Mercy Falls (23 page)

J
O’S FIRST OFFICIAL
date with Cork had begun at the Lincoln Park Zoo. It had ended at Rocky’s on the lakeshore, where Cork picked up a sack of fried shrimp and french fries, which they ate while sipping beer and watching Lake Michigan slide into the deep blue ink of evening. In between, she found a man who was funny, gentle, smart, who came from a small town in Minnesota and had somehow managed, despite the awful things he’d seen as a cop on the South Side, to retain a belief in simple human dignity.

“You’re a good cop?” she’d asked in jest.

“Depends on the situation. I try to be a good man first. Sometimes that might make me look like a bad cop, but I don’t think of myself that way. You don’t have to be a hard-ass to be in control of a tough situation. Connection, that’s what I try for. Maybe it’s because I’m part Ojibwe. Connection is very important.”

“Ojibwe?” It sounded exotic, exciting.

“Or Anishinaabe. Some people call us Chippewa, but that’s really the white man’s bastardization of Ojibwe. Most Shinnobs I know aren’t fond of the name.”

“Connection,” she said. “Are we connecting?”

“I think we are.”

“Then why haven’t you kissed me?”

He smiled, as if amused by her boldness. “When I was twelve and my father sat me down to talk about the birds and the bees, one of the things he said to me was, ‘Cork, always let the woman make the first move.’”

“Was it a good piece of advice?”

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Very much.”

“Then it was excellent advice.”

Through all the years, the hardships, even when they both stood at the painful edge of abandoning their marriage, she’d never forgotten that kiss or the promise it held for her.

As arranged, Rae Bly was waiting for Jo at the sea lion pool near the zoo entrance. She was so engrossed in watching the animals cavort that she didn’t notice Jo, who finally touched her on the shoulder.

“Here you are,” Rae exclaimed with a broad smile. “And these are your children?”

Jo introduced them and Rose, then sent them along saying she would meet them at the primate house in an hour.

Ben’s sister wore sunglasses and a white cap with a bill that shaded her face. She carried a purse and also a long canister that hung by a strap over her shoulder. “A lovely family, Jo.”

“Thanks.”

Rae waved toward a bench in the shade of a tree. “Shall we sit down?” When they were seated, she put down the canister, reached into her purse, and pulled out a silver cigarette case. She held it open toward Jo.

“I don’t smoke.”

“You used to. Pretty heavily, as I recall.”

“I quit when I became pregnant with Jenny.”

“I don’t have children, so I’m still looking for that compelling reason. Unfortunately, smoking and painting are tied together in my thinking. Paint a little, smoke a little, paint a little. The truth is, I’m afraid to give it up. Maybe the art wouldn’t come without it.”

Jo settled back so that she was out of the sun. “You’re famous, Ben tells me.”

“Famous? I sell well, but ‘famous’ is something else entirely. I enjoy what I do, and that’s what’s important for me.” She sent out a cloud of smoke, and waved it away from Jo. “I was so pleased to see you last night. You and Ben. It reminded me of that wonderful summer.”

“That was a long time ago. A lot has changed.”

“Some things. Ben still loves you. He always has.”

“Twenty years ago he left me, Rae. Without a word of explanation.”

“I know.” She looked up at the blue sky, squinting through her dark glasses. “When I left for school at the end of that summer, I prayed Ben would marry you. I’d talked to him about it. I know he hadn’t told you about Miriam, and he made me promise not to say anything. He was so torn between love and duty. For a little while I thought he would choose love. But Lou’s a formidable obstacle for us all, and in the end, fate seemed to be on his side. In September, our mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She went quickly.”

“He never said a word to me.”

“How could he? Her dying wish was for him to marry Miriam, and he couldn’t say no. If it’s any consolation, he was miserable his whole marriage.”

“What was she like?”

“Miriam? A horrible JAP. I’m Jewish, so I can say that. She was spoiled, self-centered, vain. What was important to her was the big house, the country club, the glittery life. She didn’t love Ben any more than he loved her, but the life she had seemed to give her everything she wanted. Ben walked through that marriage with his eyes and his mouth closed. And his heart. God, it was painful to see.”

“How did he endure it?”

“By doing what the Jacoby men have always done. Poured himself into the business, made money to support his family, found his pleasure in other women.” She looked deeply into Jo’s eyes. “When I saw how Ben looked at you last night, I thought about how everything might have been different.”

In the silence that followed, she took a long drag off her cigarette.

“I brought you something,” she said, brightening.

She lifted the canister, unscrewed a cap at one end, and pulled out a rolled canvas, which she gave to Jo.

“Open it,” she said.

Jo spread the canvas and recognized the painting immediately. It was her, Jo, in the white dress, in Grant Park, twenty years ago.

