Now he was dying.
And the Iron Lake Reservation had gathered to keep vigil.
LeDuc and I made our way through the crowd in the lobby of the Aurora Community Hospital, greeting everyone we knew as we went. On the way there, George had explained to me what happened.
LeDuc owned a general store in Allouette, the larger of the two communities on the rez. That morning Henry had walked into the store to buy a few groceries. Meloux lived on Crow Point, an isolated finger of land on Iron Lake far north on the reservation. There was no road to his cabin, and no matter the season, he hiked to town, a good five miles, mostly over forest trails. LeDuc and Meloux passed some time talking, then the old man paid, put his things in a knapsack he carried on his back, and went outside. A few minutes later, LeDuc heard a commotion in the street. He rushed out to find Meloux collapsed on the pavement and people crowding around. LeDuc called 911. The paramedics took Meloux to the hospital. The old man had been conscious when he arrived. He was weak, barely able to speak, but he’d asked for me.
Meloux was in intensive care. They weren’t going to let me see him. Relatives only. But Ernie Champoux, Meloux’s great-nephew, put up a stink, and the doctor in charge, a young resident named Wrigley, finally relented.
“Do you know what’s wrong?” I asked.
“His heart,” Wrigley said. “I suspect an occlusion, but we need to run tests to be sure. Only a few minutes, all right? He needs his strength.”
Meloux lay on the bed, tubes and wires running from him every which way. It made me think of a butterfly in a spider’s web. I’d never seen him looking so frail, so vulnerable. In his day, he’d been a great hunter. Because he’d saved my life, I also knew him as a warrior. It was hard seeing him this way.
His brown eyes tracked me as I came to the bedside.
“Corcoran O’Connor,” he whispered. “I knew you would come.”
I pulled up a chair and sat beside him. “I’m sorry, Henry.”
“My heart.”
“The doctor told me.”
He shook his head faintly. “My heart is in pain.”
“The doctor suspects an occlusion. A blockage, I think that means.”
Again he shook his head. “It is sadness, Corcoran O’Connor. Too heavy for my heart.”
“What sadness, Henry?”
“I will tell you, but you must promise to help me.”
“I’ll do what I can, Henry. What’s the sadness?”
Meloux hesitated a moment, gathering strength. “My son.”
Son? In the forty-some years I’d known him, I’d never heard Meloux speak of a son. As far as I knew, no one had.
“You have a son? Where?”
“I do not know. Help me find him, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“What’s his name, Henry?”
Meloux stared up at me. For the first time I could ever recall, he looked lost.
“You don’t know his name?” I didn’t hide my surprise. “Do you know anything about him?”
“His mother’s name. Maria.”
“Just Maria?”
“Lima.”
“Maria Lima. How long ago, Henry?”
He closed his eyes and thought a moment. “A lifetime.”
“Thirty years? Forty? Fifty?”
“Seventy-three winters.”
Seventy-three years. My God.
“It’s a big world, Henry. Can you tell me where to begin?”
“Canada,” he whispered. “Ontario.”
I could tell our conversation, spare though it was, was draining him. I had three pieces of information. A mother’s name. An approximate year. And a place to start looking.
“Have you ever seen your son, Henry?”
“In visions,” Meloux replied.
“What does he look like?”
“I have only seen his spirit, not his face.” A faint smile touched his lips. “He will look like his father.”
“He’ll look like his mother, too, Henry. It would be nice to know what she looked like.”
He motioned me nearer. “In my cabin. A box under my bed. A gold watch.”
“All right.”
“And Walleye. He will be alone and hungry.”
“I’ll take care of Walleye, Henry.”
Meloux seemed comforted. “Migwech,” he said. Thank you.
Outside the room, LeDuc was waiting.
“What did he want, Cork?”
“He’s worried about Walleye,” I said. “He wanted me to take care of the dog.”
The rest had been told in confidence, and I couldn’t repeat it. Nor could I say what I really thought. That what Meloux was asking was nothing short of a miracle.
