Windigo Island (27 page)

“Remember the rifle booths on the midway at the state fair, O’Connor? Remember those little metal rabbits that used to run across the back? That’s what you remind me of. I was pretty good at popping those critters.”

Cork looked around him, trying to figure his next move. Nothing offered itself. A good ten yards lay between him and the next reasonable cover, a tangle of branches where two broken trunks lay across each other in a lopsided X. He could pull off a round or two in Windigo’s direction and try to make it across that open distance. But he suspected his damaged ankle wouldn’t be much help. Also, it was the same direction he’d been moving, and Windigo would be expecting that. He could go back to the shattered stump he’d just abandoned. But that was a retreat of sorts, and in this game—as Windigo saw it—that might be a breach of some kind, and the penalty might well be Meloux’s death. He could also do nothing and see what Windigo’s reaction might be and play off that.

He chose the last option, which was very Ojibwe: to be patient and to wait.

This was Windigo’s response: “We don’t have much time,
O’Connor. I’m guessing the cops’ll be coming sooner or later. So I’m going to change the game. If you don’t make a move real soon, I’ll plug the old man.”

Cork again considered the crossed, downed cottonwood trunks ten yards ahead of him. It was a long, hopeless distance. And if he was trying to circle, it was the most obvious move for him now. That was exactly where Windigo would be aiming.

He tried to buy time. He brought his Glock up, swung into the open for a second, pulled off two rounds, and returned to cover. Three shots came in reply, buried themselves with reverberating force in the trunk that shielded Cork, reminders of the damage those hollow-point bullets could do to flesh and bone.

“I don’t like stalemates, O’Connor. Never believed in that Mexican standoff shit. I think it’s time I send that friend of yours on the Path of Souls and we really get things rolling here.”

Cork hollered back, “You believe in the Path of Souls?”

“Grew up Shinnob. That doesn’t mean I believe it. But the old man told me he’s a Mide. So I’m guessing he believes it. Either way, he’s about to find out.”

Cork had no choice now, no time to think through another move. He gathered himself and launched, tried to sprint across the open ground, tried to ignore the agony of his injured ankle, tried to use that bad foot. Because it was his only chance at keeping Henry alive. Because he loved the old man. Because he was
ogichidaa.

His spirit was strong, but his body—that damaged ankle—betrayed him. He went down almost immediately. He heard the shot and saw dirt kick up in front of his face. He scrambled in the dead leaves and the dry underbrush, which gave no cover, expecting any moment to feel the .44 Magnum hollow points explode in him. He rolled and crawled and finally limped across the stretch of open ground and threw himself behind the lopsided X of broken trunks. He lay there, breathing hard and fast, amazed still to be in one piece. For the moment, he lay shielded and completely bewildered.

He waited to hear more from the big man, but nothing came. He heard only the roar of wind among the trees, dead and living. He risked a glance toward Windigo’s little stronghold.

He saw movement there. He lifted his Glock and sighted.

Then he lowered his weapon. He watched as Jenny stumbled out of Windigo’s hiding place. He watched her faltering walk—no charade this time—as she made her way to where Meloux sat tied to the sapling. Once she was there, her legs seemed to give out under her, and she slumped beside the old man.

“Jenny,” Cork called.

She didn’t look up. He couldn’t be certain that she’d heard him above the noise of the wind.

Cork studied the place Windigo had been and from which Jenny had come. He saw no indication of life there.

“Jenny,” he hollered again.

She still didn’t respond. She sat next to Meloux, her eyes open and unblinking. She seemed to be fascinated by the desiccated leaves on the ground in front of her.

Cork eased himself up and risked a step away from his own cover. No response from Windigo. He hobbled toward the little clearing where two of the people he loved most in the world sat together, unspeaking. As he neared, he could see that the pale blue T-shirt his daughter wore was spotted with blood.

“Are you all right, Jenny?” He eased himself down beside her. “What happened, sweetheart?”

