Jenny cleared the dishes, and Rose made good coffee. She always made good coffee. She had cookies in the jar shaped like Ernie from
Sesame Street,
which had occupied its place on the kitchen counter as far back as Jenny could remember. They sat at the table, drank coffee, ate cookies, and while the night lay deep around the house on Gooseberry Lane, gave themselves comfort in talking.

At first they talked about Raven and the whole awful situation with the man who called himself Windigo. And then they got onto the subject of how a young girl could fall into that kind of mess.

Rainy said, “Try to imagine what it’s like growing up Indian. You’re part of a culture that white people have, from the beginning, done their best to eradicate. The whole smallpox on a blanket thing. Bounties on our scalps. The government schools, which were really an attempt to drive the Indian out of us and to get free labor in the bargain. Even in today’s enlightened times, if you’re Indian and you walk into a store up here, you’re noticed and you’re watched.”

Rose said, “Even you?”

“No one who’s clearly Ojibwe hasn’t experienced that up here, Rose.” Her face went troubled, and for the first time Jenny could
remember, Rainy looked at them as if they were strangers. “Being Indian is living with a wound that’s never healed. The violence, the alcoholism, the unemployment—White people think that’s who we are, who we’ve always been, that somehow we deserve this. No matter how many of us they see who don’t fit that image, they continue to believe it. And you want to know the worst thing? A lot of Indians believe it, too. So is it any wonder that a girl growing up Ojibwe or Lakota or Cree on a reservation sees no hope for herself there and falls into the hands of someone like Windigo?”

“What do we do?” Rose asked. “How do we help?”

“You don’t. It’s something we need to do for ourselves. And we are, Rose. It’s going to take time, but it’s happening. Believe me, it’s happening.”

Hearing her say this and hearing the certainty in her voice, Jenny believed it, too. Even so, there was a girl out there named Mariah who, unless she was found soon, would never benefit from the hard work so many of her people were doing.

Then Jenny caught herself.
Her people.
Those were the words she’d thought, although she, too, had Anishinaabe blood flowing in her veins. Her great-grandmother Dilsey had been true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe. One-eighth of her genetic makeup had come from The People. Still, despite the powwows she’d attended, despite the fact that she had blood cousins on the Iron Lake Reservation, and even despite having adopted a son who was fully Anishinaabe, she’d never truly thought of herself as anything other than white. Most of her ancestry was Irish. She was blond and blue-eyed, just like her mother had been. It was Stephen who looked Ojibwe and who had somehow ended up with a profound Ojibwe sensibility. Jenny had always been fine with that. Now she was angry at what she understood had been her willing disregard for an important element of herself, her family, her heritage, and with Waaboo, her maternal responsibility. She felt like a traitor. Or worse, a coward. And she knew that changing this was a part of the journey she was on, and maybe a part of the vision that had begun it.

They’d fallen quiet, the weight of so many awful realities
pressing down on them. It was Rainy who jumped to another subject, one she’d clearly been thinking about.

“So what’s between you and Daniel?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Jenny said.

“I heard you kissed him.” She smiled and said, “Uncle Henry just happened to mention it to me when I took his dinner up.”

This was a place Jenny wasn’t certain she wanted to go. She was still trying to figure out her feelings for Daniel. Where men were concerned, she’d not been particularly judicious in her choices or wise in her actions. At eighteen, she’d been in love with a poet. They’d dreamed of living together in a garret in Paris, both of them struggling to write works of greatness. But she’d become pregnant, and her gallant young poet had turned out to be a scared kid who wanted no part of caring for a child. A moot point in the end, because Jenny had miscarried. The young poet had abandoned his dream of Paris and settled for becoming a druggist in his father’s pharmacy. Her next love had been a more intellectual choice, another writer, but a man who made sense to her in her own plans for a future. Then she’d stumbled upon Waaboo, and her life changed. But her fiancé had not loved the child as she did, and she’d shoved him away because of it. In the end, he’d sacrificed himself, died trying to save the child and her, and her guilt was still something she hadn’t put behind her. She believed that she’d been the catalyst for the bad that had befallen these two men who’d loved her. And if there was a possibility of another man in her life, maybe only bad would come to him, too. So she’d been content with the company of her son, her father, her brother, and Henry. What more did she need?

“I kissed him,” Jenny said. “One kiss. No big deal.”

“No big deal?” Rose’s eyes were huge and curious. “When?”

“Just before we split up in Duluth tonight.”

