“No, Rose. Just… keeping in touch.”
They talked a minute or two more. Rose indicated she would call Jenny and Annie to let them know.
He hung up, aware that the option of sending Stephen to safety in Evanston was no longer available. He walked to the kitchen, stared out the window over the sink, and thought hard. The possibility that came to him was one he couldn’t arrange over the phone. It would require some travel, and he had less than two hours of daylight left. He wrote a note to Stephen, then hurried to his Bronco and drove north out of town.
A light shone through the window of Meloux’s cabin. Against the thin blue of the twilight sky, a thread of smoke rose up from the stovepipe that jutted from the cabin roof. The evening was still, and, except for the sound of Cork’s footfalls on the well-worn path through the meadow, Crow Point was quiet. As he approached the cabin, Cork heard Walleye begin to bark inside. A moment later, the door opened and Meloux stepped out. Along with him came the succulent smell of hot stew.
“ Anin, Corcoran O’Connor.” The old man greeted him without any hint of surprise.
“ Anin, Henry.”
“I have made stew. Will you eat with me?”
The old Mide seemed to have anticipated his visitor and his need, something Cork had experienced so often with Meloux that he didn’t question the old man’s prescient ability.
“Thank you, Henry. I’m starved.”
Meloux nodded and eyed him closely. “You have the look of a man hungry in many ways.”
Cork offered his host a pouch of tobacco, which the Mide accepted without a word, and they went inside.
It was squirrel stew. The old man had shot the animal himself. Even though Meloux was well over ninety, his hand was still steadier than those of many men half his age. The stew was full of wild mushrooms, wild rice, carrots, and potatoes, and was spiced simply with salt, pepper, and sage. Meloux had also made drop biscuits. They ate without speaking. In the corner of the cabin where Meloux had set a bowl for Walleye, the old mutt slurped with gleeful abandon.
When they were finished, the old man said, “Now we will smoke, and then we will speak of the reason you have come.”
From a deer-hide pouch hanging on the wall, the Mide took a stone pipe with a wood stem. He put two kitchen matches into the right pocket of his worn jeans and wrapped his gnarled hand around the pouch of tobacco Cork had brought him. He led the way to the fire ring beside the lake, where he opened the tobacco pouch. He pinched some of the contents and sprinkled it to the north. In the same way, he offered tobacco to the east, south, west, and finally let some of it fall into the center. Then he sat on one of the stumps that circled the ring, put a bit of tobacco into the pipe, and struck a match. As the mantle of night closed slowly around them, they smoked and then they talked.
Cork told Meloux of the things he’d discovered and what he suspected they might mean.
“Do you believe that your wife is still alive, Corcoran O’Connor?”
Cork shook his head. “For a little while, I entertained that hope. But I don’t understand how it could possibly be. No, Henry, she’s dead, but there’s more to her death than any of us know. I want to find the truth.”
“What will you tell Stephen?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“If you lie to him, he will know. If not now, eventually. I would think about what that means.”
“If I tell him the truth, he’ll want to help and I can’t let him. He’ll hate me for that as much as he would if I lied.”
“The truth, a man can deal with.”
“Stephen’s not a man yet, Henry.”
“He is not a boy either. If you treat him as a man, perhaps he will behave as a man.”
“If I were Stephen and I knew what I know, nothing in all God’s creation would stop me from going after the truth. Not even my father.”
They sat in silence. A half-moon had risen in the east and cast a silver thread across the black water of Iron Lake. Near Meloux, Walleye sighed deeply, the only sound.
“Bring him to me,” Meloux said. “Perhaps it is time to make a man of him.”
“Giigiwishimowin?” Cork asked. He was speaking of the old way in which an Anishinaabe boy became a man. It involved a vision quest that required a boy to go alone into the woods and to fast until he’d been given a dream, a vision that would guide him as a man for the rest of his life.
“Yes,” the old Mide replied. “The vision itself, if it is given to him, may help him to understand. And while he is seeking the vision, it would be a good time for you to do these things you must do.”
“If I don’t tell him the truth behind this, Henry, he may still see it as a lie.”
“And what is the truth behind this, Corcoran O’Connor? You want him to grow into his manhood, do you not?”
“Of course.”
“And you believe in the old way?”
“Yes.”
“Then the truth of this is that you want your son to become a man and you want this done properly, is that not so?”
“Yes, Henry, I suppose that is the truth.”
“Bring him to me tomorrow and I will prepare him. He will stay with me until it is finished.”
“ Migwech, Henry,” Cork said, thanking his old friend.
They walked back to the cabin, with Walleye padding along behind in a tired way. Cork felt tired, too, weighted by the oppressive prospect of all that lay ahead. At the cabin door, he bid the old Mide good night.
Meloux slipped inside with his dog and closed the door.
By the light of the moon, Cork walked the trail back to his Bronco. In the woods on either side, the darkness was intense. But he knew those woods and knew what there was in them to fear, and passing through empty- handed was no concern. The darkness ahead, however, all that lurked within it and that was unknown to him, this was something else. And he was afraid.
TWENTY-FIVE
Cork had been concerned that for Stephen a few days away from school might seem like a holiday or an early summer vacation. But when he explained to his son the purpose of his visit with Meloux, Stephen had become solemn and accepted seriously the idea of a vision quest under the old man’s guidance. Now they walked toward Meloux’s cabin together, with Trixie trotting in front, taking in the scent of everything along the path. In the east, the rising sun was a red fire burning in the treetops. A heavy dew caught the color, and the meadow grass seemed hung with garnets. Walleye bounded from the open cabin door to meet them, and Trixie ran ahead. The two mutts, good acquaintances, danced together in a flurry of woofs and wagging tails.
Meloux stood in the doorway. Like the dew on the meadow grass, his dark eyes sparkled. “ Anin, Stephen.”
“ Anin, Henry,” Cork’s son replied. There was a gravity in his voice that pleased his father. He shrugged off the pack he wore, which held his sleeping bag and clothing.
The old Mide looked at Cork. “There is no need for you to linger. Your part in this is finished.”
“How long will this take, Henry?”
The old man shrugged. “I will send word.”
Cork nodded. “Migwech.” He turned to his son and offered his own version of an Ojibwe prayer. “May you learn the lesson in each leaf and rock. May you gain the strength and wisdom, not to be superior to your brothers, but to be able to fight your greatest enemy, yourself. And may you be ready to come before Kitchimanidoo with clean hands and a straight eye.”
With the morning sun over his shoulder, the sky like mottled marble above his head, and a warm spring wind pushing at his back, Cork abandoned his son to the man he trusted most in the world and turned his feet to the trail
