Red Knife (5 page)

T
homas Blessing lived with his mother, Fanny, in a one-story frame house that, as long as Cork could remember, had been in desperate need of a new coat of paint. The house was a god-awful purple, something out of a psychedelic nightmare, and Cork had often wondered if one reason Fanny didn’t paint it was that nobody was stupid enough to manufacture the color anymore.

The house stood near a crossroads on the eastern side of the rez. On the other side of the road stood the abandoned ruins of an old gas station, a gray derelict that stared hollow-eyed at the Blessing place. Several years before, a photographer for
National Geographic
had shot the old place, and the photo appeared in the publication, run with an article about the plight of the rez: the deterioration, the drunkenness, the desperation. It hadn’t been an unfair article, Cork had thought at the time, but it had made the situation on the rez sound hopeless. The Ojibwe may have lacked many things, but they’d never lacked for courage and they’d never lost hope.

Behind the Blessing house was a marsh full of cattails and red-winged blackbirds. In the summer, the marsh was home to great blue herons that waded among the lily pads with awkward majesty and bent with a formal-looking stiffness to snatch at fish and crawdads.

It was Fanny Blessing who answered Cork’s knock. She appeared to be headed out. A big black purse hung on her shoulder and a jean jacket was slung over her arm.

“
Boozhoo,
Fanny,” he said, offering the familiar Ojibwe greeting.

“If you’re here to arrest Tommy, I ain’t going to stop you,” she said.

She was a heavy woman. She was also a smoker, had been since she was a kid, and she was paying the price: emphysema. She wore a tube that ran from her nostrils, over both ears, and down to a small green oxygen tank, which she pulled around beside her on a little wheeled cart. She was a couple of years younger than Cork and had been a wild one in her day. Fanny had loved a good time, loved Wild Turkey with a beer chaser, loved dancing in bars and at powwows, and loved men, no-good men especially. She’d had three children by three different fathers. One had died young, a drowning. The middle one, a girl named Topaz, had run away when she was sixteen and, as far as Cork knew, hadn’t been in touch with Fanny since. Thomas, her youngest, was the only one left with her, but she didn’t seem particularly inclined to want to keep him.

“I know whatever you’re here for, he probably done,” she said. “All that crazy Red Boyz shit.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Tom Blessing said from somewhere in the room behind her. “And even if I did, he wouldn’t be taking me anywhere, Mom. He’s not the sheriff anymore.”

“Just here to talk to Tom, if you don’t mind,” Cork said.

“He’s the one you got to convince.” She waved away her responsibility. “You two go at it. Me, I’m heading to the casino.” She let the screen door slam shut behind her and maneuvered past Cork with her oxygen cart in tow.

Thomas Blessing stepped into the light that fell through the doorway into the living room. “I keep telling you,” he called after her, “it’s like taking water from a lake and just pouring it back in.”

Cork figured he was speaking about the checks each registered tribal member received as a share of the profits from the Chippewa Grand Casino, south of Aurora. Fanny took the money then gave it right back at the slot machines.

“What do you want me to do?” she called as she opened the door of her big white Buick, which was parked next to her son’s black Silverado. “Sit around all day listening to the preachers on television? Least at the casino I can smoke without you giving me a lot of crap for it.”

She settled her oxygen tank in the passenger seat, kicked the engine over, backed onto the road, and shot toward Aurora.

Blessing looked at Cork coldly through the screen door. “What do you want?”

“You heard about Alex and Rayette?”

“Nothing happens on the rez we don’t know about it right away.”

“What do you think?”

“I think Buck Reinhardt just bought himself a ticket to hell.”

“You think it was Reinhardt?”

“What are you doing here? What’s with all the questions?”

“You have any idea why Alex—”

“His name was Kakaik.”

“You know why he wanted to see me?”

“No.”

“He asked me to arrange a meeting with Reinhardt.”

That seemed to surprise him. “What for?”

“Said he wanted to offer Buck justice.”

“Looks like Reinhardt decided to deliver his own form of justice first.”

“You have any idea what Kingbird—sorry, Kakaik—might have been thinking of offering Reinhardt?”

“You mean besides a bullet between the eyes?”

“I’m wondering if he was thinking of turning in your cousin, Lonnie Thunder.”

“No way. He wouldn’t do that. He’d never disrespect one of the Red Boyz that way.”

“Seems to me Lonnie had already betrayed the Red Boyz. He dealt drugs here in Tamarack County. It’s my understanding none of the Red Boyz is allowed to do that.”

“Where’d you get your information?”

“It’s what I heard. I want to talk to Thunder.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve got to find him first, Tom.”

“My name is Waubishash.”

“If anybody knows where your cousin is, I figure it’s you.”

“Even if I did, why would I tell you?”

“Because it would be in his best interest to talk to me.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

“I think a good case could be made that he killed Rayette and Alex.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Is it? What if he was afraid Alex was going to turn him over to the sheriff?”

“I already told you Alex wouldn’t do that.”

