Stevie was playing by himself in the front yard. My son was eight, then, small for his age. With his straight black hair and hard almond eyes, he was, of all my children, the one who showed most clearly his Anishinaabe heritage. He’d recently discovered golf, and that afternoon he stood in the shade of our big elm, a driver in his hand, swinging at a big Wiffle ball that sailed twenty yards when he hit it. I spotted a number of divots in the grass. When he saw me pull into the driveway, he dropped the club and came running.
“What are you doing home, Dad?” He looked hopeful. He was the youngest kid on the block, and with Jenny and Anne often working at Sam’s Place, I knew he was sometimes lonely.
I ruffled his hair. “Work to do, buddy.”
“Mom’s working, too,” he said, disappointed.
“Where’s Dumbarton?” I asked, speaking of the neighbor’s dog. “They called him in.”
I nodded toward the driver lying in the grass. “How’s that backswing coming?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe later we’ll play a few holes together,” I said.
“Really?”
“We’ll see what we can do. Mom’s inside?”
“In her office.”
“Remember, head down and keep your eye on the ball.”
I went in the house. He turned back to his game.
It was cool inside and quiet. I walked to the kitchen, ran some tap water into a glass, and took a long drink.
“Stevie?” Jo called from her office.
“No. Me.”
A moment later she came in wearing her reading glasses, blue eyes big behind the lenses. She’s a beautiful woman, Jo. A few years younger than me, but looks even more. One of the smartest women I’ve ever known. Also one of the most courageous. For years, she’s represented the Ojibwe of the Iron Lake Reservation in litigation that has often put her on the unpopular side of a legal issue. She’s never flinched. We’ve had our problems. Show me a couple married twenty years who hasn’t. But we were in a good period that summer.
“What are you doing home?” she asked.
“Meloux’s in the hospital.”
“Henry? Why?”
“He collapsed this morning in Allouette. The doctor thinks it’s his heart. Meloux thinks so, too, but in a different way.”
“What way?”
“He has a son, Jo.”
Surprise showed in her eyes. “He’s never said a word.”
“He has now. But only to me, so you can’t say anything to anyone else.” I’d told her because she’s my wife and a lawyer and understands about client privilege. “He asked me to find this son of his.”
“Did he tell you where to look?”
“Ontario, Canada.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“The mother’s name.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. He fathered the child over seventy years ago. And he’s only seen him in visions.”
“Then how can he be sure?”
“He’s Meloux.”
“What are you going to do?”
“First, head to his cabin. There’s something I’m supposed to find.”
“What?”
“A watch. Also, he asked me to take care of Walleye while he’s in the hospital.”
“Do you have any idea how you’re going to do this?”
“I’m waiting for inspiration to strike. Okay if I take Stevie with me? He’s looking a little bored.”
“Thanks. I’m kind of overwhelmed with paperwork.”
I filled my water glass again and took another drink. Jo pulled a cup from the cupboard and poured herself what was left in the coffeemaker on the counter.
“I saw Jenny at Sam’s Place,” I told her. “Whatever had her sick this morning, she seems better now. Sick from drinking, maybe? Is that what we need to talk about?”
“Tonight, Cork. We’ll talk. You need to get out to Meloux’s.” She practically pushed me out the front door.
Outside, Stevie was using the driver as a rifle, kneeling behind the railing of the front porch, firing off imaginary rounds.
“Okay, Davy Crockett,” I said. “Time to desert the Alamo. I’m going up to Henry Meloux’s cabin. Want to come?”
He jumped at the prospect. “Is Henry there?”
Meloux and my son had a special bond. Stevie had gone through a traumatic experience a couple of years earlier, a kidnapping. The old Mide had spent a good deal of time with him afterward, helping him deal with his fears and return to wholeness.
“Henry’s in the hospital, Stevie.”
“Is he sick?”
“Yes. And we’re going to help.”
“Can we visit him?”
“We’ll see. But Walleye’s alone at the cabin. We need to take care of him.”
Walleye and Stevie. Another special bond.
He dropped the golf club on the porch and ran to my Bronco.
FIVE
I pulled to the side of a dusty county road a few miles north of Aurora. Far behind me were the last of the resorts on Iron Lake, hidden in the deep cover of red pines and black spruce. All around me was national forest land. A few miles farther north lay the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I parked near a double-trunk birch that marked the beginning of the trail to Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point.
Stevie leaped from the Bronco. He was already on the trail before I locked up, skipping far ahead. I followed more slowly. Age, yeah, but also because the trail to Meloux’s cabin always had a sacred feel to me. It was a hot afternoon, typical of early August. We were in the middle of a grasshopper infestation, and the woods were full of their buzz, a sound like tiny saws cutting the air. Sunlight broke through the canopy of pine boughs overhead and lay in shattered pieces on the ground. Thirty yards in front of me, Stevie danced through caverns of shadow and into moments of radiant light. I loved him deeply, my son. Every day, I counted him-and my daughters-a blessing.
Meloux had never seen his own son. Never carried him on his shoulders or held him when he cried. Never felt the small boy’s breath, warm and sweet smelling, break against his face. Never knew the pleasure of being for his son the slayer of monsters imagined in the night.
God, I thought, the emptiness.
Yet I’d never felt that from Meloux until, lying on that hospital bed in a web of modern medicine, he’d looked up at me, lost, and asked a favor, father to father.
I didn’t doubt Meloux, didn’t doubt that he had a son he’d seen only in visions. Over time, I’d experienced too many unexplainable moments with the old Mide to be skeptical about something like this. It did make me wonder deeply, though, about the circumstances.
