William Krueger - Tamarack County

Near the end of the day, his eyelids grew heavy and his mind grew quiet and he saw something he had not seen before. He saw that he was no longer sitting in the place he’d sat that morning. He hadn’t moved, yet nothing around him was the same. He realized it had been that way all day. In every moment, everything had abandoned what it had been in the moment before and had become something new. He was looking at a different meadow, a different lake, a different sky. These things were very familiar to him, and yet they were not. He was keenly aware of each scent as if he’d never smelled it before, each new sound, new breath of wind, new ripple in this new universe.

When, at twilight, Meloux emerged from his cabin and crossed the meadow, he said nothing to Stephen, simply stood looking down at him. And Stephen realized that Meloux was different, too. He saw that the old man was older. He saw that the old man was dying, dying in every moment. It was a startling realization, but not a sad one, because he understood.

Meloux didn’t speak of the experience or of what Stephen might have learned from his time on Crow Point that day. He said simply, “I have made soup.”

Things changed. That was the nature of all creation. Stephen knew this and tried to accept it, but that morning, standing in the lobby of the Four Seasons, waiting for Skye Edwards to come from her room, acceptance was difficult. He stared through one of the windows overlooking the empty marina and the frozen white of Iron Lake. He didn’t want things to change. He wanted Marlee. He wanted her not to be angry with him, if anger it was. He wanted to be near her. At the same time, he felt himself resisting that temptation. He was full to bursting with contradictory impulses. He felt hot and cold toward Marlee at the same time. His mind, in a single moment, said to him two different things. It said, “Stay,” and it said, “Run.” His heart felt as if it was flying dizzyingly high and free, and yet was also imprisoned. He didn’t like this mix-up of emotions. He didn’t like that he felt out of control. On the other hand, he so enjoyed where that lack of control sometimes led him. For all its tragedy, the day before stayed with him in a way that did not feel tragic. He couldn’t shake the image of Marlee’s breasts, the dark eyes of her areolas staring at him, the feel of her flesh warm and yielding in his palm. Even now, to his great embarrassment, he had an erection.

“Stephen?”

The voice brought him suddenly out of himself. He shifted his left hand so that the coat he was holding covered him below the waist. He turned and found himself face-to-face with a tall, slender woman whose smile, from that first instant, won him.

“Skye?” he asked.

“This is such a pleasure,” she replied. “Annie’s told me so much about you. You’re every bit as handsome as she says.”

She offered her hand, then saw that his was bound in gauze. “Oh my, what happened?”

“Long story,” Stephen said and didn’t elaborate.

“Well, if I can’t shake your hand,” she said. She stepped to him and gave him a hug, heart to heart. She smelled of milled soap, fresh and clean, and he didn’t mind in the least the gentle force with which she pressed him to her.

When she released him, Stephen said impulsively, “Minobii-niibaa-anama’e-giizhigad.”

She smiled but was clearly baffled.

“It’s Ojibwe,” Stephen explained. “It means ‘Merry Christmas.’?”

“That’s so lovely. Thank you.”

“If you’re ready, I’ll take you out to see Annie.”

“Just let me get my coat.” She’d thrown the parka over the back of an easy chair in the hotel lobby. She lifted it and laughed. “Every time I put this on, I look like I’ve gained a hundred pounds.”

At the Land Rover, which was parked in the hotel lot, Skye eyed the trailer where the Bearcat sat. “We’ll need that?”

“Yes,” Stephen said.

“What is this Crow Point exactly?”

“A special place. It’s kind of isolated. You’ll see.”

“Jesus,” she whispered and shook her head.

Stephen drove south around the tip of Iron Lake and began up the eastern shoreline toward Allouette on the Iron Lake Reservation. Skye asked questions, a million of them, like a schoolgirl introduced to a new subject that fascinated her. Stephen happily obliged, answering and easily elaborating.

“The Ojibwe call this lake Gitchimiskwasaab,” he told her, “which basically means big ass. We have a story that tells of it being created by Nanaboozhoo, who’s kind of the trickster in our legends. See, Nanaboozhoo tried to steal the tail feathers from a great eagle, but the eagle took flight. He flew really high, and Nanaboozhoo finally had to let go, and when he fell to earth, he landed here. His butt cheeks made the indentation for the lake. The fall hurt him pretty bad, and he cried, and his tears filled the indentation with water.”

“You say ‘we,’ when you talk about the Ojibwe. Annie doesn’t.”

“The O’Connors are more Irish than Anishinaabe,” Stephen said.

“Anishinaabe?”

“Another name for the Ojibwe. A lot of people know us as the Chippewa. Some of us prefer one name, some another. Sometimes we just call each other Shinnobs. For me, it’s the Ojibwe part of who I am that’s most important. I can’t tell you why exactly except that I’ve always felt that way. For Annie, her relationship with God has always been the most important thing.”

“Yeah,” Skye said, not pleasantly. “God.”

They came to the place where the 4Runner had slid onto the ice and had broken through. The hole had frozen over, but Stephen knew where it was, and he tried not to look long because the memory hurt him like a fresh wound. And while he negotiated the icy curve of the road there, he drove very, very carefully.

They entered Allouette, a small town that, when Stephen was young, had been a community of dilapidation and neglect, the result of too little money, too few employment opportunities, and too long a history of wearily battling the government bureaucracies and the hopelessly complicated policies and the stereotypes believed by too many white people. Things had turned around a good deal on the rez in recent years, the result, in large measure, of the Chippewa Grand Casino south of Aurora. Gambling income had underwritten the cost of street improvement and repair, new water and waste systems, a new, large community center with its own health clinic, new tribal offices, a new marina. Enrolled members of the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe received apportionments from the casino income as well. The money wasn’t always wisely spent-many homes on the rez were stuffed with all kinds of unnecessary crap-and it didn’t mean that someone who’d let his place go to hell before kept it up now. Still, conditions on the rez had undeniably improved.

They left Allouette behind, and Stephen drove northwest on an old, snowpacked logging road. Four miles outside of town, he pulled off onto a wide area where the snow was crisscrossed with tire and snowmobile tracks.

Skye looked at the thick wall of forest all around her. “We’re here?”

“Not yet,” Stephen said. “From here, we take the snowmobile.”

He lowered the trailer ramp, climbed aboard the Bearcat, kicked the engine over, and carefully off-loaded the machine. Skye stood by, watching his every move intently and with a look that Stephen interpreted as admiring. He let the snowmobile idle, went to the Land Rover, and took out two helmets.

“You’ll need to wear this,” he said, handing one of them to Skye.

She fit it on herself and gave her head a little experimental shake.

“Feel okay?” Stephen asked.

She grinned and gave a thumbs-up.

Stephen pulled on his thick mittens, and they were off toward Crow Point, following a trail already well broken and hard-packed through the deep snow.