“I can’t,” she said dully.
“Suit yourself. I haven’t had any breakfast.” He took another strip of bacon, then picked up the coffee cup from which Roy had been drinking and held it out to her. “At least have some coffee. It’ll help.”
She looked at the cup—dark blue plastic—in his hand, and she acted without thinking. Her own hand shot upward and slammed the hot coffee into his face, and then she was up and running for the woods. She hadn’t gone half a dozen strides when she was jerked backward by her long black hair.
He grasped her arm and quickly twisted it behind her, immobilizing her. His other hand tugged on her hair until she was afraid he’d rip it out. She screamed.
“You think I’m hurting you because I’m angry.” He spoke quietly into her ear. “I’m not angry. What you did was a natural reaction, something I would expect. Did you ever break a horse?”
He let up slightly on her hair, gave a bit of slack, then yanked brutally. “No!” she cried.
“No? Country girl like you?”
Her head burned. Her voice was choked with crying. She could barely breathe from the crush of his arm around her.
“The key to breaking a horse is to make absolutely clear to the animal that it can’t throw you, escape you, or outlast you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She tried to answer, but only a thin, inhuman sound came out.
“Say the word.” He snapped her head back with another yank of her hair.
“Yes!” she cried.
“Good. Next time you try something like that, I’ll hurt you in a different way.”
He let her go and she dropped to her knees. She vomited onto the golden birch leaves that covered the ground. For a while, she knelt weeping over the mess that steamed in the cold wet morning air.
“Here.” He was beside her again, offering the dead man’s coffee to her once more. “Like I told you, it’ll help.”
She looked at the cup and shook her head.
“Come back to the fire,” he told her.
She didn’t move.
“I just want to get away from the puke,” he said. “So we can talk.”
He put his hand around her arm and lifted her forcibly. She staggered up and stumbled ahead of him to the fire. The bacon was burning now, gone black and hard as the skillet it cooked in. Blackish smoke poured upward, mixing with the gray wood smoke.
“I can’t sit here,” she said, looking away from the two bodies.
“Stand over by the water, then. It’s all the same to me.”
She walked to the shoreline where the canoes were drawn up and waiting. She stared out at the lake, at the islands that lay like dead things on the water.
He spoke at her back. “I’m here to kill you. That’s the first thing you need to know. But I want something from you before I do. That’s why you’re alive and your companions aren’t. So you have some time left. In that time, you have a choice to make. When I kill you, I can kill you very quickly and quite painlessly. I promise you. I can also drag it out and you’ll beg me to kill you. I have no feeling either way. The choice is yours.”
“What do you want?” she asked without facing him.
“Two things. I’ve told you one—your life.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter much what the other one is.”
“On the contrary, that’s what matters most. You’ve been at work on something while you were up here. I believe you called it—just a minute.”
She glanced back, saw him take a folded letter from his shirt pocket.
“‘A discovery of the past,’” he read aloud. “‘I see now what I never saw before, the truth I couldn’t face.’”
She recognized her own words. “Where did you get that letter?”
“I killed a woman for it.”
Shiloh felt her chest go tight, as if the stranger had her in his grasp again. “Please, not Libbie.”
“Her name wasn’t important to me. She was just a woman who had something I wanted.”
“Like me.”
“Exactly.”
Snow began to fall, a flake here and there. She felt the light touch on her cheek, the cold moment of turning as the perfect shape melted into something that trickled away.
“How did you find me?”
“The letters. Then a friend of yours brought me part of the way.”
“Friend?”
“Probably the best friend you’ve ever had, judging from how hard he tried to protect you.”
She caught her breath. “Wendell?”
“I’ve known a lot of strong men. None stronger than Wendell Two Knives.”
“Where is he?”
“That depends on your religious belief. As I understand it, his own people would say he’s walking the Path of Souls.”
“You killed him.”
“I killed him.”