“Well, there you go,” Rose said.

“There you go what?” Jenny said. “It was just one kiss.”

“The first kiss,” Rose said. “I remember the first time Mal kissed me. You want to know something? It was the first time any
man had ever kissed me. There I was, thirty-nine years old, and I’d never been kissed by a man. Let alone anything else with a man.”

“A good kiss?” Rainy asked.

“How was I to know?” Rose laughed. “But I’ll tell you this. I will, to my dying day, remember that kiss, because I knew my life had changed. And what a change it’s been.”

Jenny envied her aunt, her obvious love of her husband. She’d loved before, or thought she had, but never with the depth that seemed to flow between Rose and Mal.

“What about you, Rainy?” Rose asked. “First kiss?”

“Johnny Blumenthal,” Rainy replied. “At the homecoming dance, sophomore year.”

“Good kiss?”

“A little sloppy, but it was pretty sweet. We went steady for six months. Then I found out he was two-timing me with Holly Knowles, one of the cheerleaders. Johnny was my first in a series of very bad choices in men.”

“You were married once,” Rose said. “One of your bad choices?”

“The worst. I had my head up my ass with that one. Good-looking, Lord yes. But a snake underneath. I finally learned my lesson with him. It’s not what’s on the outside that counts.”

“I agree. Men are like M&M’s,” Rose threw in. “What’s on the outside is just a thin cover. It’s what’s underneath that counts.”

“Ain’t it the truth. You’ve got to watch out. What looks like chocolate under that candy coating might be nothing but bullshit,” Rainy said with a laugh.

“You think Dad’s like that?” Jenny asked.

“Of course not. But the truth is I didn’t much like him at first.”

“Cork?” Rose said, surprised. “But he’s such a sweet guy.”

“I know that now. When I first met him, though, I found him . . . aggravating. He was so sure of himself.”

“He can be that way sometimes,” Jenny said.

“All men can be that way sometimes,” Rose put in. “Even my precious Mal. It’s in their DNA, I think. The know-it-all gene.”

Rainy said, “Jenny, did you know that Daniel’s a writer?”

Jenny looked at her as if she’d spoken Swahili. “What?”

“It’s true,” Rainy said. “Poetry mostly. He’s kind of well known in the Ojibwe community.”

“He didn’t say a thing about it,” Jenny said.

“He didn’t talk about books? He’s a passionate reader. Did you tell him you write?”

“I don’t tell anybody I write.”

“I think Daniel would understand,” Rainy said.

The kiss had confused Jenny. Now it frightened her. Maybe Daniel didn’t want to be kissed by her. He hadn’t told her he was a writer. He hadn’t wanted to share himself with her in that way. Maybe what she’d seen, what she connected with, that gentleness of spirit, was all in her own imagination, out of her own loneliness or desperation or some other pathetic need. She thought that maybe her relationship with Daniel would, in the end, consist of one kiss. And would that really be so bad? Because, really, wasn’t she happy with the way her life stood at the moment? And based on her past experience with men, which had been mostly disappointing or tragic, did she really want to go through all that again? It made her tired thinking about it, so she decided she wouldn’t.

She hadn’t seen her little guy since she came home. She stood and said that’s what she intended to do. Rainy got up as well and said she’d go up and give Henry a break. Rose said she would make another pot of coffee so she could offer the old Mide something fresh and hot. They all parted ways for the moment.

In Waaboo’s room, Jenny found her son asleep, tangled, as always, in his bedding. He was a restless sleeper, though his restlessness seldom woke him. She didn’t know if it was part of who he was and would always be, or if, considering the harshness of his very early existence, it was something that came at him from his subconscious. She wanted so much for him to grow up happy and free from fear. But did anyone? And, of course, there were degrees of fear. She thought about what must have driven Mariah Arceneaux and Carrie Verga and Raven Duvall to abandon their
homes and families for the likes of the man called Wolf and his brother, Windigo.

She straightened the covers over Waaboo and sat in the rocker near his bed. This was the place that she and her father and Aunt Rose and Rainy and anyone else who offered to put her little guy down for the night did what needed doing—read to him, or made up a story for him, or listened as he made up his own. She’d grown up with much the same experience. At night, her father or mother would sit with her and Anne and Stephen, and read a story. The comfort in that sharing—with the dark outside the window but, inside, the little circle of light in the room, and all of them safe in that circle—Jenny wished every child in the world could have.

