William Krueger - Trickster's Point

“I’m not going to help you start something with her.”

“I don’t want to start anything, Cork. I want…” He’d fallen quiet again, but this time it was as if he’d lost his way.

“What do you want, Jubal?”

“Tell her I want to heal. Tell her I want to be strong again. Will you do that, Cork?”

And so Cork had been the intermediary, and Jubal Little had come north without his wife on the pretext of a bow hunt with his best friend from boyhood.

They had, in fact, gone bow hunting, for the first time since they’d parted ways after Jubal graduated from high school. Cork hunted every season, hunted in the old way Sam Winter Moon had taught him, often with Sam himself, who was still alive in those days. He was amazed at his old friend’s ability. Not only was Jubal still able to find and follow the track of a deer but he was also, even after all the years away from the hunt, a better shot with an arrow than Cork could ever hope to be.

But the bow hunt was only the cover. Jubal’s visit with Winona was the real point, and he sandwiched his time with Cork between his times with Winona. Cork had no idea what passed between them, though he could guess about part of it. In his own mind it was, as Henry Meloux had said long ago, that there were spiritual bonds connecting certain people, that they were two sides of the same leaf, two halves of a broken stone, and that it was not about love, as most people thought of that word, but about a wholeness that was there when the two parts came together.

Whatever it was, when Jubal headed south again, Cork could see a healthy difference. It was shortly thereafter that Jubal entered the political arena. He returned to Tamarack County as frequently as possible, always without Camilla-unless he was campaigning-using the excuse of a fishing excursion or simply the need to reconnect with his North Country roots. Until the outing at Trickster’s Point, which had its own purpose, Cork never again allowed Jubal to use a bow hunt as one of his excuses. He refused to be a party to a continuing lie. But whatever it was that Winona gave him in their time together, it was like an elixir that filled Jubal with vigor.

It was different for Winona. She often disappeared after Jubal left, and when Cork saw her next, she looked withered and drawn. Despite his marriage to a woman he loved deeply, Cork still had a special place in his heart for his first love. He sometimes despised Jubal for all he took from Winona.

Meloux had once told Cork this about healing: “Sometimes the connection runs one way. You pour your own energy into the sick one, and when it is done, you are empty. It is not always like that, but sometimes. So you have to be careful, because some spirits are so hungry they will devour you.”

Cork understood only too well that Jubal Little was one of those spirits who, if you allowed him to, would consume you.

He thought about all this as he drove from his confrontation with the Jaegers directly to the Iron Lake Reservation. He stopped at Willie Crane’s cabin, but no one was there. He headed toward Allouette and knocked at Winona’s front door but received no answer. When he reached the town, he found the Iron Lake Center for Native Art open and Willie Crane inside.

Half of the center was devoted to showing the work of contemporary Indian artists. The other half, which Winona was largely responsible for, was a museum of Ojibwe cultural artifacts. There were beaded bandolier bags, cradleboards, flutes, drums, pipes, moose-hide moccasins, figures carved of wood, baskets woven of reeds or made from birch bark, the shells of snapping turtles used as war shields, ash bows, deer-hide quivers, arrows, and other ornate implements of warfare. Over the past twenty years, Winona had patiently accumulated a wealth of items that showcased Ojibwe ingenuity, spiritual sensibility, and artistic appreciation.

Willie was behind a display case of Ojibwe jewelry and smaller artifacts, and he looked up with surprise when Cork entered, as if, despite the Open sign on the door, he really wasn’t prepared for visitors.

“What do you want?” he said. Waouwan?

“ Boozhoo to you, too, Willie.”

Cork crossed the old wood floor to the counter, which Willie stayed behind as if it were a protective wall.

“You heard about Isaiah?” he asked.

“Of course,” Willie answered.

“You really think he killed Jubal?”

“Why would he say so if he didn’t?”

“I can think of a lot of reasons, and your sister’s at the top of the list.”

Willie bent and rearranged two items in the case. “I don’t understand.”

“I think that, given the right set of circumstances, Isaiah could have killed Jubal Little, but I don’t think he did. I think he’s covering for Winona.”

“You’re crazy,” Willie said, still fiddling in the case. The words of his denial had no energy.

Cork said, “Know what Jubal and your sister talked about their last night together, Willie?”

“How would I know something like that?”

“Because I think Winona told you everything. For want of a better word, I think you’ve always been her confessor.”

Willie finally stood up straight. His face was tawny and tight, and reminded Cork of deer hide stretched for drying.

“Cork, if you ever cared about Winona and Jubal, you’ll stop asking questions.”

“What I care about most right now is the truth.”

“You talk like it’s something you could just wrap your hand around.” Willie’s eyes were hard and dark and shiny and tired. But they weren’t empty. Something flickered in them, and Cork couldn’t tell whether it was fear or anger. “You know the story of the blind men and the elephant? I think that’s the reality of truth. What you understand depends mostly on the perspective you bring to it.”

“How about you tell me your own perspective, and we’ll see what I understand?”

Willie shook his head. “It’s not that easy.”

“Okay, how about I tell you something I believe to be the truth, and then you can give me your perspective? One of the things Jubal confessed to me when he was dying was that he’d said good-bye to Winona forever. He told her it was their last night together. He was cutting her loose.”

“You see,” Willie said. “Right there. You’re holding only a small part of the elephant.”

“Jubal kissed her off, after all these years and all she’d done for him. She was pissed. Anybody would be. But the question is, was she pissed enough to kill him?”

“Hurt isn’t always followed by anger, Cork.”

“No? What followed Winona’s hurt?”

“Acceptance.”

“How very understanding of her.”

“Jubal was going on the path he was born to, and she always knew that he would have to go alone.”

“But he wasn’t going to be alone, Willie. His wife was going to be there beside him. Not your sister. In the eyes of the world, Camilla Little would always be the woman behind the great man. A bitter pill to have to swallow.”

Willie’s jaw worked in a way that made Cork wonder if he was trying to get words out of his twisted mouth or struggling to keep them in.

“Jubal used people, Willie. He used me, and he used Camilla and the Jaegers, and he used the Ojibwe. I don’t claim to understand the whole dynamic of what was between Winona and him, but what I saw was your sister giving and Jubal taking, and so I can’t help but believe that, in the end, he just used her, too.”

“She believed that helping Jubal was the path she was born to.”

To Cork, it sounded as if Willie was trying to defend the indefensible.

“It wasn’t the one I was born to,” Cork said, “or anyone else, but Jubal sure as hell thought it was so. He walked on all of us to get to that mountaintop of his.”