Blood is the Sky

Chapter Twenty-One

When I woke up, it was snowing. It was a light October flurry, nothing to get the snowplow out for. The clock said 12:34. I did the math and figured I’d been sleeping for about fourteen hours. It didn’t feel like nearly enough.

My feet hurt when I put them on the cold floor. But I could walk a little better. I wasn’t ready for the decathlon, but at least I could start getting around again. I took a long hot shower, shaved six days of beard off my face, and got myself dressed. I put on clean white socks and very carefully stepped into a pair of old shoes.

As I fired up the truck, it felt strange not having Vinnie sitting there next to me. When I drove down my road, I noticed that his truck was gone. He must have been over at his mother’s house. For a second I thought I should go over there myself, but then something told me I should leave them alone for one day, at least. I hoped it wasn’t just me being afraid to face Mrs. LeBlanc.

I went down to the Glasgow Inn. Jackie looked me over like I was the walking dead and made me a cheese omelet with five eggs. He served it to me with a cold Canadian as I put my feet up by the fire. If he had asked me for everything I owned, I would have given it to him right then.

“I’ve already heard the basics,” he said as he sat down next to me. “Hell, it was on the front page of the Soo Evening News. Are you gonna tell me the rest?”

I spent the next hour going through the whole story for him. It felt good to tell him, like maybe I was almost ready to let go of it. Almost. When I was done, he got me another Canadian and I fell asleep in front of the fire.

When I went back home, I still didn’t see Vinnie’s truck in his driveway, but there was a note from him pinned on my door. “Service for Tom,” it read. “1:00 tomorrow. See you there.”

I drove down to the end of my road. The blue tarp was still tied tight over the walls we had started. The center post we had stuck in there was doing its job, letting the light snowfall glide off to the ground.

I can’t believe it, I said to myself. I actually started building this cabin. In October. That’s how crazy I was.

I checked the other cabins on my way back. Two were still occupied, the other two empty. In both cases, the men had left while I was up in Canada. And in both cases, the cabins were spotless and money had been left in envelopes. Bow hunters, I thought. God bless them.

There was a message on my machine when I got back to my cabin. The two men from the FBI were checking up on me, wanted to make sure I was back in the country. I called the number they left, and told them I was here in Michigan and not planning on going anywhere. That seemed to satisfy them for the time being. They knew where to find me if they had any more questions. I tried to ask the man a few questions of my own. He told me they were working hard on the case but didn’t have anything to say about it yet.

I went back down to the Glasgow for dinner that evening. I ate sitting by the fire again, and as I sat there feeling a hell of a lot better than the day before, I couldn’t help thinking about it. Again. Five men dead, a vehicle moved several miles. Somebody else had to help Gannon do this. But who?

And those men from last night, the big man, Jay, and Red’s brother-what was his name? I replayed the whole scene in my mind. Dal, he called him-the man with the look in his eyes like he’d be capable of anything. And the way they were talking. I tried to remember it, word for word.

What?

You know.

No, man. Are you serious?

These men knew something. At least they had an idea. If anyone could lead us to the answers, it was these two men.

So rest up, Vinnie. We’ve got some work to do.

I went to bed early that night, and slept in again the next morning. I almost felt human. I was able to put shoes on my feet without incident, and I could even walk around a little bit without feeling like I was ninety years old. I put on my old black suit, spent a few minutes tying my tie, and then drove down past Vinnie’s house. He wasn’t there, so I headed over to the reservation. There were a lot of cars at the Cultural Center, so I knew I was in the right place.

When I went inside, I saw that everyone had gathered in the main hall. There had to be two hundred people there. They were all dressed nicely, but nobody was in black. The room itself was simple, with a high ceiling and drawings of animals and mountains and trees, along with the Bay Mills crest of four feathers. A great fireplace stood in the center of the room. The fire was going strong, and the sweet smell of burning tobacco hung in the air.

Vinnie came to me and took my right hand. His face was still taped up. “Alex,” he said. “You look a lot better.”

“So do you,” I said, although it felt like a lie. He still looked totally worn out, even worse now than before, like something had been taken from inside him.

He took me to his mother, the moment I had been dreading all along. But she took my face in both hands and kissed me. “Thank you,” she said. Her face was red with grief. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

I didn’t have any words for her. I took her hands and held them.

“You’re my son now,” she said. “I hope you know that. You are my son.”

