William Krueger - Trickster's Point

“Hello, Alice,” Cork’s mother greeted her. “I’m so sorry about Donner.”

“Thank you, Colleen,” Mrs. Bigby said, then her eyes, blue and fragile as butterflies, settled on Cork. “I understand you stayed with Donner while your friend went for help.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cork replied.

“Thank you. It’s a comfort knowing that he wasn’t alone.”

He was dead, Cork thought. Beyond alone. Or maybe as alone as you could ever get.

She hesitated, then asked, “He didn’t suffer?”

“No, ma’am, he couldn’t have. The fall killed him instantly.”

She nodded and looked down. “He was so often… unhappy.” She raised her head and stared at her husband on the other side of the big room, where he dominated in the way a redwood might stand out above all other trees. “He believed he had a lot to live up to.”

Beside Buzz Bigby stood Donner’s kid brother, Lester. He was maybe ten years old, dressed in a dark suit and tie. It was clear he would never be big, not in the way Donner had been. He seemed to have inherited more of his mother’s genes. Cork was glad to see him, to know that the woman had another son. Another chance, maybe.

Bigby’s father caught sight of his wife and then-Cork’s heart dropped-seemed to recognize Cork. He’d been talking to the Lutheran minister, but he cut off the conversation abruptly. He crossed the room, and the gathering made way before him. Lester trailed behind him like a leaf caught in a strong draft.

“You,” Mr. Bigby said in a loud voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I asked him to come with me, Clarence,” Cork’s mother said.

Alice Bigby put a hand on her husband’s arm and cautioned, “Buzz.”

He shook her off and drilled Cork with accusing eyes. “There’s something not right about what went on out there. My kid was like a mountain goat. I watched him climb. I don’t understand how he could just fall.”

“Leave him alone, Buzz,” Alice Bigby said in a low, cold voice.

Cork looked up into Mr. Bigby’s face. The funeral, the comforting scripture and the kind things that had been said, the poster with so many pictures of Bigs as a child, they’d all worked to haze over Cork’s feelings about the unpleasant kid he’d known Donner Bigby to be. But staring up into that angry, bullying face, Cork saw the Donner Bigby he’d always feared and hated.

“I don’t understand it either, sir,” Cork managed to reply. “I just know that he did.”

“You were out there to pick a fight with him, weren’t you?”

“Not necessarily.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Buzz, please,” Mrs. Bigby pleaded.

“I’m going to keep at this kid and the other one,” Bigby snapped at his wife, “until I know the truth.”

“Clarence,” Cork’s mother said evenly, “I know you’re upset, and so I’m going to overlook your tone and your accusation, but I don’t want you bothering my son about this. Cork’s told everything he knows, and that’s that.” She gave Mrs. Bigby a nod in parting and said, “Alice, I think we’d best be going.”

Cork glanced at Lester, who was staring up fearfully at the towering figure of his father, and he felt an immeasurable sadness for all the Bigbys, alive and dead.

They left the church basement, which had grown crypt quiet during Buzz Bigby’s outburst, and went upstairs and out into the bright October afternoon. Cork looked up, and the sunlight blinded him in much the way it had at Trickster’s Point when he’d tried to see what was happening on top of the monolith. He felt sad to the point of tears, although he didn’t actually cry, thinking especially about Donner’s mother, whose suffering seemed great and was not just about the loss of her son. He felt his own mother’s arm around his shoulders, and she said, “He’s always been an angry man, Cork. And now he’s hurting as well. I think you just do your best to forgive him, and leave the rest to God.”

Although he’d told the Jaegers he was headed home, that wasn’t true exactly. Cork had a stop to make first. He headed to the Iron Lake Reservation. As he approached Allouette, he turned west off the main road onto a narrow dirt lane that ran between poplars to a modest house on the lakeshore. He pulled to a stop, got out, and climbed the steps to the porch. Although the house was completely dark and appeared empty, he knocked anyway, waited, then called out, “Winona? It’s Cork O’Connor.”

He left the porch and walked around to the back, down a worn path to a small dock, where an aluminum boat fitted with an old outboard was moored. Across the lake, which in the growing dark and under the heavy cloud cover had taken on the look of a deep, empty hole, he could see the lights of town. Normally, the glimmer would have warmed his heart because it was a reminder of home, but that night it seemed like a kind of watch fire built against some nebulous threat.

In Allouette, which felt mostly deserted, he pulled up before an old wooden storefront that had been refurbished. The gray, flaking wood had been sanded and slapped with coats of white paint, and the broken windows had been replaced with new plate glass. Above the door hung a brightly lettered sign: IRON LAKE CENTER FOR NATIVE ART. It was an enterprise owned and operated by Winona and Willie Crane. Like the house Cork had just visited, the center was dark and empty.

When he drove past the Mocha Moose, however, he saw that he was in luck. At the counter inside the coffee shop, two men stood talking with Sarah LeDuc. One of the men was Isaiah Broom, a member of the Tribal Council and a Shinnob with a long history of activism on behalf of the Native community. His was also a name on the list that Henry Meloux had given Cork, the list of those whom Sam Winter Moon had taught to hunt in the old way. The other man was Winona’s brother, Willie Crane. Cork parked at the curb and killed the engine.

He didn’t go in immediately but sat for a couple of minutes watching. Sarah LeDuc was the widow of George LeDuc, who’d been an old and good friend to Cork before he was killed by the same people responsible for the death of Cork’s wife. Cork sometimes dropped by the Mocha Moose, and he and Sarah talked in the way of people who shared an understanding others did not. Isaiah Broom, an enormous Shinnob, towered over her. He was nearing fifty and wore his hair in two long braids that hung down his chest. Beside him, Willie Crane seemed fragile. Willie had grown into a tall man, but slender and with a softness in his face and his voice. He still walked with the awkward gait that was one of the legacies of his cerebral palsy, and when he spoke, he spoke carefully in order to be clearly understood. In addition to running the Iron Lake Center for Native Art, he was a well-known wildlife photographer and nature writer.

The conversation the three friends were involved in was clearly a lively one. Broom’s mouth worked in an exaggerated way, and he threw his arms about dramatically. Sarah put her hands close together, as if framing a picture she was trying to make Broom see. Willie just seemed to listen intently.

Cork got out of the Land Rover and went inside. The talk stopped immediately, and three faces with shaded skin turned his way.

“ Boozhoo, Dead-eye,” Isaiah Broom said.

“Not funny, Isaiah.” Cork crossed the floor, where the old wood boards creaked under his weight.

“Not meant to be. It was spoken with respect.”

“I didn’t kill Jubal Little.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“Don’t mind him, Cork,” Sarah said. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better. It’s been a tough couple of days.”

“We were just talking about that,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry. Being with Jubal Little while he died, that had to be awful.”