The storm had knocked out power, and Sam’s Place lay in the dark, lit only by frequent flashes of lightning. It was two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, but it felt like evening. There were no customers waiting at the serving windows. The violent weather had driven folks to shelter, in their homes or their hotel rooms or their rented summer cabins. Iron Lake was an empty shiver of restless gray water deserted by fishing boats and pleasure boats alike. Aurora, Minnesota, deep in the great Northwoods, hunkered down and watched and waited for the storm to pass.
Heavy rain hammered the metal roof of the old Quonset hut called Sam’s Place, and inside, the O’Connors readied for a period without electricity that could, they knew from experience, last hours or even into the next day. Cork had hauled the gas generator from the cellar, filled it, and got it running. It powered the essentials: the freezer, the refrigerator, the ice milk machine, the lights and outlets of the prep and serving areas. Cork didn’t think there would be many customers until after this weather had passed, but he wanted to be ready, just in case. And God forbid that any of the perishables should go bad. In a small town like Aurora, in a close-knit area like Tamarack County, any hint of food poisoning could sink a food enterprise for good. It may have been only a burger joint, but Sam’s Place had a sterling reputation, and Cork intended to keep it that way.
When they’d prepared for the worst, Jenny O’Connor, Cork’s older daughter and officially in charge that day, brought out her notebook and sat at one of the serving windows. While rain cascaded down the awning outside, she wrote. Judy Madsen, a retired school administrator who’d just come on and would close up Sam’s Place that night, worked the day’s crossword puzzle in the Duluth News Tribune. Cork stood near Jenny, looking out at the dismal sheets of rain. He had paperwork waiting in the back section of the Quonset hut, which was the office for his business as a private investigator, but without lights or power to his computer, there wasn’t much he could do.
Marlee Daychild, one of their teenage summer help, sat on a stool near the freezer, talking on her cell phone. She was seventeen, pretty, Ojibwe. She laughed and said into the phone, “No way.” She listened and said, “You want to talk to them?” Then she said, “I love you.”
She hung up and said, “Stephen says hello. He says he’ll call you tomorrow. He has a surprise.”
Stephen was Cork’s son, also seventeen, and Marlee was his girlfriend. At the moment, Stephen was in the Twin Cities, where in recent weeks, he’d been working with physical therapists at the Courage Center. A bullet fired by a madman last winter had damaged his spine. The folks at the Courage Center believed they could help him walk again. Anne, Cork’s younger daughter, had gone with him as company, cheerleader, and liaison with the folks back home. Cork would have chosen to be there himself, but because of the way the tragedy had occurred and because her own particular spiritual journey had prepared her, Anne believed this was a responsibility that lay on her shoulders. Her reports to Cork and the others in Aurora had been full of hope.
“No hints?” Jenny asked.
“He wants to tell you himself.”
“He’s walking?” Cork said.
“I can’t tell you. He made me promise. But it’s good,” she said.
Even though the day was bleak, Cork felt a profound glimmer of hope.
They went back to what they’d been doing before. Jenny was working on the manuscript for a novel. Her second attempt at a manuscript. The first, she insisted, was “a total piece of crap,” and it gathered dust bunnies on a shelf in her bedroom closet. Jenny was twenty-seven. She had a BA in journalism and an MFA from the renowned Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. She was the mother of an energetic three-year-old and was also the managing force behind Sam’s Place these days. Cork and Judy Madsen also took turns running things, but for all intents and purposes, the operation was Jenny’s. She was terrific at it, yet Cork knew a career in food service, even if it was the family business, wasn’t where her heart lay. Every free moment she was able to carve out for herself, she bent to her writing.
“Have you called home, Jenny?” Cork asked.
She didn’t answer, so deep into her writing now that she didn’t hear. Cork made the call to home himself from his cell phone. Rose, his sister-in-law, answered.
“Yes,” she said, responding to his question. “The power’s out here, too. Waaboo and I both have flashlights and we’re making sure all our stuffed animals know that there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Waaboo was Jenny’s child, Cork’s grandson. His real name was Aaron Smalldog O’Connor. His Ojibwe name was Waaboozoons, which meant “little rabbit,” but everyone called him Waaboo. He’d been adopted, and the heart of every O’Connor held a special place for the little rabbit. They’d all, every one of them, put their lives on the line for him.
“If the outage lasts until dinner, come on up to Sam’s Place,” Cork suggested. “I’ll put something together up here.”
“A Sam’s Special and a milk shake,” Rose said. “Heck, we might do that even if we get power.” She turned away from the receiver and said, “It’s your grandpa.”
“Baa-baa,” Cork heard his grandson say. Which was what Waaboo had always called him.
“Thanks, Rose,” Cork said.
“You know it’s no problem. We’ll see you later.”
Cork ended the call, and Jenny finally looked up from her notebook. “How’s my guy?” she asked.
