Boundary waters

29

A little over two hours along the Little Moose, Stormy and Louis came alongside Cork in their canoe.

“Louis says we’ve got to put in.”

“What’s up?” Cork asked.

“Bad stretch of river around that next bend.”

“That’s where Uncle Wendell always stopped.”

Louis pointed ahead to a break in the pines on the eastern bank.

Cork gave Sloane and Raye an exaggerated hand signal to follow and headed for the landing.

“We take a break here,” Sloane called out to him.

They lifted the canoes from the water and tipped them onto the wet bed of pine needles that covered the landing. The ground was spongy and ringed with lady’s slippers long past blooming. Cork sat on a fallen pine and pulled the water bottle from his pack.

“Everyone should drink,” he cautioned. “In weather like this, it’s easy to ignore your thirst and get dehydrated.”

Sloane looked beat. He sat with his back against the trunk of a red pine and eyed the sky miserably. Drizzle wetted his face. A couple of white flakes drifted down, then vanished on his skin.

“This weather,” he said, as if he were cursing.

“Where are you from?” Cork asked.

Sloane closed his eyes and didn’t answer.

“Come on,” Cork said. “That can’t be classified.”

Sloane’s eyes opened slowly. “California,” he finally said.

“The Golden State,” Louis said.

“That’s right, son.”

“Are you from Hollywood?” Louis asked.

Sloane smiled briefly. “‘Fraid not. Grew up in a place called Watts.”

“Have you ever been to Disneyland?”

Sloane seemed to think about not answering. “Used to take my girls a lot when they were about your age. Ever been there?”

“No,” Louis said.

“Someday, maybe,” Sloane offered hopefully.

“How long’s this portage?” Raye looked at the trail that climbed a slope steeper than anything they’d encountered so far.

“I’m not sure,” Cork said. “It’s been years since I’ve been this way. Louis?”

“Me and Uncle Wendell always made it in about half an hour,” Louis said. “It’s not far, but it’s kind of hard because it’s high and rocky. We always stopped here to rest and look at the moccasin flowers.”

Raye gave him a puzzled look. “Moccasin flowers?”

“Lady’s slippers,” Stormy told him. He pointed at the plants around the edge of the clearing. “Some people think the blossoms look like Indian moccasins.”

“It’s hard to believe anyone would do this for pleasure.” Sloane spoke mostly to himself and shook his head wearily.

“Where the river ends is a big lake. She’s near there,” Louis told him.

“We ought to get going,” Cork said. “Once we’re back on the river it should be only an hour or so to Wilderness. That’s Louis’s big lake.”

The sound of a small plane came from the gray downriver. It passed near them but was hidden by the overcast. Cork knew it was a yellow De Havilland Beaver, a float plane belonging to the U.S. Forest Service.

“Think they’re looking for us?” Raye asked.

“No,” Cork said. “They’re too high. They always stay above four thousand feet unless they’re on a search-and-rescue. Even if they were looking for us, they’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of spotting us in this weather.”

Sloane heaved a sigh and pushed himself up.

“You doing all right?” Cork asked.

“Fine, O’Connor,” Sloane said. “Just fine. You worry about yourself.” He considered the trail ahead of them. “This is how it’s going to be. O’Connor, you first, then Two Knives, then Raye. You’ll have the canoes. Then you, Louis. I’ll bring up the rear. O’Connor, you and Two Knives carry a pack. Louis, you take one. I’ll haul the last one. We’ll need only a single portage that way.”

“You’ll be carrying a lot of weight,” Cork pointed out.

“Like I told you, O’Connor, just worry about yourself.”

Sloane hefted his pack onto his back, then had Louis help him sling the additional pack that carried food and cooking utensils across his chest. Cork could see the strain the weight put on him, but it was the man’s choice. The others slipped into their own packs and shouldered the yokes of their canoes. They started upward along the trail in the arrangement Sloane had dictated. The going was slow not only because the slope was tough, but the ground was mostly rock and the drizzle that wetted everything made the footing slippery. The woods were quiet. Cork could hear the occasional grunt of the others behind him as they struggled to keep from slipping or stumbling. He could hear the water of the Little Moose, out of sight now, as it became an unnavigable rush compressed between rock walls and split by a scattering of sharp-edged boulders. In the cold air wetted with mist, the smell of the pines all around them seemed especially strong.

