“Our own people have taken up the search. And we will find them,” the woman said emphatically.
A caption appeared under the picture on the screen: “Ellyn Grant, wife of Edgar Little Bear, a passenger on the plane missing in the Wyoming Rockies.”
The reporter, a blonde in a long, expensive-looking shearling coat, asked, “I understand one of the Arapaho has had a vision that may indicate where the plane came down.”
“Will Pope,” Ellyn Grant replied. “Our pilot is looking in the area Will’s vision guided us to, a place called Baby’s Cradle. We’ve asked for help, but so far the authorities out here have given us nothing.”
“Would you comment on the allegation that the pilot of the plane had been drinking the night before the flight?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Right now, all I care about is finding the plane and my husband.”
The segment that followed dealt with the charter pilot, Clinton Bodine, who’d allegedly been drinking the night before. A reporter in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, where Bodine lived and operated his charter service, told viewers that he’d obtained information indicating the pilot was a recovering alcoholic. Accompanying the report were pictures of the hangar at the regional airport that he used for his small enterprise. There was a brief statement by one of the officials at the airport who said he’d known Bodine a long time and he was surprised to hear about the drinking allegation. There were shots of the pilot’s home and of his wife, a young woman holding the hand of a small boy, hurrying from her car to the front door to avoid reporters.
Mal said, “Why do I think that if they could they’d follow her into the bathroom?”
“Brace yourselves,” Cork said. “Our turn may come.”
SEVEN
Day Three, Missing 43 Hours
Another tragedy developed overnight, but this one didn’t involve the O’Connors.
Cork slept on the sofa again, keeping company with the television and CNN in a drowsy, sometimes disoriented, way. Partly this was because it allowed him to monitor the news, but it was also because he couldn’t sleep in the bed he shared with Jo. It felt too empty and he felt too alone. At 5:00 A.M. he roused himself, made some coffee, and stepped onto the front porch to breathe in fresh air and check the weather. The storm that hit the Rockies had slid south and east through Colorado and Nebraska and Iowa and had missed Minnesota entirely. The sky was black and clear and frosted with stars.
He was about to enter the third day since Jo’s plane had gone missing. Cork wasn’t praying anymore that they’d made it to some godforsaken airstrip. He was praying that wherever the plane came down it had remained in once piece. And he was praying that, when the search began again that morning, the plane would be quickly found.
He returned to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, stared at the wall clock, where the rapid sweep of the second hand was torture to him, and then headed back to the sofa.
CNN had come alive with coverage of a story breaking in Kansas. Outside a town called Prestman, population 1,571, a standoff had developed between law enforcement and a religious sect led by a man named Gunther Hargrove. Hargrove and his followers, a group estimated at around sixty people that included a number of children, had leased an abandoned farm several miles outside the isolated prairie town. Hargrove hadn’t kept up with the rent, and a sheriff’s deputy had gone with the property owner to execute a lawful eviction order. During the confrontation that followed, Hargrove’s people had shot the property owner and taken the deputy hostage. Now the farm, which the sect had turned into a compound, was surrounded by law enforcement personnel. Hargrove claimed that enough explosives had been planted about the compound to blow western Kansas off the map. The situation was extremely tense, and a resolution wasn’t anywhere in sight. From a cable news perspective, it was a perfect story, and in a way, it was helpful to Cork. It sent the missing plane full of Indians to the bottom of the network interest list. Cork hoped that as a result the media vultures who might have descended on Aurora to hound him and his family would be drawn to Kansas instead.
Mal was up long before the others. It was still dark when he came downstairs in his robe and slippers.
“Up early,” Cork said.
“I’m always up early. And I smelled coffee.” Mal went to the kitchen and came back with a cup. “Anything new?”
“Nothing from Wyoming. There’s a situation in Kansas that’s getting the coverage.” Cork explained the standoff.
“So much harm in the name of God. Makes atheism look mighty appealing sometimes.” Mal shook his head and sipped his coffee.
Cork went upstairs, showered, and put on clean clothes. When he came back down, Stephen was on the sofa with Mal. Rose and the girls were up, too. They filled the kitchen with breakfast preparations while the men and Stephen monitored CNN. Finally Rose called, “Breakfast’s ready.”
Another day of waiting had begun.
An hour after sunup, about the time Cork anticipated day would be breaking in western Wyoming, he phoned the Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Department and spoke with Deputy Dewey Quinn.
“The weather there is clear,” he reported to the others. “The planes are just taking to the air. They’ll keep us informed.”
“Did you ask him about that Arapaho’s vision?” Mal said.
“He dismissed it. The man’s a notorious drunk, and the area his vision indicates is nowhere near any of the corridors the plane may have traveled.” Then to Stephen he said, “Let’s go see Henry Meloux.”
Cork drove his old red Bronco. He stopped at the Gas-N-Go for a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. He also bought himself a cup of coffee and some hot chocolate for Stephen. The defroster was giving him trouble, and he kept having to wipe the windshield as he drove. They headed north out of Aurora along the shoreline of Iron Lake. After twenty minutes they left the paved highway and began bouncing over the gravel washboard of a county road. Another fifteen minutes and Cork pulled to a stop near a double-trunk birch that marked the beginning of the trail that led to Henry Meloux’s cabin. They got out and began to walk.
For almost a mile the trail cut across national forest land, then it entered the Iron Lake Reservation. It led in a fairly straight line through tall second-growth pines. The ground was a soft bed of shed needles, and the air was sharp with the scent of pine sap. The air was still, and the only sound was the occasional snap of twigs under their feet. In some places the sunlight came through the trees in solid pillars and in others it lay shattered on the ground, so that the forest had the feel of a temple partly destroyed.
They broke from the trees onto a long point of land covered with meadow grass that was still green so late in the season. Near the end of the point stood an ancient, one-room cabin. Smoke poured from the stovepipe that jutted from the roof, which Cork had expected. What he didn’t expect was that dark smoke would be pouring from the windows and door as well.
“Come on!” he called to his son, and they began to run.
They reached the cabin together, and Cork called through the door, “Henry! Henry, are you in there!”
“Here,” Meloux hollered back and emerged from the smoke with an old yellow dog at his heels.
Cork was greeted with another unexpected sight: Henry Meloux was laughing.
“Are you all right, Henry?”
Meloux was an old man, the oldest Cork knew, somewhere in his nineties. His hair was long and white. His face was as lined as the bark of a cottonwood. His eyes were like dark, sparkling water. And at the moment, his hands held what looked like a smoking black brick.
“Corn bread,” the old man said.
Stephen had knelt down to pet the dog, to whom he was a well-known friend. “You okay, Walleye?” he asked.
The dog’s tail wagged in eager greeting, and he licked Stephen’s hands.
“What happened, Henry?” Cork said.
“We went for a walk. I forgot about the corn bread I was baking.” He looked at the hard, burned brick cradled between pot holders. “The corn bread is a disappointment.” He smiled at Cork and Stephen. “But the walk was not.
