“Why are you so certain that’s what’s happened?” Jenny asked.
Stephen aimed at her the dark fire of his eyes. “Am I the only one who sees things the way they are? If the plane didn’t crash, we’d have heard from Mom by now. If it did crash, it crashed in those big fucking mountains and ended up in little fucking pieces, and if anybody survived they’re fucking Popsicles by now.”
“Watch your language, Stephen,” Cork said.
“My language? Mom’s dead and you’re worried about my language. Jesus Christ.” He yanked his napkin from his lap, threw it on the table, got up, and left. Trixie, who’d been lying nearby, rose as if to follow, then seemed to change her mind. She simply watched him stomp up the stairs toward his room.
“He’s scared,” Annie said.
“And he’s thirteen,” Jenny added.
Cork slid his chair away from the table. “I’m going up to talk to him.”
Upstairs, he knocked on Stephen’s bedroom door.
“What do you want?” his son called from inside.
“To talk.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“We need to. Open up, Stephen.”
The wait was long and Cork was beginning to think he’d have to assert his parental authority to barge in, but Stephen opened the door at last. He turned away immediately and went back to his desk. The only light in the room came from the computer monitor, which was full of pictures from a website, images of a plane wreck.
Cork sat on Stephen’s unmade bed. “I can’t imagine that’s pleasant,” he said.
“It’s not supposed to be pleasant.” Stephen looked at the monitor. “Did you know that they’ve changed the instructions for crash position? They don’t want you to stick your head between your legs anymore. Know why? It’s not because you have a better chance of surviving but because there’s a better chance of keeping your teeth intact so they can use dental records to identify the remains.”
“You found that on the Internet?”
“Yeah. And worse.”
“And you believe it. And you think there’s no hope.”
Stephen pointed to the monitor. “You think there’s any hope in that?”
“When my father died, I was thirteen,” Cork said. “I was sitting at his bedside. Your grandmother was there, too. We watched him go. The doctors who attended him never gave us any hope. Because they were so sure, I didn’t even pray that he wouldn’t die. I just let him go. And you know what? I’ve always regretted that I didn’t pray my heart out trying to keep him with us. I wonder to this day if it might have made a difference.”
“What? Like a miracle or something?”
“Yeah. A miracle or something. Look, Stephen, nobody really knows what’s happened out there.”
Stephen said quietly, “I do.”
“Oh? How do you know?”
“Because I dreamed it,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
The light from the monitor lit Stephen’s face, giving his skin a harsh, unnatural sheen. For several seconds he didn’t speak, and his lips were pressed into a thin, glowing line. “There was this dream I used to have when I was a kid, I mean really little. I was in a big yellow room and Mom was there but way on the other side. I was scared. I think maybe there was something or somebody else in there with us. I don’t remember that part so well. What I remember is that I tried to run to Mom but she disappeared through a door and the door slammed shut when I tried to follow her. The door was white like ice. I pounded on it but it wouldn’t open. I screamed for her to come back.”
“Did she?”
“I always woke up then. You or Mom heard me crying and came in and the dream was over.”
“You used to have a lot of nightmares,” Cork said.
“I had this one a bunch of times. It stopped and I pretty much forgot about it. Until today. Dad, it had to be about this, right? I mean, it is this. Only why did I have it so long ago when I couldn’t do anything about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there something I could’ve done to . . . I don’t know . . . stop it? Is there something I should do now? I don’t understand.”
Tears gathered along the rims of Stephen’s eyes. Anything still unbroken in Cork’s heart shattered, and he reached out to his son, but Stephen shrank away.
“I want to understand,” he pleaded.
“Why don’t we talk to Henry Meloux?” Cork said. “He’s the only man I know who understands dreams.”
“Henry,” Stephen said, and the dim light of hope came into his eyes.
“Not tonight though. It’s late. First thing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Stephen said with a nod.
They sat for a while, silence and the distance of their great fear between them.
“Feel like joining the rest of us?” Cork finally said.
“Yeah, I guess.” Stephen turned off the computer and followed his father out of the room.
Downstairs, the faces of the others were turned to the television screen.
“Dad,” Jenny said, “check this out.”
Cork stood behind the sofa and watched the CNN report. A small, energetic woman with black hair and dark, angry eyes stood talking with another woman, a reporter. She wore a leather vest over a western shirt. When she gestured, which was often, silver bracelets flashed on her wrists. She stood in front of a tan brick building that was bright in the sun and surrounded by an apron of snow. She squinted in the sunlight and spoke into the microphone the reporter held toward her.
“Do you think,” she said, “that if this had been a plane full of white politicians these people would have waited so long to begin searching for them? But it was full of Indians, so who cares?”
“Who is she?” Cork asked.
“The wife of one of the men who was on the plane with Jo,” Rose said.
“Our own people have taken up the search. And we will find them,” the woman said emphatically.
A caption appeared under the picture on the screen: “Ellyn Grant, wife of Edgar Little Bear, a passenger on the plane missing in the Wyoming Rockies.”
The reporter, a blonde in a long, expensive-looking shearling coat, asked, “I understand one of the Arapaho has had a vision that may indicate where the plane came down.”