Her legs felt too weak to hold her up. She dropped to the ground. She put her hands to her face, and they were filled with tears for Wendell Two Knives.
The stranger walked to his inflatable kayak, reached in, and pulled out a small radio transmitter.
“Papa Bear, this is Baby Bear. Do you read me?”
A moment of static. Then, “Papa Bear here. Go ahead.”
“I’ve got Goldilocks. Repeat, I’ve got Goldilocks. That herd of deer you’ve been tracking, it’s time to bring ’em down. Do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Baby Bear. Papa Bear out.”
The stranger stepped to her and touched her hair. She jerked away.
“Good,” he said. “You’re learning. It’s time for us to go.”
“Where?” she managed to say.
“Wherever it is you’ve hidden the past and whatever hopes you had for the future.”
He smiled and offered her his hand.
29
A LITTLE OVER TWO HOURS along the Little Moose, Stormy and Louis came alongside Cork in their canoe.
“Louis says we’ve got to put in.”
“What’s up?” Cork asked.
“Bad stretch of river around that next bend.”
“That’s where Uncle Wendell always stopped.” Louis pointed ahead to a break in the pines on the eastern bank.
Cork gave Sloane and Raye an exaggerated hand signal to follow and headed for the landing.
“We take a break here,” Sloane called out to him.
They lifted the canoes from the water and tipped them onto the wet bed of pine needles that covered the landing. The ground was spongy and ringed with lady’s slippers long past blooming. Cork sat on a fallen pine and pulled the water bottle from his pack.
“Everyone should drink,” he cautioned. “In weather like this, it’s easy to ignore your thirst and get dehydrated.”
Sloane looked beat. He sat with his back against the trunk of a red pine and eyed the sky miserably. Drizzle wetted his face. A couple of white flakes drifted down, then vanished on his skin.
“This weather,” he said, as if he were cursing.
“Where are you from?” Cork asked.
Sloane closed his eyes and didn’t answer.
“Come on,” Cork said. “That can’t be classified.”
Sloane’s eyes opened slowly. “California,” he finally said.
“The Golden State,” Louis said.
“That’s right, son.”
“Are you from Hollywood?” Louis asked.
Sloane smiled briefly. “’Fraid not. Grew up in a place called Watts.”
“Have you ever been to Disneyland?”
Sloane seemed to think about not answering. “Used to take my girls a lot when they were about your age. Ever been there?”
“No,” Louis said.
“Someday, maybe,” Sloane offered hopefully.
“How long’s this portage?” Raye looked at the trail that climbed a slope steeper than anything they’d encountered so far.
“I’m not sure,” Cork said. “It’s been years since I’ve been this way. Louis?”
br /> “Me and Uncle Wendell always made it in about half an hour,” Louis said. “It’s not far, but it’s kind of hard because it’s high and rocky. We always stopped here to rest and look at the moccasin flowers.”
Raye gave him a puzzled look. “Moccasin flowers?”
“Lady’s slippers,” Stormy told him. He pointed at the plants around the edge of the clearing. “Some people think the blossoms look like Indian moccasins.”
“It’s hard to believe anyone would do this for pleasure.” Sloane spoke mostly to himself and shook his head wearily.
“Where the river ends is a big lake. She’s near there,” Louis told him.
“We ought to get going,” Cork said. “Once we’re back on the river it should be only an hour or so to Wilderness. That’s Louis’s big lake.”
The sound of a small plane came from the gray downriver. It passed near them but was hidden by the overcast. Cork knew it was a yellow De Havilland Beaver, a float plane belonging to the U.S. Forest Service.
“Think they’re looking for us?” Raye asked.
“No,” Cork said. “They’re too high. They always stay above four thousand feet unless they’re on a search-and-rescue. Even if they were looking for us, they’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of spotting us in this weather.”
Sloane heaved a sigh and pushed himself up.
“You doing all right?” Cork asked.
