Boundary Waters

  “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Benedetti?”

  He wore an expensive waxed canvas slicker that was wet from the drizzle outside the church. The slicker crinkled when he moved.

  “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t fooled by Jackson. He’s slick as raw oysters.”

  “And that’s why you followed me?” She didn’t bother to hide her irritation.

  “Mostly I wanted to tell you that I’ve seen his brother before. Booker T. Harris. Just after Shiloh’s mother was killed.”

  The quiet in the church changed. The peace in it felt crushed by something ominous. Jo sat down in the last pew and Benedetti joined her.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “The papers were going crazy. Dredging up all the stuff about the old days when my father and Marais Grand had been a hot item. There was a lot of speculation flying around about their starting up their affair again and about Marais Grand’s death having something to do with a love thing gone wrong. It was hard on my mother. She spent a lot of time at St. Lucia. She was so upset she couldn’t even drive, so I’d take her. I was sixteen then. I didn’t have the same patience I’d had when I was little. Usually I’d drop her off and go get a burger or something, come back in an hour or so. Generally she was still inside lighting candles, praying. I’d have to tell her it was time to go.

  “One day I come back, step inside, and there she is at the candles, but she’s not alone. A man’s with her. A black man. And they’re whispering hot and heavy. I think something must be wrong, so I go to help her. She yells at me. There in church. Tells me to get the hell out. So I do. I’m waiting outside for her, wondering what can be going on. A few minutes later, the guy comes out and I get a good look at him. It was that Booker T. Harris. I’d swear to it on my mother’s grave. A little later, my mother comes out. Usually church soothes her, but she’s shaking like she just had a visit from the Devil himself. She’s real quiet. Doesn’t say a thing the whole way home.”

  Jo waited, but Benedetti seemed to have finished. “What do you think it means?” she finally asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m just trying to tell you these men have been harassing my family for years. Now I realize it extended even to violating the sanctity of the church. Maybe I’m just saying that being a lawyer, you may be disposed toward believing them because of who they are. Me, I wouldn’t trust any of them any farther than I could throw this church.”

  Jo stood up as if to leave. Benedetti did the same.

  “I’m interested. In your line of work, just how do you know who to trust?” she asked.

  “My line of work?” He laughed and it sounded loud in the empty church. “I’m just a businessman, Ms. O’Connor. I manage my father’s casino.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “About trust, you mean? All right, I’ll tell you who I trust. Family.”

  “Family,” Jo considered. “And this is all family business because, of course, Shiloh is family.”

  “My father believes she is.” Benedetti looked down at the dark water spots on the carpet where rain had dripped from his slicker. “He loves her like a daughter, whatever.”

  “He’s had a strange way of showing it all these years.”

  “Love isn’t always about hugs and kisses. Sometimes it’s about doing what’s best for the person you love. I guess Pop always figured her life was complicated enough without his throwing her another curveball. You should see his office. Plastered with pictures of Shiloh. Plays her music all the time. He’s been to every concert she ever gave.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Jo shook out her umbrella in preparation for heading outside. “You’re familiar with the story of the prodigal son? I’m just wondering. The good son who did all his father asked of him, how do you think he felt when he saw the love that was lavished on the other?”

  Benedetti shook his head in a disappointed way. “This isn’t about me.”

  “Why should I believe anything you tell me? I mean, if, as you say, family is all that can be trusted.”

  “Whether you believe me or not doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that you don’t buy that slop Harris and Jackson are trying to sell you.”

  “But disbelieving them is part of the package you’re trying to sell. Do you see my dilemma?”

  Angelo Benedetti regarded her for a moment, and something like regret seemed to enter his face. He shrugged. “Believe what you want to believe. Your funeral.” He walked away from her. When he opened the front door, a shaft of gray light entered the church, but it didn’t make things any brighter.

  She spent a few minutes at the office clearing her schedule. She called Rose, let her know she’d be late for dinner. Finally, as dark settled over Aurora, she climbed into her Toyota and headed toward the Iron Lake Reservation. She had to tell Sarah Two Knives that the men who’d forced her husband and her son into the Boundary Waters had lost contact with them and had no idea where they were.

  Heavy white flakes began to plaster themselves against the windshield. In her headlights, the wet snow mixed with the drizzle like moths among a swarm of gnats.

  On the outskirts of Allouette, she pulled up and stopped at the turn-in to the trailer home of Wendell Two Knives. The trailer and the outbuildings were almost lost in the dark and the precipitation. But beyond the buildings, visible through the boughs of the cedars near the lake, was a flickering light.

  Jo left the car at the side of the road and stole into Wendell’s yard. She crept between the dark, empty trailer and the big shed where Wendell kept his truck and the materials he used to make his canoes. She passed a small garden full of bared cornstalks and emptied pumpkin vines. A light wind came off the lake and moved through the branches of the cedars, coming toward her with a long sigh. Another sound came with the wind, a sound that to Jo seemed like crying.