“You mean Kakaik.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll make a deal with you. Tell Lonnie I want to talk to him. He can arrange it anywhere, anytime he likes, in any way he thinks will make it safe for him. If he’s able to convince me that he had nothing to do with killing the Kingbirds, I’ll stop dogging him. Otherwise, I’ll find him on my own and drag his sorry ass to the sheriff myself.”

“I’d love to see you try that, old man.”

Cork held him with his gaze. “I’m thinking that now Kingbird’s gone, the Red Boyz are going to look to you for leadership. Believe me, Tom, I wish you luck. Talk to your cousin and have him call me. Or call me yourself.” He held out a business card. Blessing made no move to open the screen door and accept it, so Cork slid it into the crack between the edge of the door and the frame. “If I don’t hear from one of you by the end of the day, I start hunting Thunder.”

Cork turned around and headed toward his Bronco. At his back Blessing called, “You come onto the rez, maybe it’s you who gets hunted.”

Cork kept walking.

W
ill returned in the late afternoon. Lucinda had finally been able to get the baby to nap, and when her husband came in the front door, she put her finger to her lips.

“She’s sleeping,” she whispered and waved him to the kitchen.

He looked dumbfounded at the plates and pans of food that filled the counters—casseroles, salads, breads, desserts.

“What’s all this?”

“People have been bringing things all afternoon so I don’t have to worry about cooking. It’s been kind of them, but it’s also been hard to get the baby quieted.”

He sat at the table while she made coffee. The whole while he stared at the window above the sink and said nothing.

She’d been numb all day, focused both on the baby, who’d cried most of the time, and on being cordial to the good-hearted people who dropped by with food. She thought the grieving would come when she wasn’t so busy, so tired, and when she was alone. The grieving for Rayette anyway. The grieving for her boy Alejandro had been done long ago. The man who called himself Kakaik—what a horrid sound, like a hungry bird—she didn’t really know. In so many ways, he had become like his father: a stranger to her. Who knew what was in their heads or in their hearts? Frightening, if you thought about it too much, that you could live with a man for twenty-six years and not truly know him. Was she alone in this?

“They’ll release the bodies tomorrow,” Will said when she brought his coffee. “I talked to Nelson at the funeral home. He’ll take care of things. The visitation will be Tuesday evening. The service will be on Wednesday.”

“Thank you for taking care of things,” she said.

He sipped his coffee and stared out the window.

Rayette had told her that Alejandro was a warm, loving man but that she didn’t always know what was going on with him. He would sit for long periods and stare, and where his mind was he wouldn’t share with her. Rayette suspected that in those times he was somewhere in the past, because often he would clench his teeth and his jaw would go rigid. He didn’t talk about the past, she said, except in generalities, and she thought there were a lot of things that had hurt him. Lucinda knew what some of those things were. There had always been tension between Alejandro and Will, often open hostility. Will said it was natural. Sons always challenged their fathers, and it was a father’s duty to prepare his son for the challenges of life. If that was true, then Will was perfect for the job. He was a hard man, a hard father.

“Where’s Ulysses?” Will asked.

She began to wipe the counter. “He left a while ago. He took his guitar. You know how he is. He needed to get away by himself and play his music and think.”

“I wanted to talk to him.”

Good,
she thought, with a brief sense of hope.
Uly needs to talk.

“He left the damn garage door open again,” Will said.

She turned and glared at her husband. “Did you love him?” The words came out before she’d even thought them; if she’d thought first, she might not have spoken. She stared into his eyes, those dark Ojibwe windows that he never let her see through.

“What?”

“Did you love Alejandro?”

“He was my son.”

“You barely spoke to him in the last two years.”

“We said what needed saying. We understood each other.”

“Do you think he loved you?”

“He respected me. That’s more important. Why talk about this now, today?”

Yes, why? The worst possible time to talk about what could not be changed.

But she pressed on. “He came to me once when he was twelve. It was when you were stationed at Lejeune. He asked me, ‘Mama, does God love me?’ And I said of course he loves you. And he asked, ‘Does God love Uly?’ And I said yes, very much. And he asked, ‘Does God love Papa?’ And I said God loves everybody. And he looked at me with such disappointment in his young eyes and he said, ‘Then it doesn’t mean anything, does it.’ And he walked away.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. He never brought it up again.”

“Why would you think of that now?”

“It’s not just now. I’ve thought about it from time to time. I always intended to ask him someday what he meant. Now it’s too late.” She hadn’t looked away from his face. She almost never focused on him this way. It made him uncomfortable to be watched. “Will, who killed them?”

“Who do you think? Buck Reinhardt, that’s who.”

“What do we do?”

“We wait to see what the sheriff does.”

“And then?”

He got up and rinsed his cup at the sink. “I’m hungry, Luci.”

He was finished talking about this. She knew that no matter what she said now, the discussion was over.

“Come back and sit down,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll fix you something.”

He kept his back to her. “You’ll eat, too?”

She took his cup and put it in the dishwasher. “It’s not good to eat alone,” she said and turned her mind to the meal.

