Steve Hamilton - Blood is the Sky

“No trouble at all, ma’am.”

“You know my son Thomas is missing.”

“I wouldn’t say he’s missing yet, ma’am. Vinnie says he’s just a couple of days overdue.”

“Yes, from this hunting trip,” she said. “With these men we don’t know. This trip with my one son pretending to be the other.”

“You know that Vinnie’s been helping me,” I said. “I mean, this is why-”

“He’s my youngest child, you know. And he’s already had his share of trouble.”

“I know,” I said. “But there could be so many explanations for why he’s not back yet. I don’t think there’s any reason to be worried yet.”

She waved that away like so much smoke in the air. “You know,” she said, “when my oldest son was born, my husband’s mother asked me to call him Misquogeezhig. You know what that means.”

“Red Sky.”

“Yes. It’s actually a very peculiar name.”

I was about to make some remark about that, but held my tongue.

“It comes from the Waubunowin, the Society of the Dawn. That’s what the Red Sky is, you know-the eastern sky when the sun comes up at dawn. The Waubunowin, they were outcasts, and most of the tribe were afraid of them. They thought the members of this society had strange powers. My mother-in-law, I knew she had always been interested in the Waubunowin, but when she asked me to give this name to my firstborn, I was not happy. I thought it meant that my son would grow up one day to be an outcast himself.”

I looked up at Vinnie. He did not move, or make the slightest sound.

“My mother-in-law said to trust her. So I did. That is how Vincent was given the name Misquogeezhig.”

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think it’s a good name.”

“Yes, well, then I had two daughters. My mother-in-law had no interest in naming them. So I thought to myself, this is good. She is done with the naming of my children. But then I had my other son, Thomas. And she said to me, you must name him Minoonigeezhig, which means Pleasing Sky.”

From the other side of the house, I could barely hear the murmur of the men and women talking, punctuated now and then by an outburst from one of the children. It all seemed to fade into silence as she leaned closer to me.

“Pleasing Sky is the sky of the west,” she said. “It is the end of the day. The end of life. I always thought it was an unlucky name, Alex. I never should have given it to him.”

“Mrs. LeBlanc-”

“No, don’t tell me I’m being a silly old woman.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Perhaps not. But you think that.”

“Please,” I said. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this.”

“I’m asking you to go with Vincent,” she said.

It took a moment to sink in. When it did, I knew I was committed. There was no way I could sit in that room with that woman and have it turn out any other way.

“I want the two of you to find him,” she said. “Prove me wrong. Go find my son with the unlucky name and bring him back home.”

It was still dark when Vinnie knocked on the door. I let him in and poured him a cup of coffee while I finished dressing. He sat there and drank it without saying anything.

“You know where we’re going?” I said when I was ready.

“I think so.”

“We’ll take my truck.”

“We can take mine.”

“If we take yours,” I said, “we’ll never make it back. I saw the tread on those tires.”

“They have paved roads in Canada, Alex.”

“We’ll take my truck.”

A few minutes later, we were on our way. The trip started on Lakeshore Drive again, bending around Whitefish Bay, just as we had done the day before. But this time we didn’t stop on the reservation. At this hour the only signs of life came from the two casinos. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to gamble before dawn on a cold October morning, but there were enough cars in the parking lots to prove me wrong.

When we left the reservation, it was a straight shot down Three Mile Road into Sault Ste. Marie-or the “Soo,” as the natives call it. We got onto I-75 and headed over the International Bridge, passing over the Soo Locks, and then over the Algoma Steel Foundry Works. With the sun just starting to come up, and the fires burning in the sintering furnaces, the whole scene was like one of the outer rings of hell.

“Get your license ready,” I said as we came up to the Canadian Customs booth.

“Little problem,” Vinnie said.

I looked over at him. “What is it?”

“Tom’s got my license.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“We decided he might need it, just in case. He looks enough like me-”

“This is beautiful,” I said. I pulled up to the waiting line. There was one car in front of us. Going through customs can be a breeze, or it can be a pain in the ass, depending on who you’ve got in the booth and how they happen to be feeling that day. With the amount of time this guy was spending with the driver ahead of me, it didn’t look good.

“You got another ID, right?”

“No, Alex.”

“A credit card?”

He just looked at me.

“You gave Tom your credit cards?”

“Yes.”

“You got anything?”

“I gave him my wallet, Alex. The whole thing.”

The car in front of me finally pulled away.

“Pretend you’re sleeping,” I said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Go to sleep. Right now.”

“I’m not doing that.”

I started to pull forward. “We’re going in, Vinnie. For God’s sake, do your dead man act or we’ll be stuck here all day.”

He said a few unkind words and then did what he was told, dropping his head against the far side of the car and closing his eyes. As I pulled in front of the booth, the man looked at me, then at Vinnie, and then back at me. The man had razor burns all over his neck, and he was not happy. If I’d been sitting in his booth with a scraped-up neck on a cold morning, I don’t imagine I would have been happy, either.

“Identification, sir?”

I pulled out my license. He gave it a quick glance.

“And your friend?”

“He’s down for good,” I said.

The man narrowed his eyes. “Your business in Canada this morning, sir?”

“Just taking him home,” I said.

“He’s Canadian?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s one of yours.”

“Think you could slip his wallet out from underneath him, sir?”

“His wallet’s long gone,” I said. “Lost it. Or had it stolen. He’s had kind of a rough night. When I closed the bar, I thought maybe I’d do the right thing, make sure he got back where he belonged.”

“You own a bar, sir?”

“Don’t I wish,” I said. “I just work there a few nights a week.”

“Which bar would that be, sir?”

“Glasgow Inn. You ever been there?”

“No, sir. Don’t believe so. Apparently, this is part of the service, eh?”

The man was loosening up a little bit. He was even starting to sound like a Canadian.

“Like I said, just trying to do the right thing.”

“Any alcohol or firearms in your vehicle?”

“No,” I said. It felt good to say one thing to the man that wasn’t a lie.

“Have a good morning,” he said.

Vinnie waited until we were a hundred yards past the booth. “That was real cute,” he finally said. “You had fun with that one.”

“Matter of fact.”

I could tell he was about to say something else. He stopped himself and just shook his head. He didn’t say a word as we made our way through the quiet streets of Soo Canada. It’s a large city by Canadian standards, about four times bigger than Soo Michigan. But there’s something about the place, something I could never put my finger on. It always seemed a little forlorn to me. This cold, gray morning seemed like a permanent part of the city itself.