Mercy Falls

37

No one knew the true age of Henry Meloux. He was already old when Cork was a boy. Meloux was one of the Midewiwin, a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. He lived on a rocky, isolated finger of land called Crow Point that jutted into Iron Lake at the northern edge of the reservation.

Cork parked the Pathfinder on the gravel at the side of the county road, locked up, and followed a trail that began at a double-trunk birch and led deep into the woods. For a while, the way lay through national forest land, but at some unmarked boundary it crossed onto the reservation. Cork walked for half an hour through woods where the only sounds were the chatter of squirrels, the squawk of crows, and the occasional crack of a fallen branch under his boots. When he broke from the pine trees, he could see Meloux’s cabin on the point, an old one-room log structure with a cedar plank roof shingled over with birch bark.

“Henry,” he called, not wanting to surprise the old man, though surprising Meloux would be a rare thing. The Mide had a remarkable knack for anticipating visitors. If that failed, the barking of Walleye, Meloux’s yellow dog, was usually warning enough. Meloux did not respond, and Walleye was nowhere to be seen. Cork approached the door, which stood open, and looked inside.

The interior of the cabin was always clean, though full of a hodgepodge of items that recalled other eras. On the walls hung snowshoes made of steam-curved birch with deer hide bindings, a deer-prong pipe, a bow strung with sinew from a snapping turtle. There was a Skelly gas station calendar forty years out of date, but the old man kept it because he admitted appreciating the young woman in the cheesecake photo whose breasts were big and round as pink balloons ready to burst. Resting on two tenpenny nails hammered into the wall was an old long-barreled Remington with a walnut stock. There was a sink but no running water, a hickory table and two chairs, a potbellied stove, and a small bunk. These were practically all the material goods Meloux possessed, but he was the most contented man Cork had ever known.

The open door didn’t bother Cork. In good weather, Meloux often left the door ajar for fresh air to circulate inside. It also allowed Shinnobs to bring and leave for the old Mide offerings of respect and gratitude. Cork could tell from the sacks on the table that the recent offerings had been manomin, wild rice. In the Ojibwe language, August was Manomingizis, the Month of Rice. In the final days of August and into early fall, the Anishinaabeg poled through the fields in the lakes, knocking the ripe kernels loose and filling their boats. After the rice was prepared, some would be eaten, some sold, and some given as a gift, as it had been to Meloux.

A distant bark brought Cork around. He gazed toward the trail he had followed, and in a moment he spotted Walleye bounding from the pine trees, his yellow coat full of burrs. Meloux was not far behind. He walked slowly but erect, his hair like white smoke drifting about his shoulders. He wore bib overalls, a faded blue denim shirt, deer hide moccasins that he’d made himself. In his hand was an ironwood staff ornamented with an eagle feather, and over his shoulder hung a beaded leather bag. He smiled when he saw Cork but didn’t change his pace. Walleye, however, ran ahead. When Cork knelt to greet him, the old dog eagerly nuzzled his palm.

“ Anin, Corcoran O’Connor,” the old man said in formal greeting.

“ Anin, Henry.” Cork eyed the bag hanging from Meloux’s shoulder. “Let me guess: mushroom hunting.”

“I have gathered a feast. I will make a fine soup with rice and mushrooms. Will you join me?” Meloux said.

“I have to decline.”

The sun was directly overhead, beating down out of a cloudless sky. Meloux shaded his eyes with a wrinkled hand and studied Cork’s face.

“You always come like a hungry dog, wanting something, but it’s never food.”

“Sorry, Henry.”

The old man lifted his hand in pardon. “It’s all right. Like a dog, you’re always grateful for even a scrap.”

“It’s more than a scrap I need this time.”

Meloux nodded. “Let me put away my harvest, then we will smoke and talk.”

They sat at a stone circle that enclosed the ashes of many fires. Down the slope a few feet away lay the water of Iron Lake, crystal clear along the shore, blue and solid as a china plate in the distance. The old man had listened to Cork’s story and now he smoked a cigarette hand-rolled from tobacco Cork had brought as a gift. Although he’d given up smoking more than two years before, Cork held a cigarette, too. The ritual he shared with Meloux had nothing to do with addiction.

“Stone,” Meloux said. “Like a Windigo, that one.”

In Anishinaabe myth, the Windigo was a cannibal giant with a heart of ice. The only way to kill a Windigo was to become one. Once you had succeeded in destroying the terrible creature, you had to drink hot wax so that you would melt back down to the size of other men. If that didn’t happen, you were doomed to remain a Windigo forever. Thinking of how Stone had killed his monster of a stepfather, Cork believed he understood what Meloux was saying. Myths were simple things, but they cut to the heart of brutal truths.

“What do you want of me?” the old Mide asked.

“You’ve lived in Noopiming all your life.” Noopiming, the Ojibwe name for the north country. “You know the woods better than anyone alive. Since I was a boy, I’ve heard stories of your prowess as a hunter. Henry, I need someone who knows the Boundary Waters and who can track the Windigo.”

The old man smoked awhile. Indian time. Never hurried.

“That was when I was a young man. It has been too many years to count since I was on a hunt, and this kind of animal I have never hunted. Stone, he will be dangerous.”

“Will you do it?”

Meloux finished his cigarette. He threw the butt into the ash inside the stone circle. “I’m old. Death and me, we’ve been eyeing one another for a while now. There’s not much left that scares me. One last hunt, that would not be a bad thing, especially to hunt the Windigo.” He used his staff to help himself stand. “When do we leave?”