Boundary waters co-2 Read online

  “Wendell Two Knives.” A good name to hear. A good man. And it made sense. Wendell Two Knives was of the Wolf Clan. Ma’iingan.

  “This majimanidoo is puzzling,” the old man said. “Even cedar smoke does not make him clear to me. Be careful, Corcoran O’Connor. Be especially careful of the water. Pay attention to the wind that blows across the water. It can tell you much.”

  “What comes, comes.” Cork finished his cigarette in a final, pleasing lungful of smoke. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Okay advice for an old man like me. But if I was you,” the midewiwin cautioned, “I would keep a barking dog.”

  8

  S HE WATCHED THE WANING MOON RISE above the rock wall at the end of the long, narrow corridor that held the lake. That’s east, she thought. It was a pathetic little piece of information, but with everything so uncertain, that one solid fact was reassuring. Far enough east, she knew, and she would hit Lake Superior and civilization. How far and how long it would take if she were to attempt it were mysteries to which she had no clue.

  Wendell had left her a map, a complicated thing, black and white with confusing lines and rings all over it. Nothing like a road map. You might as well give me a book in Chinese, she’d said, laughing. He’d tried to explain to her the lakes, the portages, just in case. She’d pretended to listen.

  Stupid, stupid, she thought of herself now. You never listen to the right people.

  Somewhere on the cliffs along the shoreline far down the lake, an owl called. She tried to pierce the darkness to see where. The light of the moon gave the gray rock of the corridor a bleak, haunted look. The color reminded her of gravestones. Death was something she’d thought about a great deal alone in those woods. She’d examined carefully the time she tried to take her own life. Wrapped deep in the scent of pine and the sweet smell of the lake water, with the wind and the birds giving her music, her suicide attempt seemed bewildering, like the action of a stranger. Wendell told her the woods could heal if she let them. In that, as in everything, he’d been truthful.

  You should have listened more, she thought bitterly, remembering the map. She’d been so careful to make sure no one knew where she was going. She’d been so clever, so complete in her escape. In a way, she realized, she’d dug her own grave.

  Then she remembered something Wendell said to her near the end. She’d walked with him down to the lake to see him off. He’d talked of her mother that visit, of the things he remembered about her. They were good things, and she’d been grateful to hear them. Before he’d shoved off in his canoe, he’d said, “We don’t die. In the things we pass on to our children, we go on living. There’s a lot of your mother alive in you.”

  Thinking of that, she pulled herself together and pushed away her useless recriminations. She couldn’t sit and wait for Wendell forever. Her food was low. Soon the snow Wendell feared would come. She would have to think of a way out on her own.

  From its hidden place in the rocks, the owl called again: Who.

  The woman drew herself up in the darkness. Me, she thought. Shiloh .

  9

  Cork took the long way home through the Iron Lake Reservation, where he stopped at the mobile home of Wendell Two Knives. Wendell didn’t answer his knock. Cork checked the door. Unlocked, as he suspected it would be. The Anishinaabe did not believe in locking doors. He called inside. No response. He checked the trailer briefly but found nothing that caused him concern. On the back of a car-wash receipt, he wrote his phone number. Call me, he added. Urgent. Cork O’Connor. Then he put the note on the door with a bit of silver duct tape from the toolbox in his Bronco.

  He left the reservation and drove around the southern end of Iron Lake toward Grandview. Will Raye opened the door as Cork approached along the flagstone walk.

  “What’d you find out?” Raye asked.

  “I think I know who guided Shiloh in. A man named Wendell Two Knives. A good man.”

  “A good man,” Raye nodded gratefully. “That’s something.”

  “I stopped by his place tonight. Nobody home. I left a note for him to call.”

  “If he doesn’t?”

  “I’ll head over first thing in the morning.”

  “We’ll head over,” Raye said.

  “Not a good idea,” Cork told him. “On the rez, people tend to be suspicious and tight-lipped around strangers.”

  “She’s the only family I have, Cork. I can’t just sit here and wait.”

  Once again, Cork found himself imagining what it would be like if he were in Raye’s shoes and it were Annie or Jenny out there.