As he climbed, Cork found himself thinking about the lady’s slippers. They reminded him of another trip in the Boundary Waters, long ago-the last time he’d ever spoken in an important way with Marais Grand.

At the end of every summer, when Cork was in his teens, the St. Agnes CYC made a canoe trip into the Boundary Waters. It was always eight or ten teenagers accompanied by two or three adults. Cork’s first year on the outing was Marais’s last. He’d just turned fifteen. Marais had just graduated from Aurora High. There were four other boys on the trip that year, all older than Cork. They’d argued among themselves who would be Marais’s canoe partner. She’d settled it herself by choosing Cork. Marais asked him to take the stern, and he felt honored. His position allowed him to watch her constantly. In the heat of the afternoon, she often took off her shirt and paddled in her tank top. Her hair was black and long. Her skin was like finely polished walnut. Cork became fascinated with the curve of her shoulder blades, outlined at every stroke, as the bone captured and channeled her hair. Sometimes she sang while they canoed, leading the others in familiar songs or singing her own compositions. Every day, Cork fell more in love.

The last night of the trip that year was beautiful. They camped at a site on a point of land jutting into Lake Saganaga, less than a day’s paddle from the Gunflint Trail that would take them home. The sky was cloudless, the stars brighter than Cork could ever remember. Long after dark, the moon rose, full. All the stars around it vanished as if the moon were a bucket that had scooped them up, filling itself to overflowing with their silver light. The hour became late. They doused the campfire and all turned in. Cork lay awake a long time listening to his tent partner, a boy named Duane Helgeson who was plagued by enlarged adenoids, snort in his sleep like a rutting bull moose. In a moment of rare dead quiet, Cork heard the rustle of a tent flap and the step of someone leaving camp. He peeked out and saw by the moonlight that it was Marais.

He followed along a path that cut through a stand of poplars to the other side of the point. Where the path broke from the trees, lady’s slippers grew in great profusion. He crouched among the flowers watching Marais as she sat down on a big rock at the water’s edge. Her head dipped foward a moment. Her face flashed in the glow of a match. She began smoking a cigarette.

Beyond Marais, the moonlight turned the water to silver and silhouetted her perfectly. She sat back, exhaled smoke. To Cork it was like watching the shadow of her soul pass from her lips. He’d never wanted anything so much as he wanted Marais to love him. He knew he should go back, but he couldn’t bring himself to move that way. Instead, to his own surprise, he stepped forward.

She didn’t seem angry that he’d disturbed her solitude.

“ Anin, Nishiime,” she greeted him. She looked up at him briefly, then back at the water.

Cork sat down. Not too near.

“Smoke?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She took a pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket and handed it to him. He pulled out a cigarette, gave the pack back. He struck the match she handed him and lit up. Cork had never smoked before. He tried to take a big drag into his lungs but ended up having a coughing fit. He was afraid he’d made a fool of himself, but Marais said nothing. Her feet were bare. She dangled them in the water, making the moonlight bounce around her ankles.

A loon called from somewhere out on the lake.

“Hear that?” she asked. “No other bird sounds the same. That’s what I want my music to be like. When someone hears it, I want them to understand that no one else but me could have made it.”

“I love your music,” he said.

“I want to tell stories with my songs. Did you know that some people believe Homer was a woman? And that the Iliad and the Odyssey were meant to be told accompanied by music?”

He shook his head in the dark, then tried another small puff from his cigarette.

“They’re Players,” she said.

“What?” Cork asked.

“The cigarettes. They’re Players. British. I have a friend who gets them for me.”

What friend? Cork wondered jealously.

She was quiet for a long time then. Cork wasn’t sure if he should say something, but the truth was that he was happy enough just being alone with her.

“I’m trying to take it all in,” she told him. “As much of it as I can. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.”

