Purgatory Ridge

  “I don’t know.”

  Jenny was quiet a moment. “Mom, I thought she looked kind of worried. Maybe even scared.”

  “You know, I thought so, too, Jen.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “I guess when she calls me, I’ll find out. By the way, what did she write in your book?”

  Jenny opened the cover and read proudly, “Someday you’ll be signing a book for me.”

  12

  CORK WOULD HAVE MADE MORE MONEY keeping Sam’s Place open after dark, but he liked his evenings free. At seven-thirty, he finished grilling a couple of Sam’s Big Deluxes and whipped up a couple of chocolate shakes for two teenage boys who’d motored up to the dock. Then he flipped the CLOSED sign outward and began to shut the place down. Stevie had helped a good deal during the day, but after his own dinner—a hot dog, chips, and milk—he’d fallen asleep on the bunk in the Quonset hut.

  Cork scraped the grill, emptied and cleaned the ice milk machine, cooled and poured out the fry oil, wiped down the prep areas, and swept the floor. He took the cash from the register and turned out the lights. In the back, he sat at the desk, counted the day’s take, and made entries in his ledger. Finally he prepared a night-deposit slip, bundled the money, and shook Stevie gently awake.

  “Come on, buddy. Time to hit the road.”

  Stevie was slow in getting up.

  “Want a ride?” Cork asked.

  Stevie gave a sleepy nod.

  Cork turned his back to his son and knelt. Stevie wrapped his arms around Cork’s neck and his legs around Cork’s waist.

  “Up we go.”

  He carried Stevie piggyback outside and locked the door behind them. By the time he got his son settled in the Bronco, Stevie was wide awake.

  “Are we going home?” Stevie asked.

  “First we go to the bank. Then to the store for some cigarettes.”

  Stevie seemed bewildered. “You don’t smoke anymore.”

  “They’re not for me. After that, how about a walk in the woods?”

  Stevie looked at the long shadows cast by the setting sun. “Will it be dark?”

  “When we’re done. Do you think the woods are scary when it’s dark?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Sometimes so do I. But I’ll tell you what—I promise I won’t let anything happen to us, okay?”

  Stevie thought it over, his dark Anishinaabe eyes seriously considering his father’s face. “Okay,” he agreed.

  And Cork felt, as he often did, the sweet weight of his son’s trust.

  Cork drove north of Aurora, following county roads until he came to a place in the Superior National Forest where a split-trunk birch marked the opening to a foot trail through a thick stand of red pines. He pulled off to the side of the road, locked up the old Bronco, and set off with Stevie through the woods.

  It was twilight then. Normally the air under the pines would have been cool and sharp scented, but the heat was holding and the smell in the air came from the forest fires to the north. The undergrowth was brittle. Whenever Cork or Stevie brushed against the branches and brambles, they gave off a sound like the rattle of bones.

  Stevie held Cork’s hand tightly and warily eyed the woods around them.

  After ten minutes on the trail, Cork knew they’d passed onto Iron Lake Reservation land, the far northwest corner where there was only one cabin for miles. The cabin belonged to Henry Meloux, the oldest man Cork had ever known, although years seemed a feeble measure of a man like Meloux. He was a mide, one of the midewiwin, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. To many of the whites in Tamarack County, he was known as Mad Mel. Cork, however, had respected the man his whole life.

  As they neared Meloux’s cabin on the small, rocky peninsula along a north arm of Iron Lake, Cork sniffed the air with concern. The pervasive smell of distant fire had suddenly grown powerful and immediate. Cork broke from the pines into a clearing that gave him an unobstructed view of the cabin and the lake. Beyond the cabin, tattooed against the pale blue of the twilight sky, rose a dark coiling. A column of smoke.

  “Come on, Stevie.”

  Cork broke into a trot, holding himself back only for the sake of his son’s small legs. They ran past Meloux’s outhouse and cabin and followed a well-worn path between two tall outcroppings of rock. On the other side of the rocks, Cork halted so abruptly that Stevie ran right into him.

