William Krueger: Trickster's Point

Cork didn’t have to press him about the traitor part. That arrow had long ago been intended for Jubal Little. “When did you realize it was Willie who killed him?”

Cork felt the huge body on the other side of the Land Rover tense up.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you do, Isaiah. That’s why you gave yourself up. To protect Willie. He would never have let you take the blame, you know.”

They’d negotiated the southern end of Iron Lake and had started up the shoreline toward the reservation. Broom was like one of those wooden statues he carved so adroitly, massive and silent.

Cork went on. “I talked with Willie earlier tonight. He’s going to turn himself in.”

Broom twisted quickly, facing Cork. “No.” It was like a command.

“It has to be done, Isaiah. Willie understands that.”

“There’s no way he’s going to spend his life in jail. I won’t let him. And it’ll kill Winona.”

Cork drew to a stop at the side of the road. “Isaiah, there’s something else you need to know. I wish…” He was suddenly at a loss for words. He’d delivered bad news, news of death, many times in his law enforcement career, and it had always knotted his gut. “Winona’s dead, Isaiah. She killed herself. That’s pretty much what drove Willie to kill Jubal.”

Broom looked as if Cork had just done the same to him, put an arrow into his heart. He seemed stunned, deeply wounded, then he turned away, hid his face by staring out the window on his side of the Land Rover.

“We’re going to see Willie,” Cork told him. “I figured you might want to talk to him alone before he turns himself in. Everything’ll get hard after that.”

Broom kept his face to the window. “Drive,” he said.

When they reached Willie Crane’s cabin, there was a light on inside and the Jeep was parked in front. They stood on the doorstep with snowflakes wetting their faces, but when Cork knocked, no one answered.

“Willie?” he called. He tried the knob and pushed the cabin door open. “Willie, it’s Cork O’Connor. I’ve brought Isaiah with me.”

“Was he expecting us?” Broom asked.

“Not exactly. He wanted some time to get things ready before he turned himself in. I figured he’d be here.”

But the cabin was empty. On the table where Willie ate his meals lay a sheet of paper printed with text, and at the bottom was Willie Crane’s signature. Cork picked it up and read it. A full explanation of the killing of Jubal Little. A signed confession. There was also a note to Cork on a separate sheet of paper. It said simply, “With Winona.”

Broom read the confession and the note. He walked to one of the windows overlooking the lake that backed the cabin. “There’s a fire on the shore,” he said, and he turned and quickly went outside.

Cork followed, and they stumbled through the dark along the path where a couple of days earlier Willie had led Cork on a wild-goose chase in search of Winona. They came to the place in the lee of the great rock where the earlier fire had been kindled, and a more recent fire had also burned. The flames were slowly dying. Willie had been there but was gone.

Broom turned to the black hole that was the lake. “Willie!” he cried desperately. “Willie!”

Cork stood beside him, thinking how, long ago, Willie Crane had saved his good friend’s life. Thinking how Isaiah Broom, in trying to take the blame for Jubal’s murder, had done his best to repay that debt. Thinking, too, that, in their lives, Willie Crane and Isaiah Broom had been blessed by their great friendship. Thinking of Jubal Little, who’d done his best to have Cork killed. And thinking, finally, that for a big man with such huge ambition, Jubal had had a very small heart.

“He’s gone, Isaiah,” Cork said.

Broom turned to him, and the Shinnob’s cheeks were cut by streams of tears that glistened in the light of the dying fire. “Where?”

“He told me that, when he died, he wanted to be left out there.” Cork nodded toward the deep forest that began on the far side of the lake. “He wanted to become a part of all that beauty. Wherever he is, he’s with Winona, and I doubt that we’ll find them.”

The snow had begun falling in earnest, thick as ash from some all-consuming fire.

“We should go,” Cork said.

“I want to stay for a while.”

“I have to leave, Isaiah.”

“Then leave.”

“Long walk home.”

Isaiah Broom said, “I know.”

S now had fallen the night before, not deep, but enough to coat the ground. A hunter’s snow. As they came across Lake Nanaboozhoo, the sun was just rising, and the eastern sky, clear now, was a deep russet, the color of oak leaves in the fall. Above the distant shoreline, the top of Trickster’s Point caught the first light of day, and it reminded Cork of a finger dipped in old blood.

The air was cool. A low white mist lay on the water, and the canoes glided through as if touching nothing but air. Cork had the stern, Rainy the bow. In the stern of the other canoe, Stephen dug his paddle into the lake easily and almost without sound. Up front, despite his age, Meloux kept pace just as smoothly.

When they reached the far side, the whole upper half of Trickster’s Point was lit with morning sunlight, which by now had turned gold, and the tops of the trees looked bathed in honey. They pulled the canoes onto shore and tipped them and laid the paddles against the upturned hulls. Without a word, they began to thread their way through the trees, following the same path, more or less, that Cork and Jubal Little had followed only a week before. They said nothing to one another as they walked, and the only sound was the soft crush of their boot soles on the thin crust of snow.

They broke from the trees, and Trickster’s Point rose above them, and for a moment, Cork’s heart beat faster, as he remembered all the death he’d been a part of there. But all that death was, in fact, the reason they’d come.

Meloux had brought his bandolier bag, an ancient accoutrement made of ornately beaded deerskin. At the base of the great monolith, he slid the bag from his shoulder, opened it, and drew out a small leather pouch filled with tobacco.

“Stephen,” he said and held the tobacco pouch toward Cork’s son.

Stephen seemed surprised and pleased. He took it, loosened the drawstring, and dipped his thumb and index finger inside. He pulled out a pinch of tobacco and offered it to the East, the first of the four grandfathers. Then he turned clockwise and made an offering to each of the other grandfathers: South, West, and North. He let a pinch fall to the ground where he stood, as an offering to Mother Earth, and finally tossed a bit in the air as an offering to the Great Spirit above.

Meloux took back the pouch and returned it to his bandolier bag. Next he pulled out four sage bundles tied with hemp threads, which he’d prepared by lantern light that morning in his cabin while it was still dark outside. He gave a bundle to each of them and kept one for himself. From the bag, he took four shallow clay bowls painted with designs in ocher, and gave them out. After that, he carefully drew out four black turkey feathers, each quill wrapped in soft leather binding, and handed them around.

The old Mide sat down on the snow, and the others sat with him. He set his clay bowl on the ground, untied his small bundle, and mounded the dried sage in the center of the shallow cupping. He took a box of kitchen matches from his bandolier bag and put flame to the dried sage, which began to smolder. He held his hands in the smoke to cleanse them, then used his feather to blow smoke gently across his heart and his head. He wafted smoke across each of the others in turn.