  He relented. “All right. If Wendell calls, I’ll let you know. Otherwise I’ll be here at eight-thirty to pick you up.”

  “Thank you.” Raye looked out at the night beyond Cork. “What if he’s not there in the morning?”

  “Then I think we try his nephew Stormy. If anybody would know where Wendell is, it’s Stormy Two Knives.”

  Raye slumped against the doorjamb, as if the waiting had already exhausted him.

  “Get some sleep if you can,” Cork advised.

  It was late by the time Cork returned to Sam’s Place. He got himself ready for bed, turned out the lights, and lay down. He lived in one big room in the back of the Quonset hut. Simple amenities. A kitchen area with a gas stove, old refrigerator, sink. A small table and two chairs Sam Winter Moon had made of birch wood. A single bed. A writing desk and three shelves of books. A small bathroom with a toilet and shower stall. Everything smelled of french fries and grilled hamburgers. A couple more weeks and he’d probably close up for the winter, something he wasn’t looking forward to. He liked the business. He liked it a lot. It was easier pleasing customers than it had ever been pleasing voters when he was sheriff. A bad hamburger was a simple thing to get rid of. A bad law was something else. He loved having the girls help him. And he liked the fact that he was self-employed. He could close up shop any time he wanted and just go fishing. Or searching for a lost woman.

  He thought about the woman in the Boundary Waters. Whether he liked it or not, she was his concern now.

  It was going to be hard to sleep. In the days when he smoked, this would have been the time to light a cigarette. Instead, he got up, put on a pot of coffee, and sat down at the birchwood table with Elizabeth Dobson’s diary in front of him. He went over everything carefully. What he noted most significantly was that there was a great deal missing. Whole days. Whether Elizabeth Dobson had decided not to confide in her diary in those times or whether the pages had simply been excluded from the copy Cork was given, he couldn’t say. He didn’t like the feel of things at all, didn’t trust Agent Harris or the others, had such an overwhelming sense of having been diverted from the heart of something important. But what? He hadn’t reported the break-in at Grandview-something that went against all his professional training-not only because he suspected nothing substantial would be found but also because he was reluctant to trust the authority of the FBI until he had a better sense of what he was really dealing with.

  As usual, Meloux had given him plenty to think about. Majimanidoo . Evil spirit. What the hell did that mean?

  The coffee finished perking. He went to the counter to pour himself a cup and took a moment to stare out the window toward the lake. What was it Meloux had warned? Pay attention to the wind that blows across the water?

  The moon had risen high and grown smaller. The light that came from it was weaker now and less revealing. On a calm night, Cork could usually see stars reflected on the surface of the lake like sugar crystals sprinkled over dark chocolate. But there was a breeze ruffling the water, just enough so that nothing reflected from the sky, and the lake spread away from the shore in a darkness that was like the vast empty space between planets.

  Then a star appeared on the water. One red-orange star. As Cork watched, it bloomed brighter, like a nova, then dimmed.

  Someone on the lake, maybe fifty yards out, was smoking.

  Cork jammed on his s
ocks, grabbed a flashlight, and hurried outside. At the edge of the water, he flicked on the beam and shot it where the ember glowed. He couldn’t make out much; the boat was too far away. But whoever it was who was watching didn’t seem particularly disturbed that Cork was watching back. An outboard motor kicked over and, leisurely, the boat began to glide into the dark well beyond the range of the flashlight beam. Cork flipped off the light. Shivering in the cold, he listened until the sound of the motor was too far away to be heard anymore.

  He wasn’t certain, but he could almost have sworn that the breeze across the lake carried on it the faint odor of cigar smoke.

  10

  Shiloh didn’t sleep well. A nightmare had jarred her awake, a visitation from an old enemy. The Dark Angel.

  Most of her life, her dreams-the worst of them, anyway-had been dominated by a frightening, faceless figure in black. In the dreams, she inevitably found herself trapped, backed against a dead end-a city alley, a blind desert canyon, a dimly lit hallway, a cave. The Dark Angel approached her. Like the Grim Reaper or the Ghost of Christmas Future, the Dark Angel never spoke, never touched her. Shiloh had always believed with a deep, paralyzing terror that if the Dark Angel ever laid its hand on her, she would die. She usually woke screaming, soaked with sweat. Until she discovered drugs, she had never been able to go back to sleep after a visit from the Dark Angel.