She turned her face to him, and he saw that it was empty of color, and her eyes, in a way, were empty, too. “I killed him. I didn’t mean to. But I killed him.”

Meloux made a sound, a low groan, and moved a little.

“Henry?” Cork said. “You okay?”

The old man lifted his head. “Corcoran O’Connor. It is good to see you.” The ancient Mide managed a weak smile. “But then, it is good to see anything.”

“Let me cut you loose, Henry.”

Cork pulled his Buck Alpha from his pocket. He cut the cord
that bound Meloux, then turned his attention back to his daughter. “What happened, Jenny?”

She stared at the ground in front of her and spoke in a dead voice. “I killed him. That’s all. It wasn’t part of the vision, but I killed him.”

“I’ll be right back, Henry.” Cork put his hand softly on his daughter’s shoulder. “I’ll be back, sweetheart.”

He found a broken branch that reached to his hip and used it as a crutch to help him hobble to Windigo’s sanctuary. He climbed one of the toppled trees that formed half of the protective V. Behind it lay the man whose real name he knew to be Robert Wilson French, a Red Lake Shinnob of mixed heritage, a product of the foster care system, a man feared even by Crips and Bloods and the Native Mob and as empty of humanity at his core as anyone Cork had ever known. The right side of his head bore a terrible-looking wound. Beside him lay the long-handled ax, the blunt end covered in blood.

Cork checked for a pulse, found none. His daughter had spoken the truth.

Later, when she could talk, this is what Jenny would relate to her father, and then to the Williams County sheriff’s people.

While Cork had made his way down the promontory, she’d returned to the trailer’s backyard and had grabbed the ax from the cottonwood stump near the chimenea. She’d slid the long handle down the leg of her jeans so that it would be invisible to anyone watching from below—which accounted for her stiff-legged gait as she descended. On the slope of the promontory, when she’d heard the first shot ring out, rather than running, as her father would have insisted, she’d dropped into the nearest swale and brought out the ax. She’d crawled in the tall grass to a place where she could use her field glasses and had located Windigo. She could see him crouched in the protective juncture of the fallen trees. As the exchange of gunfire had gone on, with Windigo distracted and that mighty wind covering the sound of her approach, she’d come at him from behind. And when he’d fired that final round at her
father, she’d sprung on him and had swung the blunt end of the ax. To disable him, she said. To knock him out, maybe. She never meant to kill him. Yet that’s what she’d done.

Although she didn’t say it, this is what Cork understood: She had heard the windigo call her name. She had done battle. And she had won.

But at what cost, her father would forever wonder. At what terrible cost?

When Cork returned to the little clearing, the wind still shoved its way through the damaged stand of cottonwoods on the bank of the Missouri River. Meloux, old and tired and beaten but alive, held Jenny in his arms. Cork stood in the net of shadows cast by the sun through the leaves of those tall cottonwoods, those ancient survivors of an unknown tempest. He knew the worst was over. But there was so much healing to be done now. So much that he wondered if it was even possible.

He pulled out his cell phone and made the 911 call.

Chapter 42

F
ear is who we are. But only part of who we are. It is the wolf we choose to feed, or not. It is powerful and hungry and always there. It would consume us, but for the other wolf also inside us, also part of who we are. This other wolf, of course, is love.

Cork knew this well, and a good deal of the healing that Henry Meloux and Rainy Bisonette undertook at the end of that hot, deadly summer was predicated on this understanding. Healing was sometimes a private experience, but often it involved family and the larger community. In those weeks following the return from Williston, North Dakota, there was much healing to be done.

