Vermilion Drift

“Wedding photos?”

“I told you, nothing.”

“Even though it wasn’t a marriage in the usual sense, Max, doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

Cavanaugh considered Cork’s question and appeared to be surprised. “You know, I never thought about it. Or if I did, I suppose I just figured that it was all too painful and he simply wanted to forget.”

“So he never talked about her and you never asked?”

Cavanaugh folded his arms on his desk and leaned toward Cork. “My father was in the war, World War Two. Whenever I asked him if he’d killed any Germans, he would always reply, ‘I shot at a lot of them.’ It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever I asked him about my mother, he’d say, ‘Why try to remember what’s best forgotten?’ In its way, it was, I suppose, the same response.” Cavanaugh sat back and said with a sigh, “I’ll look through the things I have and see what I can come up with, all right?”

“I’d appreciate it, thanks.” Cork put his mug down. He realized he hadn’t taken a single sip. “Max, your sister’s death has opened a lot of wounds. I’m sorry that it seems like all I do is pour in salt.”

Cavanaugh turned away, swiveling in his chair, and stared out the window toward the great wound that bled iron. He was quiet a long time, and Cork realized it was because he simply couldn’t speak. The weight of Cavanaugh’s sadness was undeniable, as if every breath the man exhaled filled the room with suffocating grief.

“You want to know the truth, Cork?” His voice broke as he spoke. “I feel as empty as that hole out there. I didn’t know anything could hurt so much.”

“I understand, Max. My own experience has been that, as cliche as it sounds, time will help you heal.”

Cavanaugh swung back to him. “First I need to know who killed her. Then I can start healing.”

Millie Joseph sat in her wheelchair on the porch of the Nokomis Home with a lap blanket spread across her knees. From there, she could see much of Allouette, the town where she’d lived all of her eighty years, and beyond Allouette the wide, cool blue of Iron Lake, sparkling under the noonday sun. The air was full of the scent of late- blooming lilac, and Millie Joseph looked perfectly content and seemed absolutely delighted to see him.

“It’s been a long time, Corkie.” Like Hattie Stillday, she called him by the nickname all his mother’s friends had used.

Only two days, Cork thought, but it was obvious that his last visit wasn’t there at all in the perfectly clear sky of her memory.

“Millie, I’d like to ask you some questions about my mother’s journals and about the people on the reservation many years ago.”

“When I was a child, the government didn’t want us to speak our own language here. Did you know that, Corkie? But your grandmother said hogwash. And she taught Ojibwemowin to the children in her school. Your grandmother was a strong woman.”

“Yes. And a woman much loved.” Cork leaned against the porch rail. “Someone cut out pages from my mother’s journals, Millie. Do you know who?”

“Oh, Corkie, I know I should have looked at everything she gave me, but I never had the time. If something’s missing, well, I suppose it was your mother’s doing. Everybody’s got things in their past they don’t want folks to know, don’t you suppose?”

“I suppose,” Cork agreed. “Millie, was there someone on the reservation when you were a young woman who was not so well loved? Someone you were warned against?”

“Mr. Windigo,” she said darkly and without hesitation. “Oh, I used to be scared of him. We were always warned about Mr. Windigo.”

She was speaking, Cork assumed, of the creature out of Ojibwe myth. In the stories the Ojibwe told, the Windigo was a cannibal giant with a heart of ice. It had once been a man but had become a monster that loved to feast on the flesh of the unwary—children especially. It was often used in much the same way white people employed the bogeyman, to frighten children into obedience.

“Was there a man or a woman that people on the rez stayed away from?”

“We didn’t like everyone, but we were all Shinnobs and neighbors and got along. Some people were afraid of Henry Meloux. They called him a witch. The government doctors tried to tell us that. Henry a witch,” she said with a dismissive laugh.

Meloux. He knew he should be talking with Henry, but his old friend had made it clear that Cork was on his own.

“And Mr. Windigo, of course,” the old woman added. “There were all kind of stories about Mr. Windigo snatching kids.”

“When Fawn disappeared, did my mother or my aunt talk to you?”

“Your mother always talked to me.”

“Did she talk about Fawn?”

“Of course.” Millie Joseph smoothed her lap blanket. “And she talked about Mr. Windigo.”

“Did she think the Windigo had something to do with the Vanishings?”

“She knew he did.”

Cork was confused. Why would his mother blame a mythic beast for a real disappearance?

“She was awfully sad, your mother. Your aunt, too. We all were. And scared, because who would be next?”

“But the next to vanish was a white woman. And she was the last.”

“Oh, we were all very happy about that.”

“That the white woman vanished?”

“That she was the last Mr. Windigo took.”

“Did you know her, the white woman the Windigo took?”

“Sure. From St. Agnes.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Not well, no.”

“What did you think of her?”

“She was rich.” Which clearly was not a good thing to Millie Joseph. “Your mother knew her better.”

“What did my mother think of her?”

“Your mother used to say that she was a woman like a snowshoe rabbit. In the winter, she would be white, in the summer dark.”

“What did she mean?”

“A woman who was two women, I guess.”

And one was light and one was dark, Cork thought.

“After the white woman vanished, what did my mother say?”

Millie thought awhile and her hands twitched. “Why, I don’t think she said anything, except what the rest of us said. That it was good Mr. Windigo wasn’t lurking around the rez anymore.”

An old pickup cruised past on the street and the driver, Ben Cassidy, lifted his hand and called out, “Boozhoo, Millie! Cork!”

She waved back and said, “We found his truck.”

“Whose truck?”

“Mr. Windigo. We found it half-sunk in a bog way south on the rez.”

“The Windigo drove a truck.”

“You keep saying ‘the Windigo.’ I’m not talking about the Windigo. I’m talking about Mr. Windigo.”

“He was a man?”

“Of course he was a man. His name was Indigo. That’s how he got the name we called him.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He was tall and thin like a broomstick. Had eyes like black fire. Whenever he looked at me, I burned and got cold at the same time. I didn’t like that man.”

“Was Indigo his only name?”

“No, he had a last name. It was perfect for him, because it was exactly what he looked like, a broomstick. His name was Indigo Broom.”