Northwest Angle

THIRTY-ONE

Jenny couldn’t sleep. Her body vibrated. From exhaustion, probably, but also from something else, something that felt to her like vigilance. It was much the same feeling she’d had the night before, stranded on that island. But she was safe here, wasn’t she?

She lay in her bunk listening to Anne’s soft, steady breathing from the other side of the small cabin, listening to the great breath of the wind outside. Before lying down that night, she’d drawn aside the curtains over the eastern windows so that the moon would light the room and she could see the baby. He lay in the wicker basket on the floor within easy reach of her hand.

Aaron slept in another cabin with Stephen. It was odd, having him so near but not sharing her bed. Odd but not unpleasant. The moment she’d seen the look of horror on his face at the sight of the child’s cleft lip, something had changed in her. Something, she knew, had died. It wasn’t a whole thing but an essential. As if her love for Aaron had lost its heart. She couldn’t hide it from him. He’d gone to the cabin with Stephen walking like a man to a prison cell.

The baby began to fuss. Jenny had already prepared a bottle, and Bascombe had insisted she take a hot plate and saucepan to her cabin so that she could heat the formula easily in the night. She got up and, in her preparations, woke her sister.

“Go back to sleep. I’m just seeing to the baby.”

“You’re a good mom,” Anne said drowsily, and she rolled over and faced the wall. In only a moment, she was breathing deeply and steadily again.

Jenny took the bottle and the wicker basket with the baby inside and left the cabin. Moonlight silvered the island and the lake, and she had no trouble making her way to the end of the dock, where she sat on the bench. She lifted the baby and gave him the bottle. She gently pressed her finger to the cleft in his lip, and still mostly asleep, he began to feed.

She loved this aloneness with the child, this sense that, for the moment, the whole world was just the two of them, and the only thing that was important was seeing to his safety and his need. How blessedly simple her life could be, she thought.

Except this baby wasn’t hers. Maybe as soon as the next morning, she would have to give him up. She tried to accept the idea, but everything inside her went rigid in protest. She was angry, and her anger was directed mostly at her father, who seemed not to care in the least and whose only concern was how quickly he could get the child off their hands. She couldn’t understand him and didn’t want to. If it were possible, she’d have fled the Lake of the Woods herself and taken the baby with her.

The wind made the night restless. The lake surged and retreated against the dock pilings. The leaves of the poplars along the shoreline shook with a sound like a thousand rattlesnakes. The moon was nearly full and cast the island in a sharp contrast of silver light and black shadows that shifted in the wind.

And among those shadows Jenny saw something move.

At first she thought it was only a trick of the changing patterns of light and dark. Then she realized the motion was independent of the erratic way the wind made the trees sway. It was steady and directed toward the cabin she’d left only a few minutes before. She thought at first it might be Aaron, coming to check on her, and she felt a sad kind of gratitude. But when they came fully into the apron of moonlight in front of the cabin, she realized there were two figures and one of them held a rifle.

As the figure in front neared the cabin door and reached for the handle, Jenny let out a bloodcurdling scream. The figures at the cabin turned and fled toward the woods that backed the cabins and disappeared.

Jenny leaped to her feet. Lights went on in the cabins and in Bascombe’s lodge, and everyone spilled outside into the night.

“Jenny!” Anne called.

“Here!” she cried back.

They ran to the end of the dock and huddled around her and the child, who seemed oblivious to all the activity.

“Christ, Jenny, are you all right?” Aaron asked.

“Yes.”

Her father said, “What happened?”

“The baby was hungry. I came out here to feed him. I saw someone creep out of the woods and go to my cabin. There were two of them, Dad, and one of them had a rifle.”

Bascombe stood at the edge of the gathering. He gripped a rifle in his hands. “Was it you, Seth?”

“Not me. I just grabbed this on my way out.”

“Where’s Tom?” Mal said, because Kretsch wasn’t among them.

“Maybe he’s still sleeping,” Rose offered.

“Through this?” Bascombe said. “I don’t think so.”

“I’ll check his cabin,” Stephen said.

But just as he started away, a figure came from the woods, entered the light in front of the cabins, and walked toward the dock. He carried a rifle, too.

Cork nodded at the Remington in his hand. “What’s with the rifle, Tom?”

“I heard a scream and someone ran past my cabin. I grabbed this and tried to follow them. Whoever it was, they got away.”

