William Krueger - Trickster's Point

Jenny stepped from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and Trixie padded along behind her. The dog came to Cork, her tail wagging briskly in welcome, and Cork bent and ruffed her fur. Waaboo reached down to grab at an ear, but Trixie, who was used to the child, slipped away and sat on her haunches well out of reach.

“Any trouble?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t think anybody saw me,” he said.

“We’ve kept the curtains closed, but-” She was cut off by the insistent ring of the phone. She strolled to the stand beside the staircase and checked caller ID. “Them,” she said simply.

Cork put Waaboo down, and the toddler went immediately for Trixie. Then Cork strode to a front window and drew the curtain aside just enough to see out. He’d have been happier seeing no one, but at least it wasn’t a media feeding frenzy. He thought of the dead in Colorado, and knew that the national media, like hungry crows, would flock to the bigger kill. He turned back to his children. “Sam’s Place?”

“Judy opened this morning,” Jenny said. “I talked to her a few minutes ago. There were a couple of enterprising reporters waiting, hoping, I guess, that you or one of us might show up.”

Cork said, “Maybe I ought to hold a press conference there. We could sell a ton of burgers afterward.”

“Seriously, Dad, what are you going to do?” Stephen pressed him.

“The first thing is head back to Trickster’s Point.”

“What for?”

“Maybe I can find something Marsha’s people couldn’t.”

“Like what?”

“I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it. I left our canoe, so I need to pick that up anyway.”

“Can I go?” Stephen asked.

“You’re on the schedule at Sam’s Place at noon,” Jenny reminded him.

“I’ll call Gordy, get him to cover for me. Okay, Dad?”

Cork thought it over and agreed. There was no reason Stephen couldn’t go along, and it would get him away from the craziness that was going to be their lives for a while now. Cork wished he could get them all away while he dealt with the situation, but he wasn’t sure how to do that or if they’d even go.

“You and our little guy will be all right?” he asked Jenny.

“I think we’ll go to Sam’s Place and spend the day. Maybe by this evening the vultures will have flown.”

“If you need me, call my cell. I won’t get a signal up at Trickster’s Point, but leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m in range.”

While Stephen got himself ready, Cork made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, wrapped them, and put them in a knapsack along with some bottled water. When everything was ready, he kissed Jenny good-bye and gave Waaboo a big, gentle hug.

“Take care of your mommy,” he instructed seriously.

Waaboo said happily, “Bye-bye, Baa-baa.”

They drove out of Aurora, along the southern shoreline of Iron Lake, then swung north toward Allouette.

When Cork was a boy, Allouette had been a collection of mostly BIA-built homes and trailers, with only a couple of the two dozen streets actually paved. There’d been an old, rotting community center, which had housed the offices of the tribal government, and also a small gymnasium, where the kids could play basketball, and where powwows and community celebrations were sometimes held and the jingle dancers and the drummers practiced. Across the street was LeDuc’s general store and next to that a small cafe called the Boozhoo. A block away was Alf Johnson’s Sinclair gas station, a two-pump operation that also sold tackle and live bait and beer. The dock on the shore of Iron Lake was a rickety old thing, and the boats tied up there were generally a sad-looking fleet of secondhand dinghies and rowboats mounted with sputtering outboards.

But Allouette had changed. There was a new, much larger community center designed by an Ojibwe architect and built entirely by Ojibwe contractors and laborers. It held not only a gymnasium and the tribal government offices but also a tribal-run preschool, a health clinic, and a number of new tribal-operated community services. The streets were paved, and every house had access to new water and sewer systems. There were burgeoning new businesses. LeDuc’s store had been updated, and next to it was the Mocha Moose, a coffee and sandwich shop that was the darling of Sarah LeDuc. Alf Johnson’s station was now a multipump Food ’N Fuel, and beyond it was a large new marina where a number of fine-looking Ojibwe-owned craft lay moored.

The whole reservation was changing. It had always been a hodgepodge of land owned by individual Ojibwe, or held in trust by the tribe, or leased to the federal government or private parties, or owned outright by whites, who, very soon after the earliest treaty signings, had purchased allotments for a song from Shinnobs who didn’t understand the reality of what they were giving away. Recently, the Anishinaabeg had begun a movement-the Iron Lake Initiative-for the purpose of reacquiring all the land that had originally been theirs by treaty. The land that had once belonged to The People was coming back to them.

This reflection of recent affluence was the direct result of the Chippewa Grand Casino, which had been constructed south of Aurora several years earlier and which was owned and operated by the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe.

Cork had mixed feelings about all this. He was very glad to see the Anishinaabeg-the people of his blood-finally able to do for themselves what the government on every level had failed to do. He was glad to see the optimism and enterprise that came with the casino gambling, which the Indians called “the new buffalo.” He was encouraged by the flaring of a new fire of Anishinaabe pride in a culture rich in history and wisdom and knowledge and unique tradition. But all this came at a price. In its early days, the Chippewa Grand had seen a good deal of corruption among its management. Oversight of bookkeeping and profits was always questionable, and true and fair distribution of the income was an issue of great and heated discussion among folks on the rez. One of the underlying values of the Ojibwe culture had always been a lack of interest in stockpiling wealth. What you had, you shared, and it was the sharing that was esteemed, not the having. Now, no matter how much people were given in casino allotments, it never seemed enough. Dealing with this sudden influx of money wasn’t always an easy affair for someone raised on nothing and less than nothing. If, for example, you were disposed to drinking, you probably drank more. If you were into drugs, you plunged deeper. If you’d been given to coveting the things you saw in other people’s houses-particularly the homes of white people on television sitcoms and dramas-you bought items you didn’t need or didn’t know how to use or didn’t even really understand the purpose of, and they accumulated and forced you to buy a bigger home or a longer trailer, and despite all you had, you still weren’t happy.

Welcome to the white man’s world, Cork thought.

Although there was an official state forest trail to Trickster’s Point, it was a five-mile hike. Cork had always preferred the more direct route, a two-mile paddle by canoe across Lake Nanaboozhoo. A couple of miles outside Allouette, he turned onto an old logging road that cut northeast through the reservation. The road was seldom used and had become more a memory of road. But two parallel lines of bent and broken undergrowth showed where, a day earlier, he’d twice driven his Land Rover, first with Jubal Little sitting where Stephen now sat, and then alone.

The logging road ended abruptly in a clearing full of sumac that had gone bare weeks earlier. Cork parked, and he and Stephen got out and made their way across the clearing to the shore of Lake Nanaboozhoo. There was a natural, sandy landing where Cork’s canoe lay tipped, with two paddles leaning against the hull. Stephen took the bow and Cork the stern. They lifted the canoe, righted it, and set it in the water. Stephen grabbed a paddle and a place in the bow. Cork took the stern, and they shoved onto the flat gray of the lake.