William Krueger - Thunder Bay

The old man actually gave me a sly wink. “A trick the Ojibwe learned from the bear. Give the hunter an easy trail, then circle behind.” He stood up. “We can go back now. Or”-he looked to his son for the decision-“we can become the hunters.”

Wellington turned to me. “What’s the situation back at the house?”

“Benning and Dougherty have been taken care of. Wally’s hit. He needs medical attention. And, Henry,” I said to Meloux, “Trinky Pollard’s dead. They killed her.”

Meloux’s face was stone. His eyes were dark ice. In the quiet at the edge of the clearing, his breath became fast and angry. I couldn’t ever remember seeing him upset, but I could see it now.

“If we go after Rupert,” Wellington said, “we risk ourselves and your friend Schanno. What’s the point? We should go back.”

I thought Meloux probably felt differently. Hunting Rupert Wellington, the black heart behind so much recent misery and the son of a heart even blacker, would have been his choice. Meloux was Mide, concerned with the wholeness and balance of being. Hunting an enemy was not alien to his understanding of the forces that kept that balance. But he’d given the decision to his son, and the decision had been made.

He nodded and we all turned back together.

From his house, Wellington called the provincial police station in the town of Flame Lake. Then he turned his attention to Dougherty, who’d lost a lot of blood but was still conscious.

Henry and I went to see about Schanno. He wasn’t where I’d left him. We found him sitting propped against a pine tree next to the body of Trinky Pollard. He looked empty, his face pale, his eyes blank.

“You need to lie down, Wally,” I told him gently. “You’re going into shock. The wound,” I said, though I suspected it was more than that.

“I don’t get it, Cork.” He stared, uncomprehending, at Trinky’s body.

“She must have followed us, been watching our backs, Wally.”

Later, the police found her green SUV, the one that had tailed us from Thunder Bay, parked in the woods, not far away.

He shook his head slowly. “I was the one who was supposed to watch our backs.”

Meloux had seated himself between Trinky Pollard and Benning. He began to sing softly. Singing, I knew, to help guide them onto the Path of Souls.

“Lie down, Wally.” I took his shoulders and urged him into a prone position. I lifted his feet and propped them on Benning’s body to keep them elevated and keep blood flowing to his brain. I didn’t think about the irony of that situation. I did it because it made sense.

Schanno stared up at the sky, which was broken into blue fragments by the green weave of pine boughs above us. “I’m too old for this,” he said.

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Is anybody ever young enough?”

From far away came the cry of a siren, a sound as out of place in that quiet morning as all the death that had come before it.

Schanno and Dougherty were airlifted by helicopter to the community medical center in Ignace. Dougherty, devastated by Benning’s death, talked to investigators and told them what he knew, plenty to corroborate the story the rest of us had given.

Trinky Pollard’s body was taken to Thunder Bay. A stepbrother arranged for her memorial service, which was held a week later. Schanno and I drove up from Minnesota for it. Most of the people at the service were former RCMP colleagues. She didn’t have much family. The memorial was brief, and afterward her stepbrother, in accordance with her wishes, went out on a boat he’d chartered and spread her ashes across the water of Lake Superior.

A couple of days after the shootings, Rupert Wellington walked into the police station in Flame Lake and turned himself in. The press had arrived by then, and the papers and television news were full of images of him, dirty and tired and hungry, trying to use his handcuffed hands to block his face from the cameras. Later, we would all learn that the sounds of the sirens had alerted him to the danger of returning to his brother’s place, and he’d kept to the woods, hoping to figure a way out of the mess he’d gotten himself into. There wasn’t any.

Meloux stayed in Canada. He spent ten days with his son and his grandchildren, who came from British Columbia and Toronto to be with him and their father. I had no doubt Meloux’s heart was as light and healthy as it had ever been.

Immediately after the shootings, I spent a night in Ignace making sure Schanno was okay in the hospital there. The doctors wanted to keep him a couple of days for observation. The provincial police had given me permission to return to Minnesota, with the understanding that they could call me back if I was needed. The next morning, I took off for home.

At a gas station in Grand Portage, just south of the border, I called Jo. I tried her office first, but Fran, her secretary, told me she wasn’t going to be in all day. She wouldn’t tell me why, and I didn’t like the reservation in her voice. I called home. Jo picked up. I could tell something was wrong.

“It can wait until you get home. You’ve been through enough the last couple of days,” she said.

“Jo, what is it?”

She was quiet, considering whether to put me off or let me in.

“It’s Jenny, Cork. She started bleeding last night. I took her to the hospital. She lost the baby.”

“Ah, Jesus.” I leaned my forehead against the wall above the pay phone. “How is she?”

“A mess.”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can. No more than three hours.”

“Don’t push it, Cork. It’s over. Just get home safely.”

I spent the rest of the drive feeling shitty, railing at God, beating myself for not being there for my daughter when she needed me.

I pulled into the drive in the late afternoon and parked in the shade of our elm. Stevie came running from the backyard with Walleye not far behind. My son was all bounce. Walleye ambled along with a kind of patient obedience. His tongue was hanging out, and I felt sorry for the old boy. Stevie had clearly worn him out. Walleye was probably hoping Meloux was with me, a sign that they could both return to their quiet lives as over-the-hill bachelors.

“Dad!” Stevie cried. “Watch this!” He turned to the dog. “Come on, Walleye. Come on, boy.”

Walleye took his time but eventually joined us under the canopy of the elm.

“Okay, boy, sit.”

Walleye sat, blinking tolerantly.

“Now roll over, boy.”

Stevie used his arms in an exaggerated rollover gesture, but Walleye didn’t get off his butt.

“Here, like this.”

Stevie eased the dog’s front legs forward so that Walleye’s whole body settled on the ground. With his small, eager hands, my son urged the dog onto his side, then his back, and finally onto his belly once again.

“We’re still practicing that one,” Stevie explained.

“Good work,” I said. “Your mom inside?”

“Yeah.” Stevie’s face clouded and his dark young eyes got painfully serious. “She’s with Jenny.”

“Don’t work him too hard.” I nodded toward Walleye, who’d lowered his head onto his paws and was relaxing in the grass. “There’s a saying about old dogs and new tricks.”

“I know that one,” Stevie said. “But Walleye is extra smart. Come on, boy. I’ll show you how to catch a Frisbee.”

Walleye’s placid brown eyes gave me a brief, pleading look.

“Come on,” Stevie said. He nuzzled the dog’s nose against his own.

What could Walleye do? What could any good heart do in the face of such uncompromising affection? The old dog staggered to his feet and lumbered after Stevie.

Jo met me at the door. She kissed me warmly and gave me a long, heartfelt hug. She whispered against my neck, “I’m glad you’re back. I’ve been watching the news reports of what happened up there. It sounds awful.”