Northwest Angle

FIFTY-THREE

Bullhorn in hand, Cork walked to the edge of the trees. In the shadow of the forest, beneath a fiery sunset sky, he took a position behind the trunk of a large red pine. Flanking him on either side were deputies who’d found their own protected positions and had their firearms trained on the cabin. Cork leaned enough to one side of the pine so that he could see Meloux’s place without presenting a good target to anyone who might be sighting a rifle from there. He put the bullhorn to his lips. Before he spoke, he said a silent prayer: Please, God, let this work. Please, God, let Meloux understand.

He took a breath.

“Meloux!” he called into the bullhorn. “Ishkode! Baashkiz!”

He waited a moment, then spoke again.

“Ishkode! Baashkiz! Do you hear, Meloux? Ishkode! Baashkiz!”

He lowered the bullhorn, and there was nothing to do then but wait.

“What’s he saying?” the woman demanded of Meloux. “What’s this ‘ish co-day’ stuff?”

There were high clouds in the west. The sunset sky was a brilliant red-orange blaze, and the clouds were on fire. The light of that conflagration poured into the cabin, burned across the floor, and lit Meloux as if he were a torch.

“It means ‘fire,’ ” the old man replied.

“Fire? What’s he talking about?”

Meloux looked calmly into her intense face. “Do you know the name our people are sometimes called by? Ojibwe. It means ‘to pucker.’ I have heard it said that the name was given to us by our enemies, because when we captured them and roasted their flesh, it puckered. That may be what he is talking about. He may be saying that, before this is finished, he will be roasting your flesh over a fire.”

She gave him a frigid look of disbelief and impatience.

“Or,” the old Mide went on, “it could be he is reminding me that inside each of us is a fire, which we call spirit or soul, that is a small spark of the fire that burns at the heart of the Great Mystery.”

“The fire that is the wrath of God,” the woman said, as if correcting him.

Meloux shook his head gently. “The Great Mystery or the Creator or Kitchimanidoo or God, or whatever name it is known by, is not a fire of anger or a fire that consumes. It is the fire of life. It is the heart whose burning sends out every spark that becomes the possibility of a living thing, great or small, good or evil.”

The woman spoke, and each word was one hard stone laid against the next. “There is only one God, and he is not the God of heathens like you. He is a vengeful God, make no mistake. It’s you, and all those like you, whose flesh will pucker in the fires of hell.”

The old man appeared to think this over, then he shrugged. “There is another possibility. It may be that Corcoran O’Connor is simply speaking of the warrior’s trial by fire.”

“What’s that?”

“A test of a warrior’s spirit. A test of the strength given him by Kitchimanidoo.” The old man smiled. “It would be a good test, the strength of your God against mine.”

“What is this test?”

“Untie me, and I will show you.”

She studied him and made no move to comply.

“Untie me, and we will test the strength of your faith against the strength of mine. Unless you are afraid that the spirit at the center of this old, beat-up body may be stronger than the spirit at the center of yours.”

“It’s a trick, Abigail,” Joshua Hornett said.

“You have the rifles,” Meloux pointed out. “If you believe it is a trick, you can shoot me any time you want.”

Still the woman didn’t move.

“You have killed in the name of what you call God,” Meloux said. “Is it possible that the reason for your killing had nothing to do with God but simply a hatred that burns inside of you? Is that why you are afraid to test the strength of your spirit and of your belief? Is it possible that inside of you there is only ash and no spirit fire?”

The woman’s face moved as if something under her skin was alive. Her eyebrows twitched, and her temples pulsed, and her jaw clenched and unclenched. Finally she said, “Cut him loose, Joshua.” She leaned toward Meloux, and when she spoke, it was pure poison. “When this is finished, I will, myself, cut out your heart.”

“We need to think about this, Abigail,” her son pleaded.

“I said cut him loose, Joshua. Do it! I’ll keep the others covered.”

Reluctantly, Hornett set his rifle against the door, snapped open the pouch on his belt, and brought out a folded knife. He opened the blade and crossed to where Meloux sat. The old man held up his hands, and Hornett cut the tape that bound the wrists. He stepped back quickly, as if afraid Meloux might spring at him. He put his knife away, returned to the door, and again took up his rifle.