“Sure you will,” he said. Then, “Where will you go?”

She turned her face to the part of the sky that hadn’t been swallowed by moonlight. “Where I can’t see the stars, I expect.”

“I’ll be leaving someday, too,” Cork said.

She laughed, gently. “Don’t you like it here?”

He did. He liked it a lot. But if getting out was what Marais thought was important, then it seemed like a good idea to him, too.

“I’m not leaving because I don’t like this place.”

He held the cigarette between his fingers, but he didn’t want to smoke it anymore. “Why are you leaving, then?”

“Do you know what destiny is?”

“Sure. I guess.”

“That’s why I’m leaving. Destiny, Nishiime. Mine’s out there. I’ve always known it. There’s something waiting for me, something great, and I’m going to find it.”

“You’ll be famous, Marais. I know you will.”

“Do you really think so?” She finished her cigarette and flicked it out into the water. “I think so, too.”

She leaned to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Go back now,” she said.

“Why?” He was confused by the kiss and by being pushed away so suddenly after.

“I want to be alone. Go on.”

He crushed out the ember of his cigarette on the rock. He didn’t want to leave it there, or to dirty the lake with it, so he put it in his pocket.

He was pulled back suddenly from the remembrance by the smell of smoke. Not like the smoke of the cigarette Marais had given him, nor campfire smoke, as he would have expected in that place. Another smell, faint and so different from a campfire that it was like an alarm. Cigar smoke. He reacted quickly, tilting the weight of the canoe onto his left hand, freeing his right hand to reach back to his pack, groping for the. 38. At the same moment, he heard Sloane grunt behind him and Louis let out a squawk.

Cork heaved the canoe off his shoulders to the side of the trail. He spun and saw that Stormy had done the same. Behind them, beyond Arkansas Willie Raye, who still carried his canoe, they saw Sloane down, flailing his arms and legs like a beetle on its back. A few feet beyond him, Louis hung like a puppy in the grip of a giant dressed in military camouflage. The man stood at least six and a half feet tall, weighing a good two hundred and seventy pounds, all of it lean. His head had been shaved like Mr. Clean, and like most men with shaved heads, his ears seemed too large. His free hand held a pistol-a. 45 Colt military issue, Cork figured. Mr. Clean was grinning around the last two inches of a lit cigar.

“Put all the canoes down,” he ordered. “Let me see your faces.”

Willie Raye complied, carefully unburdened himself of the canoe, and turned to the man.

“That’s good,” Mr. Clean said. He set Louis down, but he kept the muzzle of his gun against the back of the boy’s head.

“Help me up.” Sloane held out a hand to Willie Raye. When he was back on his feet, he glared at Mr. Clean. “Who the hell are you? And what do you want?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter who I am. And as for what I want, well, I’ve got that.”

The woman, Cork thought. Shit. His. 38 was in his pack, on top, just under the flap. He’d put it there-a mistake, he now knew-because he hadn’t brought his holster and had no easy way to carry it and had convinced himself that this kind of ambush wouldn’t happen until they’d located Shiloh. Now there was no way he could get to it before Mr. Clean put a bullet through Louis, and probably the rest of them as well.

“Louis?” Sloane asked, confused.

Mr. Clean rolled his eyes. “Shiloh, you dumb fuck.”

“Who sent you?”

“Jesus. You guys. I swear, after I kill you, you’ll be grilling Satan about whether he’s got a license for his fucking pitchfork.”

“You hurt my son, I’ll rip you apart,” Stormy said.

“You make a move in this direction, Chief, and I’ll blow his head off. Then yours.”

Between Cork and Mr. Clean stood Stormy, Raye, Sloane, and Louis. Cork thought desperately that if he could get behind them for just a moment, out of sight, he might be able to reach into his pack for the . 38. He began to ease himself behind Stormy.

“Hey, burger man. Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“Just going to drop my pack, that’s all. Getting heavy.”

“Won’t be heavy much longer.” Mr. Clean grinned.

“What do you want with the woman?” Sloane asked.

“Business. This is all just business.” Mr. Clean shrugged off a rifle that had been slung over his shoulder and set it against a stump at the edge of the trail.

