Boundary Waters (38 page)

Cork turned toward the wide, sparkling blue of Iron Lake.

The shoreline near Wendell’s place was a ragged edging of small, rocky inlets dotted with pines. Stepping quietly, his rifle readied, Cork made his way to the water. He paused a moment, listening. The lake was calm, lapping very gently at the rocks. Just north of where he stood, in the direction of Wendell’s trailer, rose a big slab of gray rock about the size of a pickup truck. From the other side came the almost imperceptible bass note of a canoe hull tapped lightly with a paddle. Cork eased to the rock, and around it, until he saw Charon/Milwaukee leaning over the canoe. The man stood bent, caught in a netting of shadow cast over him by the branches of a big red pine. He appeared to be securing a pack under the stern thwart. Cork stepped up behind the trunk of the red pine and leaned himself against it to help his left arm support the weight of the rifle as he brought it to bear. A fire raged in his shoulder. He prayed he wouldn’t have to hold the rifle that way for long.

“Put your hands on your head and don’t turn around.”

The man paused. “O’Connor,” he said, as if Cork were not unexpected at all.

“Hands on your head. Now.”

Charon/Milwaukee complied, pressing his palms to the back of his head.

“Turn around slowly.”

As the man came around, Cork could see he wore an affable grin. “I guess I should have killed you.”

“With your left hand, using only your thumb and index finger, take your weapon from its holster and drop it on the ground.”

When the handgun lay flopped on a bed of pine needles, Cork asked, “That’s Willie’s twenty-two. Where’s your weapon? The automatic. What was it? A Sig Sauer?”

“In the pack.” He gestured with a jerk of his head toward the canoe behind him.

“Sure it is.”

“Care to frisk me?” Charon/Milwaukee gave a very small, very real laugh. “A little tough holding that rifle. And with a bum shoulder.”

“We’re going back to the trailer.”

“You’ll be dead before we get there.”

A slight wind made the water roll and the bow of the canoe went up and down like a little head nodding in agreement.

“You make the tiniest move and I’ll shoot you,” Cork warned.

“How quickly can you swing that rifle and aim with a dislocated shoulder?” Charon/Milwaukee asked. “That’s a bolt action. You’ll be lucky if you even get one good shot, because I’ll be moving. I can imagine the pain you’re in, O’Connor. The pain’s already eaten into your normal ability to aim, to react. It would be the same for any man.” He lifted his hands from his head, only a few inches, a gesture of reasonability. “Look, you’ve fought a better battle than anyone I’ve faced in a very long time. Let’s call it a truce, you and me. Go back to your wife. I’ll fade away into the darkness I came from. We’ll never see one another again.” Something sharp and pointed entered his words as he finished, “I’ve given you your life once already.”

“Let’s go,” Cork ordered.

Charon/Milwaukee didn’t move. His face lost any trace of reasonableness. He narrowed his gaze and a deep line appeared between his eyes like a sudden streak of war paint. “If you don’t back down now, this is what will happen. I’ll kill you, and after I kill you, I’ll return to that trailer and kill everyone in it. Is it worth that risk to you?”

Cork was silent.

“I thought not.” Charon/Milwaukee smiled, but almost sadly, as if the victory had been a cheap one. “Then it’s good-bye, O’Connor.”

He took a step backward, still smiling. He turned toward the canoe. As he pivoted, he made his move quickly, diving left, rolling on the soft pine needles that covered the ground along the shoreline, reaching for the automatic stuffed in his belt under his vest. Cork didn’t fire until the moment the man called Milwaukee and Charon came up to one knee and braced to shoot.

The bullet from Wendell’s rifle blew off most of Charon/Milwaukee’s left hand. It plowed a wide, messy path through his chest and exited his back along with large splinters of his shoulder blade. The force knocked him backward. He lay on the ground, his arms spread wide, his face turned toward the sky. The automatic had fallen near his feet, unfired. With difficulty, Cork worked another round into the chamber of Wendell’s rifle. Carefully, he approached the downed man.

Charon/Milwaukee’s eyes were open. The hard brown, Cork saw, was flecked with gold. He was still breathing, small gasps that sounded like hiccups. Cork bent to him and said, “I’ve hunted all my life. One good shot is all you ever get.”

