“I’ll be fine. But Cork, if someone is after Shiloh, we don’t have much time.” Arkansas Willie’s long face seemed longer, drawn down by the weight of his worry.
Cork reached out and put a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “We’ll find her, Willie.” He started through the sliding door, but turned back. “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Do you smoke cigars?”
“No. Vile habit. Why?”
“Just wondered. Lock up,” he said, and tapped the latch on the glass door.
Almost a year before, Cork had been a heavy smoker, more than a pack a day. But he’d made a promise to someone he’d loved very much that he would reform. Now he ran every day, and he hadn’t had a cigarette in nine months. He’d become supersensitive to the smell of tobacco smoke. It had been faint in Raye’s bedroom, but definite. Whoever it was who’d been there, they had a fondness for cigars.
7
Cork drove north out of Aurora, passed the Chippewa Best Western, Johannsen’s Salvage Yard, and finally the last streetlamp of town. Three miles farther, he turned right onto a county road that followed the shore of Iron Lake. In another ten minutes, he came to a graveled access that led to an old resort hidden among the trees. A long time had passed since he’d been out that way, and he slowed as he approached the access, then stopped, killed the engine, and stepped out.
The moon above the dark pines was waning, lopsided, like a balloon leaking air. The night was still and without a sound. Cork couldn’t see the buildings of the old resort, but he knew how they lay. The big cabin set back from the shoreline. Six small cabins flanking the lane down to the lake. And there, where the black water met the sand, the sauna. All of it had been built by the old Finn Able Nurmi, Molly’s father, and left to Molly when he died. When Molly died, there’d been no one to pass it on to, and now the old resort just sat, disintegrating with each season, the wood going soft with rot so that it would all collapse someday and go back to the earth and there would be no sign that Molly Nurmi had ever been. In the time before the cold science of the whites came to Iron Lake, the Anishinaabe believed the water was bottomless. There was a tradition among the Iron Lake Ojibwe. Before they were married, a couple would take strands of their hair and braid a cord. On the day they were wed, they tied the cord around a stone, canoed to the middle of the lake, and dropped the stone into the water. The stone descended forever, they believed, its spirit bound by the braid of their hair, and forever there would be a thing that bore the memory of them together. In a way, that’s how Cork thought of Molly and him. Forever bound in spirit. As long as he had memory, Molly would always be.
He drove on, putting the old resort behind him. Two miles farther, he came to a double-trunk birch off to the right of the road. He pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. From the glove compartment, he took a flashlight, locked up the Bronco, and headed toward the birch, which marked the trail into the woods to the cabin of Henry Meloux.
Meloux was a midewiwin, an Ojibwe medicine man. He was also said to be a tschissikan, or magician, although that was a claim Meloux himself never made nor admitted to. He was the oldest man Cork had ever seen, and he had seemed that old for as long as Cork could remember. As far as Cork knew, except for his dog Walleye, Meloux had always lived alone in his cabin on a small rocky peninsula on Iron Lake called Crow Point.
Although Cork brought the flashlight, he didn’t turn it on. The trail was easy to follow, lit by the moon and beaten nearly bare by the feet of others who, like Cork, had sought out the old man for his succor and advice. Cork walked for half an hour in the stillness of the woods, crossing at some point from national forest land onto the reservation of the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe. As he approached the cabin, he could see light through the windows and he smelled wood smoke. He paused, waiting for Walleye to bark and announce his presence.
When no sound came from the cabin, Cork moved nearer.
“Henry!” he called. “Henry Meloux! It’s Corcoran O’Connor!”
A small animal whine came from the woods to his left. In a little clearing visible in the moonlight stood a small dark structure. Cork headed that way.
Walleye, Meloux’s old hound, lay beside the door. He lifted his head casually as Cork approached and his tail lazily thumped the ground. From the tiny building behind the dog came a long, grumbling fart.
“Henry?”
“You’re early,” the old man accused from inside.
Cork didn’t argue. He’d long ago learned that Meloux had a way of knowing when someone would come to him.
“Getting so a man can’t take a quiet crap anymore.”
“Sorry,” Cork said.
After a momentary rustling behind the door, the old man emerged from the outhouse buttoning the last strap on a pair of gray overalls. “That’s all right,” he said, waving off Cork’s apology. “Wasn’t going so good anyway.”
Meloux led the way back to his cabin, Walleye at his side. Inside, the cabin was a simple affair. One room, a bunk, an old cast-iron stove, a rough-hewn table and three chairs, a sink with a pump. The walls contained an assortment of items-snowshoes, a reed basket, a midewiwin ’s drum, a big bear trap, and a Skelly calendar from 1948 with a drawing of a buxom woman in tight shorts inadvertently entertaining a gas-station attendant as she bent to the sideview mirror to apply lipstick. The cabin was lit by two kerosene lamps, and the smell of the burning oil was mixed with the scent of burned cedar.
“Been purifying, Henry?” Cork asked.
The old man didn’t answer, only nodded toward one of the chairs for Cork to sit. He went to the sink and brought back two blue speckled enamel cups, then to the stove where a coffeepot sat heating. He poured hot coffee into the cups. When he returned and sat at the table, Cork handed him a pack of Camel unfiltered cigarettes. Meloux accepted them with a smile and a nod. He broke open the pack and held it out to Cork, then took one for himself. Kitchen matches stood in a small clay holder on the table. Meloux struck one and lit his cigarette.
Cork held his own cigarette gingerly. He hadn’t smoked since Molly died. It was the last promise he’d ever made to her and he wanted to keep it. But it would be an insult not to join Meloux in the smoking of tobacco, a thing that for the old man had nothing to do with an addictive habit.
Meloux watched Cork with silent interest. Cork finally reached for a match and lit the cigarette. Only nine months, but as soon as the smoke hit his lungs, it seemed like nine years. Cork realized how much he’d missed the old habit. He closed his eyes and the smoking felt like a visit with a deliciously sinful old friend.
They smoked in silence for a while. Walleye lay sprawled on the old wood floor, snoring loudly.
“Walleye didn’t bark when I came,” Cork noted. “He’s old, Henry. Is he going deaf?”
“You think he didn’t hear?” The old man grinned and shook his head. “He heard. He just didn’t care. He’s old like me. He’s finally learned that what comes, comes. Why bark?”
The old midewiwin exhaled a flourish of smoke and watched it rise to the ceiling. “They tell me you are a running fool.”
“Running fool? Well, I do run, Henry.”
“The wolf runs after the deer. The deer runs from the wolf. In this running, there is reason.”
“Believe it or not, there’s reason in my running, too. A lot of things are clearer to me when I run.”
Meloux considered this for a moment. “A walk in the woods makes clear a lot, too.”
“It’s hard to explain, Henry. In a way, it’s part of a promise I made to Molly to make my life healthier.”
“Ah, Molly Nurmi.” He nodded as if that explained it just fine.
The cedar-and-kerosene-scented silence descended comfortably once again. Cork finally decided it was time to approach Meloux with the reason for his visit. But before he could speak, Meloux said, “I have been purifying the air to clear my mind. The wind speaks these days, a warning I do not understand. I hear the trees groan, but their complaint is lost on me.” He looked at Cork, and within the dark eyes, sunk deep in lined and wrinkled flesh, was a look of concern.
“’ Majimanidoo,” he finished.
