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  CHAPTER 2

  Violence took Jubal Little out of Cork’s life, but violence was also the way he’d entered it.

  Nearly forty years earlier, when Cork was twelve years old and in the sixth grade, the baby boom in Aurora, as it probably had everywhere, resulted in the overcrowding of the town’s elementary school. To deal with the situation on a temporary basis, the school board arranged for a couple of annex trailers to be placed on the grounds of the junior high, which was the only school-owned property with space available. The annexes were used to house the two sixth-grade classes. As a result, those kids who normally would have been the cocks of the walk in that final elementary year became, instead, the focus of abuse by many of the older junior high students, with whom the sixth graders shared the cafeteria, gymnasium, restrooms, and playing field. Worst among the tormentors was Donner Bigby, whom everyone called Bigs because of his size. He was a strawberry blond and had a massive upper torso. His intimidating physique came from both genes and working summers with the logging crews his father sent into the Superior National Forest to cut timber on tracts leased from the federal government. Bigby chewed tobacco, drank beer, and swore like a lumberjack. When he strutted down the hallways or across the school grounds, most kids—Cork included—gave him a judiciously wide berth.

  The children of the Iron Lake Ojibwe attended school in Aurora and were bused in from the reservation. Three of the reservation kids were in the sixth grade with Cork. Because his grandmother was true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe and he spent a lot of time on the rez, Cork was acquainted with them: Peter LaPointe, Winona Crane, and her twin brother, Willie. He knew Winona especially well, because he’d had a crush on her forever. She was smart and pretty and a little wild. She played the guitar and made up her own songs and sang beautifully. She had long black hair and eyes like shiny chips of wet flint that, if she wanted, could cut you with a glance. She was fiercely protective of Willie, who’d been born with cerebral palsy and who walked with a slow, awkward gait and spoke with some difficulty.

  It wasn’t at all surprising that Willie turned out to be a perfect target for the abuse of Donner Bigby.

  Most days after school, Winona and her brother hopped on the bus and rode the fifteen miles to the rez, where they lived with a variety of relatives. Their father was dead, killed in a car wreck caused by a drunken driver—him. Their mother was an unreliable caregiver at best, and very often gone. Just gone. For weeks or even months. Sometimes they stayed with their grandmother, sometimes with an aunt or uncle. Their uncle Leonard Killdeer worked at the BearPaw Brewery, which sat next to Sam’s Place, the Quonset hut turned burger joint on Iron Lake. Whenever they stayed with Leonard, they would walk to the brewery after school to meet him when his shift ended. On those days, Cork often accompanied them on the pretext of visiting his family’s good friend Sam Winter Moon, who owned Sam’s Place. Though he liked Willie just fine—they both shared a passion for Marvel Comics—Winona was the real reason Cork went along.

  A couple of weeks after the start of school that fall, as the trio passed through Grant Park on their way to the brewery, Willie haltingly detailing the exploits of the Hulk in a recent issue and Winona quiet and distant and beautiful at his side, three figures materialized from the picnic pavilion and blocked their way.

  “Well if it isn’t the spaz and his keepers,” Donner Bigby said. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth in a kind of perverted homage, perhaps, to James Dean. The two kids with him Cork knew, but distantly. Vinnie Mariucci was tall and as thin as jerky, and everyone called him Specs because he wore glasses. Ray Novak was almost as huge as Bigby. They were high school guys, and they hung with Bigby because he was, in fact, their age. He was in the seventh grade because he’d been held back twice over the years. Academically and socially, he was a mess. In a later, more enlightened day, he might have been diagnosed as dyslexic and having ADD, but at that time he was just seen as unteachable, both disinterested in education and defiant of authority.

  Cork smelled beer, though he saw no evidence of their drinking. He felt his stomach tighten, and he tried to speak in a calm voice. “Come on, we’re not bothering you.”

  “Look, O’Connor, just being on the same planet with Spaz here bugs me. I don’t like watching him walk.”

  “Fine,” Cork said. “We’re leaving and you won’t have to watch.”

  “Don’t call him Spaz,” Winona said, low and threatening.

