Cork’s sense of uneasiness persisted. Because it had arisen in the woods, and because it seemed to be something that came out of a place in his own sensibility that defied logic, he finally decided to seek counsel with a man who understood such things.
Henry Meloux was one of the Midewiwin, a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. He was an old man, very old, who lived alone in a cabin on a section of the rez far north on Iron Lake. Late one sunny afternoon when he’d enlisted the help of both Annie and Jenny to run Sam’s Place, Cork drove north out of Aurora, along back highways, until he reached a place at the edge of a graveled county road where a double-trunk birch marked the entrance to a footpath through the pines. Cork parked his Bronco, got out, and began to walk the trail. After a while, he knew he’d passed from land under control of the U.S. Forest Service onto that which belonged to the Iron Lake Ojibwe. Three-quarters of a mile in, he danced across a string of rocks that spanned a stream called Wine Creek. The name came from the color of the water, a reddish hue due to the iron-rich area through which it flowed and the seepage from bogs along its banks. A few minutes later, he broke from the trees into a clearing that extended all the way to a narrow peninsula called Crow Point that jutted into Iron Lake. Cork could see Meloux’s cabin on the point. The structure was as old as Meloux and just as sturdy. It was built of cedar logs, with a board roof covered with birch bark. The bark worked as well as shakes or shingles and was easier to replace. Smoke came from a stovepipe that thrust up from the roof, and even at a distance, Cork could smell the spices of a stew.
The cabin door stood wide open.
“Henry?”
He received no answer and he stepped inside. Meloux’s cabin was a reflection of time itself. The walls were adorned with many items that harkened to an earlier day. A bow strung with the sinew of a snapping turtle, a deer-prong pipe, a small toboggan. There was also a cheesecake calendar, circa 1948, from a Skelly gas station. Nailed to a post near the potbellied stove was a color Polaroid of Henry Meloux standing with the activist Winona LaDuk. And lying on Meloux’s bunk was the most recent Lands’ End catalogue
The stew simmered in a cast-iron pot on the stove. Fish, wild rice, onions, and mushrooms, spiced with sage and pepper. The table was set with two bowls and two spoons. Cork wasn’t surprised that Meloux had set a place for him. The old man had an uncanny knack for knowing when he was going to receive a visitor.
The barking of a dog came from somewhere near the end of the point. Walleye, Henry Meloux’s old yellow hound. The barking became louder, and Cork figured Meloux was on his way up from the lake. He stepped outside. The low afternoon sun shone directly in his eyes, and for a moment, he was blinded. He put up his hand to block the light, and he saw two silhouetted figures walking together with the dog trotting alongside them. Meloux was obvious, small and just a little stooped, but the other wasn’t clear to Cork. As they came nearer, Cork saw exactly who it was that accompanied the old man, and he let his surprise show.
Solemn Winter Moon smiled when he saw Cork in the doorway. He nodded and said, “It must be time.”
Meloux put another bowl and spoon on the table and dished up stew. The men ate without speaking, Meloux filling the quiet of the one room with the sound of his slurping as he sucked from his spoon. He’d tossed Walleye a big ham bone, and the dog gnawed contentedly in the corner. When they’d eaten, Cork took a pack of Lucky Strikes he’d bought at the Food ’N Fuel on his way out of Aurora and held the cigarettes out to Meloux. The old Mide accepted the offering. Without a word, he stood up, and Cork and Solemn followed. Meloux walked outside, led them down a path toward the lake, between two rock outcroppings to a place where sooted stones ringed a circle of ash. The lake spread before them, water the color of apricots, reflecting a sky full of the afterglow of sunset. Meloux sat on a maple stump, the other two on the ground. Walleye, who’d trotted along, circled tightly a couple of times and, with a tired groan, eased himself onto the dirt near his master. From the pack Cork had given him, Meloux took one cigarette. Carefully, he tore open the paper and let the tobacco fall loose into his palm. He pinched the tobacco and sprinkled a bit to the west, to the north, to the east, and to the south. He took another pinch and offered it to the sky, and then a final sprinkling offered to the earth. When this was done, he took another cigarette for himself, then passed the pack to the others. Meloux wedged a wrinkled hand into the pocket of his bib overalls and drew out a small box of wooden matches. One after another, the men lit up and smoked for a while, letting the silence that had begun with the meal linger. In the apricot light, Cork studied Solemn’s face.