Charon/Milwaukee tried to speak, but he seemed to be addressing someone behind Cork, above him. Cork almost turned to see who it might be. Then the hiccuping stopped, and the brown eyes became sightless as a couple of marbles.

Cork’s legs gave out and he sat down hard. His shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch. Whatever it was that had sustained him was gone. His ability to focus, to think at all, had fled. If the dead man had risen up like Lazarus from his pine-needle bed, Cork wouldn’t have been able to lift a finger to defend himself. He was empty.

He barely turned when he heard the crackle of twigs breaking underfoot. He saw George LeDuc come from the trees cradling a rifle. George knelt beside him. When he spoke, his breath smelled of spearmint gum. It was like the scent of an angel.

“You okay?”

Cork nodded.

“That him?” George pointed the rifle muzzle at the body.

A thought crept out of the haze in Cork’s mind, a clear wonderment. “What are you doing here, George?”

“Woman came into the store, used the phone to call the sheriff. Seemed like somebody should get here quicker’n they could.”

Cork looked at him dully. “The others?”

“They’re fine. Up at Wendell’s trailer. Jo wanted to come, but I put my foot down. Wasn’t sure what I’d find out here. Come on. Can you walk?” He offered his hand.

As they approached the trailer, the whine of sirens rose from the distance. The trailer door opened and Jo rushed into the sunlight.

“He’s okay,” George called out to her as she came.

“Thank God.” She put her arms around Cork.

“Gently,” he cautioned, although her arms felt good.

In a moment, two cars from the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department skidded onto Wendell’s drive and kicked up dirt and gravel as they sped toward the trailer. Behind them came the blue Lumina and the Lincoln Town Car.

Wally Schanno bounded out. “You okay?”

“Alive anyway.” Cork gestured toward the trailer. “Some folks in there need help. Get an ambulance.”

Schanno hollered instructions to a deputy in the other car. He took inventory of Cork. “You look like you could use some medical help, too.”

“At this point, Wally, I’m just happy to be alive. There’s a body down at the lake. George can show you where. Not one of the good guys.”

The big man Joey approached them, carrying Vincent Benedetti in his arms. “My son?” Benedetti asked.

“Inside,” Cork said. “He’ll be fine.”

“And Shiloh?” Nathan Jackson came up beside Joey, Harris right behind him.

“She’s in there, too. Unharmed.”

Cork and Jo followed them inside. Schanno went to check on Arkansas Willie, who sat hunkered in a corner, holding his knee and looking like a trapped varmint. The others went directly to where Shiloh sat on the floor next to Angelo Benedetti.

“Shiloh,” Angelo said, gesturing toward the man in Joey’s arms, “meet your father.” She looked up, confused. Then Benedetti waved toward Nathan Jackson. “And . . . meet your father.”

Nearly a dozen bodies were packed into the small living room of the trailer home. Cork backed out, and Jo with him. “Let them sort it out,” he said.

Schanno accompanied them. “We’re going to need a full statement, Cork.”

“First we’re getting him to a doctor,” Jo said. “He may have a broken collarbone.”

“Want to wait for the ambulance?”

She shook her head emphatically. “I’ll take him.”

They walked away from the trailer. Across Iron Lake, through the cedars near the shore, over grass still greening under the October light, came a breeze that smelled of the North Woods. Of evergreen and deep, clean lakes. Of sun-warmed earth. Of desiccated autumn leaves. Of the cycle of dust to dust. Of things seen and half seen, things unseen but sensed. Fragrances that had gifted Cork all his life, that had become as common to him as the scent of his own body. Pay attention to what blows across the water, Henry Meloux had advised Cork early on. In his wisdom, the old man had offered more than just a warning about the coming of the
majimanidoo,
and Cork found himself taking in the air with a renewed sense of wonder.

“You’re grinning like this was Christmas morning,” Jo said.

“Am I?”

“I’d have thought you’d be in a lot of pain.”

“You hurt long enough, you almost forget it’s there.”

“I know.” She stopped walking.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I was just thinking. You’ll need some tending while that shoulder heals. Why don’t you come and stay with us.”

The smile on her lips seemed as delicate as a snowflake and as easily melted.

“You mean . . . at the house?”

“Yes.” The breeze pushed a wisp of yellow hair onto her forehead. She swept it back with her small hand. “You can stay in the guest room to begin with. We could see how things go while you heal. While we all heal.”