  Therapy had helped. Dr. Sutpen had guided her well to an understanding of this terrible figure that haunted her. The nightmares had subsided. Her whole time in the woods, Shiloh had not once been tormented by the Dark Angel.

  Until now. In the dream, the Dark Angel had trapped her against a wall of trees she could not break through, trees red with what she thought were autumn leaves, but when the leaves fell, they formed a pool of blood at her feet.

  She woke in a sweat and couldn’t go back to sleep. At first light, she didn’t feel rested at all. She rose and fixed herself a breakfast of coffee, oatmeal with raisins, and some toast, all cooked on the cabin’s old cast-iron stove. Every morning, the cabin seemed colder and the little stove less able to heat the one room.

  On the rough table, she spread the map Wendell had given her, wrapped her hands for warmth around the tin cup of coffee, and tried to figure where she was and where she would have to go. Wendell had marked the cabin on the map with an X and had put arrows across the map showing her the way home. Where the arrows hit the land, he put a series of small x’s to denote a portage. There were seven portages in all. The mix of the contour lines, the arrows, and the x’s confused her. She felt hopelessness sweeping over her like a heavy air mass, and for a moment, she could hardly breathe.

  “You can’t stay here,” she said, speaking aloud so that it was as if the advice had come from outside herself. “Wendell’s not coming. He can’t, or he’d be here by now. That’s why he gave you the map. Just in case.”

  She stared down at the jumble of lines and found where he’d written “Wendell’s Place” beside a big circled X in the bottom right-hand corner of the map. It looked like a long way and as labyrinthine a route as a maze in a puzzle book. She closed her eyes and imagined herself already there, Wendell smiling as she came. She imagined hugging him, and she could almost smell the leather of the old vest he always wore.

  “You can do it,” she heard a strong voice say.

  Opening her eyes, she found she was still alone.

  She packed her thermal underwear. Before he would take her into the Boundary Waters, Wendell insisted she buy the underwear, although it was hot summer. Now, with the chill in the air, she was thankful for his foresight. In her backpack, she placed a small cooking pan, some utensils, a waterproof container of kitchen matches, a Swiss army pocketknife (a gift from Wendell), a flashlight, and the last of her packaged food-two packs of dehydrated vegetable soup, a bag of apple chips, three granola bars, and a tin of tuna fish. She also packed a change of clothing. She put the map in a side pocket and tied on her rolled-up sleeping bag.

  She knew she had to leave her guitar. It had been a good friend in her isolation, but would be a burden on her journey out. The cardboard box full of the tapes she’d recorded she put on the table beside the four big notebooks full of her writing. She thought about the portages, about carrying her pack and the canoe, and she knew she couldn’t cart the other things, too. She decided that when she reached Wendell’s place, she could arrange to retrieve her guitar and the work she’d done. The larder of the cabin, a box sunk into the floor in one of the corners, was empty now. She put the cardboard box and the notebooks there and placed an old mat woven from cedar bark over the larder lid so that it was hidden.

  She took a final look around. This had been a good place for her, the hidden cabin, just as Wendell had promised when he first invited her to the woods. Although it was small and rugged, with but a single room and no running water, she felt a greater fondness toward it than she did either of the big homes she maintained outside those woods. Like a rough old friend, like Wendell himself, it was a place stripped to the essentials and it had helped her get clear.

  She hefted the pack, stepped outside, and closed the door. There was no lock, yet she’d never been afraid.

  “Good-bye,” she said, not feeling silly at all in addressing the place. All things had spirit, Wendell had taught her, and this spirit was good. “Thank you.”

  She turned and followed the stream to the lake.

