Vermilion Drift

  In the kitchen, it’s quiet for a long time.

  Then his father says, “I look at Indigo Broom and Monique Cavanaugh, who, as nearly as I can tell, are involved in some brutal and bizarre sexual behavior. I look at the Vanishings, and I get the feel of something brutal and bizarre there. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “That they took Naomi and Fawn?”

  “I can’t say that. Not even unofficially. But there are connections. Broom knows the rez, knows the vulnerable girls, can move about without a lot of notice.”

  “And he takes Fawn and Naomi and then what, Liam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, God, I hate to think.”

  Cork hears a kitchen chair slide back and hears his father pacing.

  “Liam, how do we find out?” There is a different tone to her voice. Solid. Resolved.

  “If I pull him in and interrogate him, I might lose the only advantage I have, which is that he doesn’t know I’m looking his way.”

  “What about her?”

  “Right. I haul in the wife of Peter Cavanaugh and interrogate her regarding the missing girls and mention the fact that she loves to dress like a whore and have kinky, dangerous sex with hairy bikers. That’ll go over real big with my constituency. Hell, she wouldn’t say a word to me without a lawyer there, anyway. And if I start asking her questions, I lose that same advantage I have with Broom, which is that she doesn’t know I’m watching her.”

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  “Just you.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Liam, let’s talk to Sam Winter Moon and George LeDuc. And maybe Henry Meloux.”

  “To what end?”

  “Maybe they can help.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But they’ll be more likely to believe you than almost any white person in Tamarack County.”

  “There’s that,” he says.

  Where are you now?

  At Grandma Dilsey’s.

  Who else is there?

  You.

  Who else?

  Grandma Dilsey. My mother and father. Aunt Ellie. Becky Stonedeer. Sam Winter Moon. And George LeDuc.

  He’s supposed to be swimming in the lake, but he has sneaked back and is sitting against the side of the house below the kitchen window, and he can hear them talking inside.

  “Never liked that man. Never trusted him,” Sam Winter Moon says.

  “Indigo Broom,” Meloux says. “There is a powerful spirit there. Dark like bog water.”

  “I have no proof of anything,” Cork’s father reminds them.

  “Proof? I know how to get proof,” LeDuc says. “Liam, you know what the word ‘Ojibwe’ means? To pucker. We used to roast our enemies until their skin puckered.”

  “I hope you’re joking, George.”

  “Our children are missing, Liam. About this, I don’t joke.”

  “What do we do?” his mother asks.

  “We go to his cabin, Colleen,” LeDuc says. “If he’s there, we talk to him. If he’s not, we wait until he comes back.”

  “Talk to him?” Cork’s father says. “Or pucker him?”

  “Whatever it takes, Liam.”

  “I can’t let you do that, George. That’s not why I came here.”

  “Doesn’t matter why you came.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Sam Winter Moon says. “There’s got to be something we can do short of torturing the man.”

  Grandma Dilsey says, “If we make him suffer and we’re wrong, can we live with that?”

  “Hell, I can,” LeDuc says.

  “Unless you silence him for good, George, he’ll sue you for everything you’ve got.”

  LeDuc laughs. “That’s the white man’s revenge, Liam. On the rez, he’ll just wait in the dark and slit my throat. I’m willing to take that chance.”

  “I think we should watch him,” his mother says. “There are enough eyes out here that he can’t hide. The moment he tries something, we grab him, and then, George, you can do all the puckering you want.”

  “What about the woman?” Meloux says.

  “Would she do anything without Indigo Broom?” Becky Stonedeer asks.

  “I don’t know,” his father replies. “Henry, these are not normal people. God alone knows what they will or won’t do.”

  “Can she be watched?” Meloux asks.

  “I can’t put any of my men on her. I’d have to do some explaining, and I don’t know how I’d do that. And I can’t watch her myself night and day.”

  “I think,” Meloux says, “that I would like to talk to this woman. Indigo Broom, I know. This woman is a stranger.”

  His father says, “Got any idea how I can arrange that, Henry?”

  “I have an idea,” his mother says. “She gives a lot of money away. What if Henry and I approach her about an Ojibwe charity?”

  “What charity?” his father asks.

  The kitchen is quiet. Then his mother says, “The Missing Child Fund.”

  Now? Where are you now?

  It’s night. Late. He has slipped from his house and ridden his bike ten miles to the southern edge of the rez. The moon is up, and Waagikomaan is a river of gray dirt winding among the trees. He knows from what he’s overheard that Indigo Broom is being watched, and he’s careful. There is only one way to Broom’s cabin, and he’s on it. He walks his bike and has tuned all his senses to the forest that presses in on either side of the road.

  There are crickets and tree frogs, and then there is a deeper sound, unnatural, in the trees to his right. The sound, he realizes, of a man snoring.

