William Krueger - Copper River

“Did you find her?” Cork asked.

“No,” Ren said. “We’re going back later.”

His mother walked into the kitchen. “Anyone hungry?”

“I could eat,” Cork said. “By the way, someone came looking for Ren. A guy name of Johnson.”

“Gary Johnson?” Jewell craned her neck around the refrigerator door. “What did he want?”

“To talk to Ren about this morning at the Miller place. Said he was an old friend.”

“You grow up in a small town, everybody’s an old friend.”

“He wanted you to call. He also said he thought other reporters might be dropping by.”

“You think that will happen?” she asked, looking worried.

“In my experience, reporters would dive into an outhouse hole if they thought there was a story down there.”

Dina said, “I’d be glad to help you handle them. One of the many things I’m paid to do.”

Ren saw his mother’s eyes hold on her for a moment, as if she were trying to decide how she felt about the other woman’s presence. Then she smiled cordially. “Thank you. I appreciate your help.”

For some reason, it made Ren feel good that his mother was being polite to Dina.

“Tuna sandwiches okay?”

“Great,” Cork responded. “What did you find out in Marquette?”

Ren stood near Cork. He ran his index finger over the tabletop, tracing the grain of the wood beneath the varnish. “Charlie didn’t go to the shelter last night. They open the doors again at four-thirty, so we’ll go back and see if she shows up.”

“Do the police know she uses the shelter?” Dina asked.

She’d put her phone in the pocket of her jacket and had come close to Ren. He liked her being that near, but it made him nervous, too.

“I don’t know,” he said.

His mother was at the counter, opening a can of tuna. “I don’t know why they would. She’s only been using it for a year or so, and I don’t believe she’s been in any trouble that’s involved the police lately.”

Dina nodded and laid her hand on Ren’s shoulder. Her touch surprised him, but he didn’t move away. It was like something warm leaked from her fingers and soaked into him.

She said, “Then maybe you have a good shot at getting to her before the police do.”

The wind outside shifted suddenly and the screen door banged. Dina’s hand slid away.

“What if she doesn’t show up?” Ren asked.

“If she’s hiding in Bodine, do you have any idea where that might be, Ren?” Cork asked.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Ren said. “But nothing makes sense.”

“Does she have any other friends? Any relatives she might be with?”

As far as he knew, there wasn’t any family. No one close enough that Charlie had ever talked about anyway. And friends? Everybody in Bodine knew Charlie, but she wasn’t one of the popular kids. She was like him, considered odd. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Her family’s scattered,” his mother offered. She’d pulled out mayonnaise and was stirring things in a bowl. “Nobody left in these parts. Nobody close enough to be of immediate help.”

Or help, period, Ren thought. He realized that if he were in her situation, he’d head over the Hurons and stay with his relatives in L’Anse-people who would welcome him and be glad he was there. He was lucky. He had family. Charlie had no one.

“I’m not hungry right now,” he said to his mother. “I’m going outside.”

He went to his bedroom, grabbed his sketchpad and a charcoal pencil, and left the cabin. The wind was strong. Clouds raced across the sky, their shadows like dark hands scraping the ground. He found a sheltered spot in the lee of the last cabin and sat down in the dirt. He opened his pad. The most recent drawing had been a sketch of White Eagle in pen and ink, a careful line rendering of the hero in a loincloth, the muscles of his chest and arms and calves flexed mightily, a single eagle feather set in his long black hair.

The idea of White Eagle had come to Ren from his great-grandfather, a man named Jacob Harker. He was old, moved slowly, spoke with a fragile voice, and had skin that was thin, brittle, and spotted. His eyes were not old, though. There was something sharp and fine in them, and often funny. For a man who seemed to be cheating the grave day by day, he had a remarkably generous view of time. He shared a lot of what he had left of it with Ren. He told the boy about his young days at a government school, how he ran away, mined copper on the Keweenaw. He told stories of his people, the L’Anse Band of Ojibwe, whose blood was in Ren. He was Ma’iingan, he said proudly. Wolf clan.

Once, late at night, when Jacob Harker lay snoring in the guest room, Ren heard his parents talking heatedly upstairs.

“But we’re not Indian, Dan,” his mother said. “It’s like a lion that’s been bred and raised in a zoo claiming it’s from Africa.”

“Not the same at all, Jewell. And this is important for me. I never had a real family.”

“You do now. Me and Ren. And we’re not Indian. I’m not going to wear a jingle dress and I don’t want you beating a drum at a powwow, all right?”

It left Ren wondering who they were, who he was.

Not long after, Jacob Harker died in his sleep. He wasn’t in Ren’s life very long, but in many ways, he changed its course.

Ren studied the drawing of White Eagle, the legendary warrior who Jacob Harker had said was Wolf clan, too. His feet were suspended in midair, as if he’d just dropped from the sky and was about to land somewhere. Although the details of his face were still uncertain, one thing was for sure: in every drawing Ren had done, the warrior was in motion, in the midst of action. He wished he were White Eagle, that instead of sitting, he knew exactly what to do to save Charlie.

Cork found the boy sitting against the wall of Cabin 6, the sketch pad open on his lap.

“Sorry to break in on you, Ren, but your mother insisted I bring you a sandwich.”

Ren didn’t seem to mind. “Thanks.”

“Okay if I sit down?”

“Go ahead.”

Cork handed him the paper plate that contained a cut tuna sandwich, a handful of potato chips, some grapes, and an Oreo cookie. He’d had a tough time keeping it all together in the wind. Supporting himself with the wooden cane, he eased down beside the boy.

Cork stared into the woods where that morning the cougar had screamed at him. Through the shifting branches of some birch trees he could see the flaming crests of the Hurons in the west.

“You know, it occurs to me you’re very lucky,” he said.

Ren, who’d just bit into his sandwich, paused with crumbs on his lips and gave Cork a quizzical look.

“You always have a place to go, that place in your head where your art comes from. Seems to me it must be a place where things come together for you. Miziweyaa. Know what that means?”

Ren shook his head.

“It’s an Ojibwe word. It’s when everything comes together, all of a piece.” Cork kept his eyes on the mountains, careful not to look at Ren’s drawing, which would have been a trespass. “You’re Ma’iingan. There’s a lot of power in your blood. Did you know that?”

Ren looked down at his plate. “Mostly it makes me weird here.”

“You get a lot of flak?”

“It didn’t used to be a big deal, not until my dad died. Then everybody was like, ‘Hey, Tonto.’ ”

“What do you do when they give you a hard time?”

“I say Screw you in my head and try to ignore ‘em.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

The wind shifted for a moment and the papers on the sketch pad riffled wildly. Ren held them down.

“Mom’s not big on being Indian,” he said.

“I know.”

“Ever since Dad died she’s seemed kind of mad all the time.”