William Krueger: Trickster's Point

The wind ran around the cabin and threw sleet as it passed. Rainy propped herself up on her arm and stared at him in the dark.

“Rosebud,” she said.

“Rosebud?”

“The sled in Citizen Kane. ”

“That movie always put me to sleep.”

“You’ve got a Rosebud here. It’s the last name he said, so it must be very important to him, don’t you think?”

“Honest to God, Rainy, I don’t know what to think.”

A knock came at the cabin door, unexpected and surprising, and it startled them.

Rainy called out, “Who is it?” but received no response.

Cork said to her quietly, “Meloux?”

“He’s not deaf. He’d answer me.”

Cork threw back the quilt and swung his legs off Rainy’s bed. He was dressed only in boxer shorts. The cabin floor was ice against his bare soles. He crept to the door, stood a moment listening, then swung the door wide. The wind rushed in, a bitter shove against his body, full of sleet pellets that peppered his face and chest. He squinted at the night, but without a moon or any stars to shed light, the dark was impenetrable.

“Anybody?” Rainy called to him.

“No one,” Cork said.

“Come to bed then.”

He stepped back to close the door. That’s when he noticed the arrow. It was lodged approximately in the place where, if the pine door had been an upright man, the razor-sharp broadhead tip would have pierced his heart. Cork pulled it free from the wood, took one last look into the night, then shut out the wind and the cold.

“Would you mind lighting your lantern?” he asked as he came toward the bed.

“What is it?” She sat up and turned to the nightstand.

Cork heard the scratch of a match head over the strike strip of the box, and a flame bloomed in her hand. She lit the lantern and adjusted the wick. Cork sat on the edge of the bed, cradling the arrow in his hands.

“That was the knock?” Rainy asked.

“Guess so.”

“A hunting arrow?”

Cork nodded. “And look here.” He ran his index finger across a word printed finely and delicately in white paint along the length of the gray carbon-composition shaft.

“What does it say?”

Cork held it close to her so that she could see for herself.

“Traitor,” she read out loud.

His perplexity and concern must have been obvious, because Rainy put a warm, reassuring hand on his arm. “It’s disturbing, I know. But there’s an upside. At least it proves you’re not crazy.”

Cork woke to the hoarse barking of Walleye, Meloux’s old yellow dog. He opened his eyes, saw the gray of that morning seeping through Rainy’s windows, and realized he was alone in bed. He got up, pulled on his socks, and went to the nearest window. Outside, dingy-looking clouds hung wet and heavy over the North Country. The ground on Crow Point was salted with sleet pellets. Walleye sat on his haunches, his attention focused on the outhouse that stood twenty yards north of Meloux’s cabin. As Cork watched, the old Mide emerged from the tiny structure and, instead of heading back to his own cabin, came toward Rainy’s. Walleye followed behind.

Cork took his pants from the chair where he’d laid them folded the night before and slipped them on. He was buttoning his flannel shirt when the old man entered without knocking.

“I was beginning to think you were going to hibernate this winter, Corcoran O’Connor.” Meloux walked to the empty chair at Rainy’s table and sat while Cork drew on his boots. Walleye had come in, too, and flopped at Meloux’s feet. “Rainy told me about your visitor last night.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a visit, Henry.”

“What would you call it?”

“A warning, maybe.”

Cork took the arrow from the stand where he’d put it in the night and handed it to Meloux, who looked it over carefully.

“A warning, you say? About something you have done or something you should not do?” the old Mide asked.

“You tell me, Henry.”

“If I could tell you, Corcoran O’Connor, I would not have asked.”

Cork sat down across the table. “Have you given any more consideration to what we talked about last night?”

Meloux reached into the pocket of the plaid mackinaw he wore and pulled out a creased sheet of paper, which he handed to Cork, who unfolded it and laid it on the tabletop. Meloux had written on it in pencil.

“You asked about those Sam Winter Moon taught to hunt in the old way and who were still alive and still on the reservation. Those are all I could think of, but it is not everyone.”

“You’ve forgotten some?”

The old man seemed mildly irritated by his suggestion. “I may not see so good anymore, Corcoran O’Connor, but my brain is still as sharp as the head of that arrow.”

Cork had no doubt it was true, but there the similarity ended, for in the sharpness of the old man’s brain there was no sinister purpose.

“Though we were good friends, Sam Winter Moon did not share everything with me or with others,” Meloux explained. “He was a man who, for his own reasons, sometimes kept secrets.” The old Mide gave Cork a penetrating look. “Who does not?”

Cork slowly went down Meloux’s list of names. The handwriting was small and precise. Meloux had been taught at the Indian school in Flandreau, South Dakota, where the administrators and teachers had done their best to pry the Indian out of him and fill the void with all things white. They’d done a poor job of it. Meloux had, indeed, learned from them but, for the most part, not the lessons they’d intended.

The names on Meloux’s list were all familiar to Cork, and, for almost all of them, he could see neither the reason nor the twisted moral fiber that would result in sending an arrow into Jubal Little’s heart. But there were two possibilities that did stand out. The first was Isaiah Broom, the man who’d brought the news of Jubal’s death to Crow Point. All his life, Broom had been an agitator and activist on behalf of the Iron Lake Ojibwe and, during Jubal Little’s gubernatorial campaign, had been an outspoken opponent. Cork had seen raging anger in the huge Shinnob enough times to believe he might be capable of murder.

The other name was Winona Crane.

“Winona hunts in the old way?” he asked.

“Sam Winter Moon told me that she was as good a hunter as he had ever taught.”

The door opened, and Rainy stepped in, bringing with her not only the wet chill from outside but also the good smell of freshly baked biscuits. “Breakfast’s ready,” she said brightly.

After they’d eaten, Meloux said, “When you told me last night about the voice from the woods, I thought maybe it was a manidoo. ” He was speaking of the spirits that, in his unique understanding, filled the world around him. “But it was not a manidoo who came knocking last night with that arrow. I have been out already this morning, looking.”

“Did you find tracks?”

“None that these old eyes could see.”

Through Meloux’s windows, Cork observed that the clouds seemed to be hanging lower and lower, and he knew that very soon they could deliver icy rain or more sleet or even snow, so that whatever tracks there might be would be obscured. “I’ll have a look myself.”

“Mind if I come?” Rainy asked.

“Go,” Meloux said to her before Cork had a chance to respond. “From me, you learn to heal. From Corcoran O’Connor, you learn to hunt.”

“I don’t intend to shoot anyone, Uncle Henry,” Rainy told him.

“Not today, perhaps,” the old man said with an enigmatic smile. He waved them out. “I will clean the dishes.”

Cork and Rainy pulled on their coats and stepped outside. The wind was up again, and the air was damp and held a sharp chill. The temperature, Cork figured, was just above freezing. This kind of weather was harder on him than the most bitter winter blows. The damp wind seemed to push right through his outerwear and drove spikes of wet cold into all the bones of his body. He flipped his coat collar up and drew on his gloves and snugged his cap more firmly on his head. Though she zipped her own coat up to the neck, Rainy seemed less bothered by the weather.