As summer ended and fall began, Crow Point became a gathering place. Tents were pitched in the meadow. The air was often scented with burning sage and red willow and cedar. The deep rhythm of sacred drumming was as familiar as the call of crows. Cork sometimes spent whole days there, playing with Waaboo, the two Arceneaux boys, and young Wade Duvall, while Jenny and Mariah and Raven—and Louise and Lindy, too—did the work of their healing. He was happy to help in this way. He enjoyed introducing the kids to fun that had nothing to do with video games or television cartoons. They fished Iron Lake, swam in its clean water, played hide-and-seek in the shadows of the woods. According to Rainy, this was the
nokomis
in him, the nurturing spirit. He was not all warrior; no one was. If he were, she told him with a gentle kiss, she wouldn’t love him half so much.

Stephen and Anne O’Connor were also often present. They’d
returned from the Courage Center in the Twin Cities. Stephen was walking again, though with a cane and with a limp that might well be with him for the rest of his life. Anne planned to stay until Christmas and then return to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and resume her preparations to join that activist order. Even Rose was a frequent visitor, adding her own prayers to the great healing mix.

Daniel English took a leave of absence from his job as game warden and was a constant presence and help to Meloux and Rainy, splitting wood for the many fires in Meloux’s sacred ring or to heat the Grandfathers for the sweats in Meloux’s lodge. He made frequent trips to Allouette on the Iron Lake Reservation or to Bad Bluff in order to ferry friends or relatives to Crow Point for the ceremonies. In the healing of Jenny, whose spirit had been torn badly by her killing of the man called Windigo, Daniel was an important presence, a source of a kind of balm that neither the old Mide nor Cork could offer. He helped with Waaboo and the other kids, too, and Cork saw in this good man so much to admire. He hoped that beyond this season of healing they would see more of him.

The damage done to Mariah Arceneaux and Raven Duvall ran deep. It was a ravaging of spirit that had, in many ways, gone on most of their short lives. The ceremonies were a strong part of the healing—Meloux believed deeply in the power of these ancient traditions—and the benefit was obvious.

The deposed testimony of Mariah was an element in the arrest and eventual prosecution of John Boone Turner in the death of Carrie Verga. She also helped nab Carrie’s stepfather, Demetrius Verga. In the warranted search of Verga’s home in Bayfield, Wisconsin, Joe Hammer of the Bayfield County Sheriff’s Department found a plethora of child and teen pornography, including incriminating photos of his sexual relationship with Carrie. The investigation also uncovered a list of prominent business associates who’d been guests on his sailboat and to whom Verga had probably prostituted his stepdaughter. The testimony of Raven
Duvall would help the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigate and, eventually, aid in the successful prosecution of Samuel Leland French, aka Maiingan, aka Manny, for a number of criminal activities. These included the murder of a young girl named Melissa Spry, who’d run away from the Grand Portage Reservation more than a year earlier and had never been seen there again. Robert Two Bears, who’d called himself Brick, and who’d run from the scene at the trailer with his hands cuffed behind his back, hadn’t been hard to locate. Within a day of the incident at the trailer, the Williams County sheriff’s people had him in custody. Ultimately, the convictions resulting from his numerous outstanding felony warrants ensured that, for a very long time, the sky above him would be only a small patch of ephemeral blue framed by the obdurate gray of stone prison walls. As for the girls who’d been in the trailer with Mariah, they’d simply vanished, in the way of all small, frightened creatures.

By the time the leaves had begun to turn in Tamarack County and the morning air was brisk, the ceremonies had become less frequent and the visitors fewer. Meloux called for a final gathering of those whose lives would forever be bound by the deaths that summer. Daniel and Jenny and Mariah and Raven helped to build the fire. When the daylight had gone completely and stars became like frost against the windowpane of the night sky and the moon poured silver over the great Northwoods, they gathered around the sacred fire ring on the shore of Iron Lake.

When all was ready, Henry and Rainy and Cork walked together from the old man’s cabin and across the meadow. Ember, the old Irish setter, whom Meloux had adopted, trotted after them. He’d proven to be a good companion for the Mide, and the affection that flowed between the two of them was obvious.

