“Becky said I should talk to you,” Harry said uncertainly.
Loretta Emery smiled. “Yes, she wants me to take a look.” She pressed her finger to Harry’s chest. “To see what’s in there.”
Harry was trapped humoring a crazy old lady. “Becky knows something I need to know,” he began.
She smiled at his discomfort. “She knows that greed built Maston County. Now greed is going to tear it down.”
“I was looking to get a more specific description of things.”
254 / CHUCK LOGAN
Miss Loretta laughed. “Okay. I’ll tell you exactly. You say you were up on the point this morning. When you look around up there, what do you see?”
Harry shrugged. “Lake Superior.”
“What else?”
“The ridge.”
She nodded. “You’re getting warm. And…?”
“The open pit.”
“Yes. The pit.” Her dark eyes kindled. She raised her finger. “You understand that if you ask for something, you might really get it?”
Harry sat politely. A shaggy gray tomcat arched its back against his leg. Out the window he saw Jerry Hakala lounging against his police car, arms folded. “Sure,” he said.
“Sure,” she chuckled and her eyes danced. An exotic granny Beatnik hanging out in musty piles of junk.
She put her hands behind her head and undid her barrette. With a toss of her trim neck, she shook out her hair, stroked her fingers through the thick graying strands, and pulled it down along her throat. She offered the Pall Malls again with ceremonial graciousness.
This time, politely, Harry took one. A cloud of smoke rose over the table.
“I will tell you a story about Nanabozho,” she said very circum-spectly.
“Pardon?”
“Indian fella you meet wandering up in those woods on the point.
Got to be careful with him. He’s the trickster. He was very strong around here at one time.”
“Uh-huh,” said Harry cautiously. Ojibway culture hero. Some local color mentioned in the Superior Hiking Trail brochure. Christ, coffee and smokes with Miss Loretta came with an obligatory oral history recital.
“Well,” she said, getting comfortable, “way back, he was out walking through the woods and he met the first white man. He’d never seen one before, so he was curious. They sat down and had a talk. The white man showed him a little piece of yellow metal.
Gold, of course. The white man was looking for it.
HUNTER’S MOON / 255
“Nanabozho pointed out all the other things in the forest, the herbs, the trees, the animals. But the white man only had eyes for the yellow lump.”
Miss Loretta paused and her eyes held him with the power of deep forest. Empty, to casual inspection. Teeming, to the greater senses.
“Go on,” he said cautiously.
She nodded and continued. “Well, Nanabozho was puzzled. So that night when the white man was asleep, he pulled his chest apart, and removed his heart to inspect it. The answer was clear. A very big spider of a kind he’d never seen before had all eight legs tightly wrapped around the white man’s heart.”
She lowered her voice. “‘Gold,’ whispered the spider.”
Harry sipped the bitter chicory. “I see,” he said.
“Good,” said Miss Loretta. “The spider was a European import and Nanabozho saw he had a problem. Now that the spider was out of the white man’s chest, it could get loose and raise hell in the forest. So Nanabozho put the heart back in the chest and tied the arms and legs in a tight knot to keep the spider from getting out.
Then he carried the body deep into a cave, way down to where there was a little shiny vein of gold. He piled tons and tons of rocks on that body so the spider would never get loose in the world.”
Miss Loretta sighed. “Then, unfortunately, Nanabozho went off on one of his long trips.”
Harry nodded and stood up. “Well, thanks for the coffee.”
“Sit down, young man. I’m not done yet,” she commanded.
“Yes ma’am,” Harry sat.
“You see, Nanabozho screwed up. He thought the white man was a freak. A one-of-a-kind creature. Trouble was there were millions of other white men. And one of them was Bud Maston’s grandfather.
When old Stanley Maston dug that pit to get the iron, damn if he didn’t let that spider out. That spider was hungry. Only thing he had to eat was the white man’s heart, and he developed a taste for it. Other thing, that spider was pissed at Indians.”
256 / CHUCK LOGAN
This time Harry got up and started walking toward the door.
“Well, I got to go. Been nice talking to you.”
She followed him out onto the steps. “When I told that story to Jay Cox, he understood it. Chris understood it. Becky understands it…”
Harry kept moving, avoiding her eyes and her words.
“To understand the story you have to go up there,” she tilted her head at the ridge. “Go without a compass into the woods until you are lost. Then when the sun goes down, listen to the winter voices in your heart—”
“Be seeing you,” said Harry.
“Harry Griffin,” she pronounced. “Do you really want to find what you’re looking for?”
Jerry Hakala wiggled his eyebrows as Harry walked past. “She get you all straightened out?” he asked.
Harry grunted and climbed into the Jeep. He drove slowly down a side street and pulled to the snowbank in front of the liquor store.
Bubblebubble, toil and trouble, the three Indian winos, stood shifting from foot to foot in the cold.
He glanced up at Nanabozho Ridge. Take these tourist woods any day over the Laotian highlands. He summoned one of the Indians.
“How about you go in there and get me a fifth of Jack Daniel’s?”
“Whatsa matter chief, you ain’t twenty-one?” asked the guy. His face was a burst sweet potato and his tapioca eyes perused the bill in Harry’s hand. “That’s Mr. Franklin.”
“Just be a pal.”
The dude returned with a bottle in a brown paper bag and a handful of currency. Harry took the bottle and told him to keep the change. The wino raised his eyebrows.
“Back rent,” said Harry as he drove away.
The switchboard at St. Helen’s Hospital defeated him. Harry hit the
