Windigo Island (9 page)

That was enough. Louise walked on her own to the door of his
cabin, where Henry Meloux stood waiting. The woman stopped short of him. They faced each other in a long silence.

Meloux finally said, “Did you bring it?”

Louise looked ready to collapse and cry. “I only brought me.”

Meloux nodded, then he smiled and said gently, “Welcome, Niece.”

Chapter 16

M
eloux’s sacred fire ring lay just beyond a rock outcropping on the west side of Crow Point. It was an area bared of ground cover by the tread of countless feet during countless gatherings. The aspen-lined shore of Iron Lake edged the area to the north and west. South was the meadow and east the rocks. The fire ring lay at the heart of it all, a circle of stones that held a bed of ash and char and that was circumscribed by sawed sections of tree trunk, which served as seating. That night Meloux sat near the fire, his lined face a ripple of reflected flame. Cork was there and Rainy and Daniel English. Louise Arceneaux, a woman who’d exhausted all her strength in the pilgrimage to Crow Point, was not. She was sound asleep in the bed in Rainy’s cabin.

Cork appreciated that Meloux had not turned the woman away, even though she’d come empty-handed, without bringing to him Mariah’s most precious possession. That bespoke the kindness of the old Mide. But it also puzzled Cork in a way, because Meloux, once he’d set down a requirement, insisted that it be followed, even if the point of it was a mystery to everyone except Meloux. Cork figured that Louise had been right: if Meloux saw what it took out of her to come to him, the old Mide couldn’t refuse her.

They’d shared tobacco, all of them, in Meloux’s pipe, and now they sat in a semicircle around the fire, while the embers drifted toward the night sky and were lost among the stars. Cork had re
lated everything that took place on the Bayfield Peninsula, and the old man had listened without comment. Finally Cork said, “Louise believes that with your help, we’ll find the answers.”

“She has worked hard today,” Meloux said. “Tomorrow, she will work hard in a different way.”

“Will you guide her in a sweat?” Rainy asked.

“No, Niece. You will guide her.”

“Me?” Just as quickly as it had come, the look of surprise on Rainy’s face vanished. She nodded and said, “Of course.”

“And you, Nephew,” he said to English, “and you, Corcoran O’Connor, will see to the sacred fire and to the care of the Grandfathers.”

“What will you do, Henry?” Cork asked.

“Nothing,” the old man said.

“Nothing?”

“I told you. If she wanted my help, she had to bring me her daughter’s most sacred possession.”

“But I thought—”

“Sometimes that is a real problem with you, Corcoran O’Connor. You think too much.”

Cork couldn’t help feeling disturbed by this sudden turn in what he’d thought was the positive direction events had taken. And then his cell phone rang, startling and further disturbing him because it was so late. When he checked the display he saw that it was Stephen calling from the Courage Center in the Twin Cities. He rose quickly and stepped away from the others.

“Stephen,” he answered. “Is something wrong?”

“Didn’t Marlee tell you I’d call?”

“She didn’t say when. And it’s late now. What’s up?”

“I just got off the phone from a long talk with Jenny. She filled me in on your current undertaking.”

“Oh, checking up on the old man, are you? Is Annie there with you?”

“She is.”

“Say hello to your sister for me.”

Cork heard his son do just that. Then he heard his daughter’s voice, though he couldn’t make out the words.

Stephen said, “She says give her best to Rainy.”

“Of course. Marlee said you had news you wanted to share.”

“I walked a half dozen steps today, on my own. No support.”

Cork closed his eyes, as if he’d just received a blessing. He said, “Way to go, guy. I knew you’d do it.”

“I’m feeling stronger and stronger every day. I think I’ll be home before too much longer.”

“I miss you, kiddo.”

“I miss you, too, Dad. And everybody up there. And . . .”

Stephen’s voice trailed off, and Cork thought maybe his cell service had dropped, as it sometimes did out on Crow Point. But he glanced at the display and still had two bars.

“Stephen? You there?” he said.

“Yeah, Dad. It’s just that I’ve been having this feeling, and it’s not a good one.”

“Your legs?”

“No, nothing to do with that. I’ve been really fearful the last day or so, and I haven’t known why. But since Jenny told me what you guys are up to, I think I understand. I think I’m picking up danger. And since I’m doing fine down here, I’m thinking it’s you and Jenny I ought to be concerned about.”