  Henry Meloux looked up from where he sat on a maple stump tending a fire that blazed within a circle of large stones. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see Cork standing suddenly before him, but when his gaze shifted to Stevie, he smiled as if the boy’s appearance were the greatest of unexpected pleasures. On the ground just to the left of Meloux lay an old yellow hound, its head resting on its paws. The dog didn’t move when the visitors arrived. His big brown eyes simply took them in with a blinking calm.

  “Anin, Corcoran O’Connor,” Meloux said.

  “Anin, Henry.” Cork moved around the fire nearer to Meloux. “You know there’s a ban on open fires, even on rez land.”

  The old man stared at him as calmly as did the dog. “You are a born policeman, Corcoran O’Connor. Even when you are no longer paid for it, you tend to the law. If you want to arrest me, I won’t resist. If not, then how about you hand me that cedar branch there.” He nodded toward a pile of cut wood and branches nestled against the rock outcropping.

  Cork handed Meloux the cedar branch. Stevie stayed near his father, shadowing Cork’s every move.

  The old mide added the branch to the fire and followed the embers upward with his watchful eyes. “I see that you have brought with you a little Corcoran O’Connor.”

  “This is Stephen. You probably saw him last when he was just about the size of a muskrat. Stevie, this is Henry Meloux.”

  “Come, Stephen O’Connor. Sit with me.” Meloux patted the ground between him and the old hound.

  Stevie looked up at Cork, who nodded his okay. The boy sat, and the hound lifted his head and nuzzled Stevie’s hand. His tail swept the dirt behind him.

  “Can I pet him?” Stevie asked.

  “I think he would like that.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I have always called him Walleye.”

  “Hi, Walleye,” Stevie said, stroking the dog’s yellow fur. “Hi, boy.”

  Meloux watched the boy, and a broad smile added creases to his face as he spoke to Cork. “The blood of the People is strong in this one.”

  From his shirt pocket, Cork took a pack of Lucky Strikes and handed them to the old man. Meloux accepted, opened the pack, and drew out a cigarette. He held the others toward Cork, who took one for himself. Meloux thrust the end of a stick into the fire and when it was burning, he held the flame to the tip of his cigarette. He passed the stick to Cork, who did the same. For a few minutes, they smoked in silence. Stevie had been right. Cork had given up cigarettes. But the smoking now had nothing to do with an old habit.

  “Why the illegal fire, Henry?” Cork finally asked. “It’s hot enough already I can fry burgers on the pavement.”

  “Cedar fire,” Meloux pointed out. “There’s anger in the air.”

  “And you think one cedar fire will clear it away?”

  “Can it do any harm?”

  “It could burn down what’s left of the forest.”

  “I have been a tender of fires for nearly two of your lifetimes, Corcoran O’Connor. Fire and me, we are old allies. Stephen.” The old man leaned toward the boy. “Do you know your father has another name?”

  “Liam,” Stevie replied, looking pleased that he knew the answer.

  “His father and mother gave him that name. But I gave him another when he was no bigger than you.”

  “What?”

  “Ickode. It means fire. He tried to burn down his grandfather’s school on the reservation.”

  “It was an accident, Henry,” Cork said.

  “Do I have another name?” Stevie looked at the old man eagerly.
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  “If you were given one, it was not by me.”

  Stevie’s eyes swung to his father.

  “No, buddy,” Cork said. He could see the disappointment on his son’s face.

  “Let me sleep on it,” Meloux offered. “Let me see what comes to me in dreams, Stephen. When next we meet, I will have a name for you.”

  Stevie brightened and returned his attention to Walleye.

  Cork sat on the ground to the right of Meloux. “Henry, I came to ask you about Charlie Warren. You know what happened at Lindstrom’s mill.”

  “I know.”

  “The authorities are thinking Charlie was responsible, that somehow he was the victim of his own bomb. I don’t believe it for an instant, but I can’t figure what he was doing out there.”

  Meloux added the ash from his cigarette to the ash at the fire’s edge. “I knew Charlie Warren all his life. He was a strong spirit, a good man. I also think he would not do this thing.” A loud pop from the fire sent sparks outside the stone circle. Meloux watched them closely until they died in the dirt.