“Ben asked me to do it for him before I left for school that fall. He wanted to give it to you as a gift. Then he ended things and gave it back to me and told me to get rid of it. He couldn’t bear to look at it. I’ve kept it all these years. I’d love for you to have it.”

“It’s beautiful, Rae, but I can’t.”

“Please. It was always meant for you. It would give me great pleasure knowing that you finally have it.” She put a hand on Jo’s arm. “And honestly, if you decide you can’t keep it, you have my blessing to sell it. Believe me, you could get enough for that canvas to send Jenny to Northwestern for a year. Take it, Jo, please. For me.”

She didn’t feel comfortable accepting, but she also felt that to decline, particularly in the face of Rae’s strong insistence, was not right, either.

“All right. Thank you.” She rolled it again and slipped it back into the canister. “So you’ve become the artist you always wanted to be.”

“No thanks to my father.” Rae laughed. “He disinherited me.”

“Because you became an artist?”

“That and because I didn’t marry the man he’d chosen for me.” She dropped her cigarette and crushed it on the pavement. “My parents’ marriage was arranged and was a dismal affair. Ben married the woman my parents chose for him, and I saw how miserable he was. I decided, come hell or high water, I was going to marry for love. And I did. George Bly, a wonderful man. It was George who urged me to follow my heart and to paint. He’s an artist, too. Stained glass. My father cut me off financially and cut me out of his will. Big deal. George and I do fine financially. The important thing is that we love what we do and we love each other. Believe me, that’s not typical for the Jacobys.”

“What about Eddie and his wife? How was that marriage?”

Rae shook her head sadly. “That may have been the greatest travesty of all. You knew Eddie well?”

“Well enough to wonder about the woman who would agree to marry him. Ben told me she’s Argentine.”

“Yes. From one of the best families. She’s beautiful, well educated, cultured, and broke. When the Argentine economy collapsed, her family lost everything. Once again, Jews became the target of old hatred and prejudice. Many of those who were able to emigrated—to Israel, Spain, the States.

“My father and Gabriella’s father had been financial associates for years. The situation in Argentina developed about the same time Eddie hit marriageable age. No woman who knew him would marry him. My father understood that. He’d seen Gabriella and knew the plight of her family, and he arranged to marry the poor girl to Eddie. It got her out of Argentina, and Lou promised to help the rest of the family emigrate. Her parents chose to go to Israel. Her brother came here.”

“I was impressed with her last night.”

“She is impressive. She proved to be a dutiful wife, good mother, doting daughter-in-law. Lou absolutely adores her.”

Jo detected a note of bitterness in that last statement. “Is that a problem?”

Rae pulled another cigarette from her silver case and lit up. “In his business dealings, my father’s a powerful and perceptive man. In his personal life, he’s clueless. He has no idea about real love. He mistakes subservience for affection. My mother didn’t put up with his tyranny, and he ignored her. Ben tried to break free of his control, and Lou has never completely forgiven him. I defied him, and he all but banished me. See, my father’s great weakness is this. He’ll deny it with a vengeance but he needs desperately to feel loved, and feeling loved means two things to him. That you need him and that you obey him. Eddie’s mother, Gwen, understood this perfectly. She played to it flawlessly. Dad loved her and gave her whatever she wanted. Eddie grew up doing the same thing, the little toady, and became the apple of Lou’s eye. Gabriella’s no slouch. She understood immediately which way the wind blows.” She shot out a puff of smoke. “If I sound bitter it’s only because, despite everything, I still love my father. And I pity his blindness and I miss his affection. So maybe, in the end, I’m just as screwed up as all the other Jacobys.” She looked away as a tear crawled down her cheek from behind one of her dark lenses. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“That’s okay,” Jo said.

“You”—Rae laughed gently—“you would have made a great sister-in-law. Tell me about your life now. Everything.”

They talked for an hour, then Jo looked at her watch and said it was time to meet Rose and the children. She stood up, slung the canister strap over her shoulder, and gave Rae a parting hug. As she walked away, heading toward the primate house, Jo couldn’t help thinking that there were a lot of cages in the world, and not all of them had bars.

N
O ONE KNEW
the true age of Henry Meloux. He was already old when Cork was a boy. Meloux was one of the Midewiwin, a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. He lived on a rocky, isolated finger of land called Crow Point that jutted into Iron Lake at the northern edge of the reservation.

Cork parked the Pathfinder on the gravel at the side of the county road, locked up, and followed a trail that began at a double-trunk birch and led deep into the woods. For a while, the way lay through national forest land, but at some unmarked boundary it crossed onto the reservation. Cork walked for half an hour through woods where the only sounds were the chatter of squirrels, the squawk of crows, and the occasional crack of a fallen branch under his boots. When he broke from the pine trees, he could see Meloux’s cabin on the point, an old one-room log structure with a cedar plank roof shingled over with birch bark.

