William Krueger: Trickster's Point

They didn’t make love that night but lay together under the soft, heavy quilt and talked.

“Why would someone kill him?” Rainy asked. Her cheek was against his shoulder, and her warm breath ghosted over his bare skin.

“You didn’t know him,” Cork said.

“And if I did, I wouldn’t have to ask?”

“He was a complicated guy. A lot of good in him, and that’s what he showed most people. But there was a dark side to Jubal he didn’t like people to see.”

“But you saw it?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And yet you were still friends.”

Cork said, “I don’t know.”

“You weren’t?”

“We were best friends when we were kids, but people change. We changed.”

“I don’t think the essence of who we are changes much, Cork.”

She was right. Who Jubal was at heart, Jubal had always been. “When we were kids,” Cork said, “it was easy to overlook.”

“What was he like as a kid?”

“Like I said, complicated. He had a reputation for not tolerating bullies. He went to the mat for a lot of kids who couldn’t defend themselves.”

“I heard you were that way, too.” She kissed his shoulder.

“Yeah, but when Jubal stepped into a situation, he could back it up. Me, as often as not, I got my face pushed in.”

“It didn’t stop you from trying.”

“I did it because I thought I had an obligation. It was what I thought my father would have done, or would have wanted me to do. Jubal did it because he could. In a way, it was his form of bullying. He just bullied the bullies.”

“You’re right,” she said. “Complicated.” A wind had come up, and the cabin creaked, and Rainy listened for a moment. “What else?”

“You couldn’t always believe what he told you.”

“He lied?”

“Not exactly. He was kind of a politician even back then. He said things in a way that led you down one track while the absolute truth lay in the track next to it. You were always going in the right direction, just not necessarily on the right path. Do you see?”

“Not really.”

“His father, for example. He told me he’d lost his father, and the way he said it made me believe his father was dead, but that wasn’t true.”

“We all know about his father.”

“Sure, now. Jubal’s been trading on what happened for years. But it was a big secret for him then, and you can understand why.”

Something tapped the window, and they both fell silent.

“An aspen branch,” Rainy said. “The wind.” Then she said, “Tell me more.”

When Cork was fourteen, the summer before he entered high school, he began working for Sam Winter Moon. Sam usually hired high school kids to give him a hand during the season, and Cork became one of them. Because the business Sam ran in the old Quonset hut was not about making a lot of money-he was very Ojibwe in his approach to wealth; what you made you shared-Sam Winter Moon was a peach of a boss, and a lot of kids in Aurora, white and Ojibwe, got their introduction to the working world at Sam’s Place.

Cork had been on the roster at Sam’s for a month when Jubal Little asked if there might be a chance he could work there, too.

“My mom needs some money,” Jubal explained. “I thought maybe I could help.”

Cork understood. His own mother had begun to let out one of the upstairs bedrooms, and there’d been strangers in the house, summer people up to enjoy the season. It was uncomfortable, but a financial necessity. He talked to Sam, explained to him about Jubal’s father being dead and his mother needing extra money, and Sam was congenially accommodating.

Jubal wasn’t only a quick study; he also very soon became the favorite of customers. He had an easy, assured manner and assumed a brash familiarity with everyone that still somehow never quite crossed the line beyond politeness. Folks responded to him in the way they might have a cheeky but beloved cousin.

On Jubal’s first day of work, Sam spoke to him in Ojibwe.

Jubal gave him a blank stare in response.

“Anishinaabe indaaw?” Sam said again, which, Cork knew, meant “Are you one of The People?”

Cork said, “He’s not Indian, Sam.”

“No?”

Sam laid his dark eyes on Jubal, who held steady under their gaze, smiled amiably, and said, “Nope. I’m all American.”

Sam nodded and replied gently, “So am I, son.”

It was a good summer, working with Jubal. Cork had many friends, but he began to think of Jubal as the best of them. They fished together on Iron Lake, and floated down Mercy Creek in inner tubes, played baseball, and went to the Rialto Theater on Saturday nights when they weren’t working at Sam’s Place. They biked the ten miles to the Ojibwe reservation on the far side of Iron Lake to visit Cork’s grandmother Dilsey, who lived at the edge of Allouette, the larger of the two rez communities, and who took an immediate liking to Jubal. Whenever they were in Allouette, Cork kept an eye out for Winona Crane, who’d begun to dominate his thinking in a way that made him intense and nervous. Occasionally he’d run into her in town with Willie, and whenever he first caught sight of her, dark-eyed and willowy, his heart always did a little ballet leap.

One day in late August, Cork invited Jubal to go ricing. This was an annual, seasonal tradition for the Anishinaabeg, one Cork loved being a part of. His mother took them to Allouette in her station wagon and dropped them in front of George LeDuc’s general store, which also functioned as the town’s post office. That day, LeDuc had turned operation of the store over to his wife. He greeted them both with a hearty “Anish na?” which meant “How are you?” He didn’t wait for an answer but said to Jubal, “I’m betting I can get a good day’s work from you.”

“Yes, sir,” Jubal said.

LeDuc was black-bear big. He had a long ponytail, a broad, honest face, and dark eyes that danced nimbly over the boys and were full of good humor. “Sir?” He laughed. “ ’Preciate your manners, but you can call me George. Let’s go, boys.”

They piled into LeDuc’s dusty, black Chevy pickup and headed east on an old logging road, which nature had almost entirely reclaimed. While they bounced along through high weeds and timothy grass that nearly hid the track, LeDuc explained to Jubal the importance of wild rice to The People. In the old times, he said, it was their primary source of food, and the gathering of rice, which he called manomin, was vital to their survival.

“We begin in August, manominigizis, the month of rice,” he told Jubal. “We’ll keep at it until probably November. Right now, the best place for ricing is going to be in shallow lakes with muddy bottoms. Later, we’ll harvest the big lakes. Today, we’re headed to Nagamowin. That’s what we call it on the rez anyway. It means ‘singing.’ On a map, you’ll find it called Mud Lake. We named it first, but white people make all the maps.”

They parked among tamaracks on the shore of the lake, which was a little over half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, full of tall green stalks. LeDuc had Cork and Jubal help him pull the canoe from the back of the pickup. The frame-ribs and planking, rails and deck, thwarts and seats-was constructed of wood: white cedar, white spruce, and ash. The hull was khaki-colored marine canvas. They cradled it on their shoulders, carried it to the water, and waded in. Cork understood immediately why, on maps, the lake was called Mud. He sank to his calves in goo that sucked hard at his sneakers. LeDuc gave the signal, and they flipped the canoe onto the lake. He returned to the truck and came back with a long pole, forked at one end, and with four smoothed sticks, each about three feet in length. Cork knew that the pole was made from tamarack wood so that it would be strong and light. The sticks were made of cedar, for the same reason.