CHAPTER 33
In November, a little over a year after he’d married Camilla Jaeger, Jubal Little came north to bow-hunt with Cork O’Connor. That’s what he told Camilla anyway. Cork knew it was for a different reason, and he knew because Jubal had asked him to help in the deception. As a married man with children, he normally would have had no part in helping a man deceive his wife in order to be with another woman. But this was different.
When Jubal married Camilla, it was a union of purpose. It reminded Cork of the royal marriages of old Europe, mergers for the consolidation of power. The Jaegers had political savvy and their name had political cachet. Jubal had the bearing, the looks, the image, the ambition. But he told Cork, in a drunken phone conversation shortly after the wedding, that he felt like a big empty ship gone off course. He made it clear he wasn’t fond of the Jaegers.
In that same drunken conversation, he told Cork, “All they want me to be is some kind of horse they can all ride to political glory on. They want it to be all about the Jaeger legacy. They want to pull the strings and have me do their dance.”
“What about Winona’s vision, you on the mountaintop?”
“Fuck her vision. And fuck the Jaegers. Fuck ’em all.”
“Does that go for Camilla?”
Jubal was quiet a long time. “She deserves better than me,” he finally said.
Better than Jubal Little? Cork thought, and he knew that his old friend was in trouble.
“Winona won’t answer my calls. And Willie won’t pass along my messages. I need to see her, Cork.”
“What do you want from me, Jubal?”
“Talk to her. Tell her I’ve got to see her. Tell her I’m dying.”
Coming from anyone else, that would have been hyperbole. But coming from the mouth of Jubal Little, it was serious.
“I’m not going to help you start something with her.”
“I don’t want to start anything, Cork. I want…” He’d fallen quiet again, but this time it was as if he’d lost his way.
“What do you want, Jubal?”
“Tell her I want to heal. Tell her I want to be strong again. Will you do that, Cork?”
And so Cork had been the intermediary, and Jubal Little had come north without his wife on the pretext of a bow hunt with his best friend from boyhood.
They had, in fact, gone bow hunting, for the first time since they’d parted ways after Jubal graduated from high school. Cork hunted every season, hunted in the old way Sam Winter Moon had taught him, often with Sam himself, who was still alive in those days. He was amazed at his old friend’s ability. Not only was Jubal still able to find and follow the track of a deer but he was also, even after all the years away from the hunt, a better shot with an arrow than Cork could ever hope to be.
But the bow hunt was only the cover. Jubal’s visit with Winona was the real point, and he sandwiched his time with Cork between his times with Winona. Cork had no idea what passed between them, though he could guess about part of it. In his own mind it was, as Henry Meloux had said long ago, that there were spiritual bonds connecting certain people, that they were two sides of the same leaf, two halves of a broken stone, and that it was not about love, as most people thought of that word, but about a wholeness that was there when the two parts came together.
Whatever it was, when Jubal headed south again, Cork could see a healthy difference. It was shortly thereafter that Jubal entered the political arena. He returned to Tamarack County as frequently as possible, always without Camilla-unless he was campaigning-using the excuse of a fishing excursion or simply the need to reconnect with his North Country roots. Until the outing at Trickster’s Point, which had its own purpose, Cork never again allowed Jubal to use a bow hunt as one of his excuses. He refused to be a party to a continuing lie. But whatever it was that Winona gave him in their time together, it was like an elixir that filled Jubal with vigor.
It was different for Winona. She often disappeared after Jubal left, and when Cork saw her next, she looked withered and drawn. Despite his marriage to a woman he loved deeply, Cork still had a special place in his heart for his first love. He sometimes despised Jubal for all he took from Winona.
Meloux had once told Cork this about healing: “Sometimes the connection runs one way. You pour your own energy into the sick one, and when it is done, you are empty. It is not always like that, but sometimes. So you have to be careful, because some spirits are so hungry they will devour you.”
Cork understood only too well that Jubal Little was one of those spirits who, if you allowed him to, would consume you.
He thought about all this as he drove from his confrontation with the Jaegers directly to the Iron Lake Reservation. He stopped at Willie Crane’s cabin, but no one was there. He headed toward Allouette and knocked at Winona’s front door but received no answer. When he reached the town, he found the Iron Lake Center for Native Art open and Willie Crane inside.
Half of the center was devoted to showing the work of contemporary Indian artists. The other half, which Winona was largely responsible for, was a museum of Ojibwe cultural artifacts. There were beaded bandolier bags, cradleboards, flutes, drums, pipes, moose-hide moccasins, figures carved of wood, baskets woven of reeds or made from birch bark, the shells of snapping turtles used as war shields, ash bows, deer-hide quivers, arrows, and other ornate implements of warfare. Over the past twenty years, Winona had patiently accumulated a wealth of items that showcased Ojibwe ingenuity, spiritual sensibility, and artistic appreciation.
Willie was behind a display case of Ojibwe jewelry and smaller artifacts, and he looked up with surprise when Cork entered, as if, despite the Open sign on the door, he really wasn’t prepared for visitors.
“What do you want?” he said. Waouwan?
“ Boozhoo to you, too, Willie.”
Cork crossed the old wood floor to the counter, which Willie stayed behind as if it were a protective wall.
“You heard about Isaiah?” he asked.
“Of course,” Willie answered.
“You really think he killed Jubal?”
“Why would he say so if he didn’t?”
“I can think of a lot of reasons, and your sister’s at the top of the list.”
Willie bent and rearranged two items in the case. “I don’t understand.”
“I think that, given the right set of circumstances, Isaiah could have killed Jubal Little, but I don’t think he did. I think he’s covering for Winona.”
“You’re crazy,” Willie said, still fiddling in the case. The words of his denial had no energy.
Cork said, “Know what Jubal and your sister talked about their last night together, Willie?”
“How would I know something like that?”
“Because I think Winona told you everything. For want of a better word, I think you’ve always been her confessor.”
Willie finally stood up straight. His face was tawny and tight, and reminded Cork of deer hide stretched for drying.
“Cork, if you ever cared about Winona and Jubal, you’ll stop asking questions.”
“What I care about most right now is the truth.”
“You talk like it’s something you could just wrap your hand around.” Willie’s eyes were hard and dark and shiny and tired. But they weren’t empty. Something flickered in them, and Cork couldn’t tell whether it was fear or anger. “You know the story of the blind men and the elephant? I think that’s the reality of truth. What you understand depends mostly on the perspective you bring to it.”
“How about you tell me your own perspective, and we’ll see what I understand?”
Willie shook his head. “It’s not that easy.”
“Okay, how about I tell you something I believe to be the truth, and then you can give me your perspective?