She rocked and listened to the crickets and heard the breeze stir the branches of the elm with a gentle, liquid rustle, and before she knew it, the long day caught up with her, and she was asleep.

It was Rose who woke her later. She touched her shoulder, and when Jenny opened her eyes, Rose said, “They’re here.”

Chapter 34

H
er watch told her it was 4:47 a.m. The dark outside didn’t seem as profound as it had been when she nodded off. Dawn wasn’t far away. She followed Rose downstairs. Those who’d arrived were just now coming into the kitchen through the side door. It was Daniel, along with Louise and the Duvalls. The children looked sleepy and bewildered. Lindy Duvall looked worried.

“Where’s Raven?” she asked the moment she was inside.

“Upstairs,” Rainy said. “She’s fine. She’s with Uncle Henry.”

“Henry?”

“The old man who talked to you in Bad Bluff,” Jenny said.

“Can I see her?”

“Of course,” Rainy said. “But I think that maybe we should wait a bit before her brother and sister see her.”

“She’s . . . ?” Lindy didn’t finish, but her face said it all.

“She’ll be fine,” Rainy assured her. “But these children look pretty beat. How about we get them squared away?”

Rose said, “I’ve got Waaboo’s old crib set up in the office, and I’ve put a cot in there as well. Why don’t you all come with me?”

The Duvalls followed Rose out of the kitchen. When they were gone, Daniel asked, “Where are your father and Manny?”

Jenny shrugged. “Dad took off a long time ago. Didn’t say where he was taking Manny or when he’d be back.”

“Got a cup of coffee?” Daniel asked. “It’s been a long night.”

“Everybody sit down,” Rainy said, “and I’ll make a fresh pot.”

They took chairs at the table. Meloux walked in, relieved of his
vigil at Raven’s bedside, and he sat down with the others. When the coffee was ready, Rose poured mugs for them all.

The sky had begun to hold the promise of light. Outside the kitchen windows, the birds had launched into a noisy chorus. Jenny heard the newspaper hit the front porch. It was Saturday morning, a day she’d always loved. She should have felt promise in that dawn, in the jubilant song of the birds, in the possibility of a return to normality that the clunk of the morning paper signaled. She should have been looking forward to a glorious summer day. Instead, the world felt oppressive, and the only promise it seemed to hold was of more worry, more waiting.

Meloux, who’d probably had little sleep at Raven Duvall’s bedside, looked drawn, emptied. That concerned Jenny a lot. She didn’t know how much he could take. They’d been on this hunt for nearly a week and still didn’t have Mariah safely in their grasp. Jenny knew that the uncertainty ate at Louise’s strength. She looked exhausted, too. And something had changed in Daniel. When they’d set out, there’d been a freshness in him, almost a boyish excitement in the hunt. Now he seemed old, hardened, a constant wariness in his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure that anything he saw could be trusted.

Rose offered them hope. As if she’d sensed the depth of their despair, she said, “I think we need some breakfast. I think we’ll all feel better if we eat.”

Rainy stood up to help. Jenny came to her feet as well and offered, “More coffee, anyone?”

No one had a chance to answer. They heard the front door open and close, and a moment later Cork appeared in the kitchen doorway.

He was Jenny’s father, and he was not. He had the face of her father, and his eyes were her father’s eyes, but it was not her father behind those familiar features. He stood in the doorway, looking at them as if they were the strangers, not he.

Meloux spoke first. “
Anin
, Corcoran O’Connor. Will you have some coffee?”

The man in the doorway thought about that, then said, “Thanks.”

“Sit down, Cork,” Rose said. Although Jenny was standing, it was Rose who filled a mug and brought it to him. Jenny couldn’t seem to move.

Her father took a chair, sat with the mug in his hands, stared at the coffee and did not drink.

“Nothing,” he said, as if in answer to a question none of them had asked.

“Nothing?” Louise said.

“I got nothing from him,” Cork said.

Jenny spotted what appeared to her at first to be a red rash across the front of his blue work shirt, then she realized she was looking at a tiny spray of blood.

“You didn’t . . .” The words caught in her throat. “You didn’t kill him, Dad?”

“Kill him?” He thought about that. “I wanted to.” Jenny watched him work through something difficult in his own mind; then he continued. “Our children disappear. They run away or they’re seduced away. Some never come back. I know why now. He told me things. Things he’s done to girls. As if he was proud of it. He told me what he’d do to Raven, to Mariah, to me if he ever gets free.” He lifted his bloodshot eyes to them. “To all of you. But he didn’t tell me anything I wanted to hear. No matter what I did.” He finally sipped a little coffee. He looked at Louise, and for the first time in all this, there was defeat in his face. “I’m sorry. I tried.”