“Fine, O’Connor,” Sloane said. “Just fine. You worry about yourself.” He considered the trail ahead of them. “This is how it’s going to be. O’Connor, you first, then Two Knives, then Raye. You’ll have the canoes. Then you, Louis. I’ll bring up the rear. O’Connor, you and Two Knives carry a pack. Louis, you take one. I’ll haul the last one. We’ll need only a single portage that way.”
“You’ll be carrying a lot of weight,” Cork pointed out.
“Like I told you, O’Connor, just worry about yourself.”
Sloane hefted his pack onto his back, then had Louis help him sling the additional pack that carried food and cooking utensils across his chest. Cork could see the strain the weight put on him, but it was the man’s choice. The others slipped into their own packs and shouldered the yokes of their canoes. They started upward along the trail in the arrangement Sloane had dictated. The going was slow not only because the slope was tough, but the ground was mostly rock and the drizzle that wetted everything made the footing slippery. The woods were quiet. Cork could hear the occasional grunt of the others behind him as they struggled to keep from slipping or stumbling. He could hear the water of the Little Moose, out of sight now, as it became an unnavigable rush compressed between rock walls and split by a scattering of sharp-edged boulders. In the cold air wetted with mist, the smell of the pines all around them seemed especially strong.
As he climbed, Cork found himself thinking about the lady’s slippers. They reminded him of another trip in the Boundary Waters, long ago—the last time he’d ever spoken in an important way with Marais Grand.
At the end of every summer, when Cork was in his teens, the St. Agnes CYC made a canoe trip into the Boundary Waters. It was always eight or ten teenagers accompanied by two or three adults. Cork’s first year on the outing was Marais’s last. He’d just turned fifteen. Marais had just graduated from Aurora High. There were four other boys on the trip that year, all older than Cork. They’d argued among themselves who would be Marais’s canoe partner. She’d settled it herself by choosing Cork. Marais asked him to take the stern, and he felt honored. His position allowed him to watch her constantly. In the heat of the afternoon, she often took off her shirt and paddled in her tank top. Her hair was black and long. Her skin was like finely polished walnut. Cork became fascinated with the curve of her shoulder blades, outlined at every stroke, as the bone captured and channeled her hair. Sometimes she sang while they canoed, leading the others in familiar songs or singing her own compositions. Every day, Cork fell more in love.
The last night of the trip that year was beautiful. They camped at a site on a point of land jutting into Lake Saganaga, less than a day’s paddle from the Gunflint Trail that would take them home. The sky was cloudless, the stars brighter than Cork could ever remember. Long after dark, the moon rose, full. All the stars around it vanished as if the moon were a bucket that had scooped them up, filling itself to overflowing with their silver light. The hour became late. They doused the campfire and all turned in. Cork lay awake a long time listening to his tent partner, a boy named Duane Helgeson who was plagued by enlarged adenoids, snort in his sleep like a rutting bull moose. In a moment of rare dead quiet, Cork heard the rustle of a tent flap and the step of someone leaving camp. He peeked out and saw by the moonlight that it was Marais.
He followed along a path that cut through a stand of poplars to the other side of the point. Where the path broke from the trees, lady’s slippers grew in great profusion. He crouched among the flowers watching Marais as she sat down on a big rock at the water’s edge. Her head dipped foward a moment. Her face flashed in the glow of a match. She began smoking a cigarette.
Beyond Marais, the moonlight turned the water to silver and silhouetted her perfectly. She sat back, exhaled smoke. To Cork it was like watching the shadow of her soul pass from her lips. He’d never wanted anything so much as he wanted Marais to love him. He knew he should go back, but he couldn’t bring himself to move that way. Instead, to his own surprise, he stepped forward.
She didn’t seem angry that he’d disturbed her solitude.
“Anin, Nishiime,” she greeted him. She looked up at him briefly, then back at the water.
Cork sat down. Not too near.