It was a day of miracles. Of two suns. One crowning a cloudless sky and the other rising new in Cork’s heart.

“Hey, Cork!” Schanno called to him. “If I want to reach you, where will you be?”

For a moment, Cork was lost in the blue of Jo’s eyes. Then he answered, “Home, Wally. I’ll be home.”

EPILOGUE

I
N HIS FORECAST
based on the coats of muskrats, Charlie Aalto had been correct. Two days before Halloween, a heavy snow fell over the North Woods. The weather came gently, moving in just before nightfall, and hour after hour, snow drifted silently down until it covered the ground deep as a man’s calf.

The weather did not deter the Anishinaabe. Quiet as the snowfall, they filed past the white trailer home, past the harvested garden, through the line of cedars, and gathered around a fire on the shore of Iron Lake to honor Wendell Two Knives.

The
midewiwin
Henry Meloux beat the
mitigwakik,
the Mide drum, and spoke to the spirit of Wendell Two Knives, guiding him on the Path of Souls, cautioning him against the dangers and distractions on his way west to the Land of Souls. Wendell Two Knives was guardian of tradition, respectful of the old ways. Tradition dictated that a man be buried with the implements that had defined his life. There was no burial for Wendell Two Knives; his body was never found. Instead, Meloux placed on the fire a strip of birch bark, Wendell’s deer-bone awl, a wooden bowl of pitch, and a
cijokiwsagaagun,
the small spatula Wendell had used to seal the seams of his canoes.

“Our brother, you leave us,” Meloux said in the language of the Anishinaabeg. “Our brother, to the Land of Souls you are bound.”

George LeDuc stepped forward. He was not ashamed to let his emotion show in tears.

“I knew Wendell Two Knives all my life. As boys, we wrestled. Wendell was stronger and smarter and usually beat me. I was a better shot. When we hunted, Wendell was never envious and was always glad for me when I brought home the deer. He was a good man who never turned away when someone needed his help. All of us on the rez, we’re better people because of him. I will miss my friend.”

Others spoke, each in their turn honoring Wendell Two Knives. Then Henry Meloux said, “Our brother was
aadizookewinini,
a storyteller. In our stories do we remember who we are. In our stories do we tell our children’s grandchildren about the ways of our people. Wendell Two Knives gave the gift of his stories to the Anishinaabeg. He gave his stories as a trust to his nephew’s son, Louis. The snow has fallen. It is winter. The time for telling stories.”

For one so young to be asked was an honor. Louis came fully into the firelight, a small boy with a great heart. The snow had whitened his hair, making him seem an old man already. Cork, who was watching, knew there was indeed something wise in the boy, far beyond his years.

Louis told this story.

“There was a man who knew Noopiming—Up North in the Woods, the Boundary Waters—better than any other man. He knew not only the lakes and rivers, but also the rocks and trees and animals. He loved all life there, held sacred the belief in the
manidoog,
the spirits who dwelled in that place. And he was blessed in return with a skill in building canoes that glided across water smoothly and swiftly as birds in air. The man was called Ma’iingan, for he was brother to the wolf.

“A woman came and asked Ma’iingan for help. She asked for a place to hide in Noopiming, for she was being pursued by a terrible
majimanidoo.
The good man Ma’iingan led her to a special place and hid her there. He brought her food and he kept her safe.

“One day the
majimanidoo,
in the shape of the woman’s father, appeared before Ma’iingan and begged to be taken to her, claiming he was worried and wanted to see with his own eyes that she was well. At first, because his heart was so good that he did not recognize evil in another, Ma’iingan was fooled. But the true spirit of the
majimanidoo
could not be hidden for long, and before they reached the woman’s hiding place, Ma’iingan saw the
majimanidoo
for the evil it was. He refused to go any farther. Using all his terrible magic, the
majimanidoo
tried to force Ma’iingan to tell him where the hiding place was, but to no avail. In anger, he killed good Ma’iingan.

“The spirit of Ma’iingan stood on the Path of Souls but did not want to make the journey yet. He cried out to Kitchimanidoo, imploring the Great Spirit to let him stay a little longer in Noopiming, to keep safe the young woman, to fulfill his promise to her. Kitchimanidoo heard the good man’s plea. The spirit of Ma’iingan was given the shape of a gray wolf, for that was his totem, and allowed to return.