Boundary waters

43

Darkness spilled across the sky above the Deertail, bringing cold that threatened a bitter night. As the fire dried and warmed their clothing, Cork and Stormy slid pants and shirts under Sloane, coats and sweaters over him. They kept the flames leaping high, with a huge bed of coals beneath giving out heat. Sloane’s wounds bled and soaked the dried clothing; there was nothing any of them could do. They tried their best to make him comfortable. He ate a little soup Cork spooned through his lips. But Cork knew they were losing him. And when Sloane’s brown eyes held on Cork’s face, the look in them said he knew it, too. They didn’t talk about the other man who was lost to them and probably dead. Except Louis, who said, “I hope Arkansas Wilie is okay.”

“We all hope so,” Stormy said.

“He liked my stories.” Louis added a handful of sticks to the fire. “Maybe we’ll find him waiting downstream.”

Stormy glanced at Cork. “Maybe we will,” he said quietly.

“Are you warm enough?” Cork asked Sloane.

“Enough,” Sloane murmured.

Louis brought over a fire-dried wool sweater and laid it on Sloane. “Is that good?” he asked.

Somehow Sloane managed a smile for the boy. “Fine, Louis. It’s fine.”

Stormy had a pot of coffee on the fire’s edge. Cork poured a cup and sat down beside Sloane.

Although Sloane’s face glistened, a chill passed through him that made his body shake so violently he couldn’t speak. When the tremor passed, he breathed a sigh and closed his eyes. “I like your stories, too, Louis. How ’bout one now?”

“About what?”

“Anything,” Stormy told him.

Louis looked into the dark where the Deertail ran. He said, “How about the story of the river?”

His father nodded and Louis told this story.

Small Bear was a proud man. More than proud. He was vain. He was generally known to be the most handsome man in the land of the Anishinaabe. His hair was long and black, his eyes red-brown like cedar bark, his face more pleasant to look on than a summer lake. Village maidens dreamed of becoming his wife. All except one. Her name was Morning Sun. She was a young woman who loved the beauty of the forests more than the face of any man. Her lack of interest stung Small Bear’s pride-and intrigued him. He sought Morning Sun whenever she went for solitude into the forest, but she always hid from him. Desperate to possess the maiden who shunned him, Small Bear appealed to Nanabozho. Nanabozho understood Small Bear’s passion, but he was also fond of Morning Sun, whose love of the forest and respect for the manidoog -the spirits-were well known to him. Nanabozho decreed that Small Bear and Morning Sun should race. If Small Bear won. Morning Sun would be his wife. If Morning Sun were the victor, Small Bear could never again speak to her.

Small Bear was afraid, for Morning Sun was reputed to be as fleet of foot as he was handsome. He sought the help of a magician, who gave him a deerskin pouch containing three leaves. Eat the leaves just before the race begins, the magician instructed him.

The day of the race, moments before they began to run. Small Bear ate the leaves. Immediately he changed into a river. He began to flow swiftly, leaving far behind him Morning Sun, who had to leap fallen trees and avoid raspberry thickets and climb high hills. The sound of the water bubbling smoothly along was the laughter of Small Bear in his delight, for soon Morning Sun would be his wife.

Morning Sun cried out, appealing to Nanabozho that Small Bear had cheated. Nanabozho agreed. He caused the spirits of the valley to throw down a wall of rock to block Small Bear’s way. Small Bear hit the wall with a sound like thunder. Angrily, he threw himself against the rocks again and again, slowly breaking through. But not soon enough. Morning Sun ran past him and finished the race long before Small Bear. To this day, the sound of Small Bear’s anger can be heard in the thunder of the rapids.

Sloane opened his eyes when the story was finished. “Thank you, Louis. Small Bear was an asshole. Glad Morning Sun won.” He looked at Cork. “A runner. Like you, Cork. A marathoner, right?”

“I’ve run one.”

“Always told myself I’d do a marathon someday. Never got around to it. Lot of things like that. Too much left undone.”

“Don’t talk,” Cork said.

“Think it’ll make a difference?” Sloane made a sound that might have started off as a laugh but came out as a faint coughing. When he spoke again, it was only the ghost of a voice drifting from his lips. “Truth is, I won’t be leaving much behind. Divorced ten years. Daughter doesn’t speak to me anymore. Got a grandson I’ve never even seen. Funny…” But he didn’t finish. “O’Connor, do me a favor.”

“What is it?”

“Make sure my daughter knows I love her. Will you do that?”

“I’ll do it.”

Sloane shifted his gaze to Stormy and Louis. “Sorry I got you into this.”

“Forget it,” Stormy said.

“Bet this trip was easier when it was just you and your uncle, Louis.”

“Yeah,” Louis replied. He tried to smile. “Me and Uncle Wendell and the letter.”