Rainy walked to him and stood at his back and put her hand on his shoulder. He tensed, as if her touch had been fire. Or maybe the coldest ice.

“Corcoran O’Connor,” Meloux said. “Inside this Maiingan, there is still a man. A man is a human being. Every human being, even the darkest of hearts, has two wolves fighting in him.”

Cork gave the old man a flat look. “I haven’t seen any fear in him, Henry. And I can’t believe there’s any love in him either. I’m not convinced he’s human at all.”

The ancient Mide stood. “Come with me.”

They followed Meloux upstairs to the bedroom where Raven lay. Her mother sat beside the bed in the same chair that Meloux had occupied. When they stepped in, Lindy Duvall was sleeping, her chin resting on her chest. Raven was awake however. She watched them enter, Meloux in the lead. The old man came to her side.

“Good morning, granddaughter,” he said.

She didn’t smile, but she looked relieved to see him.

“Granddaughter, I want to ask you a question. Is that all right?”

She nodded.

Lindy roused and blinked and looked at Raven and then the others. She said nothing, just straightened in her chair and listened.

“This man, this Maiingan, what does he love?”

“Nothing.” She said it without even a second of consideration.

“Think, granddaughter. Has he ever shown a kindness toward anything?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them, and they held a little flame of understanding. “Ember.”

“Ember,” the old man echoed and nodded.

“Sweet old thing. Manny’s had him forever. He won’t take any of us to a doctor, but he’s spent a fortune on Ember. Angel, he’s always ragging on Manny because of that old dog. Always saying that one of these days when Manny’s not around he’s going to slice Ember up and throw the pieces into the weeds for the crows to eat. Would never say that to Manny’s face, but I think he means it.” Her face took on a pained look, Jenny thought maybe from her injuries, but she said, “Pepper, a girl I brought over from Red Lake, left the door open once, and Ember got out, ran off. Manny beat the hell out of her for that. But when Ember came back a few hours later, Manny cried. The son of a bitch actually cried. Never thought I’d see that day.”

“Thank you, granddaughter.” Meloux turned to Cork. “The wolf is ours.”

• • •

Downstairs, in the kitchen, Cork said, “Daniel, you mind coming with Henry and me?”

“I’m coming, too,” Jenny said.

Her father started to reply, and Jenny could tell it was going to be in the negative. But Daniel cut him off. “All right, Jenny.”

Cork shot him a look, not a pleasant one, but voiced no objection.

Cork drove his Explorer and Meloux rode with him. Jenny rode with Daniel in his truck. The dog settled in on the seat between them. They’d put one of Trixie’s old collars around the dog’s neck and had brought a leash.

They hardly spoke. For Jenny, that kiss in Duluth seemed to have opened a big crack between them, a dangerous chasm, and she, for her part, had decided not to go near the edge. If she said nothing, if Daniel said nothing, maybe they’d be safe.

They headed onto the reservation and east along a dirt road that ran past the old mission, with its graveyard in back. The sun had risen above the hills, and the day was already feeling hot and sultry. The road wound through a section of the rez Jenny had never been on before, but her father clearly knew where they were going. The Explorer kicked up a big rooster tail of yellow dust, and Daniel stayed well back.

Cork stopped suddenly, and Daniel stopped, too. Jenny’s father got out and went to the side of the road. He moved a blind constructed of heavy brush, revealing a narrow, barely visible track that led into the trees. He returned to his vehicle and drove onto the track. Daniel followed. When they were inside the trees, Cork stopped again. He got out, jogged back to the opening of the track, and returned the brush blind to its original position. They continued on.

After fifteen minutes of slow progress, they came to a tiny log structure, dilapidated and abandoned-looking, an old trapper’s cabin, Jenny thought. It stood in the shade of tall pines at the edge
of a small lake. Parked in front was a dusty brown pickup with Iron Lake Reservation plates. Two men stepped from the cabin. Jenny knew them both: Tom Blessing and Elgin Manypenny.

