Vermilion Drift (35 page)

“I am, Henry.”

“Then continue.” He turned as if to leave.

“Wait, Henry,” Cork said. “The two wolves fighting? Which one wins?”

But Meloux didn’t answer. He walked away, and Rainy followed.

Just before sunrise, Meloux and Rainy came again, and Walleye came with them. They brought two folded blankets.

Cork hadn’t slept, or been aware that he’d slept. The night had been long, and his thoughts had drifted widely.

“You are ready for the end of your journey?” Meloux asked.

Although he was weary, Cork replied, “I’m ready, Henry.”

“Help me with the fire, Niece.”

As Cork watched, Meloux and Rainy built the sacred fire, and when the blaze had produced a fine bed of glowing coals, the old man pointed Rainy toward a pitchfork that leaned against a nearby tree. Not far away was a stack of large rocks, which Cork knew were the Grandfathers, the stones that would heat the lodge. Rainy used the pitchfork to place the Grandfathers among the embers. Meloux burned sage and cedar in the fire and used an eagle feather to guide the smoke over Cork to further cleanse his spirit. He gave Cork tobacco, and Cork sprinkled it into the fire, asking the Great Spirit to guide him in his quest. Then Meloux told Rainy to put the blankets on the ground inside the lodge. When all was ready, he said to Cork, “It is time.”

The old man stripped off his clothing, and Cork did the same. Meloux went first and Cork followed. When they were seated on their blankets, Rainy carried in the Grandfathers, one by one, cradled on the tines of the pitchfork, and laid the red-hot stones in the hollow in the center. She used a pine bough to sweep away any lingering ash or embers from the stones. Last, she brought in a clay bowl that held a small dipper and was filled with water. Then she retreated and dropped the flap over the opening, plunging Cork and Meloux into darkness.

During a long period of silence, Cork’s eyes adjusted, and he saw Meloux reach for the dipper and pour water over the stones. Steam shot into the air, and Cork began to sweat, and the old Mide began a prayer, an Ojibwe chant whose words Cork didn’t understand.

The heat increased, and Meloux sprinkled more water on the stones and continued chanting.

After a while, Cork relaxed.

His weariness overwhelmed him.

And he began to dream.

W
hat do you see, Corcoran O’Connor?

He was outside himself, seeing himself, and he said so.

How old are you?

Thirteen, he said.

Tell me what is happening
.

And this is what he told.

He’s lying on the sofa in the living room of the house on Gooseberry Lane. He’d thought he would watch television to take his mind off the worry that never left him these days, but he hasn’t bothered to turn the set on. Instead, he stares up at the ceiling and wonders if his father will ever find his cousin Fawn or Naomi Stonedeer, and if he does, will they still be alive. They’ve been taken, abducted, everyone on the rez is sure, but no one has any idea who would do such a thing, and everyone is afraid. The Vanishings. That’s what everyone is calling what’s happened.

The house is quiet. He’s alone. His mother is on the rez with Grandma Dilsey and Fawn’s mother, Aunt Ellie. His father is… well, his father could be anywhere these days. He’s gone a lot. During the day, he leaves in uniform. But at night he leaves in different clothing, and often he doesn’t come back until early morning, when Cork is asleep. But his mother doesn’t sleep, and his father’s sneaking out is something that concerns her. Because of his mother’s worry and because of his father’s inability to find Fawn and Naomi and, most of all, because of his father’s silence and odd behavior that
clearly hurt his mother, Cork is angry with him, angry all the time. They barely speak these days. Sometimes Cork sees in his father’s eyes something like regret. And sometimes he longs to tell his father that he’s tired of his own anger and wants to let go of the worry and that all he really wants is for everything to be as it was before the Vanishings began.

He hears the kitchen door open, and a moment later he hears his mother’s voice.

“Damn it, Liam, why won’t you listen?”

“I have listened. To you and all your relatives and every other Shinnob on the reservation. And I understand your concern, and I wish to God that you’d trust me and let me do my job.”

“You leave almost every night and are gone until almost dawn and you won’t tell me where you go.”

“That’s the trust part, Colleen.”

“Trust works both ways, Liam. Tell me what’s going on. Trust that I’ll believe you or forgive you or whatever it takes.”

At first, his father offers only silence. Then he says, “Where’s Cork?”