  Night was coming on. A yellow haze nested in the trees to the east, the rising moon. Stars seemed to have popped out in the sky as sudden as the embers that burst from Meloux’s fire. Cork saw that Stevie was more interested in Walleye than in the deepening dark. There was something about fire, he knew, and the company of men that had for centuries chased away the monsters of the night.

  Meloux spoke again. “I’m an old man. I don’t sleep like I used to. Sometimes the tree frogs and me, we talk all night long. I don’t mind being alone with the tree frogs. But some men need other company. Charlie Warren liked company. He also liked checkers, and checkers a man cannot play alone. Sometimes Charlie Warren shared his nights with a friend whose name is Jack Daniel. I would think about these things, Corcoran O’Connor.”

  Walleye suddenly stood, shrugging off Stevie’s hand. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. He went rigid and a growl rumbled in his throat as he watched the place where the path from Meloux’s cabin threaded between the tall outcroppings of rock. Stevie’s own dark eyes, frightened now, looked there, too.

  The woman paused as soon as the firelight hit her, and she held still between the rocks, leaning on her cane.

  “Anin, Henry Meloux,” she said.

  “Anin,” Meloux replied. “I have been waiting for you.”

  Her surprise showed. “You knew I was coming?”

  He beckoned her. “Sit.”

  She walked forward, using her cane at every step of her right leg. She sat on a section of saw-cut pine situated across the fire from Meloux. It was only then that Cork realized Meloux had subtly choreographed the movements of his guests so that the pine section would be vacant when the woman, who could not easily sit on the ground, arrived.

  Meloux spoke to Walleye, Ojibwe words, and the dog returned to the dirt and again cradled his head on his paws. Stevie, looking tired, laid himself against the big hound, who seemed not at all to mind the weight of his small companion.

  “You know who I am, then,” the woman said.

  “I know. Joan Hamilton. Some, I’ve heard, call you Joan of Arc of the Redwoods. That is not a bad name to be called.”

  Joan Hamilton looked down at Stevie, whose eyes were drifting closed. Then she stared long and hard at Cork.

  “Corcoran O’Connor,” Meloux said.

  “We’ve met,” she said. “In a way.”

  Meloux’s eyes went from one to the other, taking in what was between them. “Not a good way, I think.”

  “His business was disrupted yesterday morning. I suspect he blames me.”

  “Your presence has disrupted a lot of businesses,” Cork said.

  “Not intentionally. That man—you called him Erskine, I think—started it.”

  “That man has a family, a mortgage, bills,” Cork told her. “The trees are his living. I’m not saying he was right, but I can understand why he was angry.”

  “You worry about one man. One family. I’m worried about the world.”

  “I think you should worry a little about the kid.”

  “Kid?”

  “The young man who was about to paint Erskine’s knuckles with his blood.”

  “My son, Mr. O’Connor.”

  “Your son? You seemed pretty willing to let Erskine manhandle him.”

  “I don’t need to explain myself to you.” She laid her cane across her knees. It was carved of some dark hard wood that reflected the firelight as brightly as if it were on fire itself. “For two reasons I didn’t interfere,” she went on suddenly. “My son is a man now, not a kid. He wouldn’t have wanted me to step in. This was something that, as a man, he needed to deal with. Also, he’s a soldier, in his way, and as a soldier he will sometimes be hurt. He knows that.”

  “Spartan,” Cork said.

  “You disapprove. That’s because you don’t understand this situation as we do. I’ve seen the greatest trees on earth brought to the edge of extinction, not just by greed but by complacency. We’re killing the earth and ourselves with it. This is war, Mr. O’Connor, and what we’re fighting for is nothing less than our survival on this earth.”

  The Army of the Earth, Cork thought, remembering the militant environmental group Eco-Warrior claimed to be a part of, and he studied carefully the woman on the far side of the fire.