The men were roughly Jenny’s age. Earlier in their lives, they’d been part of a gang on the Iron Lake Reservation. They’d called themselves the Red Boyz. When he was sheriff, Cork had dealt with them in an official capacity. A few years later, well after he’d given up his badge, he’d dealt with them in a different way, one that he never spoke about. They’d all been a part of something significant, something that had changed them, something that Jenny understood she would never know the truth of. The gang had dissolved, and the young men had gone on to more productive lives. Blessing and Manypenny ran the Wellbriety program and worked with at-risk tribal youth. In their days as Red Boyz, each had branded an
R
into his skin, part of the initiation ritual, and the raised scar tissue was still there. When necessary, they could bring back the swagger of those days and the cold, stone faces they wore. On rare occasions, when he needed them, they turned out to help Jenny’s father.

With no greeting, Cork asked, “How’s he doing?”

To Meloux, Blessing said,
“Boozhoo, nimishoomis.”
Then he shook his head and answered Jenny’s father. “Still playing dumb. This is one hard nut, Cork. I don’t think he’ll crack.”

Jenny came from the pickup with Daniel. She brought Ember, who padded at her side, held by the leash. She also brought a baggie full of dog biscuits.

“Who’s that?” Blessing asked, nodding toward the dog.

“The nutcracker,” Cork said.

They went inside the cabin. The floor was dirt. There were no windows, and it was dark and smelled of rot and animal leavings and, somewhere in its not too distant past, something dead. Wolf sat against the far wall, at the end of the long, narrow fall of light that came through the doorway. His face was bruised and puffed, not unlike Raven Duvall’s had been. He was shirtless, and Jenny saw what looked like cigarette burns on his chest. He lifted his
head and watched them enter, and even in that dark, she could see the fire of defiance in his eyes.

“Brought something you might be interested in, Manny,” Cork said.

Wolf leered at Jenny and said, with a kind of growl of satisfaction, “Another girl for me to have some fun with. Thanks.”

“But see who this girl has brought with her?”

The brightness of the light from outside seemed to blind him a bit, and he squinted. Then his face went ashen.

“Go ahead, Jenny,” Cork said. “Let Ember and Manny get reacquainted.”

She allowed Ember to trot to the man called Wolf, and the old dog’s tail went crazy. He licked Wolf’s battered face and nuzzled a bound arm. Jenny saw the weakness in Wolf’s eyes, which she understood would be his undoing. But when he looked back up, those eyes had gone hard again. A show, Jenny knew. They all knew.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Kill Ember,” Cork said.

“He’s just an old dog.”

“He’s your old dog, Manny. That makes him special. Jenny, give Ember one of the dog biscuits you brought along,” Cork said.

Jenny took a biscuit from the baggie. She held it in her palm, bent down, and called, “Here, Ember. Here, boy.”

The trusting old canine came to her, grabbed the biscuit, gave a few chews, and swallowed. Jenny patted his head affectionately. “Good dog. Such a good dog.”

“Daniel,” Cork said. “Give me your Glock.”

Daniel handed over the sidearm.

“Give me a biscuit, Jenny.” She did, and Cork knelt and held it out. “Come here, Ember. Have a last meal.”

The dog padded over and ate out of Cork’s palm. Cork put the Glock to Ember’s head.

“On three, I shoot him, Manny.”

Jenny had thought whatever they did with Ember would be for show. But she could see that her father wasn’t bluffing. She
knew absolutely that he would kill the dog. He seemed to be a man she’d never seen before, a man she didn’t know, a man who, if he did what he was threatening to do, she would hate, hate forever. She glanced at Meloux, hoping he might intervene, but his face showed no expression. His eyes were hard, dark pebbles. She stood frozen with horror and disbelief as her father began his countdown.

“One. And consider this, Manny. After Ember, I’ll begin on you again. I’ll shoot your right kneecap, then your left.”

The dog was licking Cork’s hand, licking off biscuit crumbs. Manny watched, but his eyes gave away nothing.

“Two,” Cork said. “And by the way, you know what your brother says about old Ember here? Says he’s going to cut him up and let the crows eat the pieces. At least, that’s what Sparkle told us. You willing to let Ember die for a man like that, Manny? You willing to lose both your kneecaps over him?”

Manny’s face didn’t change. Jenny was sure he wouldn’t crack. She tried to dart at her father, to save Ember, but Daniel caught her and held her back.

“Three.” Cork worked the slide on the Glock and settled the muzzle against the back of Ember’s head.

“All right,” the man called Wolf screamed. “All right. Don’t hurt Ember. What do you want to know? I’ll tell you. I swear I’ll tell. Just don’t hurt Ember.”