  “Winona,” Cork cautioned.

  “How about Retard then?” Bigby offered and laughed. His cohorts laughed, too.

  “I’m . . . not . . . retarded,” Willie managed to get out. His speech, normally a little difficult, was further strained and was hard even for Cork to understand.

  “Inotarded,” Bigby said, mimicking Willie.

  As the son of the Tamarack County sheriff, Cork felt on his shoulders the onerous weight of doing the right thing. Which meant taking on Donner Bigby, who was a head taller and thirty or forty pounds heavier and who probably knew more about how to beat the living crap out of a kid than anyone Cork could think of. He considered simply trying to talk his way past Bigby, and hustling Willie and Winona along with him, but Winona killed any hope of an easy escape. She stepped up to Bigby and slugged him. She caught him in the ribs, and he made a little ooph sound, but he didn’t budge an inch. Before she could withdraw her hand, he caught her arm by the wrist and twisted. Winona cried out and went down on her knees. Willie tried to go after Bigby, but Specs stepped in and shoved him, and Willie went sprawling.

  Beyond thought now, Cork lowered his shoulder and barreled into Bigby. He knocked the kid off balance, and they both went down. He attempted to wrestle the bigger boy under him, but it was like trying to get the best of a rhino. Bigby was on top in the blink of an eye, sitting astraddle Cork and pinning him to the ground, helpless. Cork saw the big right fist, an agate-colored ball of bony knuckle, draw back, and then he saw stars.

  As his perception cleared, he was aware that Bigby’s weight no longer held him down. He opened his eyes and rolled his head to the side and saw Bigby trapped in a hammerlock, his thick upper arms useless and his chin forced down to his chest. The kid who’d put him in this precarious position was every bit as large and powerful as Bigby, and he was a stranger.

  “Stay back or I’ll break his neck,” the kid ordered Specs and Novak, who stood looking ready to jump in.

  “You goddamn son of a bitch!” Bigby cried and tried in vain to shake himself loose. The kid gave Bigby’s head a further nudge, and Bigby grunted painfully and went slack.

  “Are you through bothering people?” the kid asked.

  When he got no reply, the kid bent Bigby’s neck so sharply that even Cork was afraid he’d break Bigby’s neck.

  “Yes,” Bigby shouted. “I’m through.”

  The kid released his grip and shoved Bigby away, all in one fluid motion. Bigby stumbled, and his pals caught him. He shook them off and straightened up, but it was clear to Cork that the move was painful to him.

  “I’m not finished with you,” Bigby said.

  The stranger opened his arms as if in welcome. “Anytime,” he said.

  “Let’s go.” Bigby turned and walked away, trying to square his shoulders in a last-ditch effort at some dignity.

  Cork finally noticed Winona, who stood with her arm around Willie, and who was not watching Bigby and his cohorts at all. Her eyes were on the stranger, and what was in them was something Cork would have sold his soul for.

  “You okay?” the big kid said to Winona and Willie.

  Willie nodded, and Winona said, “Yes, thanks.”

  The kid looked at Cork. “You’re going to have yourself a shiner.”

  Cork felt his left eye and winced at the tenderness there. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Little,” the huge kid said.

  Cork laughed. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Jubal Little.”

  “I’m Cork. This is Winon
a and Willie.”

  Jubal nodded at them but seemed to take no significant notice.

  “You’re new,” Cork said.

  “Just moved here,” Jubal replied.

  “What grade are you in?” Winona asked.

  “Seventh.”

  Cork was astonished because the kid was like no other seventh grader he’d ever seen. “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Is that like in elephant years or something?” Cork asked.

  Jubal shrugged easily. “I’ve always been big for my age.” He looked where Bigby and the others were exiting the park. “You have any more trouble with those guys, let me know.”

  “We’re heading to Sam’s Place for something to eat,” Winona said. “You want to come?”

  Jubal shook his head. “No, thanks. Got things to do.” He turned to leave.

  “See you,” Cork said.

  “Yeah,” Jubal replied, without any particular enthusiasm. He didn’t even look back, just lifted his hand in a brief farewell.