“Giving comfort to all his stuffed animals.”
“Very nurturing,” she said.
“How’s it going?” Cork nodded toward her notebook.
“It goes,” she replied. Which, when it came to her writing, was how she always answered him.
His cell phone was still in his hand, and the ringtone played the first few notes of the chorus from “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees. He glanced at the number on the screen, smiled, and took the call.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said.
At the other end of the line, Rainy Bisonette said, “Flattery will get you almost anywhere. But right now, I need you here.” Her voice was stern and urgent. Also a little broken up because reception where she was, a remote spot called Crow Point, could be spotty.
“What’s wrong?” Cork said. “Is it Meloux?”
Her next few words were lost in static, then Cork heard her say, clearly and definitely, “Just get out here and you’ll understand.”
“I’m on my way.” Cork slipped the phone back into the holster on his belt. “Hold down the fort. I’m heading out to Crow Point.”
“What is it?” Jenny asked. “Is everything okay? Henry?”
“I’m not sure, but it sounds serious. I’ll let you know.”
Jenny studied the rain outside, which fell without any sign of letup. She closed her notebook. “I’m going with you.” She looked toward Judy Madsen. “Okay?”
“We’ll be fine,” Judy said. “Marlee and me, we’ll handle the hordes, won’t we?”
The teenager gave a whatever kind of shrug and went back to playing a game on her cell phone.
• • •
Henry Meloux lived at the end of a long finger of meadowland called Crow Point that jutted into Iron Lake several miles north of Aurora. Meloux was old. Exactly how old no one, not even Meloux himself, really knew. Somewhere in his nineties was Cork’s best guess. Since he was a boy, Meloux had lived in a one-room cabin he’d built with his uncle, and for most of those years, he’d lived alone. He was a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society, a healer of body and spirit. In his youth, he’d been a hunter of great renown. He’d also been a fierce warrior in defense of those who sought his protection. Many of them had been Anishinaabe, his own people. But Meloux’s eyes were color-blind when it came to skin. Cork was one of those who owed their lives to Meloux, and even more important, his children were among them, too. Whatever Meloux needed from him, Cork was prepared to give.
Cork drove a red Ford Explorer. He’d bought the vehicle slightly used a couple months earlier after a huge buck had leaped in front of the Land Rover he’d been driving. The collision had killed the buck and totaled the Land Rover. All things considered, Cork was content to be driving an American-made vehicle again. He parked at the edge of a gravel county road, near a double-trunk birch that marked the beginning of the two-mile trail through thick boreal forest to Crow Point. His wasn’t the only vehicle parked there. A mud-spattered green pickup sat among the weeds at the roadside. Cork put on his rain poncho and got out. Jenny did the same, while her father walked around the pickup. The plates were Wisconsin.
“What are you looking for?” Jenny asked.
“Maybe nothing.” Cork peered through the rain-streaked window on the passenger side. “On the other hand, the gun rack’s empty. Maybe whoever drove here didn’t bring a rifle, but maybe they did. If so, they’ve got it with them. And it’s not hunting season, Jenny.”
“You’re scaring me, Dad,” she said.
He pulled out his cell phone and tried calling Rainy but got no answer. He looked at the trail that threaded through the dark pines. “Let’s go. But keep your eyes peeled.”
“For what?”
The trail to Henry Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point cut through national forest land for a mile or so, then crossed onto the reservation of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, or as they preferred to be called, the Iron Lake Anishinaabeg. In the wet air, the smell of pine was sharp and cleansing. Normally, the trail would have buzzed with insects, but the storm had driven them to shelter. Same with the birds. The only sounds were the rain cascading among the branches of the evergreens and poplars all around them, the crinkle of their ponchos as they walked, and the suck of mud on their boots where the ground was bare.
“He’s big,” Cork said.
“Who?” Jenny glanced at him from beneath her dripping poncho hood.
“Whoever got to Crow Point ahead of us.” He poked a finger at tracks in the muddy ground ahead of them.
“You make it sound so sinister,” she said. “Lots of people visit Henry.”
“Carrying rifles?”
“You don’t know that he’s carrying a rifle.”
“And I don’t know that he isn’t. Remember Waaboo and the Church of the Seven Trumpets?”
He was making reference to people who’d tried to kill his grandson when Waaboo was only a baby. That confrontation had taken place on Crow Point. Several people had died that day. Jenny, Stephen, Rainy, and Meloux had almost been among them. So Cork’s concern was not unfounded.
“Given the urgency in Rainy’s voice and the fact that she’s not answering her cell phone, it seems prudent to err on the side of caution, don’t you think?”
“I guess it makes sense. So what do we do?”
They’d crossed Wine Creek, a freshet that was well inside reservation land. Crow Point was another quarter mile ahead.
“One thing we’re not going to do is come at Henry’s cabin directly, in case someone’s watching the trail. Follow me,” Cork said.