Cork lies still as death to be sure he can’t be seen.

“I don’t know,” his mother replies. “Out, I suppose.”

“Sit down.”

Cork hears chairs scraping linoleum.

“A while back, Cy Borkman and I responded to a call from Jacque’s in Yellow Lake.”

“That’s a vile place, Liam.”

“Places like that are the reason I have a job,” he says. “It was an altercation over a woman, the kind of woman who looked like she wasn’t particular who shared her bed. I broke up the fight, and ended up escorting the woman to her vehicle. She made me the kind of offer an experienced streetwalker in Chicago might have come up with.”

“Does that happen often?” his mother says, in a brittle tone.

“People try to negotiate with me using all kind of tender. This is about trust, remember?”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“She called herself Daphne, and there was something familiar
about her. Then it came to me. Beneath all that makeup and the wig and the slutty clothing was Peter Cavanaugh’s wife.”

“Monique?”

“Yep. Monique Cavanaugh.”

“You must have been mistaken, Liam.”

“No mistake. It was her.”

“Did you let her know you recognized her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was curious. What was a woman like her doing in a dive like Jacque’s dressed like a prostitute and behaving like one? Since then I’ve been watching the place to see if she might come again, and to see if I could figure what she was up to. She’s the wife of one of the richest men on the Iron Range, and I knew I needed to be careful in how I went about things. Last night, I saw her again. She was made up like Daphne, and she wasn’t alone. She came with someone familiar to us both.”

“Who?”

“Indigo Broom.”

“Mr. Windigo? God, just thinking about him gives me the creeps.”

“It gets creepier. I sit in my car in the parking lot most of the night waiting for them to come out. Finally Daphne does, but she’s not with Broom. She’s got a biker on her arm, some big, hairy ape of a guy who gets on his motorcycle and she gets on behind him. Before they take off, Broom comes out, gets in his truck, and when they leave, he follows them. I follow Broom. We end up at the North Pine Motor Court over on Long Lake. The biker and Daphne check in and take a room. Broom parks in the motor court lot, turns off his truck, sits. I park on the road and wait until almost dawn, then Daphne comes out. She gets into Broom’s truck and leaves with him. I pull out my badge and buckle on my gun belt and knock on the door of the room she left. Nobody answers. I knock again, then try the knob. Door’s unlocked. I go in. The biker’s on the bed, naked, tied up with a woman’s nylons and with a woman’s panties stuffed in his mouth and looking like he’s been attacked by a tiger, long bloody scratches everywhere. Bruises, too. I pull out the gag and cut the nylons, toss the guy his clothes, ask him what
happened. ‘Nothing,’ he says. The badge gets me nowhere. I threaten to haul him in. He calls my bluff. The kind of guy who’s dealt with uniforms a lot and doesn’t scare. I tell him to get dressed, and I go to the motor court office, get us both some coffee, bring it back. He says he’ll talk but off the record. There’s something he wouldn’t mind getting off his chest, but not to a lawman. So I say, ‘Off the record.’ He tells me that at one point when she’s got him tied up, she pulls a knife from her purse, a switchblade, and says she’s going to cut his heart out and eat it. He laughs, but then she puts the blade to his chest, and for a moment he thinks she’s really going to do it. So I ask him, was it worth it? He says, ‘Mister, even though I thought for a minute I might die, the way she made me feel I almost didn’t care.’”

In the kitchen, it’s quiet for a long time.

Then his father says, “I look at Indigo Broom and Monique Cavanaugh, who, as nearly as I can tell, are involved in some brutal and bizarre sexual behavior. I look at the Vanishings, and I get the feel of something brutal and bizarre there. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“That they took Naomi and Fawn?”

“I can’t say that. Not even unofficially. But there are connections. Broom knows the rez, knows the vulnerable girls, can move about without a lot of notice.”

“And he takes Fawn and Naomi and then what, Liam?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, God, I hate to think.”

Cork hears a kitchen chair slide back and hears his father pacing.

“Liam, how do we find out?” There is a different tone to her voice. Solid. Resolved.

“If I pull him in and interrogate him, I might lose the only advantage I have, which is that he doesn’t know I’m looking his way.”

“What about her?”

