Jo shook out her umbrella in preparation for heading outside. “You’re familiar with the story of the prodigal son? I’m just wondering. The good son who did all his father asked of him, how do you think he felt when he saw the love that was lavished on the other?”
Benedetti shook his head in a disappointed way. “This isn’t about me.”
“Why should I believe anything you tell me? I mean, if, as you say, family is all that can be trusted.”
“Whether you believe me or not doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that you don’t buy that slop Harris and Jackson are trying to sell you.”
“But disbelieving them is part of the package you’re trying to sell. Do you see my dilemma?”
Angelo Benedetti regarded her for a moment, and something like regret seemed to enter his face. He shrugged. “Believe what you want to believe. Your funeral.” He walked away from her. When he opened the front door, a shaft of gray light entered the church, but it didn’t make things any brighter.
She spent a few minutes at the office clearing her schedule. She called Rose, let her know she’d be late for dinner. Finally, as dark settled over Aurora, she climbed into her Toyota and headed toward the Iron Lake Reservation. She had to tell Sarah Two Knives that the men who’d forced her husband and her son into the Boundary Waters had lost contact with them and had no idea where they were.
Heavy white flakes began to plaster themselves against the windshield. In her headlights, the wet snow mixed with the drizzle like moths among a swarm of gnats.
On the outskirts of Allouette, she pulled up and stopped at the turn-in to the trailer home of Wendell Two Knives. The trailer and the outbuildings were almost lost in the dark and the precipitation. But beyond the buildings, visible through the boughs of the cedars near the lake, was a flickering light.
Jo left the car at the side of the road and stole into Wendell’s yard. She crept between the dark, empty trailer and the big shed where Wendell kept his truck and the materials he used to make his canoes. She passed a small garden full of bared cornstalks and emptied pumpkin vines. A light wind came off the lake and moved through the branches of the cedars, coining toward her with a long sigh. Another sound came with the wind, a sound that to Jo seemed like crying.
She hid herself behind one of the trees and peered cautiously through the thick branches. The light, she realized, was a fire. And the crying was a song. Henry Meloux sat on a stump near the deep vast black that was Iron Lake and sang in the language of The People. As she watched, he lifted his hand and sprinkled something into the wind. He stopped suddenly and listened intently, then he looked directly at the place where she stood concealed. She stepped from cover.
Meloux grinned. “Jo O’Connor.” He didn’t seem surprised in the least, but Jo had never known the old midewiwin to be surprised by anything.
“ Anin, Henry,” she said, offering him the traditional Anishinaabe greeting.
“ Anin,” he replied. He beckoned her forward and indicated a big chunk of saw-cut birch as a seat.
Jo liked Henry Meloux immensely. The old man seemed to favor her with the same affection. It probably had something to do with the fact that Meloux credited her with saving his life the year before. She’d been lucky with a rifle and had prevented a murderous man in a jeep from running Meloux down. But she also suspected that anyone who approached him in true need would have felt embraced by his affection. Jo’s own feeling about Meloux was deeply embedded in respect. The old midewiwin understood a kind of law Jo appreciated more and more all the time, a law for which nothing was written and no courts existed.
Meloux wore an old plaid mackinaw that, in the firelight, glistened with rain. On his head was settled a red billed cap with CHEPPEWA GRAND CASINO printed across the crown. Water dripped from the bill. His breath, when he spoke, fogged the air. Jo looked at his hands, dark old hands where the veins ran like rivers, and she saw that he held a pouch.
“What are you up to, Henry?”
“Fishing,” the old man told her. “Among the spirits.” He lifted a bit of cedar bark and added it to the fire. “I have been asking the manidoog of the woods to bring my old friend Wendell Two Knives back safely to his home. And I have been asking that the other men come home safely, too.”
“Henry, do you know what’s going on out there?”
The wind rose suddenly. The fire stirred and grew brighter. The cedar bark flamed up in a small explosion of embers that, lifted on the wind, scurried into the night like fireflies.
“It’s an old battle,” Meloux said. “If I were a younger man…” But he let it drop.
“You know about Cork and the others?”
Meloux nodded.
“Do you know where they’re going?”
“No.” He reached out as if touching the air. “I only know everything is connected, like the threads on a spider web. And tune is like the wind. The wind blows, the web moves, but the connections do not break. Only, now I feel something tearing through, something big. Threads are breaking. I don’t know why.”
Jo leaned toward the fire and spread her cold hands to its heat. “I don’t know what’s going on, Henry. It’s like I’m downwind of the Devil. I can sense something awful out there, but I can’t tell what it is or what it wants. I don’t know how to fight against something I don’t understand.”
“We do what we can.” Meloux spoke quietly, but without defeat. “I burn sage and cedar. I offer tobacco. You? You have become a hunter. Maybe a warrior, too?”
“Maybe.”
“I know you as a warrior, Jo O’Connor. I owe you my life.”
“I was lucky, Henry.”
“I do not believe that.” Meloux took a bit of sage and cedar bark and put it in Jo’s hand. His fingers were thin and hard, the skin rough, the nails yellow. “In your own way, burn cedar and sage. And remember, the thing about a devil is that Grandmother Earth will refuse to hide it. It will be revealed. Be ready.”
“I’ll do my best, Henry.” She stood up to leave. “You’re a long way from home. Can I give you a lift?”
The old midewiwin smiled. “You already have. As for getting home, when I am ready, that I can do on my own.”
She headed back toward Aurora. Until she knew more, what good would speaking with Sarah Two Knives do except add to the woman’s burden of worry? There was nothing anyone could do that night anyway. Best let those who could sleep in peace.
She pulled into the garage of the house on Gooseberry Lane. When she opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen, the smell of fried chicken rolled over her like the scent of heaven. Rose stood at the sink with Stevie, doing dishes.
“Mommy!”
Stevie threw his dish towel down and jumped off the chair that had given him enough height to reach the counter. He ran to Jo and gave her a big hug. It was the best thing that had happened to her all day.
“We saved you some dinner,” he told her.
“In the oven,” Rose said, using the hem of her apron to wipe suds from her hands. “Hungry?”
“I wasn’t until I smelled the chicken. Now I’m starved.”
Jo took a hot pad from a hook near the stove and pulled the plate from the oven. A chicken breast with a light golden breading, baked potato, fresh green beans, and yellow squash. She put her nose into the steam that rose from the plate and breathed in the wonderful aroma of Rose’s cooking. Stevie gave her flatware and a napkin and she sat down at the kitchen table.
“Where are the girls?” she asked.
“Annie’s at church,” Stevie answered. He knelt on a chair at the end of the table, set his chin on his folded hands, and his dark eyes followed her every move. They were Cork’s eyes. The deep, watchful eyes of the Anishinaabe.
“She’s helping mark things for the bazaar next Saturday,” Rose explained. She put butter and salt and pepper on the table for Jo, then took up Stevie’s dish towel and set about drying the remaining dishes.
“And Jenny’s at Scan’s,” Stevie finished, eager to share what he knew.
“Sean’s folks invited her to dinner. They’re studying afterward,” Rose added.
Stevie picked up the salt shaker and tapped a little onto the table. He tried to get the shaker to stand at an angle on a few grains, something he’d seen his father do. The shaker fell over.
“Will you play Legos with me tonight?” he asked.