This should have been a time of peace for Cork, but lately he’d found himself brooding on his failures, worrying particularly about the fate of Breeze and those young, lost girls who’d fled Windigo’s trailer and had ended up God knew where. Meloux, in that mysterious way he had of divining one’s thoughts, said,
“There is a heaviness in you tonight, Corcoran O’Connor. What is it that weighs on your spirit?”

Cork looked up at all those stars, and although he knew that between them lay millions of miles of empty space, they still seemed to be one great company of light.

“I feel like I’ve left so much undone, Henry. There’s a crooked cop in Bad Bluff, I’m sure of it. But what he’s into and how to bring him down, I don’t know. Maybe I never will.”

“There are others to fight these battles,” Meloux said.

“I’m also thinking about the kids, Henry. I’m thinking about the ones we didn’t save. What about them?”

In the light of the stars and the full moon, Meloux’s face was brilliantly illuminated. The blood from the blow Windigo had delivered had long ago been washed away, and his hair lay in a smooth white flow over his shoulders and down his back.

“We save the ones we can, Corcoran O’Connor,” he said. “The others we include in our prayers so that we do not forget. Can you live with that?”

“I’ll have to think about it, Henry.”

“Come on,
niijii
,” the Mide said, using the Ojibwe word for friend. He rubbed the old dog’s head gently. “The spirits call us.”

Meloux walked ahead with Rainy and the dog, but Cork hung back.

Although Mariah Arceneaux and Raven Duvall had been returned to their families and were healing, Cork couldn’t stop thinking about the children who were still at risk. He couldn’t help believing there was more he should have done, should be doing. But there were so many. How did you stand between them and men like Windigo and Maiingan? How could you protect them all? He had no answer for that, and because he could not entirely embrace Meloux’s advice on the subject, it felt to him like yet another of his failures.

He thought, as he had endlessly in recent weeks, about Jenny. In all that had occurred, he’d believed himself to be
ogichidaa.
But it had been Jenny, in the end, who’d saved both him and Meloux,
Jenny who’d stood between evil and the people she loved. The violence she’d done wasn’t a part of her nature and had required a significant sacrifice, a deep wounding of her spirit from which she might never fully recover. Although Jenny had insisted on being a part of the hunt for Mariah Arceneaux, Cork felt responsible for the way that hunt had ended and the damage that had been done to his daughter. Someday, he knew, he would have to talk with her about this. Someday when the right words came to him. When he’d found a way to forgive himself for his failures. When he felt ready to ask for and accept the forgiveness of others. Someday.

There was no wind that night, and the smoke from the great fire rose up in twining strands of gray and white, filled with the brief glow of embers. In the belief of the Anishinaabeg, the smoke carried prayers upward. Meloux burned sage in a clay dish and smudged those who’d gathered, cleansing them. He sprinkled tobacco as an offering to the spirits. Daniel English, Red Arceneaux, and Stephen drummed and sang. Meloux thanked the Creator for life, for family, for the safe return of the beloved children. Some of this was said in the language of his people, Anishinaabemowin, and some in English. He invited those who felt moved to rise and speak. Louise Arceneaux stepped forward first and stood on her carved peg leg. In the shifting light of the fire, she wept and expressed gratitude and made promises to Mariah and to all those present that the future would be different, and not just for her. Her work, she said, was to help open the eyes of all those who would not see, to do her best to make sure there were no more Mariahs or Ravens or Carries. She was a woman changed. Cork saw clearly that her own journey had brought her to a place he understood well. She had become, in her way,
ogichidaa.

Others spoke and the night went on long and the moon rose like hope above them, and when it was fixed directly overhead, Meloux brought the gathering and the ceremony to an end. He stood and opened his arms to the last of the sacred flames and the thinning smoke that rose from the dying fire, and he offered this prayer in parting:

Grandfather, sacred one,

Teach us love, compassion, and honor,

That we may heal the earth

And heal one another.

They rose together and, strengthened, went back to the work of their lives.