“Right. I haul in the wife of Peter Cavanaugh and interrogate her regarding the missing girls and mention the fact that she loves to dress like a whore and have kinky, dangerous sex with hairy bikers. That’ll go over real big with my constituency. Hell, she wouldn’t say a word to me without a lawyer there, anyway. And if I start asking her
questions, I lose that same advantage I have with Broom, which is that she doesn’t know I’m watching her.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

“Just you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Liam, let’s talk to Sam Winter Moon and George LeDuc. And maybe Henry Meloux.”

“To what end?”

“Maybe they can help.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But they’ll be more likely to believe you than almost any white person in Tamarack County.”

“There’s that,” he says.

Where are you now?

At Grandma Dilsey’s.

Who else is there?

You.

Who else?

Grandma Dilsey. My mother and father. Aunt Ellie. Becky Stonedeer. Sam Winter Moon. And George LeDuc.

He’s supposed to be swimming in the lake, but he has sneaked back and is sitting against the side of the house below the kitchen window, and he can hear them talking inside.

“Never liked that man. Never trusted him,” Sam Winter Moon says.

“Indigo Broom,” Meloux says. “There is a powerful spirit there. Dark like bog water.”

“I have no proof of anything,” Cork’s father reminds them.

“Proof? I know how to get proof,” LeDuc says. “Liam, you know what the word ‘Ojibwe’ means? To pucker. We used to roast our enemies until their skin puckered.”

“I hope you’re joking, George.”

“Our children are missing, Liam. About this, I don’t joke.”

“What do we do?” his mother asks.

“We go to his cabin, Colleen,” LeDuc says. “If he’s there, we talk to him. If he’s not, we wait until he comes back.”

“Talk to him?” Cork’s father says. “Or pucker him?”

“Whatever it takes, Liam.”

“I can’t let you do that, George. That’s not why I came here.”

“Doesn’t matter why you came.”

“Now wait a minute,” Sam Winter Moon says. “There’s got to be something we can do short of torturing the man.”

Grandma Dilsey says, “If we make him suffer and we’re wrong, can we live with that?”

“Hell, I can,” LeDuc says.

“Unless you silence him for good, George, he’ll sue you for everything you’ve got.”

LeDuc laughs. “That’s the white man’s revenge, Liam. On the rez, he’ll just wait in the dark and slit my throat. I’m willing to take that chance.”

“I think we should watch him,” his mother says. “There are enough eyes out here that he can’t hide. The moment he tries something, we grab him, and then, George, you can do all the puckering you want.”

“What about the woman?” Meloux says.

“Would she do anything without Indigo Broom?” Becky Stonedeer asks.

“I don’t know,” his father replies. “Henry, these are not normal people. God alone knows what they will or won’t do.”

“Can she be watched?” Meloux asks.

“I can’t put any of my men on her. I’d have to do some explaining, and I don’t know how I’d do that. And I can’t watch her myself night and day.”

“I think,” Meloux says, “that I would like to talk to this woman. Indigo Broom, I know. This woman is a stranger.”

His father says, “Got any idea how I can arrange that, Henry?”

“I have an idea,” his mother says. “She gives a lot of money away. What if Henry and I approach her about an Ojibwe charity?”

“What charity?” his father asks.

The kitchen is quiet. Then his mother says, “The Missing Child Fund.”

Now? Where are you now?

It’s night. Late. He has slipped from his house and ridden his bike ten miles to the southern edge of the rez. The moon is up, and Waagikomaan is a river of gray dirt winding among the trees. He knows from what he’s overheard that Indigo Broom is being watched, and he’s careful. There is only one way to Broom’s cabin, and he’s on it. He walks his bike and has tuned all his senses to the forest that presses in on either side of the road.

There are crickets and tree frogs, and then there is a deeper sound, unnatural, in the trees to his right. The sound, he realizes, of a man snoring.

He creeps past the sleeping man and, a hundred yards farther, remounts and rides to an old logging road that cuts south toward Mr. Windigo’s cabin. He lays his bike at the side of Waagikomaan and starts up the logging road. The trees blot out the moon, and the woods are dark. He can barely see.

He’s here because… because he’s a boy on the edge of manhood, and he wants to be a part of this important effort to find his cousin and Naomi, to find the truth of the Vanishings, and he hopes that somehow in the dark of that night, or of another, he will find the way.