Manitou Canyon (3 page)

C
HAPTER
5

H
enry Meloux lived on a point of land well north of Aurora, at the very edge of the Iron Lake Reservation. To reach it, Cork parked his Expedition along a gravel county road, near a double-­trunk birch that marked the beginning of a trail through a forest of mixed hardwood, spruce, and pine. He locked his vehicle, tugged on his gloves, turned up the collar of his leather jacket against a chill wind that had risen, and set off down the well-worn path. It was a hike of nearly two miles, one that, over the course of his life, Cork had taken more times than he could count or ever hope to remember.

The trees lining the path felt like dark walls that day, and the narrow strip of sky above was like a ribbon torn from some soiled and shabby fabric. Cork hunched his shoulders and walked, lost in brooding thought, oblivious to the beauty that, in a different mood, he might have appreciated. He was thinking now of his daughter's impending marriage, which he greatly approved of. He liked the man she'd chosen and who'd chosen her. He liked that Waaboo would have a father. What he didn't like was that they'd chosen to wed in November, a month that promised nothing but disappointment and, if he allowed himself to sink into melodrama, doom.

Had he said anything to Jenny about his concern? No. It wasn't his place. The wedding was theirs, and the date they set was a decision that belonged to them alone. But it was a thorn in all his thinking. Just one of many these days. And it seemed to him as if
they'd all begun to fester at once. As he walked the path toward Crow Point, he felt the poison in every part of him.

* * *

“We have a visitor, Niece,” the old man said. “Corcoran O'Connor.”

Rainy Bisonette had been making bread at the table in her great-uncle's cabin. She looked up from her floured hands, out the window, across the dead grass of the meadow where the trail broke from the trees. She saw nothing but the emptiness of a land preparing for the long sleep of winter. November—
Gashkadino-­Giizis,
which meant the Freezing Over Moon in the language of her people, who were called Anishinaabe or Ojibwe—was always a busy month for her and for Henry. Their cabins on Crow Point had no electricity or running water. The little structures were heated by cast-iron stoves and lit by propane lanterns. There were important preparations to complete before the deep snow of winter began its work of isolation. Cord after cord of cut and dried wood had been laid up. The roof of Henry's cabin, which had been constructed nearly a century earlier, had been repaired with new cedar shakes. The herbs that both the old man and Rainy would need for the medicines they prepared had been gathered and dried and stored. They were Mide, members of the Grand Medicine Society, traditional healers. Even in winter, even with snow as deep as a man's thigh and cold so bitter that it froze your eyeballs, the people who needed their skills would come to them.

This year the month of the Freezing Over Moon had special meaning. Daniel English, Rainy's nephew, and Jenny O'Connor, Cork's daughter, were to be married. The wedding was going to be held in the house on Gooseberry Lane. It would be a ceremony drawn from two traditions—Anishinaabe and Catholic. Father Ted Green from St. Agnes in Aurora would preside over the Catholic part; Henry was to handle the traditional Ojibwe elements. Rainy's spirits were running high. The prospect of the marriage excited her, and she was happy for Daniel and Jenny, two people she loved fiercely. She also happened to love Jenny's father pretty fiercely,
too. And so, when Henry spoke his name, she watched for him happily out the window. But he didn't appear.

“I don't see him, Uncle,” she said, though she knew that when the old man predicted a visitation of this kind he was seldom wrong. She'd asked him time and again how he knew this thing, but his only answer was “I listen to the spirits.”

She had no doubt that he did.

Henry Meloux was a hundred years old, give or take a couple of years. His hair was long and as white as moonbeams. His face was as cracked as dried desert mud. His eyes were dark brown, but there was no hardness to them. They were eyes in which you could lose yourself and let go of all fear, eyes soft with understanding.

Henry was grinding herbs with a pestle in a clay bowl. Ember, an old Irish setter whose former owner Cork had helped put an end to, and whom Henry, out of pity, had adopted, lay at his feet, drowsing. Without looking up from his work, Henry said, “He is slow. He comes like a turtle in the mud, with no energy. Expect him to be no lover, Niece. This cabin is the only thing he will enter today.”

