still got him? Good.” He snapped the phone shut and slipped it back into his shirt pocket.
They entered Allouette, pulled onto Manomin Street, and swung into the parking lot of the community center.
“How long will this take, Tom? I’m wondering if I should leave Trixie in the truck.”
“Bring her in. Elgin’ll watch her.”
Inside the center, they walked down a long hallway, past the open doors to the gym, where Ani Sorenson was running some girls from the rez basketball team, the Iron Lake Loons, through drills. They passed the door to the administrative wing, where all the tribal offices were situated, and they took a right toward the room where Blessing did his work.
Tom Blessing had been a hard case. He’d been a leader in a gang of Ojibwe youths who’d called themselves the Red Boyz. As a result of a remarkable and deadly firefight on the rez, he’d experienced a radical transformation. Now he was deeply involved in the Wellbriety Movement, helping troubled Ojibwe kids find their way on a healing path using the teachings of elders and based on ancient wisdom and natural principles.
On his door hung a poster of a white buffalo. Inside his office, the walls were plastered with photographs of Blessing and some of the other former Red Boyz, along with a lot of kids doing a lot of things—learning to make birch bark canoes, harvesting wild rice, boiling down maple sap into syrup, playing softball, serving fry bread at a powwow, preparing for a sweat.
Elgin Manypenny, who’d also been one of the Red Boyz, sat on Blessing’s desk. In a chair shoved against one of the walls slumped a teenage kid. Cork knew him. Jesse St. Onge. His uncle Leroy stood next to him.
“
“Shake the man’s hand,” St. Onge said.
The kid reached up and did as he was told.
“Sit down, Cork,” Blessing said. “Elgin, mind taking Trixie for a walk?”
“Happy to.” Manypenny slid from the desk. “Come on, girl. Let’s go play.”
Trixie didn’t hesitate a second.
Blessing sat in his desk chair and nodded to Leroy St. Onge, who held out a folded piece of paper toward Cork.
“Found that in my nephew’s coat pocket this morning,” he said.
Cork unfolded the paper. Printed inside in the bloody From Hell font were the words
“Jesse got one of these threats?” Cork asked.
“Not exactly,” Leroy St. Onge said. “Go on, Jesse. Tell him.”
The kid focused on his hands, which were folded in his lap. He didn’t say anything at first.
“Jesse,” his uncle said.
The kid gathered himself and mumbled, “Okay, I did the throw up in the Vermilion One Mine.”
“The throw up?” Cork asked.
Blessing explained. “When a piece of graffiti art is done fast, it’s called a ‘throw up.’”
“It was you? How did you get into the mine?”
“Through the entrance on the rez that the cops got all taped up now.”
“How’d you know about that entrance, Jesse?”
The kid got quiet again.
“Go on,” his uncle said sternly.
“Isaiah Broom.”
“Did he go into the mine with you?”
“No, just showed me the way. He wouldn’t, you know, go in himself.”
“Why not?”
Jesse shrugged.
Everyone waited.
Finally Jesse said, “I got the feeling he was scared.”
“But you weren’t?”
“No.” The kid straightened up in a display of bravado.
“You went in alone?”
“Yeah. I took a flashlight and my paint cans and this printout Isaiah gave me of what he wanted me to do.”
“Did you notice anything strange in the mine?”
“Yeah, the smell. Like something dead. I understand now, but I just thought, you know, that maybe an animal got stuck in there and died. I didn’t think … you know.”
“Sure, Jesse,” Cork said. “Tell me about being in the mine.”
“Well, I went in like Isaiah showed me, and it was real dark and spooky. I had a flashlight but it wasn’t much and going into all that dark was like pushing through mud. I went all the way to the end of the tunnel. There was a wall and I couldn’t go any farther. I went back and told Isaiah, and we left and went to his place, and he got some stuff, power tools, you know, and we came back. This time he came in with me.”
“He went all the way in?”
“Yeah, but he was all jumpy, like the place was full of ghosts or something. We got to the wall, and Isaiah cut through it, and we crawled in and kept going to where the elevator shaft was. I was going to do my piece there, but Isaiah said we should go down farther so they wouldn’t know how we got in. So we climbed down this ladder that was, you know, next to the elevator. Isaiah showed me where he wanted me to work. Me, I wanted to do something I’d be proud to tag, but he wanted it done just like he’d printed out and he wanted it done fast.”
“It was Isaiah’s design?”
“I guess. I’m all like, hey, man, it’s not aesthetic. But it was what he wanted, so I just did the throw up, and we left.”
“Why?”
The kid stared at Cork. “What do you mean?”
“Why did you agree to do what Broom asked?”
“You mean his design?”
“No, the whole thing in general. It was pretty risky.”
“I don’t want all that radioactive stuff here,” Jesse said, as if it should have been perfectly obvious to anyone. “It was a way of fighting back. The warrior’s way,” he added proudly. “Isaiah, he’s been sort of leading the protest, and when I told him I wanted to help, he said The People could use my talent. See, on the rez I’ve got kind of a rep for my work. Isaiah said he had an important job for me.”
“ ‘We Die. U Die.’ What did that mean?”
“Just, you know, that if the junk they put in there leaks, we’re all dead. Even the assholes who are responsible.”
“Who would those assholes be?”
“I don’t know. The guys who make the decisions, I guess.”
“Names?”
“I don’t know.”
“Max Cavanaugh? Lou Haddad? Eugenia Kufus?”
“I don’t know who those guys are.”
“Some of the people making the decisions. They all got notes saying ‘We Die. U Die.’ Do you know anything about that, Jesse?”
“No, nothing. I just did the throw up in the mine.”
“We Die. U Die. Who came up with that?”
“Me, sort of. When I was on the protest line in front of Vermilion One, I said we should have a sign that read something like ‘This won’t kill just us. It will kill everybody.’ Isaiah liked it, but he shortened it for the throw up.”
Leroy St. Onge asked, “What kind of trouble is he in, Cork?”