  She hid herself behind one of the trees and peered cautiously through the thick branches. The light, she realized, was a fire. And the crying was a song. Henry Meloux sat on a stump near the deep vast black that was Iron Lake and sang in the language of The People. As she watched, he lifted his hand and sprinkled something into the wind. He stopped suddenly and listened intently, then he looked directly at the place where she stood concealed. She stepped from cover.

  Meloux grinned. “Jo O’Connor.” He didn’t seem surprised in the least, but Jo had never known the old midewiwin to be surprised by anything.

  “Anin, Henry,” she said, offering him the traditional Anishinaabe greeting.

  “Anin,” he replied. He beckoned her forward and indicated a big chunk of saw-cut birch as a seat.

  Jo liked Henry Meloux immensely. The old man seemed to favor her with the same affection. It probably had something to do with the fact that Meloux credited her with saving his life the year before. She’d been lucky with a rifle and had prevented a murderous man in a jeep from running Meloux down. But she also suspected that anyone who approached him in true need would have felt embraced by his affection. Jo’s own feeling about Meloux was deeply embedded in respect. The old midewiwin understood a kind of law Jo appreciated more and more all the time, a law for which nothing was written and no courts existed.

  Meloux wore an old plaid mackinaw that, in the firelight, glistened with rain. On his head was settled a red billed cap with CHIPPEWA GRAND CASINO printed across the crown. Water dripped from the bill. His breath, when he spoke, fogged the air. Jo looked at his hands, dark old hands where the veins ran like rivers, and she saw that he held a pouch.

  “What are you up to, Henry?”

  “Fishing,” the old man told her. “Among the spirits.” He lifted a bit of cedar bark and added it to the fire. “I have been asking the manidoog of the woods to bring my old friend Wendell Two Knives back safely to his home. And I have been asking that the other men come home safely, too.”

  “Henry, do you know what’s going on out there?”

/>   The wind rose suddenly. The fire stirred and grew brighter. The cedar bark flamed up in a small explosion of embers that, lifted on the wind, scurried into the night like fireflies.

  “It’s an old battle,” Meloux said. “If I were a younger man . . .” But he let it drop.

  “You know about Cork and the others?”

  Meloux nodded.

  “Do you know where they’re going?”

  “No.” He reached out as if touching the air. “I only know everything is connected, like the threads on a spider web. And time is like the wind. The wind blows, the web moves, but the connections do not break. Only, now I feel something tearing through, something big. Threads are breaking. I don’t know why.”

  Jo leaned toward the fire and spread her cold hands to its heat. “I don’t know what’s going on, Henry. It’s like I’m downwind of the Devil. I can sense something awful out there, but I can’t tell what it is or what it wants. I don’t know how to fight against something I don’t understand.”

  “We do what we can.” Meloux spoke quietly, but without defeat. “I burn sage and cedar. I offer tobacco. You? You have become a hunter. Maybe a warrior, too?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I know you as a warrior, Jo O’Connor. I owe you my life.”

  “I was lucky, Henry.”

  “I do not believe that.” Meloux took a bit of sage and cedar bark and put it in Jo’s hand. His fingers were thin and hard, the skin rough, the nails yellow. “In your own way, burn cedar and sage. And remember, the thing about a devil is that Grandmother Earth will refuse to hide it. It will be revealed. Be ready.”

  “I’ll do my best, Henry.” She stood up to leave. “You’re a long way from home. Can I give you a lift?”

  The old midewiwin smiled. “You already have. As for getting home, when I am ready, that I can do on my own.”

  She headed back toward Aurora. Until she knew more, what good would speaking with Sarah Two Knives do except add to the woman’s burden of worry? There was nothing anyone could do that night anyway. Best let those who could sleep in peace.

  She pulled into the garage of the house on Gooseberry Lane. When she opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen, the smell of fried chicken rolled over her like the scent of heaven. Rose stood at the sink with Stevie, doing dishes.

  “Mommy!”

  Stevie threw his dish towel down and jumped off the chair that had given him enough height to reach the counter. He ran to Jo and gave her a big hug. It was the best thing that had happened to her all day.

  “We saved you some dinner,” he told her.

  “In the oven,” Rose said, using the hem of her apron to wipe suds from her hands. “Hungry?”

  “I wasn’t until I smelled the chicken. Now I’m starved.”

  Jo took a hot pad from a hook near the stove and pulled the plate from the oven. A chicken breast with a light golden breading, baked potato, fresh green beans, and yellow squash. She put her nose into the steam that rose from the plate and breathed in the wonderful aroma of Rose’s cooking. Stevie gave her flatware and a napkin and she sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Where are the girls?” she asked.

  “Annie’s at church,” Stevie answered. He knelt on a chair at the end of the table, set his chin on his folded hands, and his dark eyes followed her every move. They were Cork’s eyes. The deep, watchful eyes of the Anishinaabe.

  “She’s helping mark things for the bazaar next Saturday,” Rose explained. She put butter and salt and pepper on the table for Jo, then took up Stevie’s dish towel and set about drying the remaining dishes.

  “And Jenny’s at Sean’s,” Stevie finished, eager to share what he knew.

  “Sean’s folks invited her to dinner. They’re studying afterward,” Rose added.