“Uncle Henry!” she said.

The old man laughed and went on grinding.

She saw him then, just as her great-uncle had predicted, trudging out of the woods, crossing the meadow. He wasn't looking her way. His head was down, his eyes on the worn path. She could see from his whole aspect that he carried some crushing weight. And she thought that maybe Henry was wrong about one thing. Maybe she would take this burdened man to her bed, and in that ancient, carnal way, offer him some comfort.

She opened the door before he arrived, and before he could say a word, she kissed him.

“
Boozhoo,
love,” she said in greeting and with such enthusiasm she hoped it would light a warming fire in him.

He smiled, but not with his heart, she could see. “Is Henry here?”

“Come into my home, Corcoran O'Connor,” the old man spoke from inside. “You and whatever trouble you bring.”

Cork stepped into the doorway. “What makes you think I've brought trouble, Henry?”

“You hold yourself stiff, like a wary deer. But come inside. I do not mind your trouble.”

Cork did as the old man said, and Rainy closed the door. Ember struggled up and trotted to meet the visitor. Cork gave him a halfhearted patting, and the Irish setter went back to his place at Henry's feet.

“Would you like some coffee, Cork? It's a chilly day out there,” Rainy said.

“No, thanks. I just need to talk.”

“Not yet,” the old man said. “Sage, Niece. We will smudge this troubled man and this place where he has brought his trouble.”

Rainy took a sage bundle from the store in one of Henry's cupboards, dropped it into a shallow clay bowl, lit it with a match, and waved the cleansing smoke over Cork, Henry, herself, and around the cabin saying, “
Migwech, Nimishoomis
. Thank you, Grandfather.
Migwech, Nokomis
. Thank you, Grandmother, for the beauty of this day, for the life you have given us, and for the wisdom that comes when we listen to your voices on the wind and in the water and singing among the trees. We pray for guidance from the Creator and the spirits. Let our hearts be open to all you offer us.”

When she'd finished, her great-uncle brought out one of his pipes and a pouch of tobacco. He filled the pipe, then offered tobacco to the spirits of the four directions. He put a match flame to the tobacco, and they sat together at his table and shared the pipe.

Only when they'd completed these preparations did Henry finally say, “And what is this trouble you bring, Corcoran O'Connor?”

Cork explained about the two clients he'd just taken on and about the vision Trevor Harris claimed to have experienced and about what he intended to do.

The old man nodded but said nothing.

Rainy said, “Jenny and Daniel's wedding is coming up fast, Cork.”

“I'll be in and out, Rainy. I don't imagine I'll find anything at Raspberry Lake that wasn't found before.”

“Then why go?”

“They need help.”

“No, they need comfort, closure. If you find nothing, which is what you seem to be expecting, how does that help them?”

“I'm not convinced we won't find anything. The whole time we were out there, I had the feeling we were missing something. I still can't quite put my finger on it. There's no harm in giving it one more try.”

“Is this really about them, Cork?”

He looked surprised. “I sort of think it is.”

“Are you sure it's not more about you?”

“Well, I'm certainly a part of it.” His voice was hard, which was unusual for this man she knew and loved.

“I'm only pointing out that if in the end you really can't offer them any comfort in this way, you're only delaying the inevitable.”

“And the inevitable would be?”

“Acceptance. Opening their hearts to the pain and the grief. And then to the healing.”

“They want to be sure. I can understand that.”

“And if you don't find him, how will that help them to be sure?”

Meloux had been quiet, but now he spoke to Cork. “Your father found his father.”

Rainy looked confused. “What have I missed?”

“Many years ago, the father of John Harris disappeared in much the same way that he has now. Liam O'Connor found him, Niece.”

“I thought his father died in a boating accident,” Rainy said. “That's what I read in the papers when Harris disappeared.”

Cork shrugged. “There were things the papers missed, back then and now.”

“So what really happened?”

