Blood is the Sky

Chapter Four

As we got out of the truck, the moose stepped slowly off the road and into the woods.

“That’s a big one,” I said. “For a female.”

“Yep. I’m glad you missed her.”

“Which way you think? North to the lodge, or south back to the highway?”

“Let’s try north first.”

We started walking north. The air was a hell of a lot colder up here. I zipped up my coat.

“What’s the Ojibwa word for moose?” I said.

“Moozo.”

I nodded. “Wawa and moozo. So far, it’s a pretty silly-sounding language, Vinnie.”

“I just realized what your Ojibwa name should be,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Madawayash.”

“What’s it mean?”

He smiled. “I’ll tell you later.”

We walked. The road twisted its way through more trees and more marshland with grass growing eight feet tall.

“Tire tracks,” Vinnie said, kicking at the ground.

“Recent?”

“Looks like it.”

“What kind of vehicle?”

He looked at me. “One with tires.”

“Was the driver right-handed or left-handed?”

“You’re funny.”

“Come on, you’re the Indian guide. Where are the tracking skills?”

We had walked maybe two more miles, and were about to give up and turn around. But then we went around a bend and the road ended. There were three vehicles parked among the trees-one jeep and two pickup trucks-and then through the trees we could see blue water.

“I’m guessing this is Lake Peetwaniquot,” I said.

“I think we found it.”

“They don’t need a sign on the road. Either you know how to get here or you don’t.”

I looked at my watch. It was almost five o’clock. There was some daylight left, but the sun hung low enough in the west to cast long shadows. As soon as we had stopped moving, the air felt cold again.

“Let’s go see who’s here,” Vinnie said.

“Lead the way.”

We walked down the path, the trees opening up to a clearing and a large cabin overlooking the lake. As we got closer we could see a couple of smaller sheds set back in the woods, and a long dock. There was a floatplane tied up to it, and two aluminum boats with outboard motors.

“Hello!” Vinnie said. The sound died in the cold wind. Nobody answered.

“There’s got to be somebody here,” I said.

We walked down closer to the lake. The wind was just strong enough to kick up a light chop in the water. The floatplane bobbed up and down.

“Hello!” Vinnie said again.

Nothing.

We walked out onto the dock, passing a large weighmaster’s scale and several propane tanks. There was no sound but our heavy footsteps on the wood, the wind blowing in off the lake, the hollow clunk when the boats came together, and the plane’s left float working up and down against the rubber bumpers on the dock.

“It’s a nice lake,” I said. It was maybe a half mile across, with nothing but trees on the far shore.

Vinnie wasn’t looking out at the water, but at the dark, seemingly empty window of the cabin. “Let’s see if anybody’s in there,” he said.

We were halfway there when the man stepped out from the shed.

Blood.

That’s all I saw at first. The man was covered in blood.

“Whatcha boys need?” he said.

“You own this place?” Vinnie said.

That broke the spell. I saw the man clearly, with the full-length canvas apron, the gloves. He was a little guy, not more than five feet tall. And he must have been about my age, which made me wonder why he called us boys.

“Nah, you want Helen,” he said. “I just work here.”

“You’re butchering something?” Vinnie said.

The man looked down at his gloves. “A moose,” he said. “What a goddamned mess.”

A woman peeked her head around the door behind him. She was the same size as the man, and you could tell in a second they’d been married forever. “Who is it, Ron?”

“Couple of men,” he said. He didn’t introduce us to her. Instead he just turned around and went back to her. They disappeared into the shed and closed the door.

“What’s the matter with you?” Vinnie said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I’m fine.”

Just a little blood, I thought. No problem.

“I take it that woman in the shed wasn’t Helen,” he said. “You suppose she’s in the main cabin?”

“Let’s go see,” I said. “I thought they’d never stop talking.”

We went up the path to the front door of the cabin, climbing a set of wooden stairs that desperately needed a new coat of paint. The whole place had a run-down look about it, from the cracked foundation to the porch ceiling overrun with spider webs. We knocked on the front door. Nobody answered.

Vinnie looked at me, knocked on the door again, and then opened it. The room we stepped into was a lot nicer than what I expected, based on how the place looked from the outside. A big wooden table stood in the center of the room, with eight hand-carved chairs. There was a stone fireplace on the back wall that my old man would have approved of, and a great moose head looking down at us, its rack of antlers as wide as a piano.

“Hello!” Vinnie said. “Anybody here?”

“Back here!” a voice said. “Come on in!”

There was a door in the far wall of the room. As we stepped around the table, I looked up at the moose head. He seemed to stare right back at me.

Vinnie pushed the door open slowly and peeked inside. It was an office, with a rolltop desk and a big window overlooking the lake. The woman inside was fiddling around with the antenna on a small television. Where she expected to get a signal from, I couldn’t even guess. Maybe a CBC station out of Timmins.

“We’re sorry to bother you,” Vinnie said.

The woman turned around and looked at us. “Oh!” she said. “I thought you were the men back from town.”