“Will Pope,” Ellyn Grant replied. “Our pilot is looking in the area Will’s vision guided us to, a place called Baby’s Cradle. We’ve asked for help, but so far the authorities out here have given us nothing.”
“Would you comment on the allegation that the pilot of the plane had been drinking the night before the flight?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Right now, all I care about is finding the plane and my husband.”
The segment that followed dealt with the charter pilot, Clinton Bodine, who’d allegedly been drinking the night before. A reporter in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, where Bodine lived and operated his charter service, told viewers that he’d obtained information indicating the pilot was a recovering alcoholic. Accompanying the report were pictures of the hangar at the regional airport that he used for his small enterprise. There was a brief statement by one of the officials at the airport who said he’d known Bodine a long time and he was surprised to hear about the drinking allegation. There were shots of the pilot’s home and of his wife, a young woman holding the hand of a small boy, hurrying from her car to the front door to avoid reporters.
Mal said, “Why do I think that if they could they’d follow her into the bathroom?”
“Brace yourselves,” Cork said. “Our turn may come.”
SEVEN
Day Three, Missing 43 Hours
Another tragedy developed overnight, but this one didn’t involve the O’Connors.
Cork slept on the sofa again, keeping company with the television and CNN in a drowsy, sometimes disoriented, way. Partly this was because it allowed him to monitor the news, but it was also because he couldn’t sleep in the bed he shared with J
o. It felt too empty and he felt too alone. At 5:00 A.M. he roused himself, made some coffee, and stepped onto the front porch to breathe in fresh air and check the weather. The storm that hit the Rockies had slid south and east through Colorado and Nebraska and Iowa and had missed Minnesota entirely. The sky was black and clear and frosted with stars.
He was about to enter the third day since Jo’s plane had gone missing. Cork wasn’t praying anymore that they’d made it to some godforsaken airstrip. He was praying that wherever the plane came down it had remained in once piece. And he was praying that, when the search began again that morning, the plane would be quickly found.
He returned to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, stared at the wall clock, where the rapid sweep of the second hand was torture to him, and then headed back to the sofa.
CNN had come alive with coverage of a story breaking in Kansas. Outside a town called Prestman, population 1,571, a standoff had developed between law enforcement and a religious sect led by a man named Gunther Hargrove. Hargrove and his followers, a group estimated at around sixty people that included a number of children, had leased an abandoned farm several miles outside the isolated prairie town. Hargrove hadn’t kept up with the rent, and a sheriff’s deputy had gone with the property owner to execute a lawful eviction order. During the confrontation that followed, Hargrove’s people had shot the property owner and taken the deputy hostage. Now the farm, which the sect had turned into a compound, was surrounded by law enforcement personnel. Hargrove claimed that enough explosives had been planted about the compound to blow western Kansas off the map. The situation was extremely tense, and a resolution wasn’t anywhere in sight. From a cable news perspective, it was a perfect story, and in a way, it was helpful to Cork. It sent the missing plane full of Indians to the bottom of the network interest list. Cork hoped that as a result the media vultures who might have descended on Aurora to hound him and his family would be drawn to Kansas instead.
Mal was up long before the others. It was still dark when he came downstairs in his robe and slippers.
“Up early,” Cork said.
“I’m always up early. And I smelled coffee.” Mal went to the kitchen and came back with a cup. “Anything new?”
“Nothing from Wyoming. There’s a situation in Kansas that’s getting the coverage.” Cork explained the standoff.
“So much harm in the name of God. Makes atheism look mighty appealing sometimes.” Mal shook his head and sipped his coffee.
Cork went upstairs, showered, and put on clean clothes. When he came back down, Stephen was on the sofa with Mal. Rose and the girls were up, too. They filled the kitchen with breakfast preparations while the men and Stephen monitored CNN. Finally Rose called, “Breakfast’s ready.”
Another day of waiting had begun.
An hour after sunup, about the time Cork anticipated day would be breaking in western Wyoming, he phoned the Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Department and spoke with Deputy Dewey Quinn.
“The weather there is clear,” he reported to the others. “The planes are just taking to the air. They’ll keep us informed.”
“Did you ask him about that Arapaho’s vision?” Mal said.
“He dismissed it. The man’s a notorious drunk, and the area his vision indicates is nowhere near any of the corridors the plane may have traveled.” Then to Stephen he said, “Let’s go see Henry Meloux.”
Cork drove his old red Bronco. He stopped at the Gas-N-Go for a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. He also bought himself a cup of coffee and some hot chocolate for Stephen. The defroster was giving him trouble, and he kept having to wipe the windshield as he drove. They headed north out of Aurora along the shoreline of Iron Lake. After twenty minutes they left the paved highway and began bouncing over the gravel washboard of a county road. Another fifteen minutes and Cork pulled to a stop near a double-trunk birch that marked the beginning of the trail that led to Henry Meloux’s cabin. They got out and began to walk.