I shook hands with the rest of Vinnie’s family, losing count around thirty. I couldn’t help noticing there was no coffin in the room, and then it hit me. Tom’s body was probably still up in Canada, in some forensics lab. I wondered how they could be having his funeral without him. Then I found out. A traditional Ojibwa funeral lasts for days. You go, you spend time with the family, you offer tobacco in the fireplace, you eat, you go home. And then you come back the next day.

A man stood up to speak. The room went silent as he talked about the Path of Life, and what a man must do to live in peace, and how when a man’s time on this earth is over, he must follow the setting sun to the west, crossing over the Path of Souls to the Land of Souls. It made me think of Mrs. LeBlanc and what she had said about Tom’s Ojibwa name-how being named for the western sky was a bad omen. It turned out she was right.

I ate with the family, sitting at the long table with cousins and aunts and uncles all around me. I wondered if me being there was painful for them. It must have made them think about what had happened to Tom. The flames burned in the fireplace as we sat there together.

After the dinner I said goodbye to Vinnie and his family. Vinnie followed me outside into the cold night air and stood there breathing it in with me. “I appreciate you coming,” he said.

“Least I could do, Vinnie.”

“You don’t have to spend the whole time over here, but I’m sure my mother would appreciate it if you stopped by again.”

“I will,” I said. “And we’ve got some other things to talk about.”

He looked at me. “I can’t even think right now, Alex. Give me some time, okay?”

“Okay.” Then I said good night and went home to bed.

When I stopped in at Jackie’s the next morning, he asked me where I had been the night before. I told him about the funeral, how it would go on for days. He told me to wait while he went upstairs to put his suit on. He put a sign on the front door, reading GONE TO A FUNERAL, and then he went with me and met all of Vinnie’s family.

Some people stood up after dinner and told stories about Tom, about all the funny things he had done, about all the times he had gone out of his way to help somebody. Vinnie stood up toward the end and tried to say something. He started to tell a story about the first fishing trip he and Tom had gone on, when they were little kids. Vinnie couldn’t bring himself to stick the hook through the worm, so Tom had told him to stop acting like a chimook, which is Ojibwa slang for a white man. That got a laugh, but Vinnie couldn’t continue the story. He sat down next to his mother and she rubbed his back.

When Jackie and I were about to leave, Vinnie came to us and thanked us for coming.

“You don’t look so good,” I said. I had been wanting to talk to him about the men from Detroit, but now that I saw him I knew it would have to wait.

“I can’t sleep,” he said. “Every time I close my eyes, I see the same thing.” He didn’t have to tell me what.

That was the second day of the funeral.

On the third day, I came around dinnertime again. I heard some more stories about Tom. Vinnie didn’t try to speak this time. I was walking almost normally now, and feeling like I had most of my energy back.

Vinnie looked even worse than the day before. I didn’t try to talk to him at all. I went home, wondering what in the world I could do for him.

Maskwa was right. His spirit was sick. Even I could see it now.

That was the third day.

On the fourth day, Vinnie collapsed. I picked him up off the floor, with some help from his cousins. We sat him down, fanned him, and tried to make him drink some water. Like a prizefighter, he tried to shake us off and get back on his feet.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Come on, guys. I just blacked out for a second. I’m all right.”

He wouldn’t go home. I offered to take him there myself and stay with him. But he refused. I went home by myself.

On the fifth day, Tom’s remains finally arrived from Canada. The last day of the funeral moved from the Cultural Center over to the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a Catholic church located right on the reservation, between the two casinos. They did a Catholic funeral mass and then drove Tom’s coffin up to the top of Mission Hill. It was a cold day, as gray as only a Michigan October day can get. They buried Tom in the reservation’s graveyard, facing west.

When they were done, Vinnie went off by himself and looked out over the cliff. I went and joined him and looked down at the scene below-at Spectacle Lake and the new golf course, at all the pine and birch trees and Waishkey Bay and beyond that the heart of Lake Superior. There was a wooden shelter there on the overlook, with a couple of benches underneath. I had heard this was a party spot for young men on the reservation, but I didn’t see any trash lying around. Someone had taken some yellow paint and carefully written a message on the shelter. PLEASE RESPECT THE LAND. THE SPIRITS OF OUR ANCESTORS LIVE HERE.

“It’s a nice view up here,” I said. “It’s a good place to end up.” I felt stupid as soon as I said it, but Vinnie turned to me and gave me a weak smile.

“It’s a good place,” he said.

“Your mother told me I’m her son now,” I said. “Does that mean we’re brothers?”

“Of course it does.”

“I never got to ask you,” I said. “What does that word mean? The one you called me at the lodge?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“When we first got there, and we were stuck in the mud. You said my Ojibwa name would be Madasomething.”

