Vermilion Drift

FORTY-SEVEN

The old man touched his shoulder, and Cork came out of the dream to the wet heat of the sweat lodge on Iron Lake. He was tired beyond measure.

“I want to go on,” he said to Meloux.

“First, we refresh. We cool ourselves in the lake.” Meloux called to Rainy, who drew back the cover of the opening.

Sunlight cracked the dark inside the lodge, and Cork blinked at the sudden glare. He followed Meloux clockwise around the pit where the Grandfathers lay cooling. When he was outside, he saw that Rainy was standing ready with the pitchfork to remove the stones and replace them with others she’d set among the embers of the sacred fire to heat. Cork walked with Meloux to the lake and plunged in. The cold water was a slap and brought him fully awake and refreshed him.

When they came out of the water, the old man walked slowly, and Cork wondered about Meloux’s strength.

“Henry, you don’t have to go on,” he offered.

“A long time ago I guided you from an evil place. I always knew that someday I would have to guide you back. We will go together.”

They reentered the lodge. Rainy had removed the cooled stones. When the two men were seated, she brought in stones newly heated, filled the hollow in the middle of the lodge, and retreated, dropping the cover over the opening and plunging the inside of the lodge again into darkness. Cork heard the hiss of water as the old Mide sprinkled the Grandfathers. The steam rose, and Meloux began again a prayer chant, and in a few minutes Cork was overtaken again by dreaming.

He is alone in the dark of Indigo Broom’s foul little structure, and the cuffs dig into his skin.

For hours, he’s tried to pull himself loose, and his wrists bleed.

He’s scared. Oh, God, is he scared. He knows now, knows with a deep, abiding terror the fate of his cousin Fawn and Naomi Stonedeer. And unless he can somehow free himself, he knows his own fate, too.

The door opens, and early sunlight, a kind of false hope, enters the room. With it comes Mr. Windigo. He’s not alone. A woman is with him. A beautiful woman. They walk together, bringing with them the fresh scent of morning evergreen. It is the best thing he’s ever smelled.

She touches his cheek gently with long, soft fingers. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just looking, that’s all. Just looking.”

“Curiosity?”

“Yeah. That.”

“A child’s simple curiosity. How convenient.”

“He ain’t no child,” Mr. Windigo says.

Her hand drifts from his cheek, and a fingernail painted deep red traces a line down his throat, his chest, his stomach, his belt, to his crotch, which she cups in her palm. “No,” she agrees. “Not a child.”

She squeezes hard and it hurts and he cries out.

“Curiosity? Only that?” she asks calmly, not relaxing the vise grip of her hand.

“Please,” he pleads.

She releases him, but the terrible ache between his legs is unrelieved.

“Keep him,” she says. “When I’m back from Duluth tonight, we’ll see.”

“They’ll miss him.”

“They’ve missed the others. It hasn’t mattered.”

She kisses Mr. Windigo. Kisses him a long time and in a way that isn’t about love. He knows no word for what that kiss is about.

“We’ll have fun,” she says and smiles. Her lips are deep ruby and frame the ice white of her teeth like two perfect razor cuts. She turns and leaves with Mr. Windigo at her side.

He left home without sleeping. It has been a long time since he’s slept. There is a darkness before him so terrible that he can’t begin to comprehend it, and his deep weariness and his deep desire to turn away from what he can’t escape make his eyes too heavy to hold open and he sleeps.

He comes awake to the sound of something heavy thrown against the wall of the shed. In the next moment, the door flies open and sunlight blinds him. They have returned, he knows. Mr. Windigo and the woman with the razor cut lips. And he knows the business that he slept to escape can be escaped no longer.

“Jesus!”

He hears the familiar voice of Sam Winter Moon, and he cannot keep himself from crying with relief.

“You sadistic bastard.” It’s the voice of George LeDuc.

Something hits the wall again.

Sam Winter Moon lifts him, and the cuffs no longer cut into his wrists.

“Where’s the key, Broom?” demands LeDuc.

“Peg. On the wall.” Mr. Windigo sounds as if he’s being choked.

In a moment, he can feel the cuffs released, and he falls into the good, safe arms of Winter Moon.

“Bring him out.” It is the voice of Henry Meloux, calm and compassionate.

He’s carried into the light.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Meloux asks.

