William Krueger: Trickster's Point

What was it that the person who’d murdered Jubal had been protecting? What was it they loved enough to kill for, twice? What did Lester Bigby love that much? His investment? His father? Or was it his brother, an old love whose loss had lain festering in his heart for decades and then exploded in a tragic mess? Or maybe it wasn’t just one of these things but all of them together, braided in a thick rope of confused emotions that bound him to an inevitable end.

An inevitable end. The phrase sounded familiar to Cork, but why? Then he remembered. He realized those had been Jubal’s words, or nearly, spoken on the day that Cork had put in place the final stone in the wall that had been building between them for years. They’d been said in the late spring, just after Jubal had publicly announced his intention to run for governor and put forward his platform.

Politics, from the beginning, had agreed with Jubal Little. He was a natural leader, and even men and women who’d been in the political arena far longer than he found themselves falling in behind him. The mix of his message-fiscal conservatism and social responsibility-found a following in Washington, among centrists on both sides of the aisle, not just because Jubal spoke his platform so well but because of the way he conducted himself, with a Teddy Roosevelt kind of diplomacy. He was charming as hell, but in his eyes, his voice, his bearing, he carried a club, the threat of someone who knew how to wield power, the understanding that he was not a man to be crossed.

From the isolation of the deep woods that surrounded Aurora, Minnesota, Cork had watched his friend’s rise. And although from the outside Jubal seemed unchanged, something on the inside, Cork knew, was being transformed. The seed for what Jubal was becoming had always been there, but it had been nourished by circumstance, and the vision and tending of Winona Crane, and the money and ambition of the Jaegers. Cork wasn’t certain that Jubal really believed in any ideals, believed in anything he’d have sacrificed his life for. What Jubal believed in was the rightness of his own being. He believed himself to be the chosen one, and nobody and nothing could stand in the way of his destiny.

But Cork had tried to do just that. In spring, when he’d heard Jubal’s gubernatorial platform and, like many Ojibwe and residents of the Arrowhead, had felt stunned and betrayed, he’d summoned his friend north with a cryptic threat. They’d gone fishing, an excuse for them to be alone because Cork had insisted on it, in order to get away from the reporters and the photographers. Jubal’s people had spun it as an outing with the candidate’s oldest friend. Cork had thought, Whatever.

On Iron Lake, far from the eyes and ears of the public, Cork had laid it out.

“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Jubal. You’re selling out the Ojibwe. You’re selling out the North Country.”

“No, I’m buying back Minnesota,” Jubal replied, casting easily and watching his lure plop into the mirror that was the lake that day.

“Sulfide mining? That’s part of the price tag? Jubal, are you crazy?”

“I’ve looked at the impact studies. It can be done safely.”

“On paper maybe. Have you read the reports from the areas where it’s been tried? Ecological disasters, Jubal.”

“You got a nibble,” Jubal said, nodding toward Cork’s line.

“To hell with the fishing.” Cork threw down his rod. It hit the bottom of the boat with a sound like a thin bone cracking. “And the casinos? You build those and it’ll be just like in the old days when white men shot all the buffalo.”

“The studies show that there’s plenty of interest to support both state-run casinos and Indian gaming. Your vision is far too narrow, Cork,” Jubal said, as if lecturing a schoolboy. “You think of Tamarack County, I think of all of Minnesota. Like so many shortsighted people, you want to have things but without sacrifice. You need someone like me to make the hard decisions, the ones you can’t make on your own, the decisions about who gets what and how. What you need, and everyone like you, is someone who’s willing to do what you can’t bring yourself to do.”

The sun was brilliant that day, and Jubal, against the sky, slowly reeling in his line, looked absolutely imperious.

“Christ,” Cork said. “Who are you, Jubal? I don’t know you anymore.”

Jubal leveled on him a look that put ice water in Cork’s blood. “Did you ever? Really?” He held Cork’s gaze, a cobra mesmerizing his prey, then he said, “Why are we out here, Cork? What is it you have to say to me?”

“Politics have changed you, Jubal.”

“Politics bring out both the best and the worst in people. And you want to know something? Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you? Well how about this? I know your secrets.”

Jubal visibly relaxed, as if, with everything in the open, he understood his enemy and was confident that he was equal to the challenge.

“Secrets? You mean me and Winona?”

“That’s one.”

Jubal shrugged. “It would be inconvenient if the media found out about my friendship with Winona, but not fatal to my campaign. Camilla’s always known and understood. You said secrets. What else?”

Cork picked up the final stone and mortared it into place. “Trickster’s Point.”

Jubal didn’t seem surprised. “A long time ago. And you have no proof.”

“I don’t need to prove anything. An accusation of murder would be enough in itself, I imagine.”

“I could always say that you were the one who pushed Donner Bigby to his death.”

“Of course you could. But then you’d be guilty of covering up a murder. Almost as horrific to voters, I imagine. Either way, it would kill you politically.”

Jubal had gradually reeled in the last of his line. The lure came out of the lake, a walleye flicker shad, shiny in the sunlight, water falling from the barbs into a quiet so profound that Cork could hear the dull patter of the drops on the boat gunwale. Jubal carefully laid down his rod and said, “Blackmail?”

“You told me once that in politics it’s called ‘leverage.’”

Jubal looked toward the shore, toward the gathering of homes and shops and schools that formed Aurora. Sam’s Place was visible, small against the broad scatter of the town. And Cork was wondering if Jubal might be thinking of Sam Winter Moon, who’d taught them both important lessons about stalking, and about killing deer, and ultimately, about what it was to be a decent man in a difficult world. Cork thought Sam might be disappointed that he’d stalked and attacked Jubal in such a cowardly way, but it was done, and he waited.

Jubal finally turned his gaze on Cork, who found himself startled by what he beheld. It was as if Jubal’s size had grown suddenly even more remarkable, as if the shadow he cast had tripled and turned unfathomably dark and had swallowed Cork whole.

“I’ve warned you before,” Jubal said. “Never try to take something from me. I won’t warn you again. You can’t beat me. You never could. If you try, I won’t be responsible for what happens. Your end is your own doing.”

“My end?”

“Your end is inevitable. One way or another, you yield.”

“I’m not backing down, Jubal.”

“In that case,” Jubal said with a slight shrug, “I’ll have to break you.”

He stated it simply, as if it were a minor fact of life, as if he and Cork had no history, as if they’d never loved each other as brothers.

Cork, who’d always given in to Jubal, sometimes out of friendship and sometimes out of fear, stood his ground and said, “Bring it on.”

Outside Allouette, after he’d left Rainy, Cork pulled into Winona’s drive and parked at her house. Although he risked being seen, he wanted another look inside, this time in daylight and without Camilla Little distracting him with screams.