Seventeen-year-old Stephen was the O’Connor child in whom the family’s Anishinaabe genetic heritage showed most strongly. Like Henry Meloux, with whom Stephen felt a strong kinship, he was gifted with visions. Long before the tragic event, he’d foreseen his mother’s death. And in advance of his own violent encounter with a madman, which had left him with a damaged spinal cord, he’d seen the danger coming. Cork respected his son’s sensitivity well enough not to dismiss Stephen’s fear. And, too, the voice of the windigo was still fresh in his own mind. “Believe me, I’ll be careful, Stephen, especially where your sister’s involved.”

“I hope you find her, the missing girl.”

“I hope so, too.”

“You’ll keep me—us—in the loop?”

“Will do, guy.”

“All right, then. Say
boozhoo
to Henry and Rainy for me.”

“Give your sister a hug on my behalf. Night, buddy.”

Cork ended the call and returned to the fire.

“How is Stephen?” Meloux asked.

“Walking, Henry. Walking on his own.”

“You sound surprised, Corcoran O’Connor. Strong, that one.” Meloux stood. “But this old man needs his sleep. Nephew?” He eyed English.

The young man got up from his seat. “I’m coming, Uncle Henry.”

“Rest, Niece,” Meloux said to Rainy. “And you, too, Corcoran O’Connor. Tomorrow is an important day.”

The two men headed away from the fire. Guided by moonlight, they would walk the path that threaded between the rocks and led across the meadow to Meloux’s cabin. There, English would spend the night on a mattress of straw laid out on the old man’s floor. Because her own bed was already occupied, Rainy would spend the night with Cork on a blanket under the stars.

“What do you think he meant?” Cork asked.

“You mean about tomorrow being an important day?”

“No. I think he’s right there. But he said to rest. What did he think we’re going to do?”

“My guess,” Rainy said, leaning toward him, “is this.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him long and languidly. Then she stood and, with slow deliberation, began to unbutton her blouse.

• • •

They lay together, naked on the blanket in the meadow grass. Above them, the moon was a soft, watching eye in the star-dusted face of heaven. Crickets chirred around them, and from the aspens along the shore of Iron Lake came the trill of tree frogs. The scent of the night was a warm mix of the wildflowers and the distant
evergreens and the vast, clean water of the lake. Rainy lay with her head on Cork’s chest, her fingers idly tracing the line of one of his ribs.

“We deserted them, Cork,” she said.

“Louise and Mariah?”

“The whole family. It was easiest for the rest of us not to think about them. They weren’t like us. They were the kind of Ojibwe that seemed to prove the prejudices. Now I wonder if we were just afraid.”

“Of what?”

“A kind of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God thing, you know.” She was quiet a long time, staring up at the stars. “I want to help Louise. And I will, in my way, if she’ll let me. I believe I can do that. I can’t find Mariah, though. I don’t know how. But you can.”

“Find her? Or save her? Two different things, Rainy. It might already be too late to save her.”

“But if she can be saved, you’ll do that. I know you will.”

Now it was Cork’s turn for quiet and star-staring. Each one of those lights was a giant, he knew, but they all looked so tiny, and there was such a vast distance between them that all he could think of was their loneliness. He loved Rainy, longed for those moments when, after they’d made love, he felt so wonderfully close to her. They were often times when he was vulnerable and was willing to share with her things he might otherwise keep locked inside. But this night, despite all that Rainy had done to open his heart, there was a truth he couldn’t tell her. And it was simply this: he was afraid.

If he’d spoken, he’d have talked about his failures. How he’d tried to save Jo—God how he’d tried to save his beloved wife from those bastards who killed her simply because of their greed—but he’d failed. And last year, when a crazed man had stalked his family, Cork had been able to do nothing to shield Stephen from the bullet that had lodged against his spine.

He’d agreed, reluctantly, to try to find Mariah Arceneaux. Only that. Not to save her. But that really was the whole point of
what he was being asked to do. By Louise and Red Arceneaux. By Daniel English and Jenny. Now by Rainy. Save this child. As he lay beside Rainy, he wanted to confess that he was afraid. Afraid that, even if it were possible to save the girl, he wasn’t the man for the job.

Instead, he said, “It’s late. We should both get some sleep.”

He rolled to his side and put his back to the woman he loved.

