William Krueger - Tamarack County

Stephen looked away. The sunlight through the south window threw an oblong box on the cabin floor. The top of the box touched the pile of wood next to the stove, and Stephen watched a spider crawl from under one of the logs into the light and sit there, as if warming itself. He thought it was odd to see a spider in the cabin in winter; it seemed so out of place, out of time, and he stared at it, as if mesmerized.

“Stephen?” His sister’s voice brought his eyes up to her face, and he found that she was smiling, gently. “I’m still Annie, you know? I hope you still love me.”

“Shoot,” he said. “Of course, I do. I just-I just want you happy, that’s all.”

“I think that’s what I want, too. And I’m trying to figure out how to get there.” She folded her hands on the table. “Does Dad know?”

“I haven’t said anything, and I don’t think Jenny has either. Are you wondering if it’ll matter to him? Because it won’t. He’s Dad and he loves you.”

“Oh, Stephen, I don’t know anymore what might matter and what won’t. But . . .” She stared at the stack of logs by the stove and seemed to be studying the spider that still sat in the sunlight there. “I don’t want to disappoint him.”

“You know what Dad would say? He’d say you have to do what you have to do, and the people who love you will understand.”

She laughed, and it felt so good to Stephen to hear that sound. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I’m really glad we’re talking.”

“That was only part of the reason I’m here,” Stephen told her.

“What’s the other part?”

“I want to do a sweat.”

“Today?” Her eyes shot toward the north window, where the pane was laced with ice crystals. “It’s got to be zero out there.”

“Two below when I left Aurora.”

“Can you even get a fire going at two below?”

“I could if I had some help.”

“Where are you planning to do this sweat?”

Stephen waved toward the east. “The frame is still up from the sweat lodge we helped Henry build last spring at the edge of the lake. I brought tarps from home, and I know Henry keeps blankets in his cabin.”

“What about the rocks for the sweat?”

“The Grandfathers? He keeps those with the blankets.”

“Why is it so important that you do a sweat now, today?”

“I had a dream, Annie. It seemed a lot like the vision Henry had, the one he told me about on the phone the other day. Someone, or maybe something, was watching our house. It didn’t go on long enough for me to see it clearly. If it was a vision, and if it’s a warning of some kind, I want to try to get a better handle on it. I’m hoping a sweat might do the trick.”

“You understand these things better than I do, but how will the sweat help?”

“I need to be cleansed. The truth is,” he confessed, “I’ve been holding on to a lot of negative stuff because of Skye and . . . well . . . you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. It’s my stuff to deal with. But I think it might be getting in the way of seeing this vision clearly. I figured if Henry was here, he’d have me do a sweat.”

“I’ll be glad to do whatever I can to help.”

He grinned. “Believe me, there’s plenty.”

* * *

The frame of the sweat lodge stood at the edge of Iron Lake, a hundred yards east of Rainy’s cabin, behind a stand of aspen, half buried in snow. Stephen had brought two snow shovels, and he and Anne spent an hour clearing the frame all the way down to the frozen earth. They also cleared an area nearby in which Stephen intended to build the fire that would warm the mishoomisag, the Grandfathers, stones that would heat the lodge for the sweat. They carried wood from the stack that had been piled against Rainy’s cabin, and Stephen built the fire. While it blazed, they covered the frame with the tarps he’d hauled in on the Bearcat. They brought the blankets from Meloux’s cabin, and the Grandfathers, and also a pitchfork, which Meloux used to handle the stones after they’d been heated.

When there were good, hot coals, Stephen laid a number of the stones on them, then he said, “Let’s go back to Meloux’s cabin. He has sage there. We’ll smudge, then I’ll begin the sweat.”

“It’s lunchtime,” Anne said. “Want to eat first?”

“I’m fasting. But you go ahead.”

Anne shook her head. “I’ll eat later.”

Meloux kept many herbs in a cedar box under his bunk. Stephen pulled the box into the light and took out a bundle of dried sage the Mide had tied with a hemp string. He put the bundle on top of Meloux’s woodstove, untied the string, and lit the loose sage with a kitchen match. He waved the smoke over himself, and Anne did the same. He said a prayer: “Great Spirit, cleanse my heart and mind. If there’s some truth that you want me to see, take away the fog from my thinking. Help me walk the path ahead without anger or fear, and with a clear, unblinking eye. You are the weaver, and I am a thread. Help me accept your design, whatever that may be.”

When he finished, Anne whispered softly, “Amen.”

As they left Meloux’s cabin, Stephen grabbed a small pot from a set of cookware hanging on hooks in the wall. Anne gave him a questioning glance.

“To melt snow for water,” he explained. “To make the steam in the lodge.”

The stones were superheated by the time they returned to the fire. Stephen used the pitchfork to lift them out of the coals, one by one. He’d broken a branch from a small pine tree, and he asked Anne to use it to sweep the embers from each stone before he cradled it on the tines into the shallow pit at the center of the lodge. When it was done, all the stones were in place, he dropped the flap over the entrance. In the meantime, Anne had filled the pot with snow and put it on the fire.

From one of the pockets of his coat, Stephen pulled out a small pouch filled with tobacco. He took a pinch of the tobacco and dropped it into the fire both as an offering and so that the smoke would carry his prayers upward.

“I’m on my own for a while,” he said to Anne. “You can go on back to Rainy’s cabin and have some lunch while I do the first round of sweating.”

“When do you want me back?”

“Give me forty minutes.”

“You’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

She kissed his cheek. “Safe journey,” she said and left him.

Stephen took off his coat, shirt, shoes and socks, and pants and stood before the entrance to the lodge, dressed only in his T-shirt and boxers. He took the pot of water from the fire and lifted the flap over the entrance. Earlier, he’d laid a blanket inside, on the opposite side of the lodge. He slipped in and crawled clockwise until he reached the blanket, where he sat down. The stones had heated the small area intensely. He raised the pot, poured the melted snow onto the Grandfathers, and the steam rose up and filled the air around him.

Stephen breathed deeply and settled in to receive whatever might come to him. He had no idea what that was. If he’d known, he might have chosen a different path for himself that cold winter day.

Cork had never visited Stillwater Prison, but he had a long and negative association with the dour facility. When Cork was thirteen years old, his father, who was sheriff of Tamarack County, had been shot and killed in a gun battle initiated by several convicts who’d escaped from the prison and had made a desperate, ill-considered run for Canada. His father’s death wasn’t, of course, the fault of the prison or the personnel there, but when he and Dross approached the complex, Cork felt a twist of his stomach, as if he was preparing to meet an old adversary.