“We’re sorry to bother you, ma’am,” I said.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You just surprised me.” She had brown eyes, that was the first thing I noticed. She was about my age, maybe a couple years older, with brown hair just starting toward gray, and she was wearing a red flannel shirt a couple sizes too big. My overall impression was a nice lady who was a little tough, too. I suppose that’s what it took way the hell up here.

“The couple outside told us to come see you,” I said. “They said you owned the place. We tried calling you, but I think you have a problem with your phone.”

“I’m Helen St. Jean,” she said, standing up. She shook Vinnie’s hand and then mine. “Yeah, that phone’s been out for a week. If it wasn’t so late in the season, I’d get it fixed so it could go out again.”

Vinnie spoke up. “My name is Tom LeBlanc,” he said. The old switcheroo was apparently alive and well. “This is my friend Alex McKnight.”

“That was Ron and Millie you met outside,” she said. “He was probably still working on that moose.”

“He seemed to be up to his elbows in it,” Vinnie said.

She frowned at that. “I don’t know how many mooseburgers those men are gonna take home,” she said. “They didn’t seem too happy, is all I know. I don’t imagine they’ll be coming back next year. Not that we’ll even be here next year.”

“Who are we talking about?” Vinnie said. “You see, we’re sort of trying to track down my brother. We know he came up here.”

“I think I hear them now,” she said. “Hank took them over to Calstock when they got back from the lake. You know how it is. Seven days in the woods and you need pizza.”

Vinnie went to the window and craned his neck, trying to see who was outside. “I don’t see him,” he said. “Which party is this, ma’am?”

Before she could answer, a man came stomping into the office. “Son of a freaking-Helen, do you have the sheet for these clowns, eh? The sooner we can get rid of them-” He stopped when he saw us standing there. “Let me guess,” he said. “The truck that some idiot ran off the road back there.”

“That would be me,” I said. “There was a moose.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve got the bill all made up,” Helen said, ruffling through the papers on the desk. “Let me just put one more thing on here. Gentlemen, this is Hank Gannon. He’s usually in a better mood. Hank, this is Tom and Alex.”

He stood there looking at us. He was a tall man, with a firm jawline and a commanding air. His name fit him perfectly. With the leather coat and wide-brimmed hat, he looked like the Canadian version of a Texas Ranger. “You boys need something here? Aside from a tow out of the mud?”

It was the second time in ten minutes we’d been called boys. It wasn’t sounding any better.

“I’m looking for my brother,” Vinnie said. “He was with the Albright party.”

Helen stopped writing and looked up at us.

“Christ, Albright,” Gannon said. “You guys are looking for him, too?”

“Was there somebody else looking for him?”

“Yeah, two other guys, just yesterday.”

“Did they say who they were?”

“Nah, they just wanted to know where Albright was. I told them the same thing I’ll tell you. The Albright party came and left. And good riddance.”

“Albright and his men were here, then,” I said. “Last week.”

“That’s right. I flew them back down on Saturday morning. They were gone by noon. Biggest bunch of jackasses I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. Even worse than these guys out here. I swear, Helen, it’s just not worth it anymore.”

She finished up her bill and gave it to him. “Here, send them on their way,” she said. “So we can have some peace. Did you see Ron down there? He’s probably done with the butchering.”

“He’s just wrapping it all up,” Gannon said.

“These men who were here looking for Albright,” I said, a sudden thought hitting me. “Did one of them have a big nose?” I was wondering if the two men who caused the trouble at the bar in Wawa were the same men who were here at the lodge.

“Yeah,” Gannon said. “Matter of fact. He had a real smart mouth, too.”

“Sir,” Vinnie said. “Please. What can you tell me about Albright and the men he was with?”

“Ain’t much more to tell,” he said. “We flew them out to Lake Agawaatese and then we flew them out a week later.”

“Right here,” she said, pointing to a map on the wall above the desk. “See, we’ve got seven different lakes. Agawaatese is up here.” She stretched to put her finger on the upper right corner. “Good lake for moose, although the cabin could use a little work.”

“There were six men, right?” Vinnie said.

“No, five.”

That stopped Vinnie for a second. “I thought there were six, but somebody might have canceled at the last minute.”

“There were five of them,” Gannon said. “Albright and his partners. What did he call them? His ‘executive partners.’ I was expecting a bunch of hotshots with cell phones and hundred-dollar loafers. But when they got here, eh? They were such thugs. My God, Helen puts up with a lot of shit from all the men who come up here, but these guys-”

“Needless to say,” she said, “I passed on their offer to take me up to the lake with them.”

“That just got them even more riled up, eh? They were ready to kill something. I couldn’t get them out of here fast enough. And when I flew them back, hell, I made sure Helen wasn’t even here at the lodge. She shouldn’t have to put up with guys like that.”

“Hank, I had to go into Timmins anyway,” she said. “Don’t make it sound like you were protecting me.”

He waved that one off. “Bunch of clowns. President Albright and his executive partners, my ass.”

“They weren’t all partners,” Vinnie said. “My brother was with them.”

He shook his head. “The man said they were all partners.”

“My brother was the guide.”