He shakes his head. He cannot speak, not yet. His throat is choked with gratitude.

“What about him?” LeDuc has a powerful arm around Mr. Windigo’s throat, and the evil man’s eyes look ready to pop from his head.

“Take him back inside,” Meloux instructs.

Winter Moon helps LeDuc wrestle Mr. Windigo into the shed. There are the sounds of a scuffle, of Mr. Windigo cursing, of chains rattling. Then the two men return.

“We’ve got him on the table, Henry.”

Meloux nods and looks down at him with dark, somber eyes. “We have work. It is not work you need to see.”

Finally able to speak, he says, “I’m not leaving.” He sits up. “He killed Fawn and Naomi. Him and the woman.”

Meloux asks, “You saw the woman?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know her?”

He shakes his head. “She looks pretty but she’s not. Not inside.”

“What did she say?”

“That she’d be back tonight. She’s going to Duluth.”

“He can’t stay for this, Henry,” Winter Moon says.

“I’m not leaving, Sam!”

Meloux considers. “He will stay. But he will not see.” He points toward the wall of rock that forms a backdrop to the setting of the cabin and the shed. “Up there, Corcoran O’Connor. You will wait up there. You will give us warning if you see someone coming. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Henry.”

“Good.” Meloux helps him up. “Go now.”

He makes his way to the top of the ridge, which places him fifty feet above the scene below. He can see the roof of the cabin, which is covered in black shingles and has no chimney, only a stovepipe. He can see the roof of the shed, which is cedar shake and slopes toward the rock wall where he sits. He can see the cut of the old logging road that divides the trees. And he sees his bicycle, which he’d laid beside Waagikomaan in the dark of the night before. Someone had found it, maybe the guy sleeping among the trees, and the men had come.

The cries, when they begin, startle him. Not only because of their wretchedness but because they are the only sounds in that vile part of the forest.

The cries go on and on.

At first, he doesn’t mind. He’s glad for the hurt being given Mr. Windigo.

But the longer the screams continue, the more they cut into his resolve. He wishes the sound would end. Finally, he puts his hands over his ears, but he can still hear.

And then the screams stop. Stop suddenly. But the silence that returns holds no relief. The echo of the screams goes on in his head.

The men step from the shed. They’re carrying the water hose that had hung inside. They walk to a spigot that protrudes from the side of the cabin wall, connect the hose, turn on the water, and wash their hands and arms all the way above their elbows.

Meloux climbs the wall and sits beside him.

“Mr. Windigo is dead?” he asks the Mide.

“He was a thing incomplete, Corcoran O’Connor. A thing never really alive.”

“He sure screamed like he was.”

“Pain delivers us into this world. Pain is often the way we leave. That man-no, that half-formed thing-will not feel pain or give pain ever again.”

“That’s a good thing.”

Meloux thinks on this. “It is a necessary thing.”

“Henry,” Winter Moon calls from below. “We need to talk about what now.”

“Come.”

Meloux rises, and together they descend. They join the others in front of the cabin. The men all look down at him.

“You understand, Cork, that nothing of this can ever be told,” Winter Moon says.

He knows and shows them with a serious nod.

LeDuc eyes him with uncertainty. “I don’t know, Henry.”

“We will think about that later,” the Mide advises. “Let us think about what is next.”

“His folks are worried,” Winter Moon says. “I’ll send word he’s with me and he’s fine. I’ll say that he was with me all night. A lie, but considering Liam and all, I don’t know a way around it.”

“His father needs the lie,” LeDuc says. “But tell his mother to come to Dilsey’s place. She’ll understand.”

Winter Moon asks, “What about the bodies Broom said they stuffed in the mine? We can’t just leave them there.”

“Their spirits have already walked the Path of Souls,” Meloux says. “Moving them would be a dangerous thing. Broom told us what was done to them. For those who loved them, to look now on what is left, I think that would be too hard. The earth will take the bodies back. For that, one hole is as good as another.”

“We just leave them?”

“We will honor their memory. But, yes, we will leave them.”

“That doesn’t seem right, Henry.”

“In this business, what does?”

LeDuc says, “Cork said the woman will be coming here tonight. What do we do? Just wait?”

Meloux looks at the cabin and the shed and seems to listen to the dead silence of that evil place. “We burn,” he says.