FOUR
George LeDuc dropped me back at Sam’s Place. Jenny was there, looking pale, but she seemed to be doing fine. Several customers stood lined up at the serving window. I pulled her aside for a moment and asked how she was feeling.
“Okay now.” She offered me a brief smile. “Customers,” she said and turned back to her window.
As they went about their work, I filled the girls in on Meloux, what I could tell them anyway, and asked if they’d hold down the fort while I took care of what the old man needed. Jenny said she’d call in Jodi Bollendorf, who wasn’t on the schedule that day but would be glad to help.
I hopped in the Bronco and headed home.
My house is on Gooseberry Lane, a quiet street of old homes, mostly two-story wood frame. We don’t have fences, though often lilac hedges or shrubbery serve that purpose. I grew up on Gooseberry Lane, a child in the house where I’ve raised my own children. Until his death—the result of a gun battle in the line of duty—my father was sheriff of Tamarack County. He’d come from Chicago, married my mother who was half Ojibwe, half Irish. Her mother, Grandma Dilsey to me, was a true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe, though she preferred to call herself Anishinaabe—or Shinnob—as do many on the rez. That makes me one-quarter Ojibwe. Though the other three-quarters is Irish, Grandma Dilsey always swore it was the blood of The People that counted most.
Until I was elected sheriff, my heritage was never much of an issue. After I put on the badge, whenever conflicts arose between the two cultures, red and white, I found that I was never Ojibwe enough for the Ojibwe or white enough for the whites. That wasn’t the reason I resigned my office. I turned in my badge when it became clear to me that my responsibility as a lawman was often at odds with my duty as a husband and father. I was lucky. I had Sam’s Place to fall back on. At least during the warm months, between May and November. The long winters were always a concern. The PI license I’d recently acquired would, I hoped, give me something to do in all those dark months.
Stevie was playing by himself in the front yard. My son was eight, then, small for his age. With his straight black hair and hard almond eyes, he was, of all my children, the one who showed most clearly his Anishinaabe heritage. He’d recently discovered golf, and that afternoon he stood in the shade of our big elm, a driver in his hand, swinging at a big Wiffle ball that sailed twenty yards when he hit it. I spotted a number of divots in the grass. When he saw me pull into the driveway, he dropped the club and came running.
“What are you doing home, Dad?” He looked hopeful. He was the youngest kid on the block, and with Jenny and Anne often working at Sam’s Place, I knew he was sometimes lonely.
I ruffled his hair. “Work to do, buddy.”
“Mom’s working, too,” he said, disappointed.
“Where’s Dumbarton?” I asked, speaking of the neighbor’s dog. “They called him in.”
I nodded toward the driver lying in the grass. “How’s that backswing coming?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe later we’ll play a few holes together,” I said.
“Really?”
“We’ll see what we can do. Mom’s inside?”
“In her office.”
“Remember, head down and keep your eye on the ball.”
I went in the house. He tu
rned back to his game.
It was cool inside and quiet. I walked to the kitchen, ran some tap water into a glass, and took a long drink.
“Stevie?” Jo called from her office.
“No. Me.”
A moment later she came in wearing her reading glasses, blue eyes big behind the lenses. She’s a beautiful woman, Jo. A few years younger than me, but looks even more. One of the smartest women I’ve ever known. Also one of the most courageous. For years, she’s represented the Ojibwe of the Iron Lake Reservation in litigation that has often put her on the unpopular side of a legal issue. She’s never flinched. We’ve had our problems. Show me a couple married twenty years who hasn’t. But we were in a good period that summer.
“What are you doing home?” she asked.
“Meloux’s in the hospital.”
“Henry? Why?”
“He collapsed this morning in Allouette. The doctor thinks it’s his heart. Meloux thinks so, too, but in a different way.”
“What way?”
“He has a son, Jo.”
Surprise showed in her eyes. “He’s never said a word.”
