Every 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.”