For almost a mile the trail cut across national forest land, then it entered the Iron Lake Reservation. It led in a fairly straight line through tall second-growth pines. The ground was a soft bed of shed needles, and the air was sharp with the scent of pine sap. The air was still, and the only sound was the occasional snap of twigs under their feet. In some places the sunlight came through the trees in solid pillars and in others it lay shattered on the ground, so that the forest had the feel of a temple partly destroyed.
They broke from the trees onto a long point of land covered with meadow grass that was still green so late in the season. Near the end of the point stood an ancient, one-room cabin. Smoke poured from the stovepipe that jutted from the roof, which Cork had expected. What he didn’t expect was that dark smoke would be pouring from the windows and door as well.
“Come on!” he called to his son, and they began to run.
They reached the cabin together, and Cork called through the door, “Henry! Henry, are you in there!”
“Here,” Meloux hollered back and emerged from the smoke with an old yellow dog at his heels.
Cork was greeted with another unexpected sight: Henry Meloux was laughing.
“Are you all right, Henry?”
Meloux was an old man, the oldest Cork knew, somewhere in his nineties. His hair was long and white. His face was as lined as the bark of a cottonwood. His eyes were like dark, sparkling water. And at the moment, his hands held what looked like a smoking black brick.
“Corn bread,” the old man said.
Stephen had knelt down to pet the dog, to whom he was a well-known friend. “You okay, Walleye?” he asked.
The dog’s tail wagged in eager greeting, and he licked Stephen’s hands.
“What happened, Henry?” Cork said.
“We went for a walk. I forgot about the corn bread I was baking.” He looked at the hard, burned brick cradled between pot holders. “The corn bread is a disappointment.” He smiled at Cork and Stephen. “But the walk was not. It is a day full of beauty, Corcoran O’Connor.”
Cork said, “We’d like to talk, Henry.”
Meloux’s face turned thoughtful. “I have heard about your trouble.” He looked back at the cabin, where the smoke was beginning to thin. “I think it is a good morning to sit by the lake.” He put the burned corn bread on the ground, where Walleye sniffed at it, then stepped warily back. The old man said, “Only a very stupid or a very hungry animal will eat that. In this forest, there are both.” He went back into his cabin, and when he returned he carried a box of kitchen matches, which he slipped into the pocket of the red plaid mackinaw he’d put on.
A path led from the cabin across the meadow and through a breach in an outcropping of gray rock. At the edge of the lake on the far side of the outcropping lay a black circle of ash ringed by stones. Split wood stood stacked against the rock, and nearby was a wooden box the size of an orange crate. Meloux lifted the lid and pulled out a handful of wood shavings and some kindling. These he handed to Stephen. “We will need a fire,” he said. He pulled the box of matches from his coat pocket and held them out to the young man.
Without a word, Stephen set to work.
Cork handed the pack of American Spirits to Meloux. The old man took the gift, opened it, and eased out a cigarette. He split the paper and dumped the tobacco into the palm of his hand. He sprinkled a pinch in each of the four cardinal directions and dropped the last bit into the fire Stephen had going at the center of the ring. They sat on sawed sections of tree trunk, and the old man passed a cigarette to each of them, then a stick that he’d lit from the flames. They spent a few minutes while the smoke from their cigarettes mingled with the smoke from the crackling fire and drifted skyward. Stephen had smoked with his father and Meloux before in this way because this was not for pleasure. In the belief of the Anishinaabeg, tobacco smoke carried prayers and wishes to the spirit world.
Meloux was an Ojibwe Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. As far back as Cork could remember, t
he old man’s guidance had been an important part of his life. When Meloux was a young man, his renown as a guide and hunter was legendary. He had the heart of a warrior and twice had saved Cork’s life. His knowledge and understanding had also helped Stephen back to wholeness after the trauma of a kidnapping. This old man who’d turned corn bread into hard charcoal was remarkable in more ways than Cork could say.
“Tell me what I can do,” Meloux said.
Stephen explained his dream. “I don’t know what it means or why it came to me,” he confessed. “Was I supposed to do something, or is there something I’m supposed to do now?”
The old man considered. “Sometimes a dream is just a dream, Stephen. It is a way for the spirit to examine pieces of this world.”
“I think it’s more than a dream, Henry. I think it was a vision.”
“Tell me what you think this vision means.”
“The white door has got to be the snow, right?”
The old man did not reply.
“Right?”
Instead of answering, the old man said, “You thought there was someone in the room with you. Who?”
Stephen frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t know, but whoever it was, I was afraid of them.”
“Afraid for yourself or for your mother?”
“For her, I think.”
“This room, you said it was big. What else do you remember?”
“It was yellow. And full of white rocks,” Stephen said suddenly.
“There were rocks in the room?”
“Yes. They looked like ice. Like the door looked.”
The old man nodded. “Do you remember anything else?”
Stephen closed his eyes. “A light under the door.”
“The door that hid your mother and closed itself to you?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Anything else?”
Stephen shook his head hopelessly. “It was a long time ago.”
“Yet you remember much. I think you are right, Stephen. I think this is more than a dream.”
“What does it mean?”
“I do not know. But I will tell you this. If there is a door, it can be opened.”