There was something very different about the young man. Since Sam’s passing, the muscles around Solemn’s eyes were always tense, wary, waiting, expecting the approach of something bad. That tension was gone now. Cork had the feeling he was finally seeing Solemn’s eyes clearly. And they were beautiful eyes, dark brown and sparkling.
Meloux sat with the lake at his back. He blew smoke into evening air that smelled of pines and also, in that particular place, of the char and ash of many fires.
Without looking directly at Solemn, Meloux said, “I think you are right. I think it is time.”
Solemn seemed to divine Cork’s confusion. “We’re talking about what I ran from,” he said. “It’s time to go back and face it.”
“I was beginning to think you were dead,” Cork said.
Solemn laughed. “In a way, I was. After you left me alone at Sam’s Place that day, I got to thinking about my chances with the law. I knew what people thought of me. I didn’t see any way I was going to get a break. Man, I could feel those iron bars closing in. I got scared and ran. I followed the lake north, thinking I’d make it to Canada, figure what to do from there. But I didn’t get to Canada. I ran into Henry instead.”
The old Mide shook his head. “You ran into Walleye.”
Solemn pointed toward the trees northwest along the lake. “Out there in the woods beside Half Mile Spring. Walleye wouldn’t let me pass. A few minutes later, Henry showed up.”
Meloux said, “I thought Walleye must have scared up a rabbit. Turned out to be a scared rabbit in a young man’s skin.”
He grinned, and Solemn laughed.
“I gave him shelter,” Meloux said. “And food. I heard his story. I let him stay, and I burned cedar, and considered what should be done. The nephew of Sam Winter Moon, that is something to think about. If he were a man truly, I would have told him to turn and face his problems. But I could see he wasn’t. And then I understood.” The old man took a draw on his cigarette, and let the smoke out slowly. “Giigwishimowin.”
Cork knew the word, knew of the rite. In the days before white people disrupted the Anishinaabe way, giigwishimowin was the experience that marked a male’s passage into manhood. When the time was right, usually sometime in his teens, a young man was sent out into the forest alone to fast and to seek a vision that would guide him for the rest of his life. Not until Kitchimanidoo, the Great Spirit, had granted him that vision showing him the path he was to follow and that would lead him in harmony with creation, did he return to his village. He left as a boy and came back as a man, in his own eyes and in the eyes of his people.
“I explained it to him, because it was a thing he had never heard of,” Meloux said.
“A modern Shinnob.” Solemn smiled at his ignorance. “Mumbo jumbo, I thought. But I figured whatever it took to keep my ass out of jail. Henry led me into the woods. We walked for a couple of hours. I didn’t have a clue where we were going, where we were. Finally Henry stopped and said, ‘Here.’ That’s all. A man of few words.”
“You don’t have to speak much if you speak well,” Meloux replied.
“We were in this big hollow with a stream running through,” Solemn went on. “I asked Henry what I was supposed to eat. He said, ‘Nothing.’ I asked him what exactly I was supposed to do. He said ‘Nothing.’ I asked him when he would come back. He said, ‘When it’s time.’ And then he left.
“At first, I was just bored, you know. Time dragged by. Night came. I went to sleep. Maybe I dreamed, I don’t remember. The next day I got hungry. I thought about looking around for something to eat, but Henry told me to eat nothing, so that’s what I did. When I got thirsty, I drank from the stream. I sat, thought, slept, thought some more. Day after day. Man, my stomach growled like a bear. The nights got pretty cold. The only visitors I had were blackflies and wood ticks. A lot of times, I was close to just packing it in. But what then? There wasn’t anyplace for me to go. I lost track of the days. My thinking began to get confused. Henry tells me I was out there for sixteen days when it finally happened, when I finally had my vision.
“I was sitting up against a big rock beside the stream when He walked out of the forest. He came to where I was and smiled. He sat down and we talked.”
Solemn’s eyes were alive with the color of the sky and the lake, the color of a fire that burned beyond the horizon but still lit everything.