From beyond a little wooded point to the north came the sound of powerful boat engines. A moment later, they saw a sleek launch shooting across the channel toward Birch Island. They watched it leap along the tops of the waves and curl to the north, leaving behind it a wake bone white in the moonlight.

“Cigarette boat,” Stephen observed.

Bascombe nodded. “Smalldog.”

“He wasn’t alone,” Cork said. “He had help.”

“They were after the baby,” Jenny said.

“But why?” Bascombe gave a shrug. “If you believe what some folks say about that child’s parentage, Smalldog was probably just coming for his son.”

They looked at the baby, his face aglow in the moonlight, unperturbed by the chaos that had erupted around him. He smiled up at Jenny. The divide of his upper lip parted easily, and the shape of his mouth was like a boat with a little sail.

Cork and Mal sat on the dock bench, facing Jenny’s cabin, their turn on watch. Cork cradled Bascombe’s Marlin on his lap. In the moonlight, the lake had become a great gray luminescence where whitecaps rose and fell.

“This Smalldog, he’s something else,” Mal said. “I’d like to see him.”

“I have,” Cork said. “We locked eyes when he was hunting us on the island.”

“Did you see the devil there?”

“I saw a man I knew absolutely was capable of killing us.”

“I’ve always believed that, even in the worst of men, there’s still some humanity alive. But I don’t know about Smalldog. If what Seth Bascombe says about him abusing his own sister is true, he’s a piece of work. It would be interesting to talk to him, find out his truth.”

“You can’t save every soul, Mal. It’s not even your business anymore.”

“I’m just talking about understanding someone, Cork. I think it’s the business of us all. Now soul saving, that’s something else.”

Cork stared at the angry lake and tried to make sense of Noah Smalldog.

The blood of the Anishinaabeg ran through Cork’s veins. He had an Ojibwe name, Mikiinak, which meant “Snapping Turtle.” The name had been given to him by the old Mide Henry Meloux, who’d seen the tenacity in him even when Cork was a small child. He loved the Ojibwe people, his people. But he knew the reality, which was that years of poverty on reservations and neglect by the agencies charged with helping them and misconceptions and prejudices deeply believed and perpetuated by whites had resulted in the misshaping of the spirits of far too many Indians. They drank to excess. They abused their women and their children. They abandoned their families. There was reason for their behavior, certainly, but that didn’t excuse their actions.

Smalldog, Cork decided, was a misshapen spirit. He wondered what Henry Meloux, in all his patient wisdom, might say about the man. Would he, like Mal, believe that even the most grotesque of spirits could be reshaped and brought into harmony? Did Meloux have a ceremony powerful enough to redeem Smalldog?

Maybe it wouldn’t matter, Cork thought, gripping the Marlin tightly. Because if Smalldog tried anything again, threatened Jenny or any of his family, Cork would shoot him down, shoot him down without a moment of hesitation or a measure of regret.

“What about the baby?” Mal said.

It was as if Cork’s conscience had spoken. In thinking about the safety of his family, Cork had excluded the baby.

“As soon as possible, we deliver him wherever it is he should be.”

“And where’s that?”

“I don’t know. The county authorities down in Baudette probably.”

“We get rid of him,” Mal said.

“That’s not how it will be.”

“That’s how Jenny’ll see it.”

“She’ll understand.”

Mal shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Look, Mal.” Cork spoke with an intensity that bordered on anger. “A very bad man is out there in the dark somewhere, and he’s threatening my family. Why? As nearly as I can tell, it’s because of that baby. If the baby’s gone, my family’s safe. It’s as simple as that.”

“Simple doesn’t necessarily translate into right.”

“You think I’m wrong? You think Jenny should keep that child? You think Jenny could keep that child?”

“I don’t know what might be possible, Cork. I just know that everything that threatens this family right now isn’t necessarily out there in the dark.”

Cork rose to his feet and glared down at his brother-in-law. “When you have a family of your own to worry about, Mal, then you can start offering me advice on how to take care of mine, okay?”

“Okay,” Mal said without rancor.

“I’m going to check the cabins.”

“I’ll hold down the fort here,” Mal said.

As Cork left, the old dock groaned under his weight. The wind gusted around him, and the lake surged at his back. Wrapped up in his own fury, a rage of uncertainty and worry, Cork was numb to it all.