He cut into the woods and began making his way through the undergrowth, which the thick bed of fallen pine needles and the acidic nature of the soil beneath kept sparse. He angled east, Jenny behind him, until he came to Iron Lake. The shore was lined with aspens and was a favorite roost of crows, the reason for the point’s name. He slipped among the dripping trees and followed the shoreline until he could see three man-made structures: Meloux’s ancient cabin built of cedar logs; the cabin of his great-niece Rainy Bisonette, which was much newer; and the little outhouse that serviced them both.
The sky above the lake and the point was an oppressive ceiling of charcoal-colored clouds from which rain poured relentlessly. Cork’s boots were soaked, and each step made a squishing noise in the wet ground and the mud. He moved more slowly now, easing his way toward the rear of Meloux’s cabin. He signaled Jenny to hang back while he crept to the structure. A single window faced the lake, and Cork slipped up beside it. The windowpane was lifted a few inches, enough for air to circulate but not enough to let in rain. He could hear the murmur of voices inside but could make out no words. He glanced back to where Jenny remained crouched among the aspens in her olive green poncho. She held up her hands signaling, Cork supposed, So, what’s up?
He was about to hazard a glance through the window when the pane slid up fully and a familiar old voice inside said, “You come like a thief, Corcoran O’Connor. My front door has no lock. You are welcome to enter as a friend.”
• • •
There had come a time, finally, when Henry Meloux accepted the reality of his situation, which was that he could no longer live alone. It had come to him as the result of a strange illness that had made him weak for a long while. That’s when Rainy Bisonette, his great-niece and also a public health nurse, had come to Crow Point. Her purpose was not only to minister to Meloux but to learn from him the healing ways of the Grand Medicine Society. When little Waaboozoons had been given to them—by the hand of Kitchimanidoo, the Great Spirit, Meloux was certain—the dangerous circumstances of that gifting had forced the old Mide to confront his mortality, to put his life on the line for the little guy, and this, in the incomprehensible way of the Great Spirit, had been his own healing. Rainy had stayed on, even after Meloux’s recovery, both to learn and to help the old man who was, after all, somewhere near a century old. Two summers ago, Cork had helped build the one-room cabin that was Rainy’s. And since then, he’d often spent the night with her, sharing her bed and blanket and the blessing of her warm body.
Rainy stood in Meloux’s cabin, a cup of coffee in her hand, listening as her great-uncle made the introductions.
“Daniel English,” the old man said, indicating his guest with a nod of his head.
As Cork had surmised from the boot prints on the trail, Daniel English was a big man, well over six feet tall. Cork judged him to be in his late twenties. English was quite clearly Indian, though Cork couldn’t have said what his tribal affiliation might have been. His hair was raven-wing black, his eyes almond, his nose like a hatchet blade set in a broad face. He wore jeans and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose his powerful biceps. There was one other thing that Cork noticed about him from the get-go: those dark eyes took in everything, and in a way that made Cork think, Cop.
“Daniel English,” Cork said. “That name’s familiar to me.”
English said, “We’ve met before.”
“Oh?”
“I was ten,” English said. “Visiting Uncle Henry with my mother. You dropped by.”
“Eudora English,” Cork said, remembering. “You were Danny then, and smaller.”
“You were in a sheriff’s uniform and wore a gun. I was afraid of you.”
“The uniform went a while ago. Same with the gun,” Cork told him. “This is my daughter Jenny.”
English hesitated when Cork’s daughter reached out, an awkward move. When he finally took her hand, which was small in his own, he did it with care, as if afraid he might break her fingers.
“Henry’s really your uncle?” Jenny asked. Because on the rez, sometimes familial titles were bestowed though no blood connection was involved. People of a certain age were all cousins, and to them the next generation were uncles or aunts, and above them were grandmothers and grandfathers. To the Ojibwe, traditionally, the community was family.
Meloux spoke up to clarify. “He is the son of my sister’s granddaughter.”
“My nephew,” Rainy said.
Cork noted that the clothing English wore was dry, but he could see no rain gear, which made him think that the man had been there awhile, before the storm broke. A good deal of talking had probably gone on, and whatever it was they’d discussed was probably the reason for Rainy’s call. Cork was deeply interested in that reason and in why Rainy’s voice had been so urgent. But the Anishinaabeg never rushed anything, and so he resigned himself to patience.
Rainy poured coffee for the two new visitors, and Meloux suggested they smoke together. From a cupboard, he pulled a cedar box that held a small leather pouch and a pipe that was, Cork knew, carved from stone quarried at a site in southwestern Minnesota sacred to many tribes in the upper Midwest. Henry filled the bowl, but before he lit the tobacco, he took a pinch and made an offering of gratitude to the spirits of each cardinal direction. They passed the pipe and smoked in silence and listened to the rain, and then Henry said, “There is trouble, Corcoran O’Connor. Trouble in my family.”