  The morning sun hadn’t climbed above the gray rock ridge, and the lake lay in cold shade. For most of its length, the water was edged with sheer cliffs. To reach the far end, Shiloh followed a steep trail upward through the pines and boulders to the top of the ridge. The air was crisp and clear. Her hands were already chilled, so she slipped her gloves on and began to climb. The woods were quiet. The sound of her own heavy breathing and the clomp of her booted feet seemed an intrusion. For some reason, the scent of the evergreen was sharper to her than ever, and she wondered if in preparing to leave it all behind, she’d become suddenly aware of how pervasive and wonderful it was. She followed the trail half a mile to the other end of the narrow lake. There, a small gap in the ridge had long ago allowed the stream to flow through freely. Now a jumble of rock debris filled the gap, creating a dam across the stream that had flooded what was once a small canyon. Water seeped through the debris, flowing over rocks that were covered with slippery green algae. On the forest floor far below, the stream gathered itself again and ran another quarter mile until it spilled into a lake so large and so convoluted with islands and wooded points of land that the true far shore was impossible to see. Wherever that shore was, miles lay between it and Shiloh. She remembered canoeing in with Wendell, how for most of a day they’d been on that lake weaving among the islands until she had no sense of where they were going or where they’d been.

  The sun hit the great lake with a painful brilliance that made her look away. She turned her gaze back to the little lake Wendell called Nikidin. It was so familiar she wanted to go back, to convince herself to wait a bit longer, to believe that Wendell would come after all. But she’d spent so much time there searching for the truth that she couldn’t lie to herself. Wendell wasn’t coming. God alone knew why, but she was on her own.

  Carefully, she began to descend the slick rocks. By the time she reached the bottom of the ridge, she was sweating hard. She dropped her pack and slipped off her gloves and jean jacket. She tied the jacket around her waist by the arms, hefted her pack once again, and followed the stream.

  Where the stream spilled into the big lake, the shore was lined with smooth stones. Shiloh put down her pack, went to a thicket of vines not far away, and pulled at the covering to a narrow blind. Inside, a green canoe lay upside down, its gunwales cradled across two logs. Wendell had showed her the canoe so that she could, if she wanted, explore the lake. She’d been so awkward with the paddle and so afraid of getting lost that she’d never gone far. She lifted the bow and raised the canoe as she walked under it. The midthwart was fitt
ed with a padded yoke for ease in portaging. She settled the yoke pads onto her shoulders as she tipped the canoe and balanced the weight to carry it. After she’d put the canoe in the water, she returned for the paddle. She tossed her pack in, shoved off from the shore, and settled herself into the stern.

  At water level, all the islands before her created the illusion of a wall across the lake. The sun behind them cast their trees and slopes in shadow so that the wall looked dark and impenetrable. She pulled out the map and studied the line of arrows Wendell had drawn among all the confusing contour lines.

  “Too bad you couldn’t have put them right on the water, Wendell. Like in a cartoon.” She surprised herself with a laugh.

  Returning the map to the pack, she dug her paddle into the still water.

  And so it began.

  11

  Cork was up at first light, into his sweats, and running. The air was brisk. Frost crisped the grass and the bushes. The sun was red-orange, like a lava flow spilling through the trees along the eastern shore of Iron Lake, and where the flow met the still lake water, the confluence blazed.

  He ran north along Center Street, heading toward the outskirts of town. In the early morning, the street was quiet and almost empty. He loved the town in this hour when, like the living thing it was, it slowly woke and showed a face unadorned and innocent, beautiful as a waking child. He passed Lew Knutson delivering Sunday papers from the tailgate of a station wagon driven by his father Karl, and he waved to Cy Borkmann, who was making the rounds in a sheriff’s department cruiser. He passed the garage where Harold Svendsen had worked for years repairing the cars and trucks of Aurora before a massive coronary hit him while he was shoveling snow and put an end to his expert tinkering. The garage sat abandoned for years until a young couple from Des Moines bought it, renovated the building, and turned the place into a shop serving fresh-baked goods, sandwiches, and gourmet coffee. They called it Mark and Edie’s Gas Pump Grill. When Cork was a kid, the air around Harold Svendsen’s garage had been heavy with the smell of drained engine oil, thick and black. Now when he ran past, he was treated to the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and croissants.