Chapter 17

E
very spring, Cork and others from the Iron Lake Reservation helped Henry Meloux construct a sweat lodge. Until last winter, the site had always been on the east shoreline of Crow Point, about a hundred yards from Meloux’s cabin. But after the madman’s attack on Stephen, which had occurred during a sweat in that location, Meloux directed the lodge be constructed on the opposite side of the point, well north of the fire ring. It was round, ten feet in diameter and five feet high. It had been built of aspen boughs bound together with rawhide strips. This skeleton structure had been covered with blankets and tarps. There was a single opening, flapped with a blanket and facing east. Three feet directly in front of the lodge but a safe distance away was the pit for the sacred fire where the Grandfathers, the stones that would be used in the sweat, were heated.

Cork and Daniel English were up early that Wednesday morning building the fire and banking the coals upon which they would set the Grandfathers. Not far away, Meloux sat on the trunk of an aspen that had long ago fallen among the tall grass and wildflowers of the meadow. He watched and occasionally gave a word of direction, but for the most part, he stayed clear of the work. Cork wasn’t certain if the issue was Meloux’s age or the line that the old Mide had drawn and would not cross in this business with his great-niece Louise Arceneaux. Rainy spent the morning with Louise, preparing her for the ceremony, which was about cleansing and healing and asking and, if so blessed, receiving.

They came when the sun had completed a quarter of its arc. The day was cool for late July, but there seemed to Cork to be a promise in the morning air, a particular purity in the blue of the sky, a profound tranquillity that had settled over Crow Point. Meloux, from his seat on the fallen aspen, watched the women approach. His face was an old weathered rock fractured by time and the elements. His hair was the fluff of milkweed, long and soft and white. His eyes were darkness, absolutely unreadable.

Seeing the women come, Cork took up the old wood-handle pitchfork, which Meloux had always used for the Grandfathers, and scooped the first of the stones from the red coals. With the needles of a freshly cut pine branch, English swept the rock clean of ash and char. Cork bent and crawled into the sweat lodge and laid the first Grandfather in the shallow depression in the center. He backed out, and he and English repeated this process until there were ten large stones heating the air inside the lodge.

Louise wore a loose-fitting dress and a big white T-shirt. She sat on a sawed section of tree trunk near the fire, removed the sandal she wore on her left foot, and then unstrapped the peg from the stump on her right leg. Rainy, who wore a blue tank top and shorts, gave Louise the crutches she’d carried from the cabin. Louise stood and leaned on the crutches. From a small deerhide medicine bag, Rainy took sage and a little clay dish. She placed the sage in the dish and lit it and waved the cleansing smoke over Louise and herself as she said a prayer in Anishinaabemowin. When the smudging was complete, she let the sage ash fall to the earth and put the dish back into her medicine bag.

“You’re ready,” she said to the other woman.

Louise looked a little fearful but nodded and hobbled to the sweat lodge entrance, where she discarded her crutches. Rainy helped her down on hands and knees, and Louise disappeared inside. Without a word to the men, Rainy followed, with her medicine bag over her shoulder. Cork knew that among other things it contained tobacco, which Rainy would offer in advance of her prayers. Cork dropped the blanket flap over the opening behind
them. Then he and English returned to tending the fire, where additional Grandfathers were heating. If all went well, there would be several rounds of sweat and prayer.

Meloux, who’d kept his distance, rose from the meadow and walked slowly to where Cork and English had perched themselves on sawed sections of tree trunk beside the sacred fire. He sat his old, bony butt on the ground near them and stared into the coals awhile.

“What is the question you want to ask, Corcoran O’Connor?” he finally said.

“I don’t have a question, Henry.”

The old man looked up at him calmly. “That’s not what I have seen in your eyes since you came back from the Bad Bluff Reservation.”

Cork glanced at English, who kept his own eyes averted, intent on the fire. If what transpired between the Mide and Cork was of any interest to him, he showed it not at all.

Cork said, “All right, Henry. Carrie Verga heard a windigo call her name. And now she’s dead.”

The old man waited.

“The boy who found her body, he also heard a windigo call his name.”

“What did you do about that?”

“I told him to be courageous. And I told his father to watch him carefully. But I’m not sure that was enough, Henry.”

“What more could you do, Corcoran O’Connor, except battle the windigo yourself?”

Cork said, “A windigo called my name, too, Henry.”

Meloux sat with his back toward the risen sun, his face darkened by the overcast of his own shadow. For a long time, he studied Cork’s face, his eyes unblinking.

“I think that is a good thing,” the old man finally said.

“A good thing?” Cork didn’t hide his surprise.