“That rifle,” Sloane said. “You got that rifle from Grimes. It was you.”

“No shit, Sherlock. First time I ever killed a man with an ax. I kind of liked it.”

“How’d you track us?” Cork asked. He was interested, but mostly he wanted to keep the man talking while he tried to figure something that might stop what he knew was about to happen.

“Training, burger man. It’s all in what you learn.”

“Where’s Shiloh?” Raye asked.

“Right where we want her.” Mr. Clean grew suddenly sober. “I think we’ve talked enough.”

Cork knew that was it. No matter what they did, they couldn’t sidestep it. He felt responsible. He felt sorry for young Louis.

Then the boy’s eyes shifted toward the woods. At the edge of his own vision, Cork saw what had drawn Louis’s attention. A blur of gray.

Mr. Clean saw it, too. Startled, he swung his weapon in that direction for an instant. Sloane leaped on the opportunity, grabbed the boy, and shoved him back into the arms of Willie Raye. He put himself squarely between Mr. Clean and the others. The barrel leveled on him; the next shot sent him staggering back. He fell in a heap, rolled over, and lay still, wedged between the big packs strapped front and back on him. Sloane’s sacrifice gave Stormy just enough time to catapult himself at the giant in camouflage fatigues. Stormy wrapped his powerful lumberjack’s hands around the wrist of the huge arm that held the gun and forced it skyward. Another round exploded from the Colt and tunneled into the low clouds above them. Stormy was more than a head shorter and a good seventy pounds lighter than the other man, but the force of his body and the added weight of the pack propelled them both backward. For a moment, it looked as if Stormy had him. Then Mr. Clean delivered a deft knife-hand strike to Stormy’s neck, a powerfully calculated blow that buckled Two Knives.

Cork was there to take his place. A running head butt threw the big man back a couple of steps so that he stumbled over the top of a big gray rock slab jutting from the ground. Cork leaped on him. He drew back for a right cross to the big man’s jaw, but the pack on his back slowed him. Mr. Clean hit first. The blow caught Cork just behind the ear, boomed into him hard as a cannonball. Cork tumbled off. He tried to stand, but the toe of a boot caught him brutally in the diaphragm and knocked the breath right out of him.

Gasping for air, he saw Stormy fly at Mr. Clean again. Stormy grasped the big man from behind in a powerful bear hug and lifted him off the ground. He was about to do a body slam when Mr. Clean’s arm shot back, hard as the piston on a steam engine, and his elbow rammed Stormy’s nose. Stunned and bleeding, Stormy struggled to hold on, but Mr. Clean broke loose. He delivered a kick to Stormy’s solar plexus that lifted Stormy off his feet.

Cork staggered up, too slowly. Mr. Clean had Stormy’s head pulled back, throat exposed. In his right hand he brandished a large hunting knife.

“Time to fucking end this,” he growled. His hand flicked toward Stormy’s throat.

The blade never touched Stormy. Three shots popped in quick succession. The camouflage jacket Mr. Clean wore exploded in a spray of fabric and blood. The man folded like an empty flour sack.

In the profound quiet of the moment after, in the moment when there was nothing he could do but catch his breath, Cork heard the splash and tumble of the Little Moose just out of sight, the small whimper of Louis still caught up in Willie Raye’s arms, the gasp of the man on the ground as he curled around his pain, and the disbelieving whisper of Sloane, who’d managed to shuck his packs and stood frozen with the gun in his hand. “Jesus. Sweet Jesus.”

Stormy drew himself up. Louis ran to him and threw his arms around his father. Stormy wrapped his boy in a hug. Blood ran in a thick stream from his nose and reddened his upper teeth. He looked at Sloane, and said, “Thanks.”

Sloane wobbled, then sat down hard and sudden.

Cork moved to him as quickly as his own hurting body would let him. “Are you hit?”

“I don’t know.” Sloane stared down at his chest, then put a hand under his coat and felt around. “No blood.” He looked at Cork, his face an ashen color.

“How could that be?”