  As Jubal Little walked away, Cork had a realization. This new kid had just stepped in to save his ass and Winona’s and Willie’s, and yet it wasn’t especially significant to Jubal Little in any way. It was as if such an action was perfectly ordinary for him.

  They didn’t talk much after that. There was a darkness in Willie’s face, and Cork figured he was fuming at the things Bigby had said. Winona stared into the distance, preoccupied, Cork was pretty sure, with thoughts of Jubal Little. In his own thinking, Cork was divided. On the one hand, because he’d been totally useless at handling Bigby, he was glad Jubal Little had intervened. On the other, his pride had taken a hard beating, and Jubal Little was a part of that.

  After she saw his face, his mother gave him an ice pack but didn’t press him for answers. When his father came home that night, he asked, “What’s up with the eye?”

  “Accident,” Cork told him.

  His father said, “The kind where your face falls into somebody else’s fist?”

  “I can take care of it.”

  His father considered, then nodded. “Something like this can get taken care of in a lot of ways. You won’t let it get out of hand?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right.” He’d removed his leather jacket with the Tamarack County Sheriff’s emblem on the right shoulder and hung it in the closet. “I was thinking maybe we could toss the old pigskin before dinner. What do you say?”

  Through his open window that night as he lay in bed, Cork heard his parents talking as they rocked in the porch swing. Although he couldn’t hear most of the words, he could tell from the tone of her voice that his mother was concerned. His father said something about Cork’s “raccoon eye” and sounded reassuring. Cork didn’t want them worrying about him. And the truth was that he believed there was nothing for them to be concerned about. Jubal Little had made certain of that. The problem was Cork couldn’t decide exactly how he felt about it, particularly when he recalled the look in Winona Crane’s eyes as she stared at her rescuer. He went to sleep that night hurting in a lot of ways that had nothing to do with his shiner.

  CHAPTER 3

  Although science said otherwise, Cork knew absolutely that the human heart was enormous. Inside that organ, which was only the size of a man’s fist, was enough room to fit everything a person could possibly love, and then some. Cork’s own heart held more treasures than he could easily name. But one that always stood in the forefront was Sam’s Place.

  The old Quonset hut sat on the shore of Iron Lake, at the end of a road that ran from the edge of the small town of Aurora across an open meadow and over a long, straight hillock topped by the railway bed of the Burlington Northern tracks. To the north stood the abandoned BearPaw Brewery. A hundred yards south grew a copse of poplar trees that surrounded the ruins of a small foundry built more than a century before. The meadow stretched nearly a quarter mile, and terminated at Grant Park. Except for Sam’s Place and the half acre around it, the land was held in trust by Tamarack County, given as a gift by a wealthy developer named Hugh Parmer, with the stipulation that all the undeveloped property be left in its natural state. Parmer had meant it as a memorial to Jo O’Connor, Cork’s beloved wife, who’d been gone from their lives three years now.

  When Cork pulled into the parking lot of Sam’s Place, there was only one other vehicle: the Subaru that belonged to his daughter Jenny. It was evening, and the sky was charcoal with overcast. The weather forecast was for snow flurries, and Cork, when he got out of his Land Rover, felt the cold kiss of a flake against his cheek. The sheriff’s department had kept and bagged as evidence his hunting jacket, which was stained with Jubal Little’s blood. Even though he was chilled, he stood awhile before going inside, staring down the shoreline of the lake into the gloom of descending night. Well beyond the poplars stood the tall pine trees of Grant Park, black now in the dim light, brooding sentries looking down on the place where he’d first met Jubal Little.

  In all that had occurred that day, Cork hadn’t allowed himself to feel the loss of the man who’d been his friend since boyhood. He’d been intent at first on simply comforting Jubal as he died. Then he’d been involved in explanations. Now, alone, he tried to understand how he felt. Frankly, he was confused. Jubal Little was an easy man to like, but anyone who’d been close to him knew that he was a difficult man to love. The reason was simple. In the end, in Jubal’s heart, there was room enough only for Jubal.

