William Krueger - Boundary waters

He was sweating heavily, and he shed his sweater as he ran, tying it around his waist by the arms. His legs were fatiguing already, the result of too little sleep, the extra weight of his boots, and clothing ill-suited to a run. He couldn’t think about the fatigue or he would begin to feed himself to it. So he thought instead about Arkansas Willie Raye.

The man had fooled him, but not without Cork’s complicity. Raye had woven truth and lie into an appearance that was seamless. Not a particularly difficult trick. Even the worst people weren’t pure evil. They were selfish, greedy, thoughtless, prejudiced, afraid. But these weren’t traits of the Devil, only human weaknesses, and most often Cork had found them paired with some balancing virtue.

So Arkansas Willie had fooled him. But Cork had been ripe for fooling. Raye had played a worried father, concerned that he’d let his child down. And that was Cork all over, bound up in a confusing guilt about his own children. He knew Aurora saw him as a philanderer, a man who’d abandoned his duty and his family. Although the truth was far different, far more complex than anyone would guess, he still felt vulnerable. Being seen unfairly as having abandoned the ones he loved, he was more than willing to believe that no father would. Willie Raye had played to that vulnerability, enlisting Cork in his quest to locate Shiloh, using Cork as a perfect dupe. Cork didn’t know why, what Arkansas Willie had to gain, but it was obvious the man’s purpose all along had been murder.

I should have seen, he thought, castigating himself silently as he ran. The theft of the letters at Grandview had been a fraud, a setup. And that same night, he’d given Raye Stormy’s name, all the son of a bitch needed to plant money at Wendell’s cabin that would incriminate both Stormy and Wendell. And Raye, running down the hill toward the burning cabin where Shiloh had stayed, firing his pistol, warning the man he’d hired to kill her. Christ, how could I be so blind?

He paused where the trail crossed a running brook, cupped his hands, drank, and did a quick calculation. Five miles to the old logging road, another ten to County Road C. Less than halfway home. He checked his watch. Reaching Wendell’s before noon had been a ridiculously optimistic appraisal of the task ahead of him.

But there was nothing to be done except suck it up and keep going.

A mile short of the Sawtooth logging road, the Noodamigwe crested a hill and dropped at a steep angle through a stand of quaking aspen. The trail was a river of leaves a foot deep, wetted from the melted snow, slick as ice. As he started downhill, Cork braced himself against the pull of gravity that tried to accelerate his descent. His left foot, as he planted it, slid from under him and the world did a sickening flip. His view was a blur of flying leaves, bone white tree trunks, and chill blue sky webbed with the bare branches of the aspen. He tumbled uncontrolled, then stopped abruptly when his left shoulder rammed a stump solid as petrified wood.

He lay on the ground, wet leaves stuck to his face like leeches, a dull fire burning in his left shoulder. When he tried to sit up, the fire blazed, burned white hot all over, and he cried out. After another minute, he did a slow roll to his right and worked his way to his knees. Gently, he felt his left shoulder at the socket and touched a place that was like punching an elevator button to the top floor of the Agony Building.

Dislocated, he figured. Shit. It had happened to him once before during a high school football game. He was out for the season.

He spent the next minute reviewing his options. There were only two. He could quit. Or he could do his best to move beyond the pain and finish what he’d set out to do. No choice at all.

He stood up carefully and, just as carefully, slid his left hand into the front of his jeans and pulled his belt tight to hold it there. He knew of no sure way to keep his arm from moving, but he had to try to immobilize it as best he could. The belt would have to do. He completed his descent of the hill at a cautious walk, an excruciating preview of what was ahead.

Shiloh left the canoe drawn up on the shore and walked along a path into tall marsh grass. She crossed wood planking laid over muck. A couple of minutes later, she stepped into a large square of gravel and yellow dirt where several empty vehicles sat parked. The sight of windshields and tires and the familiar glint of sunlight off chrome moved her to tears. Her body, whose strength had not failed her in all the long journey, suddenly felt weak and she sat down, weeping with relief.

She was out.

Redwing blackbirds flitted among the cattails near the parking area. Small white clouds, delicate as angels’ breath, drifted across a pale blue sky. Two days before, she’d been certain she was a dead woman. Now, like Lazarus, she was alive again. From somewhere down the road came the drone of a chainsaw. Shiloh stood up and began walking toward the sound.

After a quarter mile, she came to an old yellow pick up, leprous with rust, that had been parked to the side of the road. From the pines beyond came the song of the chainsaw, the sound rising and falling as the teeth bit through timber. Forty yards into the trees, Shiloh found a short man with a thick gray beard, dressed in biballs and a red flannel shirt, his hands covered with brown leather gloves. He was cutting a small, felled pine into sections. He concentrated on his labor and didn’t see her at first. When he did, he eyed her a while before killing the engine.

“Yah?”

“Could you help me?” she asked.

“Well, young lady, dat all depends. What ya need?” The saw hung heavy in his right hand, and the muscle of his forearm humped along the bone solid as a small rock ridge.

“You see,” she said, “I’ve been lost a while. I need a ride.”

He didn’t answer.

“I can pay,” she offered.

“Pay? If ya got money, then I’m Jiminy Cricket.” He shook his head and ragged teeth smiled through his beard. “Ya look like somethin’ a bear sharpened his claws on. Pay, ya say? I’ll take ya, but I won’t take none of your money. Where ’bouts is it you’re goin’?”

She told him.

He lifted a metal thermos and started toward the road. “You Indian?”

“Part Anishinaabe,” she replied. “The best part.”

“Me, I’m Swedish and Finn. Da worst of ’em both, my wife says. Nils Larson.” He shoved the thermos under his arm, pulled off his glove, and offered his hand.

“How do you do, Nils.”

“Didn’t catch your name dere.”

“Just call me grateful,” she said.

Nils Larson dropped her off at the trailer of Wendell Two Knives. True to his word, he refused to consider payment. She’d told him nothing of her ordeal. She was safe now. Soon enough, she would have to deal with Wendell’s murder and the murder of Libbie Dobson, offer the police the information the man called Charon had given her, provide a description, do all she could to see that the murderer was caught. But for now, for just a little while, she wanted to think of nothing.

In Shiloh’s heart, Wendell’s place was heaven’s doorstep. She walked down the dirt drive. The birches along the way had been thick with summer green when she’d last seen them, and the air had smelled of honeysuckle. Now, all the limbs were bare and what Shiloh breathed was the smell of wet earth and decaying leaves. But everything was heaven to her still. She went to the shed and tried the door. It opened easily. Wendell had told her he didn’t believe in locks. On the rez, nobody did. The red Mercedes was there, fine dust powdered evenly over the finish. Around it hung the tools of Wendell’s craft-handsaws, planes, mallets, wood chisels, and buckets-all of it steeped in the scent of evergreen pitch. She crossed to a shelf along the wall, reached into a tin can spattered with dried paint, and pulled out the keys to the car.