“He has now. But only to me, so you can’t say anything to anyone else.” I’d told her because she’s my wife and a lawyer and understands about client privilege. “He asked me to find this son of his.”
“Did he tell you where to look?”
“Ontario, Canada.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“The mother’s name.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. He fathered the child over seventy years ago. And he’s only seen him in visions.”
“Then how can he be sure?”
“He’s Meloux.”
“What are you going to do?”
“First, head to his cabin. There’s something I’m supposed to find.”
“What?”
“A watch. Also, he asked me to take care of Walleye while he’s in the hospital.”
“Do you have any idea how you’re going to do this?”
“I’m waiting for inspiration to strike. Okay if I take Stevie with me? He’s looking a little bored.”
“Thanks. I’m kind of overwhelmed with paperwork.”
I filled my water glass again and took another drink. Jo pulled a cup from the cupboard and poured herself what was left in the coffeemaker on the counter.
“I saw Jenny at Sam’s Place,” I told her. “Whatever had her sick this morning, she seems better now. Sick from drinking, maybe? Is that what we need to talk about?”
“Tonight, Cork. We’ll talk. You need to get out to Meloux’s.” She practically pushed me out the front door.
Outside, Stevie was using the driver as a rifle, kneeling behind the railing of the front porch, firing off imaginary rounds.
“Okay, Davy Crockett,” I said. “Time to desert the Alamo. I’m going up to Henry Meloux’s cabin. Want to come?”
He jumped at the prospect. “Is Henry there?”
Meloux and my son had a special bond. Stevie had gone through a traumatic experience a couple of years earlier, a kidnapping. The old Mide had spent a good deal of time with him afterward, helping him deal with his fears and return to wholeness.
“Henry’s in the hospital, Stevie.”
“Is he sick?”
“Yes. And we’re going to help.”
“Can we visit him?”
“We’ll see. But Walleye’s alone at the cabin. We need to take care of him.”
Walleye and Stevie. Another special bond.
He dropped the golf club on the porch and ran to my Bronco.
FIVE
I pulled to the side of a dusty county road a few miles north of Aurora. Far behind me were the last of the resorts on Iron Lake, hidden in the deep cover of red pines and black spruce. All around me was national forest land. A few miles farther north lay the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I parked near a double-trunk birch that marked the beginning of the trail to Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point.
Stevie leaped from the Bronco. He was already on the trail before I locked up, skipping far ahead. I followed more slowly. Age, yeah, but also because the trail to Meloux’s cabin always had a sacred feel to me. It was a hot afternoon, typical of early August. We were in the middle of a grasshopper infestation, and the woods were full of their buzz, a sound like tiny saws cutting the air. Sunlight broke through the canopy of pine boughs overhead and lay in shattered pieces on the ground. Thirty yards in front of me, Stevie danced through caverns of shadow and into moments of radiant light. I loved him deeply, my son. Every day, I counted him—and my daughters—a blessing.
Meloux had never seen his own son. Never carried him on his shoulders or held him when he cried. Never felt the small boy’s breath, warm and sweet smelling, break against his face. Never knew the pleasure of being for his son the slayer of monsters imagined in the night.
God, I thought, the emptiness.
Yet I’d never felt that from Meloux until, lying on that hospital bed in a web of modern medicine, he’d looked up at me, lost, and asked a favor, father to father.
I didn’t doubt Meloux, didn’t doubt that he had a son he’d seen only in visions. Over time, I’d experienced too many unexplainable moments with the old Mide to be skeptical about something like this. It did make me wonder deeply, though, about the circumstances.
The trail cut through national forest land for a while, then entered the rez. We crossed Wine Creek and a few minutes later broke from the trees. Fifty yards ahead stood Meloux’s cabin, an ancient structure but sturdy, made of cedar logs with a shake roof covered by birch bark. Meloux had built the cabin himself, and as long as I’d known him, had lived there year-round. He had no running water, no indoor plumbing. He used an outhouse.