Arkansas Willie Raye knelt at the packs Sloane had carried. “Are you a religious man?”

“Why?”

“Cuz lookee here.” Raye reached into a pack that had a bullet hole through it dead center. He hauled out the shattered pieces of a heavy cast-iron skillet and a sack that leaked flour from what looked like a big worm hole bored in one side. Raye stuck a couple of fingers into the hole, fished around, and brought out a flattened slug.

“Something-” Sloane looked toward the woods.

“Something drew his fire.”

Louis turned in his father’s arms. “Ma’iingan.”

“Wolf?” Sloane asked.

“I saw it, too,” Cork said.

A sound leaked from the man on the ground. Not words, but an attempt maybe. He rolled to his back and held his side. His hands were bloody as butchered meat.

“Stormy, take Louis down the trail,” Cork said.

“Why don’t you clean up your face and see what’s broken and wait for us there.”

The father and the boy picked up their gear. Stormy shouldered a canoe, and they moved on.

Sloane knelt next to the man on the ground. He examined the wounds, then shook his head at Cork.

“From the way he’s bleeding, I’d guess I hit an artery.”

“There’s nothing we can do.” Cork glanced at Willie Raye, who stood nearby, staring down at the dying man. “Why don’t you head along with Stormy and Louis.”

“No. If he knows something about Shiloh, I want to know what it is.”

“I don’t think he’ll be saying much.” Sloane sat down on the wet ground. The man beside him stared up at the sky.

“Can he hear us?” Raye asked.

“I don’t know what he can hear.”

“Ask him about Shiloh.”

Sloane leaned to the man and said, “Do you know where Shiloh is?”

The eyes-blue-white, like snow at first light, Cork thought-rolled slowly in Sloane’s direction. Sloane bent very near and listened.

“What did he say?” Raye asked.

“He told you to fuck yourself.”

The dying man’s face contorted and his body tensed, then relaxed.

“Is he dead?” Raye asked.

Sloane felt the carotid artery. “Not yet.”

Cork knelt beside the man and checked his pockets.

“No identification. Nothing.” He sat down heavily and tenderly felt himself where he’d been kicked. Nothing seemed broken. “This could take a while,” he said to Sloane.

In his hand, Sloane still held the gun. He looked at it, appraising it from several angles as if it were an instrument he didn’t understand at all. “A cop for thirty years and I never shot anyone till now.”

“He was going to kill us,” Cork said.

Sloane put down the gun. “Christ, I could use a cigarette.”

“Me, too,” Cork said.

Sloane grew quiet, studied the close, gray clouds.

Cork looked down the trail in the direction from which they’d just come. He thought about the ambush.

“Why didn’t he just shoot us?” he asked.

“What?” Sloane seemed pulled back from a far place.

“He was going to kill us, that was obvious. Why didn’t he just shoot us while we had our hands full of the canoes? He could have done it in a few seconds.”

Sloane thought about it. “Maybe he likes people to be afraid before they die. I’ve profiled killers like that.”

“They’ve got Shiloh,” Willie Raye broke in, pleading. “This man’s gonna die anyway. You said there ain’t a thing we can do ’bout that. We should move on. We should move on now.”

“He’s right,” Cork said.

“I don’t feel right about it,” Sloane said. “I wouldn’t leave a wounded animal to die like this.”

“You could shoot him again,” Arkansas Willie suggested.

Cork and Sloane both looked at him.

“It’s what you do with a wounded animal,” Raye said. “It’s that or leave him. Hell, my girl’s still out there. And if what he said is true, if they got her, then we need to find her fast. We can’t wait around for this man to take his time in dying.”

Cork said quietly to Sloane, “We’ve got a chance of saving Shiloh. We should do everything we can for the living.”

“I’m not going to shoot him again.” Sloane took a sweater from his pack, rolled it, and put it under the dying man’s head as a pillow. “I don’t suppose it’ll make much difference.” He put his gun away and lifted the scoped rifle that had been taken from Grimes.

Shouldering their loads, they burdened themselves again and moved out along the portage, leaving one more man to mark with death their passage through that wilderness.