I
n addition to being the elected tribal chairman of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, George LeDuc was a successful businessman. He ran the general store in Allouette, the larger of the two communities on the rez. He was in his early seventies, a bear of a man with hair gone gray, but still plenty of vigor in him, enough to have fathered, a couple of years earlier, a daughter of whom he was magnificently proud.

His wife, Sarah, was half his age and had plenty of energy herself. She’d convinced LeDuc to have an addition built onto the store, and she’d put in a little coffee shop she called the Moose Mocha. It had done well, become a gathering place for folks on the rez and also for whites using the new marina and boat-launch facility that the tribe had built at the edge of town, on Iron Lake.

The store was closed on Sundays, but the Moose Mocha was open and doing a good business when Cork walked in. Sarah was behind the counter, steaming milk for a latte. Sarah’s sister Gloria was at the register. LeDuc was nowhere in sight.

Cork approached the counter. “
Boozhoo,
Sarah. George around?”

She peeked from behind the big stainless-steel coffee machine and smiled. “In back, taking out the garbage.” She had to speak loudly, above the hiss of the steam. When the sound stopped, she said more quietly and with great concern, “We heard about Alex and Rayette. It’s all anybody’s talking about. What a tragedy.” She carefully poured the steamed milk into a cup containing espresso. “We heard you were out there, too.”

“For a little while,” Cork said.

She paused in spooning foam onto the surface of the drink and her face contorted, as if she was in pain. “Shot in the back, we heard, like it was a hit or something. Is that true?”

“It appears that way.”

She was a plain woman but her dark eyes were beautiful and when she was happy there was a sparkle to them, as if they were full of stars. It was her eyes, LeDuc often said, that had won him over. They didn’t sparkle now. “Drugs?” she asked.

“That’s one of the possibilities.”

LeDuc came in from the back. “Cork! Thought I heard your voice.”

Sarah handed the latte to her sister and turned to her husband. “He says it’s true, George.”

“What’s true?”

“About the Kingbirds. Shot in the back.”

LeDuc’s face showed all the emotion of a sandstone wall. “I’ve called a council meeting for tomorrow.”

“Got a few minutes free, George?” Cork said.

“Okay?” he asked his wife.

“Go on,” she said.

They stepped outside into the warm late afternoon. Across the street stood the new community center where the tribal council met. It also housed a free clinic, a number of the reservation business offices, a gymnasium, and a recreation room. LeDuc said, “I’m listening.”

“George, I’m looking for Lonnie Thunder.”

“I haven’t heard anything. Talked to his father a couple of days ago. Ike says he hasn’t seen Lonnie in a while, but that’s not unusual. He’s probably hiding. Hell, Buck Reinhardt’s running around loose out there. I was Lonnie Thunder, I’d hide.” He looked past Cork, at Iron Lake, which was visible through a stand of oaks, its surface satin blue. “Think it was Reinhardt killed the Kingbirds?”

“If I was sheriff, he’d be at the top of my list. But I’m thinking there are other possibilities.”

“Some folks around here are saying it was because of drugs.”

“Maybe. I’d like to talk to Lonnie Thunder about the shootings.”

“Why Thunder?”

“I spoke with Kingbird last night. He wanted me to arrange a meeting with him and Reinhardt.”

“Kingbird and Reinhardt? I’d like to’ve had a ringside seat for that. What was he thinking a meeting would accomplish?”

“He told me he was going to offer Buck justice.”

LeDuc chewed on that. “Any idea what he meant?”

“It might be that he was considering giving Thunder over to the sheriff.”

“And Thunder got wind of it and killed him and Rayette?” He didn’t look convinced.

“Maybe he didn’t start out thinking he’d kill Kingbird, it just ended up that way. Things got out of hand.”

“Maybe. Nobody ever accused Lonnie Thunder of having any sense.” The lines around LeDuc’s eyes went deep and he was quiet. “I was Kingbird, I’d have given Thunder over without a second thought. Everybody on the rez knows about those videos, knows what he was up to with those young girls. Any of us got our hands on him, believe me, we’d deliver a little Ojibwe justice before we turned him in.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand him protecting Thunder. Kingbird was smart. There was a lot to admire about him. A few weeks ago he came into the store. We talked for a good hour. I challenged him on the whole drug thing, told him the Red Boyz were a blight on the Anishinaabe name. Accused him and his gang of preying on the weakness of others. Know what he said? Said the Chippewa Grand Casino did the same thing, just had the power of law behind it, and law didn’t make a thing right. Had himself a point there, I suppose. This was before anybody knew what Lonnie Thunder had been up to with those young Shinnob girls. Kingbird got pretty quiet after that. You know he’d been seeing Henry Meloux?”

Meloux was a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society, a healer of the body and spirit. He was god-awful old and lived by himself in an isolated cabin far north on the rez. He was also a man Cork respected and loved above all others.

“I had no idea,” Cork said.

“You want to know the truth, once you got past all the things you think about gangs, Alex Kingbird had a lot to recommend him. Shame he wasted it on the Red Boyz and the likes of Lonnie Thunder.”