Renoir DuBois kept his heart in his bedroom closet, hidden in a Nike shoe box.
There was an agate he’d found on the shore of Lake Superior when he was very young, the image of a wolf so clear on its smooth surface that it seemed etched by a purposeful hand. In the totemic system of the Anishinaabeg, Ren was Ma’iingan, Wolf Clan, and he believed the stone was a sign of some kind whose full meaning he would someday understand.
In the box there was also an eagle feather given to him by his great-grandfather, who told him this story: A certain man spent his whole life searching in vain for an eagle feather, which would signify his great wisdom. He paid no heed to the needs of his family or relatives or other people. Finally he gave up and said to the Great Spirit, “I have wasted my life searching for the eagle feather. Now I will spend my time helping others.” As soon as he said this, a beautiful eagle flew overhead and a feather gently drifted down.
There was a small figure of the Marvel Comics character Silver Surfer, one of Ren’s all-time favorite superheroes. His best friend, Charlie, had spotted it at a swap meet in Marquette and had given it to him for Christmas.
There was the skull of a vole, small, delicate, perfect, that Ren had discovered in the meadow south of the cabins one summer afternoon. Only the skull, no other bones. So that it would not be crushed by his other treasures, he kept it in a tiny box that had once held one of his mother’s necklaces. Sometimes he opened the necklace box and spent hours drawing the skull in minute detail, imagining as he did so what kind of world such a small brain and perspective would see.
There was a newspaper article, which his mother did not know he had, cut from the Billings Gazette, about the murder of his father, and also the long, celebratory obituary that had been printed in the Marquette County Courier.
The most precious item in the box was a drawing his father had given him, done on a plain sheet of notepad paper, the kind kept by the phone to write messages. It had been created on a good day, Ren recalled, an August day. They’d spent the morning putting a new toilet in one of the cabins, and his father had talked while he worked, offering Ren his understanding about Kitchimanidoo, the Great Spirit, about life, about art. He’d said, as he put the wax ring in the flush hole and settled the porcelain bowl on top, that life was a reflection of the Great Spirit, and that art was a reflection of life. All of them were simpler than people imagined. At lunch in the main cabin, which was called Thor’s Lodge, he’d illustrated his point with a pen-and-ink drawing-two long arcs, a few easy loops. “What is it?” he’d asked Ren. Though nothing connected in a way that completed the image, Ren saw it was a bear. “There aren’t many clear connections in life. God, Kitchimanidoo, they’re pretty sketchy when you come right down to it. But you don’t need everything spelled out for you, son. Here”-and he touched Ren’s chest above his heart-“here is where it all comes together.” A week later, his father was dead.
All the treasures in his box Ren loved and in loving them found the connections simple and unseen that ran from the outside world deep into the world of his heart, just as his father had promised.
That afternoon, fourteen-year-old Ren was at work on something that would eventually find its way into his box. He had no idea at the moment of the enormity of the events that would put it there.
“On your knees with your nose in the dirt. Dude, that’s so lame, but so you.”
Ren looked up from his work, startled. Charlie Miller stood above him, her face a narrow mask of disgust. Her real name was Charlene, but she preferred Charlie. A lot about her besides her name belied her gender. She looked like a boy, dressed like a boy, and was the fastest runner in the eighth grade at Bodine Area Middle School. Her hair was shaved close to her scalp and from a distance appeared to be no more than a dusting of charcoal. Her left nostril and her lower lip were pierced and sported small silver rings. She was taller than Ren, more slender, and moved with the quickness and grace of a forest animal. Also the wariness.
“Get bent,” Ren said, and returned to his work.
Charlie knelt beside him. Ren could smell that she needed a bath.
“What’s up?” she said.
“Cougar track.”
“Bullshit.”
Two nights before, rain had turned the ground around the cabins soft. Ren hadn’t discovered the track until the next afternoon; as soon as he did, he set about preserving it. He was used to seeing tracks in the vicinity of the resort cabins. Raccoon, bear, even an occasional bobcat. They came nosing around the trash bins, which Ren’s mother kept locked. At first he’d thought the track was a large bobcat, but when he got out his copy of Peterson’s A Field Guide to Animal Tracks, he realized it was not. He’d heard stories of cougars still roaming the woods of the U.P., but he never thought he’d find the evidence. Using an old paintbrush with soft bristles, he’d gently cleaned debris from the imprint, then sprayed it with clear lacquer. When that dried, he mixed up a batch of plaster of Paris in an empty Folger’s coffee can, and he’d been pouring this into the track when Charlie startled him.
“How do you know it’s a cougar?” Charlie asked.
“I looked it up.”
“I never heard of a cougar around here.”
“They used to be all over the place, but people killed most of them and drove the others away. I heard there might not be more than twenty on the whole U.P.”
“Dude, you’re worse than National Geographic.”
She hit him hard on the arm and he dropped the coffee can.
“Goddamn it, Charlie, quit screwing around. This is important.”
“Yeah? So’s this.” She hit him again.
Ren launched into her and they rolled over in the soft dirt. Charlie easily got the upper hand, straddled him, and pinned him to the ground.
“Say it,” she commanded.
“Bite me.”
She slapped the side of his head lightly. “Say it.”
“You suck.”
She lifted her butt and bounced hard on his stomach so that he grunted.
“Say it.”
“All right. I give.”
She sprang off him, raised her hands above her head, and did a victory dance. Ren got back on his knees and crawled to the cougar track.
Charlie knelt beside him again. “Cougar. No shit.”
“No shit.”
“Sweet,” she said.
Ren heard the scrape of pine wood. He glanced up as the door to the nearest cabin opened.
The man with the wounded leg stood at the threshold, looking stunned, as if the beautiful afternoon, the evergreen-scented air, the blue autumn sky, the warm sunshine were the most amazing things he’d ever seen. Or maybe it was just the fact that he was still alive. After a moment, he fell forward, tumbled down the steps, and lay sprawled facedown in the dirt.
“Jesus.” Ren sprang to his feet and sprinted to the fallen man.
“What happened to him?”
“Somebody shot him yesterday.”
The man’s pants were bloodstained. The left leg had been cut off near the crotch, revealing two wounds, one on the outside of his thigh where the bullet had entered and another on the inside where it exited. The exit wound was larger and open, fitted with a tube and drainage bag that were held in place with surgical tape. The entrance wound had been stitched, but the stitches were broken and the wound was bleeding. The man’s eyes were closed. His face had gone slack.
“Is he dead?” Charlie asked.
“God, I hope not. I was supposed to be watching him.” Ren felt the man’s neck. “He’s got a pulse. We’ve got to get him back inside. You take his left arm, I’ll take his right. Let’s see if we can lift him.”
“Unh-uh.” Charlie backed away a step. “I’ve tried dragging my old man into bed when he was passed out. You might as well try lifting a dead horse.”