He looked back and forth between us. “Let’s get a couple of things straight here,” he said. “Number one, if those men were gonna use a guide, they’d use our guide. We got an Indian fellow out there who knows these lakes inside and out. You don’t need to be bringing in your own guide from the states to hunt our moose, okay? If you’re dumb enough to do without any guide at all, that’s a different story. Number two, when this Albright called us, he made it crystal clear that he was bringing up four men who worked with him. And that they wouldn’t be needing a guide. I tried to talk him out of it, but he dug in his heels. No guide necessary. He said they were all experienced hunters, and they didn’t need our help. So I said, suit yourself, sir. If you don’t want to actually find any moose, you go right ahead up there by yourselves. And that’s what they did.”

“Which kind of explains why they didn’t bring any moose back with them,” Helen said. “Not that they’d listen to that.”

“You got that right,” he said. “They came back dirty and tired, and pissed off at everything. And I told them, I said, you didn’t even see the back end of a moose the whole time you were up there, eh?”

“No matter what they said,” Vinnie said, “my brother did not work for Albright. I mean, just for the few days maybe. That’s what he might have meant.”

“I told you,” he said. “We got this Indian fellow-”

“I know, you’ve got your own Indian. I’m telling you, Albright was just trying to get around your little rule, okay? He brought his own Indian with him. My brother.”

The man looked at Vinnie, like he was really seeing him for the first time. It was something I’d witnessed before, many times. Some people look at Vinnie and see an Indian right away, like those idiots in the bar in Wawa. Others don’t see the Indian in him until he points it out.

“He did look like you,” Gannon said. “God damn.”

“He never came back home,” I said. “That’s why we’re here. He should have been home four days ago.”

Gannon looked at Helen and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that. I flew them back out and they left. And fast. Lord knows they had nothing to load except the gear they were carrying. They were all driving this big SUV thing.”

“A Chevy Suburban,” Vinnie said.

“Yeah, a black one. Looked brand-new. They all piled in and left. Like I said, they were out of here by noon. Plenty of time to get back to Michigan the same day. If they didn’t feel like driving all the way back to Detroit, I suppose they would have spent the night somewhere.”

“My brother lives in the U.P. They would have dropped him off that night.”

“Yeah, they would have. Like you say, that same night.”

“He never came home,” Vinnie said.

Gannon threw up his hands. “I don’t know what to say. Although, come to think of it-”

“What?”

“Oh, I’m just trying to remember. On their way out, this Albright clown was saying something about how they didn’t get their moose, and they were in no hurry to get back home. So maybe they’d have to go have some fun somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“He didn’t say. I was just assuming he meant they’d hit some casinos or some clubs or something. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

“Do you have a phone number for this Albright?” I said. “Or an address?”

“He paid with a Visa number,” Helen said, “so I don’t have a check. I’m not sure he ever gave me an address.”

“You’ve got to have his address,” I said. “That’s just normal business practice, isn’t it?”

She looked at me, and then at Gannon. “I’m not sure we even qualify as a business right now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to criticize. We’re just trying to find out what happened to Tom-” I caught myself. “Uh, Tom’s brother.” Real smooth, Alex.

She shook her head and looked through another pile of papers. Finally, she came up with a three-by-five card. “Here’s his phone number.” She read off the same cell phone number Vinnie already had.

“You don’t have anything else?” I said. “Not even another number in case of emergency?”

“Just this one,” she said.

Vinnie ran one hand through his hair. “What do we do now, Alex?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let me think.”

Gannon stood there watching us. Helen was staring at the floor. It seemed ridiculous that we’d drive all the way up here and then leave so quickly.

“We’d appreciate any other help you can give us,” I said to them. “Do you have any idea where they might have gone, if not straight home?”

“Well,” Gannon said. “I know what their first stop was gonna be. They ran out of beer their last night on the lake. Just one more thing they were complaining about.”

“They were all drinking beer?” Vinnie said.

“Sure seemed to be. All five of them arrived pretty well lubricated, I remember that. Happens when you get Americans up here drinking Canadian beer the whole way.”

“Are you positive they were all drinking?” Vinnie said. From the sound of his voice, he was already resigned to it.

“I know how many cases of beer we flew in with,” he said, “and how many empties we brought back.”

Vinnie seemed to lose his steam right about then. There didn’t seem to be much left to say, so I thanked them for their time, and asked the man if he could help get my truck back on the road.

“You go on outside,” he said. “I’ll take care of these guys and then we’ll go pull you out of the mud.”

Vinnie didn’t say a word as we went back down the rickety front steps and walked by the other hunting party. They were all standing around the butcher shed, these unshaven men with filthy sweatshirts and unwashed hair.

Four days ago, another group of men came back looking the same way and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

Or at least Tom did.

And two other men came up here looking for Albright. We were a day behind them.

As Vinnie and I walked up to the vehicles, I turned to look back at the lake. I saw a man standing on the dock, a man I hadn’t seen when we first came down. He was young, and had the kind of dark features that left no doubt in your mind. He was an Indian.

“That must be the guide,” I said to Vinnie.

He turned, and squinted in the last light of the day reflected off the water. “Where?”

“Right there,” I said. But as I looked again, the dock was empty.