William Krueger - Red knife

In addition to being the elected tribal chairman of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, George LeDuc was a successful businessman. He ran the general store in Allouette, the larger of the two communities on the rez. He was in his early seventies, a bear of a man with hair gone gray, but still plenty of vigor in him, enough to have fathered, a couple of years earlier, a daughter of whom he was magnificently proud.

His wife, Sarah, was half his age and had plenty of energy herself. She’d convinced LeDuc to have an addition built onto the store, and she’d put in a little coffee shop she called the Moose Mocha. It had done well, become a gathering place for folks on the rez and also for whites using the new marina and boat-launch facility that the tribe had built at the edge of town, on Iron Lake.

The store was closed on Sundays, but the Moose Mocha was open and doing a good business when Cork walked in. Sarah was behind the counter, steaming milk for a latte. Sarah’s sister Gloria was at the register. LeDuc was nowhere in sight.

Cork approached the counter. “ Boozhoo, Sarah. George around?”

She peeked from behind the big stainless-steel coffee machine and smiled. “In back, taking out the garbage.” She had to speak loudly, above the hiss of the steam. When the sound stopped, she said more quietly and with great concern, “We heard about Alex and Rayette. It’s all anybody’s talking about. What a tragedy.” She carefully poured the steamed milk into a cup containing espresso. “We heard you were out there, too.”

“For a little while,” Cork said.

She paused in spooning foam onto the surface of the drink and her face contorted, as if she was in pain. “Shot in the back, we heard, like it was a hit or something. Is that true?”

“It appears that way.”

She was a plain woman but her dark eyes were beautiful and when she was happy there was a sparkle to them, as if they were full of stars. It was her eyes, LeDuc often said, that had won him over. They didn’t sparkle now. “Drugs?” she asked.

“That’s one of the possibilities.”

LeDuc came in from the back. “Cork! Thought I heard your voice.”

Sarah handed the latte to her sister and turned to her husband. “He says it’s true, George.”

“What’s true?”

“About the Kingbirds. Shot in the back.”

LeDuc’s face showed all the emotion of a sandstone wall. “I’ve called a council meeting for tomorrow.”

“Got a few minutes free, George?” Cork said.

“Okay?” he asked his wife.

“Go on,” she said.

They stepped outside into the warm late afternoon. Across the street stood the new community center where the tribal council met. It also housed a free clinic, a number of the reservation business offices, a gymnasium, and a recreation room. LeDuc said, “I’m listening.”

“George, I’m looking for Lonnie Thunder.”

“I haven’t heard anything. Talked to his father a couple of days ago. Ike says he hasn’t seen Lonnie in a while, but that’s not unusual. He’s probably hiding. Hell, Buck Reinhardt’s running around loose out there. I was Lonnie Thunder, I’d hide.” He looked past Cork, at Iron Lake, which was visible through a stand of oaks, its surface satin blue. “Think it was Reinhardt killed the Kingbirds?”

“If I was sheriff, he’d be at the top of my list. But I’m thinking there are other possibilities.”

“Some folks around here are saying it was because of drugs.”

“Maybe. I’d like to talk to Lonnie Thunder about the shootings.”

“Why Thunder?”

“I spoke with Kingbird last night. He wanted me to arrange a meeting with him and Reinhardt.”

“Kingbird and Reinhardt? I’d like to’ve had a ringside seat for that. What was he thinking a meeting would accomplish?”

“He told me he was going to offer Buck justice.”

LeDuc chewed on that. “Any idea what he meant?”

“It might be that he was considering giving Thunder over to the sheriff.”

“And Thunder got wind of it and killed him and Rayette?” He didn’t look convinced.

“Maybe he didn’t start out thinking he’d kill Kingbird, it just ended up that way. Things got out of hand.”

“Maybe. Nobody ever accused Lonnie Thunder of having any sense.” The lines around LeDuc’s eyes went deep and he was quiet. “I was Kingbird, I’d have given Thunder over without a second thought. Everybody on the rez knows about those videos, knows what he was up to with those young girls. Any of us got our hands on him, believe me, we’d deliver a little Ojibwe justice before we turned him in.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand him protecting Thunder. Kingbird was smart. There was a lot to admire about him. A few weeks ago he came into the store. We talked for a good hour. I challenged him on the whole drug thing, told him the Red Boyz were a blight on the Anishinaabe name. Accused him and his gang of preying on the weakness of others. Know what he said? Said the Chippewa Grand Casino did the same thing, just had the power of law behind it, and law didn’t make a thing right. Had himself a point there, I suppose. This was before anybody knew what Lonnie Thunder had been up to with those young Shinnob girls. Kingbird got pretty quiet after that. You know he’d been seeing Henry Meloux?”

Meloux was a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society, a healer of the body and spirit. He was god-awful old and lived by himself in an isolated cabin far north on the rez. He was also a man Cork respected and loved above all others.

“I had no idea,” Cork said.

“You want to know the truth, once you got past all the things you think about gangs, Alex Kingbird had a lot to recommend him. Shame he wasted it on the Red Boyz and the likes of Lonnie Thunder.”

For an hour and a half in the afternoon, Annie played softball at the high school field. It wasn’t a scheduled practice, but many of the girls from the team liked to get together this way on the weekends. They were leading the division and wanted to keep their edge. Besides, they all loved the sport and loved each other and loved being young and totally free on a warm May Sunday.

They finally broke up and went their separate ways. Annie walked toward home with Cara Haines, who played first base. Cara was like a grasshopper, with a slender body and long arms and legs. Normally Annie had to walk double-time to keep up, but as the two girls made their way together through Aurora, they moved slowly and hardly spoke.

They were seniors, with graduation less than a month away. In the fall, Cara was going to college at Concordia, in Moorehead, Minnesota. Annie was going to college, too, although that hadn’t always been her plan. Before she entered high school and softball became one of her greatest passions-maybe her greatest-she’d intended to become a nun. It had been a clear vision for her since she was very young. By her sophomore year, however, both her love of softball and her growing interest in boys had blunted her sharp resolve, and her intentions had altered slightly. She’d decided that she would first go to Notre Dame, pitch for the Fighting Irish, and then, perhaps, give herself over as a bride to Christ. Unfortunately, Notre Dame hadn’t offered her an athletic scholarship, but the University of Wisconsin had. So at the end of August, Annie was headed to Madison, and the question of what path lay beyond that, spiritual or otherwise, was put on hold.

The two young women had spent their lives in Aurora, had followed the same streets, passed the same houses, taken for granted all the details that had outlined and helped define their existence. College didn’t mean they were traveling to the ends of the earth, but they weren’t just leaving Aurora, either. They were leaving their childhoods behind. Something important was ending, and often these days Annie found herself trying hard to notice everything about her hometown, to gather up all the small perfect pleasures and store them in her heart.