“Oh, now I remember. Madawayash.”

“That’s it. What does it mean?”

“Well, you have to remember what we were going through at the time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Just tell me.”

“It means ‘chattering wind.’”

“Good thing you’re my brother now or I’d have to smack you.”

“If you’re my brother, that means you have to come to the sweat with me.”

“A sweat? Is that part of the funeral?”

“No, it’s something they’re doing for me,” he said. “It’ll be good for you, too.”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about some things I’ve been thinking about,” I said. “About Red’s brother and that other guy, and some of the things they said. I promised myself I’d wait until you felt better.”

“I appreciate that.”

“The problem is, I don’t want the trail to get cold. You know what I mean?”

“I don’t want you to do this, Alex.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tom is gone. We can’t change that.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. “Vinnie,” I said, “are we going to find out what really happened, or not?”

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.” He turned to go.

“Vinnie-”

“Later, Alex. I promise.”

I watched him get into one of the cars. I stood there for a while, breathing in the cold air, and then I finally went to my truck and followed them.

We ended up over at the home of his cousin Buck, just down the street from his mother’s house. Buck had built a little sweat lodge in the backyard. It was a half sphere, about ten feet in diameter, made by lashing saplings together and covering them with canvas and old rugs. The men already had a fire going, several yards from the lodge. They were heating rocks in the fire, and then moving them into the lodge with a long shovel.

There were eleven men, counting me. The others stripped down to their underwear, piling their clothes on the ground. They waited patiently until everyone was standing there together, these mostly naked men of all ages, with long dark hair over their shoulders. I couldn’t imagine doing the same on a day like this, but I figured what the hell. I’d certainly done worse things on days even colder than this one. Like jumping into a lake so a madman could shoot at me.

I almost choked on the steam when I went into the lodge, but it was warm and made every muscle in my body go loose. There was a faint light from the sparks and from the glowing rocks in the center pit. I felt my way over to the edge and sat down with the other men, closing my eyes and letting the steam fill my lungs. Someone dipped a large ladle into a bucket of water and poured it on the rocks. Then he added some sage. One of the four medicines, that much I knew. I sat there hoping that the medicine would work and that it would make Vinnie start feeling like himself again.

That little scene up on the cliff. Vinnie not wanting to talk about it, or to even think about what to do next. That wasn’t the Vinnie I knew.

We sat in the lodge for at least an hour. It was better than any sauna I had ever been in. The sweat rolled down over my face, as if every poison in my body and every bad thought in my mind were being drawn out by the heat. Nobody said a word.

Finally, one man opened a flap and we all crawled out. The air felt as cold as the water had been in that lake, but I didn’t shiver. Instead I felt a tingling all over my body, and a lightness in my chest. I put my clothes back on, moving in slow motion. When I was dressed, I looked around for Vinnie, but didn’t see him. He was still in the lodge, fast asleep.

I helped a couple of his cousins carry him out of the lodge and into one of the cars. He didn’t wake up, and we didn’t bother dressing him. We just wrapped him up in blankets.

“Just take him to his house,” I said. “I’ll take care of him.”

“We’ll take him home,” Buck said.

“Good, I’ll follow you.”

“No,” he said. “I mean we’ll take him to the reservation.” He stood there in front of the car door, his body between me and Vinnie. He was four inches taller than me. The other cousins were all looking at me.

This was the look. I’d seen it before. Between one moment and the next, my welcome among them had ended. I was an outsider again.

“Thank you for everything you did,” Buck said. “We’ll take care of Vinnie now.”

Thank you, he says. The man says thank you and they’ll take care of him now. I had a sudden urge to fight them, all of them at once. They would have taken me apart, but what the hell.

“He’s my brother now,” I said. “You understand? Vinnie’s my brother.”

Nobody said a word.

“You can’t change that,” I said. “This time you’re not going to come between us.”

Buck didn’t move.

There was nothing else to do. I shook my head and left. As I looked in the rearview mirror, they were all still standing there, watching me drive away.

I headed back home. I pointed the truck straight down the road and I drove. I was tired and used up and empty. Finally, I pulled off the road. I sat there for five or six minutes, staring off into nothing. The wind kicked up and whistled past the windows. I thought about how good it would feel to go sit by the fire at Jackie’s place. Put your feet up and forget about it.

Then I turned the truck around and went back the way I came. I drove due east, straight toward Sault Ste. Marie.

If I was going to do something stupid, I couldn’t do it alone. And if Vinnie couldn’t help me now, then I knew there was only one other choice.

It was time to talk to my old partner, Leon Prudell.