  “Dad?”

  Cork broke off his reverie and looked toward the Quonset hut, where his sixteen-year-old son, Stephen, stood in the open doorway, framed by the warm light from inside.

  “You okay?” Stephen called.

  “Yeah,” Cork replied. “I’ll be right in.”

  The Quonset hut had been erected during the Second World War, and when the war ended had sat idle for some time, until it was purchased by an Ojibwe named Sam Winter Moon. Sam had divided the structure into two parts. In the front, he’d cut serving windows and installed a propane grill, a deep-fry well, a walk-in freezer, an ice-milk machine, and a food prep area. In the back, which was separated by a wall that Sam had constructed himself, was a living area, complete with a small kitchen and a bathroom with a shower. In the summer, Sam lived in the hut and ran his burger operation. Over the years, he developed a following of both locals and returning tourists, for whom a visit to Tamarack County wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Sam’s Place. Summers in high school, Cork had worked for Sam, and much of what he knew about what it was to be a man he’d learned from this friend and mentor. On Sam’s death, the property had passed to Cork, who’d done his best to honor Sam Winter Moon’s legacy. Now Cork’s children were involved in the enterprise as well.

  He stepped into the Quonset hut and found Stephen entertaining Waaboo, Cork’s grandson, who was nearly two.

  “Where’s Jenny?” Cork asked.

  Stephen nodded toward the door in the room’s back wall. “Closing up,” he said. “I offered, but she told me she’d do it if I kept this little guy occupied.”

  Waaboo was not the child’s legal name. Legally, he was Aaron Smalldog O’Connor, but his Ojibwe name was Waaboozoons, which meant “little rabbit,” and he was called Waaboo, for short. He was a wonder of a child, whose Ojibwe blood was apparent in his black hair and dark eyes, in the shading of his skin and the bone structure of his face. He bore a clear scar on his upper lip where surgery had closed a terrible cleft, a genetic defect. He was not Jenny’s by birth, but in her heart, in the hearts of all the O’Connors, he took up a great deal of real estate.

  Waaboo smiled when he saw Cork, and he said, “Baa-baa,” which was his word for “Grandpapa.”

  Cork lifted his grandson and swung him around, much to Waaboo’s delight.

  “You’re home early,” Stephen said.

  “You haven’t heard?” Cork put Waaboo down, and the child toddled toward a big stuffed toy bear that lay on the floor.

&nb
sp; “Heard what?”

  Cork was relieved that word of Jubal Little hadn’t spread. Dross and her people had, for the moment, done a good job of containment. But it wouldn’t last long. Something like this, it would go public quickly, and the jackals of the media would quickly gather to feed.

  “Jubal Little’s dead,” Cork said.

  “What? How?”

  “Someone killed him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The door to Sam’s Place opened, and Jenny came in, bringing with her the smell of deep-fry. She was twenty-five, a willowy young woman with white-blond hair, ice blue eyes, and a face in which the cares of motherhood were just beginning to etch a few faint lines. She’d become a parent through extraordinary circumstances that had involved the brutal death of the child’s birth mother. Jenny’s intervention had saved Waaboo’s life, and little Waaboo had, in a way, saved hers. She’d been trained as a journalist but had chosen to put her career on hold while she adjusted to these new circumstances. At the moment, she helped manage Sam’s Place, wrote short stories, and devoted the rest of her time to Waaboo.

  “Thought we weren’t going to see you tonight,” she said, heading toward her son, who’d wrapped his arms around the big bear and had rolled the stuffed animal on top of him. “Thought you and our next governor were going to hang out and do manly things together.”

  “Jubal Little’s dead,” Stephen told her.

  She stopped in bending to lift her son and shot her father a startled look. “How?”

  Cork explained what had happened.

  “You sat there for three hours while he died?” Jenny had the same look that Cork had seen on Dross’s face and Larson’s, a look void of comprehension. “Why didn’t you go get help?”

  He was tired of explaining, and he said, “At the time, staying with Jubal seemed best.”

  “Was it an accident?” Stephen asked.

  Cork shook his head.