  He creeps past the sleeping man and, a hundred yards farther, remounts and rides to an old logging road that cuts south toward Mr. Windigo’s cabin. He lays his bike at the side of Waagikomaan and starts up the logging road. The trees blot out the moon, and the woods are dark. He can barely see.

  He’s here because … because he’s a boy on the edge of manhood, and he wants to be a part of this important effort to find his cousin and Naomi, to find the truth of the Vanishings, and he hopes that somehow in the dark of that night, or of another, he will find the way.

  His whole life he has lived in the community of the great Northwoods. He has spent nights alone in a tent or in a sleeping bag under the stars, and the darkness itself doesn’t frighten him. But there is something about the place under his feet now that is different, that fills him with dread. There are no night sounds here. No crickets. No tree frogs. Only silence. It is a dead place, he thinks. And he thinks he should not be there.

  But he forces himself to go on.

  The cabin is a dark shape visible against a wall of stone that catches moonlight and seems to glow. There is another building as well, smaller and set off to one side and a little back from the cabin. There is a pickup truck parked near the second structure.

  He goes to the cabin first, crouching in his approach, his Keds tennis shoes making no sound in the soft dirt. He peers carefully in at a window, cannot see a thing except his own faint reflection peering back. He circles the cabin, stealing a peek in every window, and in every window there is only his own, intense face. He lopes to the other building, which has no windows. He tries the door. It isn’t locked. He opens it, and something—an ill wind, a malign spirit, a palpable evil—rushes out. He stands a moment, staring into the darkness, paralyzed by the malignancy he senses. He has brought with him a flashlight, which is clipped to his belt. He pulls the flashlight free, turns it on, and scans the interior of the small building.

  At first, he thinks it is simply a toolshed. Many kinds of implements hang on the walls. Saws, axes, shovels, pry bars, a wheelbarrow, a coiled water hose. The beam, where it hits the wall, forms a round yellow eye, and he keeps it tracking to the right until suddenly in the middle of that eye is something he can’t explain. A chain bolted to the wall with an iron cuff at each end. He creeps forward, circling a long, rough-hew
n table in the center of the room, holding the light steady, more or less, on the chains. He reaches out and fingers a cuff. The metal is cold and, he thinks at first, rusted. Then he realizes the color is not from rust, and he yanks his hand back. His heart pounds furiously and his breath comes in shallow little gasps and he wishes he weren’t there, but he is and he turns and the eye of the flashlight finds the tabletop and he sees manacles there, too, and dark mosaic stains soaked into the wood.

  He hears a noise, a long intake of air, and shoots the beam of the flashlight toward the door where Mr. Windigo stands grinning.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The old man touched his shoulder, and Cork came out of the dream to the wet heat of the sweat lodge on Iron Lake. He was tired beyond measure.

  “I want to go on,” he said to Meloux.

  “First, we refresh. We cool ourselves in the lake.” Meloux called to Rainy, who drew back the cover of the opening.

  Sunlight cracked the dark inside the lodge, and Cork blinked at the sudden glare. He followed Meloux clockwise around the pit where the Grandfathers lay cooling. When he was outside, he saw that Rainy was standing ready with the pitchfork to remove the stones and replace them with others she’d set among the embers of the sacred fire to heat. Cork walked with Meloux to the lake and plunged in. The cold water was a slap and brought him fully awake and refreshed him.

  When they came out of the water, the old man walked slowly, and Cork wondered about Meloux’s strength.

  “Henry, you don’t have to go on,” he offered.

  “A long time ago I guided you from an evil place. I always knew that someday I would have to guide you back. We will go together.”

  They reentered the lodge. Rainy had removed the cooled stones. When the two men were seated, she brought in stones newly heated, filled the hollow in the middle of the lodge, and retreated, dropping the cover over the opening and plunging the inside of the lodge again into darkness. Cork heard the hiss of water as the old Mide sprinkled the Grandfathers. The steam rose, and Meloux began again a prayer chant, and in a few minutes Cork was overtaken again by dreaming.

  * * *

  He is alone in the dark of Indigo Broom’s foul little structure, and the cuffs dig into his skin.

  For hours, he’s tried to pull himself loose, and his wrists bleed.

  He’s scared. Oh, God, is he scared. He knows now, knows with a deep, abiding terror the fate of his cousin Fawn and Naomi Stonedeer. And unless he can somehow free himself, he knows his own fate, too.

  The door opens, and early sunlight, a kind of false hope, enters the room. With it comes Mr. Windigo. He’s not alone. A woman is with him. A beautiful woman. They walk together, bringing with them the fresh scent of morning evergreen. It is the best thing he’s ever smelled.

  She touches his cheek gently with long, soft fingers. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just looking, that’s all. Just looking.”

  “Curiosity?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “A child’s simple curiosity. How convenient.”

  “He ain’t no child,” Mr. Windigo says.