“Letter?” Sloane’s face folded into creases of concentration.

“We always brought out a letter to mail for Shiloh.”

“The letters she sent to Elizabeth Dobson in California,” Cork reminded Sloane. “And to her father in Tennessee.”

“No,” Louis said.

Cork threw a quick, troubled look at Louis.

“Not to Tennessee,” the boy clarified. “Only to California. To Los Angeles. To a woman named Libbie.”

“Are you sure?” Cork asked. “Wendell went into the Boundary Waters without you sometimes. Could he have brought out letters on those trips that he mailed to Willie Raye in Tennessee?”

Louis shook his head. “He waited for me. We always walked together to LeDuc’s to mail the letters. They all went to California.”

Cork stared into the fire a while, but he wasn’t seeing the flames. “Raye told me he’d received letters from Shiloh. That’s how he knew she was up here.”

“How could he?” Stormy asked.

“I don’t know. Unless…”

“Unless what?” Louis asked.

Sloane looked at Cork and the same thought seemed to pass between them.

“Unless Raye was responsible for the letters’ being stolen from Libbie Dobson in the first place,” Cork replied.

“That-what did you call it, Louis? Majimanidoo?-of yours. Maybe he’s got a name now.” Sloane breathed shallow and fast. “Arkansas Willie Raye.”

Stormy took a stick and began to stir up the coals so that flames broke out at the edge of the fire where he sat. He tapped at them, making more and more flickers of fire, like Mickey Mouse’s ever dividing brooms of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He said, “If that’s true, then it probably means he’s been working with the men who’ve been out here after us.”

“Bet he’s been in communication with them the whole time,” Sloane said in a venomous whisper.

“It would explain a lot,” Cork said. “I’ve been wondering how they tracked us so well.”

“That’s how they knew Grimes was waiting and where,” Stormy said.

“Sorry I ever blamed you,” Sloane told him.

“Forget it.”

“Of course,” Cork said suddenly.

“What?” Sloane asked.

“Remember when we were ambushed and I wondered why that guy didn’t just kill us? We were carrying the canoes on our shoulders. Our faces were hidden, so he couldn’t tell which of us was Raye. He didn’t know who not to shoot.”

“The shooter on the rocks today,” Stormy put in. “That explains Raye’s diarrhea. Every time he disappeared into the bushes, he was probably on a radio to the son of a bitch.”

“But Arkansas Willie was shot, too,” Louis said

Cork shook his head. “I’m pretty sure not, Louis. He went into the water as if he’d been shot. That added to the general confusion and gave him a chance to slip away from us.”

“He’s alive,” Sloane said, and even in his weakened state, his anger came through strong.

“Not only alive,” Cork added, “but joined up, I’d bet, with the guy who’s after Shiloh. Shit.”

Cork picked up a stick and threw it down hard among the coals of the fire. Blazing embers leaped away like little demons afraid of his anger.

“Maybe we held them up enough here so that Shiloh can get away from them.” In the firelight, Louis’s young face seemed bright with hope.

“I wish that were true and the end of it, Louis,” Cork said. “But those men have gone to a lot of trouble to try to kill her. I don’t think they’ll stop at the edge of the Boundary Waters. And if Raye is smart, he knows where she’ll go once she’s out.”

“Where?” Stormy asked.

“Wendell’s trailer. I’d bet on it. Her car’s there. And she probably believes it’s safe.”

Sloane’s hand slipped from under the clothing that covered him and he grasped Cork’s arm. “We’ve got to do something.”

“Yeah,” Stormy agreed. “But what?”

They sat silently for a long time, thinking, sat as people had for thousands of years, around a fire that lit a very small place in a very great dark.

“Maybe there is a way,” Cork finally said. “Maybe I can make it to Shiloh before they do.”

“How?” Louis asked.

“First thing in the morning, I run my second marathon.”

“You don’t exactly have a clear course here,” Stormy pointed out.

“Let’s take a look at the map.”

From the pocket of his pack, which was still wet, he pulled the map of the Boundary Waters. The map was wet, too, and he opened it carefully to avoid tearing the paper. He spread it on the ground near the fire, and he and Stormy hunched over it.

“The Noodamigwe Trail is east of here.” Cork put his finger on a black dotted line. “Looks to be about four miles.”

“Closer to five,” Stormy said.

“If I can connect with it, I’ll follow it until I catch the old Sawtooth logging road here. What is that? Ten miles? Then another eight or so to County Road C. If I can catch a ride there, I could be at Wendell’s by noon.”

“Lot of ifs,” Stormy said.

“I’m open to other suggestions.”

Stormy sat back and offered nothing. Louis was looking at Sloane, whose eyes danced with firelight. Sloane saw him watching. He smiled, real and true.

“Don’t worry about me, Louis. No way I’m going to miss the end of this. How ’bout a little more of that soup?”