The door was open. As we approached, something in the dark inside the cabin moved. A long, yellow face appeared, big brown eyes patiently watching us come.
“Walleye,” Stevie called and raced toward the dog.
The mutt padded out, tail wagging.
Many rural people in Tamarack County keep dogs. They have them for a variety of reasons. Companionship, of course. But also security. A dog will bark a warning. Not Walleye. Or at least, not when it was Stevie coming. The two had become good friends over the past couple of years. Stevie threw his arms around the big mutt and buried his face in Walleye’s fur.
“Hey, boy, how you been?” he said. “Missed me?”
I gave the dog’s head a good patting and stepped through the doorway into the cabin.
The structure was a single room. Meloux’s bunk was against one wall. In the center near the potbelly stove stood a table with a few chairs around it. The four windows had curtains that had been a gift from one of the old man’s nieces. On the walls hung a number of items that harked back to a different time: a deer-prong pipe, a birch-bark basket, a small toboggan, a Skelly gas station calendar nearly sixty years out of date.
Stevie came up beside me. “He didn’t close his door.”
“I’m sure he thought he’d be back soon and left it open so Walleye could come and go as he pleased.”
“He never locks his door. Isn’t he afraid someone’s going to steal from him?”
“I think Henry believes that what’s in here wouldn’t interest anyone but him.”
“I think it’s cool stuff.”
“So do I, Stevie.”
Meloux had told me to look under the bunk for the watch. I crossed the floorboards, knelt, and peered into the dark beneath the bed frame. Shoved into a far corner against the wall was a wooden box. I lay down on my belly, stretched out my arm, snagged the box, and pulled it into the light. It was cedar, ten inches long, six inches wide and deep. Carved into the top was an image of animikii, the Thunderbird. Under the bed, undisturbed, it should have had some dust on it, a few cobwebs attached, but the box was clean. Meloux had handled it recently. I opened the lid. Inside,
on top of a stack of folded papers, lay a gold pocket watch.
I picked up the watch and snapped it open. Opposite the watch face was a tiny photograph of a handsome young woman with long black hair.
Stevie looked over my shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Not what, Stevie. Who. Her name is Maria Lima.”
“That picture looks old.”
“It is. More than seventy years old.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Keep it, for now. I might need it.”
“Why?”
“Henry asked me to do something for him. Two things actually. And one of them was to take care of Walleye.”
I put the watch in my shirt pocket, closed the box, and slid it back into the corner where I’d found it.
“If Henry is in the hospital, maybe we should stay out here,” Stevie suggested. “So Walleye won’t get lonely.”
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t we take him home?”
“Really?” A huge, eager smile bloomed on his face.
“Just until Henry’s better.” Though I didn’t know if that was going to happen.
Walleye had padded into the cabin behind us and sat on his haunches, watching. Stevie turned to him and scratched the fur at the dog’s neck.
“You want to come home with us, boy? I’ll take good care of you.”
Walleye’s tail swept back and forth across the floor.
“Come on, boy. Come on, Walleye.” Stevie slapped the side of his leg and headed out with the dog at his heels.
I closed the door behind us. There was no lock.
Walleye paused beside me, looked back at the closed door, then followed my son, who danced ahead of us down the trail as if he were the Pied Piper.
SIX
That night when I walked in from closing up Sam’s Place, Jo was sitting on the living room sofa, reading a book. She looked up and smiled. “Good night at Sam’s?”
“We made a buck or two.” I kissed the top of her head and sat down beside her. “Where’s Walleye?”
“Sleeping with Stevie.”
I was surprised. That afternoon when she saw the dog follow Stevie through the front door, she hadn’t been happy. I’d explained my dilemma, and she reluctantly relented. She wouldn’t allow the dog in the house, however. Not only because Walleye had come from the woods and might have ticks or fleas but, more important, because Jenny was allergic to dogs. And cats, too. Our pets had always been turtles and fish, and once we had a canary that wouldn’t shut up. Jenny named it The Artist Formerly Known As Tweety. We called it Art.