Blood Hollow

40

Follow the Blood, Meloux had said. A clever instruction? A test perhaps?

The stream flowed into Iron Lake a few hundred yards to the west. Cork quickly checked that stretch, found nothing, and turned back. For an hour, he followed the stream east, deep into the woods. The water coursed among low hills, through stands of spruce, pine, and poplar, raising a ruddy foam as it funneled between close rock walls and spilled into deep, sanguine pools.

He came at last to a long ridge of gray rock that lay before him like a wall. The stream seemed to issue from the slope itself directly out of a blackberry thicket that grew along the base of the ridge for as far as Cork could see. He walked left, then right, looking for a path through the brambles, but he saw no way. Eventually, he lowered himself into the water and began to crawl along the streambed, pushing his way among the thorns. The vines caught his clothing, snagged his hair, scratched his skin. He’d disturbed a horde of mosquitoes that added their own torment on top of the claws of the blackberry vines. The streambed was littered with sharp rocks that cut his hands as he dragged himself forward. At last, he cleared the thicket and stood up, dripping wet.

He faced a gap in the ridge where the stream had cut a narrow corridor. The breach, barely wide enough for a man to slip through, ran at an angle and twisted out of sight. Cork turned himself sideways and squeezed between the rocks, following the water. After a few minutes of slow progress, he came out on the other side of the ridge and found himself in a place he’d never been but recognized immediately.

The meadow was circular, contained within the hollow of a bowl created by a ring of granite ridges like the one through which he’d just passed. The hollow was edged with poplars and aspen and the ground was covered with meadow grass, tall and silky. Along the banks of the stream grew cattails. Not far away stood a makeshift sweat lodge, a frame of bowed willow saplings lashed together and covered with a tarp. Almost dead center in the hollow, a hundred yards from where Cork stood, a single rock rose out of the earth, a gray pinnacle far taller than a man. Seated in the grass at the base of the rock was Solemn Winter Moon.

Solemn watched Cork approach, and a crescent moon grin broke out across his dark face. “What happened to you? Meet up with a cubbing she-bear?”

“A blackberry thicket,” Cork said.

Solemn was shirtless. He wore only khaki shorts. His boots and socks sat on the ground off to one side. His long hair was uncombed, wild. It had become a net that had captured much of what traveled on the current of the breeze. Dandelion fluff, a gossamer thread spun by a spider, a yellow dusting of pollen. Solemn seemed a natural part of the place he’d come to. On the ground beside him lay the small black Bible that Mal had given him in jail.

“Mind if I rob you of your solitude?” Cork asked.

“Nothing here belongs to me. That includes the solitude. Sit down.”

The sun was almost directly overhead, but the air in the meadow felt cool. “This is where you met Him, isn’t it?”

“He walked out of the trees over there.” Solemn pointed toward the east, to a place near where the stream flowed into the hollow.

“Were you hoping He’d come again?”

Solemn smiled. “Yeah.”

“Still hoping?”

“Not anymore.”

“Lost hope?”

Solemn took a good look at Cork. “You ought to wash that blood off. Maybe have a drink while you’re at it. You look thirsty.”

“I am.”

“The creek’s clean,” Solemn said. “It’s what I drink.”

Cork got up and went to the stream. He knelt, cupped his hands, and drank. The water refreshed him.

“I’m glad you dropped out of sight,” Cork said as he cleaned his wounds. “Safer.”

“I didn’t drop out of sight. I ran. I came to Henry because I was scared.”

“Fear is a good thing sometimes. Got an angry crowd back there in Aurora.”

“I wasn’t afraid of the people who think I fooled them. I was afraid I’d fooled myself.”

“Did Henry help?”

“He led me back here. We built that sweat lodge, and Henry did what he could to bring me back to harmony. After he’d finished, he told me I wasn’t done, that I needed to stay awhile, alone. I asked him if he thought Jesus would come again. You know what he said? He said, ‘Expect nothing, because nothing is what’s going to come.’ ” Solemn laughed quietly. “That Henry. He always means exactly what he says, but it’s hard to figure sometimes.”

Cork finished at the creek and sat down beside Solemn at the rock. “Jesus didn’t come, did he?”

“Nothing came. Exactly what Henry said. But I know what he meant now. Nothing was going to come because it was already here. I had it all along. You know what it is, Cork?”

“No.”

“That’s interesting because the last time you visited me at Sam’s cabin you told me exactly what it is. Certainty. I knew God. Or Kitchimanidoo, or whatever name we give to the spirit that binds all things together. I knew. And after that nothing else mattered. Not the old anger, the old hurts. Not yesterday or tomorrow. I didn’t have to think about it, try to understand it. I just knew. It doesn’t matter whether Jesus walked out of those trees or if I dreamed Him. What I received was a true thing. I know that God is.”

He smiled up at the sky, and his face glowed as if he’d swallowed the sun. He looked at Cork and saw the doubt there.

“You’re thinking, why him? Why Solemn Winter Moon? I wondered the same thing. I traveled a hard, dark road, but what I was given didn’t come because of that journey. It wasn’t something I earned from suffering. It was a gift, a blessing like the rain. I wish everyone could know that.” He reached out and put his hand over Cork’s heart. “I wish you could.”

A breeze came up and stirred the grass in the meadow. Solemn removed his hand, and for a moment, Cork felt as if he were going to fall apart, as if all that had held him together was Solemn’s touch.

“You came a long way to find me,” Solemn said.

“To warn you.” Cork told him about Fletcher Kane. Everything he now knew.

Solemn nodded. “There’s a man’s been walking a hard, dark road, himself.”

“For a while, you need to stay here or with Meloux, until we’ve figured a way to deal with Kane.”

“Why are you so afraid for me?”

“I just told you.”

“I guess I mean why are you so afraid of me dying?” He opened his arms toward the hollow. “Don’t you feel it here? The source? We come from a great heart, Cork. The heart of Kitchimanidoo, the heart of God. And we just go back into that heart. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“When you’re looking down the barrel of a shotgun, Solemn, it’s hard to hold to that philosophy. Believe me, I know.”

“Maybe you should stay here awhile.”

“I’ve done what I came for. I just hope it’s done some good.”

“I hadn’t thought about leaving.”

“Good.”

“Thank you, Cork. Thanks for everything.”

Cork stood to leave. He looked down at Solemn. “I wish Sam could see you now.”

“Who says he can’t?” Solemn pointed toward a thick stand of poplar at the base of the western ridge. “A couple of hundred yards south of the creek. See that break in the trees? There’s a path over the ridge. Unless you have a hankering for another go at the blackberry thicket.”

“Once is enough,” Cork said.

Cork found the trail through the trees. As he topped the ridge, he looked back. Solemn hadn’t moved. Nor would he. The place he’d come to was as good as any man could hope for, and far better than most would ever know.