  She was, he guessed, about his own age. Her hair was mostly red, although in the light of the fire it seemed rich with veins of silver. Her eyes were narrow, colorless slits that allowed her to look out and invited nothing in. At one time, she might have been beautiful. Now there was something jagged and hard about her, and Cork thought of her like an arrowhead chipped from flint, well capable of killing.

  Meloux sat quietly while the exchange took place. Cork was sorry that he’d let himself trade harsh words with the woman there where Meloux burned cedar to cleanse the anger from the air. He was well aware that the old mide hadn’t asked the woman’s purpose in coming. Meloux probably already knew, in the way he knew so many things. If not, his quiet was simply a sign of the patience that was an aspect of his spirit. Cork, for his part, was dying to know why she, an outsider, had come and who had guided her.

  But there were to be no answers. The woman fell silent and Meloux looked at Cork in a way that was as powerful as a shove.

  “Migwech, Henry,” Cork said, thanking the old man for his help. He stood up and stepped to Stevie, who lay asleep against Walleye. He lifted his son and started along the path that had led him to Crow Point.

  “We fight for the world our children will inherit, Mr. O’Connor,” the woman said at his back.

  Cork turned to her. “A noble-sounding justification for almost anything. Always has been.”

  Before Cork could move on, Meloux called to him, “I have heard you might be sheriff again.”

  “Somebody’s spreading a lot of hooey in this county,” Cork replied.

  “Too bad,” the old man said. “I think it would be a good idea.”

  “I don’t share your optimism, Henry. But I thank you for the vote of confidence. ‘Night.”

  He passed between the rocks and out of the firelight.

  An early moon had risen, nearly full. Without it, the dark of the woods would have been impenetrable. As it was, Cork walked in a silver light bright enough to cast shadows. His son was heavy in his arms, but Cork didn’t mind at all. Stevie stirred in his sleep and his cheek brushed Cork’s cheek, soft down against the rough stubble of a day’s growth. Cork thought about the woman and how hard she’d seemed when it came to her son. He knew his own arms could not hold Stevie forever. Someday he would have to let go. He hoped he would be wise enough when that time came to know how to do it and strong enough to let it be done.

  As he drove toward Aurora with Stevie asleep on the seat beside him, Cork thought over all that Meloux had told him about Charlie Warren. They were not big things. Probably they were pieces of information that many on the rez knew but,
out of respect for Charlie Warren and an understandable distrust of law enforcement, had not shared with the BCA or even with Jo. Meloux thought the information was important, and so Cork considered it carefully.

  Charlie Warren was the traditional chief of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, and his voice had always been important in the affairs of the People. He was in his seventies and his health had been failing and lately he’d retired from most politics on the rez. He was a man who often did not sleep at night, and who did not like to be alone with his sleeplessness. What would such a man be doing at Lindstrom’s mill when the bomb went off?

  When he put it together that way, Cork thought he might have the answer.

  He stopped at the Pinewood Broiler and borrowed Johnny Pap’s phone book to look up an address. Then he drove out to a small clapboard house near the Burlington Northern tracks northwest of town. Stevie slept so soundly that Cork decided not to wake him. He got out of the Bronco quietly and followed the cracked, weedy sidewalk to the front door. The house was mostly dark. Through the blinds, Cork could see a lighted television screen in the front room, and he could hear through the opened window the sound of a baseball game. He pushed the button for the doorbell, but nothing rang inside. He knocked. A moment later the porch light flicked on. Harold Loomis, the night watchman at Lindstrom’s mill, appeared at the door.

  “Evening, Harold,” Cork said.

  Loomis was a thin man. He was dressed in an undershirt and plaid shorts. He had a full shock of white hair and a nose like a lightbulb that had been screwed into his face. He held a glass filled with amber liquid and ice, and his lightbulb of a nose was pretty well lit.

  “What can I do for you, Cork?” He pushed the screen door open.

  “I just need an answer to a couple of questions.”

  “Sure. If I can give ‘em.”

  “You like playing checkers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You ever play with Charlie Warren?”

  Loomis blinked at him.

  “I was just thinking,” Cork went on, “that you and Charlie had a few things in common. Besides checkers. You served in the Korean War, right?”