“Henry,” he called, not wanting to surprise the old man, though surprising Meloux would be a rare thing. The Mide had a remarkable knack for anticipating visitors. If that failed, the barking of Walleye, Meloux’s yellow dog, was usually warning enough. Meloux did not respond, and Walleye was nowhere to be seen. Cork approached the door, which stood open, and looked inside.

The interior of the cabin was always clean, though full of a hodgepodge of items that recalled other eras. On the walls hung snowshoes made of steam-curved birch with deer hide bindings, a deer-prong pipe, a bow strung with sinew from a snapping turtle. There was a Skelly gas station calendar forty years out of date, but the old man kept it because he admitted appreciating the young woman in the cheesecake photo whose breasts were big and round as pink balloons ready to burst. Resting on two tenpenny nails hammered into the wall was an old long-barreled Remington with a walnut stock. There was a sink but no running water, a hickory table and two chairs, a potbellied stove, and a small bunk. These were practically all the material goods Meloux possessed, but he was the most contented man Cork had ever known.

The open door didn’t bother Cork. In good weather, Meloux often left the door ajar for fresh air to circulate inside. It also allowed Shinnobs to bring and leave for the old Mide offerings of respect and gratitude. Cork could tell from the sacks on the table that the recent offerings had been
manomin
, wild rice. In the Ojibwe language, August was Manomingizis, the Month of Rice. In the final days of August and into early fall, the Anishinaabeg poled through the fields in the lakes, knocking the ripe kernels loose and filling their boats. After the rice was prepared, some would be eaten, some sold, and some given as a gift, as it had been to Meloux.

A distant bark brought Cork around. He gazed toward the trail he had followed, and in a moment he spotted Walleye bounding from the pine trees, his yellow coat full of burrs. Meloux was not far behind. He walked slowly but erect, his hair like white smoke drifting about his shoulders. He wore bib overalls, a faded blue denim shirt, deer hide moccasins that he’d made himself. In his hand was an ironwood staff ornamented with an eagle feather, and over his shoulder hung a beaded leather bag. He smiled when he saw Cork but didn’t change his pace. Walleye, however, ran ahead. When Cork knelt to greet him, the old dog eagerly nuzzled his palm.

“
Anin
, Corcoran O’Connor,” the old man said in formal greeting.

“
Anin
, Henry.” Cork eyed the bag hanging from Meloux’s shoulder. “Let me guess: mushroom hunting.”

“I have gathered a feast. I will make a fine soup with rice and mushrooms. Will you join me?” Meloux said.

“I have to decline.”

The sun was directly overhead, beating down out of a cloudless sky. Meloux shaded his eyes with a wrinkled hand and studied Cork’s face.

“You always come like a hungry dog, wanting something, but it’s never food.”

“Sorry, Henry.”

The old man lifted his hand in pardon. “It’s all right. Like a dog, you’re always grateful for even a scrap.”

“It’s more than a scrap I need this time.”

Meloux nodded. “Let me put away my harvest, then we will smoke and talk.”

They sat at a stone circle that enclosed the ashes of many fires. Down the slope a few feet away lay the water of Iron Lake, crystal clear along the shore, blue and solid as a china plate in the distance. The old man had listened to Cork’s story and now he smoked a cigarette hand-rolled from tobacco Cork had brought as a gift. Although he’d given up smoking more than two years before, Cork held a cigarette, too. The ritual he shared with Meloux had nothing to do with addiction.

“Stone,” Meloux said. “Like a Windigo, that one.”

In Anishinaabe myth, the Windigo was a cannibal giant with a heart of ice. The only way to kill a Windigo was to become one. Once you had succeeded in destroying the terrible creature, you had to drink hot wax so that you would melt back down to the size of other men. If that didn’t happen, you were doomed to remain a Windigo forever. Thinking of how Stone had killed his monster of a stepfather, Cork believed he understood what Meloux was saying. Myths were simple things, but they cut to the heart of brutal truths.

“What do you want of me?” the old Mide asked.

“You’ve lived in
Noopiming
all your life.”
Noopiming
, the Ojibwe name for the north country. “You know the woods better than anyone alive. Since I was a boy, I’ve heard stories of your prowess as a hunter. Henry, I need someone who knows the Boundary Waters and who can track the Windigo.”

The old man smoked awhile. Indian time. Never hurried.

“That was when I was a young man. It has been too many years to count since I was on a hunt, and this kind of animal I have never hunted. Stone, he will be dangerous.”

“Will you do it?”

Meloux finished his cigarette. He threw the butt into the ash inside the stone circle. “I’m old. Death and me, we’ve been eyeing one another for a while now. There’s not much left that scares me. One last hunt, that would not be a bad thing, especially to hunt the Windigo.” He used his staff to help himself stand. “When do we leave?”