“They discovered his empty boat run aground,” Cork said.
“They searched the whole of Iron Lake but couldn't find him. Dad was sheriff then. He finally pulled the plug, but he didn't give up looking. A week or so later, he located the body. It was tangled in the anchor rope of Harris's boat in ten feet of water off Little Bear Island. He'd most probably killed himself, but that part never made it into the papers. Not then, not now.”

“And you're going to find John Harris, just like your father found his father?”

“I can try.”

“I thought they searched every inch of Raspberry Lake. Used divers, right?”

“Maybe his body's not in the lake. Maybe there is no body. Maybe he's still out there wandering around in those woods. Or maybe there's an explanation that will reveal itself to me.”

It was clear his mind was made up, and she didn't want to argue, so she said, “What have you come for?”

Cork looked at the old man. “Henry's advice. And yours, Rainy. What do you think about Trevor Harris's vision?”

Henry said nothing and looked instead to Rainy.

She said, “Are you wondering if it's real? How can we say? Stephen's in the middle of the Arizona desert. Is it possible that his spirit communicated with Trevor Harris? Your son's remarkable in many ways, so maybe. Have you asked him?”

“He's incommunicado,” Cork said. “No cell phone out there while he's seeking whatever he's seeking.”

Nearly two years earlier, when Stephen was seventeen, a madman had put two bullets into him. One of them had damaged his spinal cord, and whether he'd ever walk again had been a serious concern. He'd spent a long time in rehabilitation, and the work of his therapists and his own determination had yielded great results. He did, indeed, walk. With crutches at first, then a cane, and finally with nothing except a very noticeable residual limp. He would never be an Olympic runner, he was fond of saying, but he'd never wanted to be one anyway. He was supposed to have entered college in September, but he'd put that on hold, and instead had decided
on a kind of pilgrimage, a solitary sojourn in the emptiness of the Arizona desert.

“He isn't seeking, Cork. Nothing has been lost to him. He's just trying to open himself to what's always been inside him. His own strength, his own knowledge.”

“Okay, so let's leave Stephen out of the equation. What if Harris's vision is real, how should it be interpreted?”

“That's up to the dreamer, Cork.”

“The dream seems pretty clear to me.”

“Seems, yes.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“Does it really matter what I think or Uncle Henry? You've already decided to go. So what is it you really want?”

He looked from her to the old man. “I want to know what we missed. I want to know what I'm looking for. How can a man just disappear and leave no trace, not even his scent for a dog to find?”

“Why do you ask me, Corcoran O'Connor?” Henry said. “I was not a part of your search for this man.”

“You understand more about hunting in those woods than anyone I know.”

The old man lapsed again into silence, and the whole of that tiny cabin seemed consumed by it. Rainy could feel, just as Henry had said, the wariness in Cork and could plainly see how rigidly he held himself. She wanted very much to be able to offer him something that would help.

“Do not look for an answer out there, Corcoran O'Connor,” her great-uncle finally said. “Let the answer find you.”

“How do I do that, Henry?” His voice was harsh, urgent. “Are you suggesting I just go out there and sit?”

“Not sit. Sift. Sift all that comes to you. The answer is what is left in your hands after everything else has slipped through your fingers.”

“That's it, Henry? That's all you've got?”

“As my niece has said, finding is never about seeking. It is about opening yourself to what is already there.”

Cork stood and pulled on his jacket.
“Migwech,”
he said. Thank you. But Rainy could tell from his tone that he didn't mean it.

“Don't leave so soon, Cork,” she said.

“I've got a lot to do to get ready for tomorrow.”

Rainy drew on her own coat and said, “Let me walk with you a bit, then.”

Outside, under the gray canopy of the sky, they walked together, past Rainy's small cabin and onto the path through the stiff, browned meadow grass and the dry stalks of dead wildflowers. Dead only to the eye, Rainy knew. They would rise again in the spring. She took Cork's arm and could feel his resistance.

“What's going on, Cork? Why are you so hard, so impatient? It's not like you.”

“I love him dearly, Rainy, but sometimes he frustrates the hell out of me. Why does he have to speak in riddles? Why can't he ever just give me a straight answer?”