“Smoke?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She took a pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket and handed it to him. He pulled out a cigarette, gave the pack back. He struck the match she handed him and lit up. Cork had never smoked before. He tried to take a big drag into his lungs but ended up having a coughing fit. He was afraid he’d made a fool of himself, but Marais said nothing. Her feet were bare. She dangled them in the water, making the moonlight bounce around her ankles.
A loon called from somewhere out on the lake.
“Hear that?” she asked. “No other bird sounds the same. That’s what I want my music to be like. When someone hears it, I want them to understand that no one else but me could have made it.”
“I love your music,” he said.
“I want to tell stories with my songs. Did you know that some people believe Homer was a woman? And that the Iliad and the Odyssey were meant to be told accompanied by music?”
He shook his head in the dark, then tried another small puff from his cigarette.
“They’re Players,” she said.
“What?” Cork asked.
“The cigarettes. They’re Players. British. I have a friend who gets them for me.”
What friend? Cork wondered jealously.
She was quiet for a long time then. Cork wasn’t sure if he should say something, but the truth was that he was happy enough just being alone with her.
“I’m trying to take it all in,” she told him. “As much of it as I can. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.”
“Sure you will,” he said. Then, “Where will you go?”
She turned her face to the part of the sky that hadn’t been swallowed by moonlight. “Where I can’t see the stars, I expect.”
“I’ll be leaving someday, too,” Cork said.
She laughed, gently. “Don’t you like it here?”
He did. He liked it a lot. But if getting out was what Marais thought was important, then it seemed like a good idea to him, too.
“I’m not leaving because I don’t like this place.”
He held the cigarette between his fingers, but he didn’t want to smoke it anymore. “Why are you leaving, then?”
“Do you know what destiny is?”
“Sure. I guess.”
“That’s why I’m leaving. Destiny, Nishiime. Mi
ne’s out there. I’ve always known it. There’s something waiting for me, something great, and I’m going to find it.”
“You’ll be famous, Marais. I know you will.”
“Do you really think so?” She finished her cigarette and flicked it out into the water. “I think so, too.”
She leaned to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Go back now,” she said.
“Why?” He was confused by the kiss and by being pushed away so suddenly after.
“I want to be alone. Go on.”
He crushed out the ember of his cigarette on the rock. He didn’t want to leave it there, or to dirty the lake with it, so he put it in his pocket.
He was pulled back suddenly from the remembrance by the smell of smoke. Not like the smoke of the cigarette Marais had given him, nor campfire smoke, as he would have expected in that place. Another smell, faint and so different from a campfire that it was like an alarm. Cigar smoke. He reacted quickly, tilting the weight of the canoe onto his left hand, freeing his right hand to reach back to his pack, groping for the .38. At the same moment, he heard Sloane grunt behind him and Louis let out a squawk.
Cork heaved the canoe off his shoulders to the side of the trail. He spun and saw that Stormy had done the same. Behind them, beyond Arkansas Willie Raye, who still carried his canoe, they saw Sloane down, flailing his arms and legs like a beetle on its back. A few feet beyond him, Louis hung like a puppy in the grip of a giant dressed in military camouflage. The man stood at least six and a half feet tall, weighing a good two hundred and seventy pounds, all of it lean. His head had been shaved like Mr. Clean, and like most men with shaved heads, his ears seemed too large. His free hand held a pistol—a .45 Colt military issue, Cork figured. Mr. Clean was grinning around the last two inches of a lit cigar.
“Put all the canoes down,” he ordered. “Let me see your faces.”
Willie Raye complied, carefully unburdened himself of the canoe, and turned to the man.
“That’s good,” Mr. Clean said. He set Louis down, but he kept the muzzle of his gun against the back of the boy’s head.
“Help me up.” Sloane held out a hand to Willie Raye. When he was back on his feet, he glared at Mr. Clean. “Who the hell are you? And what do you want?”