  Stevie picked up the salt shaker and tapped a little onto the table. He tried to get the shaker to stand at an angle on a few grains, something he’d seen his father do. The shaker fell over.

  “Will you play Legos with me tonight?” he asked.

  “I’m sure your mother is very tired—” Rose began.

  But Jo reached across the table, angled the shaker successfully on a pinch of grains, and said, “Of course I’ll play. Let me eat first and change my clothes, okay? Why don’t you go gather all your Legos and decide what we’ll build.”

  Stevie disappeared. Rose poured a cup of coffee and sat at the table with her sister.

  “Delicious,” Jo said with her mouth full.

  “Thanks.” A small, satisfied smile appeared on Rose’s plain, wide face. “I remember Mom used to come home from the base hospital and I’d have dinner ready. We’d sit down, and you’d always have something interesting or funny to tell her. You know, a place to start the conversation. I used to love that time, all of us at the table together.”

  “Mom would start her drinking then,” Jo reminded her.

  “Not always.”

  “Too often.”

  “She was alone. Taking care of us alone.”

  “We did the caretaking, Rose.”

  Rose stared at her. At first the look held hurt and mild anger, but that passed quickly.

  “You’re too hard,” she said.

  “I just try to be realistic.”

  Rose stood up and looked down at her. “Maybe you should try being forgiving instead.” She took her coffee and headed back to the sink to finish the dishes.

  The food in Jo’s mouth seemed tasteless all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m just worried.”

  Rose came back and sat beside her. “What is it?”

  “They’ve lost contact with Cork and the others.”

  “How?”

  “Equipment failure, they say.”

  “But you don’t believe them.”

  “Oh, Rose, I don’t know what to believe. Or who.”

  Rose put her plump, wonderful arms around Jo, who could smell the lilac powder her sister always used after her afternoon bath.

  “What does your instinct tell you?” Rose asked.

  “Never trust a man. Period.”

  They both managed to laugh. Jo briefly related the events of the day, the Benedettis, what Schanno had discovered, the confrontation at the Quetico.

  “Somebody must be lying.”

  “But who?” Jo asked.

  “Do you think Cork and the others are in real danger?”

  “My instincts say yes. But I don’t know how to help them.” Jo pushed her plate away, put her arms on the table, and laid her head down. “God, Rose, I feel so tired, so confused, so fucking responsible. For everything.”

  “First-child syndrome. And Catholic to boot.” Rose stroked Jo’s hair gently. “When I said you should be forgiving, I meant you should try it on yourself as well. Look, you’ve always been the smartest woman I know. You’ll figure something out.”

  Jo hugged her sister tightly and for a long time. “You’re the best, you know.”

  “I know.” Rose finally pulled away. “I’ll finish the dishes. I think you’ve got a construction job waiting for you in the living room.”

  Jo spent the evening building a Lego castle with Stevie. She put him to bed at eight and read to him from The Indian in the Cupboard. Annie came home at nine, Jenny on the stroke of ten. Jo was at the kitchen table drinking herbal tea. When Jenny breezed through the door, her face was bright as a harvest moon.

  “How did the studying go?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  Jenny smiled from a distant place. She went to the refrigerator, pulled out a carton of milk, and poured herself half a glass. She took a couple of cookies from the cookie jar and leaned back against the counter.

  “Mom, how old were you when you got married?”

  “A lot older than you.”

  “How did Dad propose?”

  “Badly.” Jo sipped her tea and smiled as she remembered. “He took me out on a cruise on Lake Michigan. I’m sure it cost him half a week’s pay. He’d never been on a boat like
that before. The lake was a little rough. He got seasick. He proposed to me and threw up.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Did you accept? I mean, right then and there?”

  “Uh-huh. He looked so pathetic, I couldn’t say no.”

  Annie stepped into the kitchen from the other room. The concern in her voice stopped the conversation dead. “Mom, there’s someone outside again, watching. In the shadow of the lilac hedge.”

  “Turn out the light,” Jo said.

  Annie hit the switch. Jo went to the kitchen window and peered out. She saw the figure, black against the shadowed hedge, motionless, nearly lost in the night.

  “What is it?” Rose asked. She came into the kitchen knotting the tie around her robe. “Why’s everybody standing in the dark?”

  “Call the sheriff’s office, Rose,” Jo said. “Get someone over here right now.”

  Rose didn’t pause to ask why. She went straight to the wall phone.

  In less than five minutes, a sheriff’s department cruiser rolled up the street and stopped near the lilac hedge. Two deputies with flashlights converged on the figure, which had not moved. Jo couldn’t see a face, but whoever the lurker was, he didn’t resist. The deputies brought him between them toward the kitchen.

  “Your Peeping Tom,” Deputy Marsha Dross said, presenting the offender at the back door.

  “Sean?” Jenny peered around her mother.

  “Hi, Jen.”

  “What were you doing out there?”

  “Nothing. Just—you know—looking at your house.”

  “Why?”

  “Sean, were you out there last night?” Jo asked.

  He was dressed in a black leather jacket, black pants, black boots. Long and lanky, dripping wet, and chagrined.

  “It’s all right, Sean. I’d just like to know.”