“The windigo is a terrible creature, but it is a stupid one. It is only concerned with feeding its hunger. Courage is needed, you
are right there. But a quick mind, that is a good thing, too.” The old man smiled slyly. “Sometimes, Corcoran O’Connor, you are as dumb as an old shoe, but I still think you are smarter than the windigo.”

Daniel English laughed quietly. Meloux swung his gaze away from Cork. “And you, Nephew, you are a turtle chasing the moon.”

“Me?” English looked completely baffled.

“She will not be in your sky forever.”

“What are you talking about, Uncle Henry?”

The old man made a gesture of dismissal. “Just like a turtle. When you are afraid, you pull your head in.”

Cork could see from the look on the young man’s face that he had no clue what Meloux was referring to. Cork was pretty sure he knew, but he held his tongue. When dispensing advice, the old Mide often spoke in riddles. This riddle was English’s to solve.

In half an hour, the first round of the sweat came to an end. Rainy lifted the blanket over the entrance and crawled out. Behind her came Louise Arceneaux. The clothing each wore was soaked with sweat, and their faces carried a high flush. Rainy took the crutches from where she’d laid them near the entrance and helped Louise stand. English gave them water from a metal bucket, and they drank in silence.

“Let’s cool off now,” Rainy said.

She and Louise walked together to the lake, where there was a little area of sand bordered by rocks. Louise waded in, crutches and all, and let herself slide completely under the surface of the cold, crystal water. Rainy dipped herself, too, but mostly she stood ready to help Louise, should the woman require it.

In the meantime, Cork removed the cooled Grandfathers from the sweat lodge and replaced them with stones fresh from the fire.

The women returned and once again entered the sweat lodge.

They’d endured four rounds when Rainy declared the sweat complete. Louise looked exhausted, even more worn out from the sweat than from the long walk to Crow Point the day before. Rainy helped her back to the cabin, while Cork and English did
the work of cleaning the lodge and taking care of the Grandfathers so that everything would be in readiness for the next sweat that would be held there.

Meloux said, “My stomach is empty, and my curiosity is satisfied.”

He stood and headed toward his own cabin. Cork and Daniel English followed.

Long ago, Meloux had constructed a larder beneath the floor of his cabin. He’d built the little box of maple, and even on the hottest summer day, the food he stored there was kept cool. He directed Cork to pull some ham and cheese from the larder, told English to get bread from the cupboard, and asked them both to make sandwiches. Then he left with a small embroidered bag over his arm. He came back in fifteen minutes bringing greens from the meadow for a salad. When all was ready, he directed Cork to fetch the women from Rainy’s cabin.

Cork wasn’t certain what, if anything, the sweat had accomplished. Louise had fasted before the ceremony, and she had to be hungry. But she chewed absently during the meal, as if not tasting the food at all. She looked ready to drop, so perhaps she was simply exhausted. Finally she put down the half-eaten sandwich, looked at them all intently, and began to cry. She wept deep sobs that shook all her loose flesh. Cork had no idea what to make of this. Rainy’s face, as she looked on, was a perfect portrait of sympathy. For his part, Daniel English seemed clueless about what to do. Henry Meloux, the old Mide, simply watched, his brown eyes hard as walnut shells.

“What did you bring me, Niece?” he finally asked.

“I have nothing,” she cried.

“That is not true. What did you bring me?”

“I thought and I thought and I couldn’t think what it could be.”

“And still you came.” The old man’s voice, which had been like the edge of a stone ax, grew soft and became gentle. “And you brought me something.”

Two waterfalls of tears cascaded down the mounds of her
cheeks and pooled before her on the rough tabletop. Cork wasn’t certain he’d ever seen a woman more desperate, more lost. And his heart broke for her.

“I . . .” she tried, then shook her head angrily because she couldn’t finish.

“You know what you brought me,” Meloux coaxed.

“I . . . didn’t . . .” Between her sobs, she gasped for air.

“In your heart, you brought me something.”

She looked long and deeply into the eyes of the old Mide. She gathered her breath and said, “Only me. That’s all I have. Only me, and that I love my Mariah.”

The old man reached across the table. His hands were brown and bony and spotted, and they held the hands of Louise Arceneaux as if cradling a newborn child. “In her heart, Niece, when she looks there, she knows this is what matters. You and your love for her. That is what is most precious.” He drew himself up, erect and strong, and in a voice as young and powerful as Cork had ever heard, Henry Meloux said, “Now, we will find your daughter.”