Vermilion Drift

the pipe to Cork. They sat a long time in this way, smoking silently.

Meloux’s hair was long and white and fine as spider silk. His face looked as if it held a line for every year he’d lived. His eyes were warm and inviting, little brown suns. He wore a blue denim shirt, old denim overalls, and moccasins he’d sewn himself. He wore no hat, and the breeze in the hollow ran through his hair. The long white filaments quivered and glowed as if electrified. Cork noticed that the old man’s hands, whenever they held the pipe to his lips, trembled, something Cork had never seen before, and though he mentioned nothing to his friend, he was concerned.

Finally Meloux said, “Isaiah Broom has you in his sights.”

“Isaiah and I have been exchanging fire since we were kids.”

“An angry wind, that man. From a child.”

“Has he ever come to you asking help?”

Meloux shook his head. “His anger blinds him.”

Walleye lifted his head briefly, blinked at them, then went back to resting.

“When he was a boy too young to remember, he was brought to me,” Meloux said. “His father was dead in Korea, his mother gone in the night. He was a child abandoned and wrapped in a blanket of pain. I tried to help him, but he was not ready for what I offered. In his anger, he has been a strong voice for The People. So maybe that was what was meant for him all along.”

“Henry,” Cork said, changing the subject, “I had a vision today.”

The old man looked at him closely. “Your face is troubled.”

Cork described the blood running from the house across the lawn of the Parrant estate. “It’s the second vision I’ve had there, Henry. The second disturbing one.”

Meloux’s eyes took in the sky. “Everything is alive, Corcoran O’Connor. And everything alive can become ill. That is a diseased place, I think.”

“Can it infect those who live there?”

“That is the nature of disease.”

Cork thought about Ophelia Stillday working at the center, and the situation concerned him.

“This vision is not the cause of the trouble I see in your face,” Meloux said.

“No, there’s something else.”

Cork told him about the grisly discovery in the Vermilion Drift. “If it’s the Vanishings, Henry, then two of the unidentified bodies are definitely Ojibwe. One of the others is probably Monique Cavanaugh. But that leaves two we don’t know about. I’m wondering if there were any other disappearances of women from the rez back then. Someone gone but never reported.”

“Not all The People love this land, Corcoran O’Connor. There have always been those who abandon it, and sometimes they do not say a word to anyone. They just go.”

“That’s not an answer, Henry.”

The old man looked down where his hands quivered on his lap. “Talk to Millie Joseph.”

“Because her memory is better than yours?”

“Because you are a man who is happy asking questions and she is a woman happy to answer. Go to Millie. Ask questions. It will make you both happy.”

“Henry, did you know about the wildcat mine pit sunk on rez land?”

“There’s not much about this reservation I do not know.”

“Who else knew?”

“A long time ago, probably many. Now?” He gave a shrug.

“Henry—”

“It is time you talk to Millie Joseph.”

It was clear to Cork that was all Meloux was going to say on the subject. He stood up to leave. “By the way, I met Rainy. She says she’s here to learn from you.”

“That’s not the only reason she’s here,” the old man said unhappily.

Cork glanced toward Meloux’s trembling hands. “You’ll get back to your cabin okay?”

“Walleye and me, we’ll take our time. That is something we both still know how to do well.”

“Migwech, Henry,” Cork said. It meant “thank you.”

Cork started away through the tall meadow grass, but Meloux called his name and he turned back.

“I will say one thing, and then I will say no more.” The sun was behind the old man, and his face lay in shadow. “Your father was one of those who knew about that pit. Your father knew there was another way into that mine.”

THIRTEEN

Millie Joseph had a room in the Nokomis Home, which was an assisted living facility that had been built by the Iron Lake Ojibwe in the town of Allouette, on the reservation. She’d been married three times and had outlived all her husbands. From these marriages, she had eight children. Six were still alive. Only one resided on the rez. The others had scattered to the four winds.

Millie Joseph had been Cork’s mother’s best friend. She’d also functioned as a kind of unofficial historian for the rez. She’d kept papers and documents and had recorded oral histories. Most of her collection had gone to the Iron Lake Historical Society, which she had helped form. Now she suffered from dementia. Although she was still gifted with periods of extreme lucidity, particularly about details of her past, about other things her mind was often as clean as a freshly laundered sheet. She’d always been a pleasant woman, and her dementia had not yet changed that. When Cork found her in the dayroom of Nokomis Home, she was sitting alone in her wheelchair, staring through the window at the blue stretch of Iron Lake. She was smiling and seemed lost in reverie.

“Boozhoo, Aunt,” Cork said, using the familiar Ojibwe greeting and calling her by the relational name he used for most reservation women her age, regardless of actual blood connection. He leaned and kissed her wrinkled cheek.

“Hello, there,” she replied, as if Cork were a stranger, but a welcome one.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Cork said, looking with her through the window.

“When I was a girl, I used to swim in that lake every morning.”

“You were a good swimmer, I’ve been told. Better than most boys.”

She laughed. “My mother told me it wasn’t good for a girl to beat boys, but I didn’t care. I was fast as an otter.”

Cork knelt beside the wheelchair. “Millie, there’s something I want to ask you.”

She smiled at him, expectantly.

“Many years ago my cousin Fawn disappeared. Do you remember that?”

Her smiled melted, and a wariness came into her eyes.

“Another young Ojibwe woman also vanished. Naomi Stonedeer. Do you remember?”

She looked away from him, and although her eyes settled again on the lake, Cork suspected it was a different vision she was seeing. “Fawn liked to swim, too.”

“I know,” Cork said. “She was a good swimmer, like you.”

“They said the lake took her.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t the lake.”

“Did others disappear, Millie?”

“Naomi Stonedeer and Fawn.”

“Yes. I know about them. But were there others?”

She frowned, thinking, and her eyes seemed more focused. When she spoke, there was gravity in her words. “Hattie’s girl ran away about that time. Seems to me Hattie never heard from her again. A wild child, that one. Didn’t surprise me that she’d run off without a word.”

“Hattie’s girl?”