  Her hand drifts from his cheek, and a fingernail painted deep red traces a line down his throat, his chest, his stomach, his belt, to his crotch, which she cups in her palm. “No,” she agrees. “Not a child.”

  She squeezes hard and it hurts and he cries out.

  “Curiosity? Only that?” she asks calmly, not relaxing the vise grip of her hand.

  “Please,” he pleads.

  She releases him, but the terrible ache between his legs is unrelieved.

  “Keep him,” she says. “When I’m back from Duluth tonight, we’ll see.”

  “They’ll miss him.”

  “They’ve missed the others. It hasn’t mattered.”

  She kisses Mr. Windigo. Kisses him a long time and in a way that isn’t about love. He knows no word for what that kiss is about.

  “We’ll have fun,” she says and smiles. Her lips are deep ruby and frame the ice white of her teeth like two perfect razor cuts. She turns and leaves with Mr. Windigo at her side.

  He left home without sleeping. It has been a long time since he’s slept. There is a darkness before him so terrible that he can’t begin to comprehend it, and his deep weariness and his deep desire to turn away from what he can’t escape make his eyes too heavy to hold open and he sleeps.

  He comes awake to the sound of something heavy thrown against the wall of the shed. In the next moment, the door flies open and sunlight blinds him. They have returned, he knows. Mr. Windigo and the woman with the razor cut lips. And he knows the business that he slept to escape can be escaped no longer.

  “Jesus!”

  He hears the familiar voice of Sam Winter Moon, and he cannot keep himself from crying with relief.

  “You sadistic bastard.” It’s the voice of George LeDuc.

  Something hits the wall again.

  Sam Winter Moon lifts him, and the cuffs no longer cut into his wrists.

  “Where’s the key, Broom?” demands LeDuc.

  “Peg. On the wall.” Mr. Windigo sounds as if he’s being choked.

  In a moment, he can feel the cuffs released, and he falls into the good, safe arms of Winter Moon.

  “Bring him out.” It is the voice of Henry Meloux, calm and compassionate.

  He’s carried into the light.

  “Are you hurt anywhere?” Meloux asks.

  He shakes his head. He cannot speak, not yet. His throat is choked with gratitude.

  “What about him?” LeDuc has a powerful arm around Mr. Windigo’s throat, and the evil man’s eyes look ready to pop from his head.

  “Take him back inside,” Meloux instructs.

  Winter Moon helps LeDuc wrestle Mr. Windigo into the shed. There are the sounds of a scuffle, of Mr. Windigo cursing, of chains rattling. Then the two men return.

  “We’ve got him on the table, Henry.”

  Meloux nods and looks down at him with dark, somber eyes. “We have work. It is not work you need to see.”

  Finally able to speak, he says, “I’m not leaving.” He sits up. “He killed Fawn and Naomi. Him and the woman.”

  Meloux asks, “You saw the woman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know her?”

  He shakes his head. “She looks pretty but she’s not. Not inside.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she’d be back tonight. She’s going to Duluth.”

  “He can’t stay for this, Henry,” Winter Moon says.

  “I’m not leaving, Sam!”

  Meloux considers. “He will stay. But he will not see.” He points toward the wall of rock that forms a backdrop to the setting of the cabin and the shed. “Up there, Corcoran O’Connor. You will wait up there. You will give us warning if you see someone coming. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Henry.”

  “Good.” Meloux helps him up. “Go now.”

  He makes his way to the top of the ridge, which places him fifty feet above the scene below. He can see the roof of the cabin, which is covered in black shingles and has no chimney, only a stovepipe. He can see the roof of the shed, which is cedar shake and slopes toward the rock wall where he sits. He can see the cut of the old logging road that divides the trees. And he sees his bicycle, which he’d laid beside Waagikomaan in the dark of the night before. Someone had found it, maybe the guy sleeping among the trees, and the men had come.

  The cries, when they begin, startle him. Not only because of their wretchedness but because they are the only sounds in that vile part of the forest.

  The cries go on and on.

  At first, he doesn’t mind. He’s glad for the hurt being given Mr. Windigo.

  But the longer the screams continue, the more they cut into his resolve. He wishes the sound would end. Finally, he puts his hands over his ears, but he can still hear.

  And then the screams stop. Stop suddenly. But the silence that returns holds no r
elief. The echo of the screams goes on in his head.

  The men step from the shed. They’re carrying the water hose that had hung inside. They walk to a spigot that protrudes from the side of the cabin wall, connect the hose, turn on the water, and wash their hands and arms all the way above their elbows.

  Meloux climbs the wall and sits beside him.

  “Mr. Windigo is dead?” he asks the Mide.

  “He was a thing incomplete, Corcoran O’Connor. A thing never really alive.”

  “He sure screamed like he was.”

  “Pain delivers us into this world. Pain is often the way we leave. That man—no, that half-formed thing—will not feel pain or give pain ever again.”