“Watch the others,” the woman told him. She set her own firearm against the cabin wall and said to Meloux, “What now?”

Meloux rose slowly. He walked to the stove in the middle of the room, where the light through the western window was strongest. He stood on one side and nodded for the woman to stand on the other. Rainy’s pot of stew still simmered where it sat near the edge of the hot stove top.

Meloux said, “In the old days, in order to test the strength of their spirits, two warriors would face off over the glowing coals of a great fire. Each would hold a hand over the coals until one of them could no longer stand the heat. The last to take his hand away was the stronger spirit. And the longer his hand remained over the coals even after the other had withdrawn, the greater that spirit and the greater his name.”

The woman looked down at the hot stove top, then up at Meloux. Without hesitation, she said, “Any time you’re ready.”

Meloux put out his hand and held it over the center of the stove, a quarter of an inch above the searing metal. The woman did the same.

It seemed to Jenny as if the cabin became a vacuum. There was no air, no movement, no sound, not even from little Waaboo. Her eyes were riveted to the stove and to the two people on either side of it, illuminated in the fiery glow of sunset. She saw that the woman trembled and her jaw was drawn taut, but her eyes were locked on the face of the old Mide, and her hand didn’t waver from the place she held it. Jenny was surprised that the woman’s belief, dark and angry and vengeful though it was, seemed to be the equal of Meloux’s. They both stood with open palms above the stove, immobile, as if they were forged from the same insensate iron.

Then a smell assaulted Jenny’s nose. The alarming and sweet aroma of scorched flesh.

In that same moment, the glass of the window in the western wall of the cabin shattered, and the woman collapsed where she stood. From beneath her on the cabin floor spread a glistening crimson pool fed by the dark red lake of her heart.

Waaboo began to wail.

Meloux lifted his hand from the stove top.

Joshua Hornett stood frozen, staring in horror and disbelief at his mother’s body.

Stephen and Rainy, acting with a single mind, leaped on this last reluctant soldier from the Church of the Seven Trumpets. They tumbled onto the floor in a squirming heap. Hornett struggled to throw them off, but they fought against him fiercely.

Then Meloux was standing above them, the woman’s rifle in his hands. He spoke in a voice of such clear authority that all motion stopped instantly.

“Enough. It is finished. Be still.” When he saw that his words had been heeded, Meloux said, “Take his rifle, Stephen, and hand it to me.”

Stephen, who already had a firm grip on the firearm, yanked it from Hornett’s grasp and delivered it to Meloux. The old man opened the cabin door and stood at the threshold. He flung first one rifle then the other far out into the meadow grass. After that, he lifted his arms and crossed and uncrossed them several times above his head in a sign that all was now safe.

Through the doorway, Jenny saw figures in blue Kevlar emerge from the woods and begin to cross the meadow. Waaboo screamed, and she held him against her and spoke to him quietly. “Don’t cry, little rabbit. Don’t cry. It’s all over. We’re safe now.”

Stephen stood poised above Hornett, prepared to battle him again should he rise. It wasn’t necessary. The man lay on the floor and stared upward, dazed and dumb in defeat.

“Uncle Henry, let me see your hand,” Rainy said. She went to Meloux and looked at the palm he’d held over the stove.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” she said firmly.

“Niece,” Meloux replied, “have I taught you nothing about healing?” Then he smiled. “Two hours ago, I thought I was dead. Yet here I am alive. What is a little puckered flesh to me?”

“Mishomis,” Stephen said. “I never heard of that warrior’s test.”

“Until the words came from my mouth,” the old man said, “neither had I.”

Jenny heard her father call from outside. A moment later, he was in the doorway, standing next to Henry and Rainy, with the sheriff’s officers pressing in at his back.

“Thank God you knew what I meant, Henry,” he said.

“What did you mean, Dad?” Stephen asked.

First his father gave him a powerful hug, then explained. “Ishkode, one kind of fire, the kind that burns in Henry’s fire ring. Baashkiz, another kind of fire. To fire a gun.”

“Your Ojibwe needs work, Corcoran O’Connor,” Meloux said. “But I understood.” He lowered his eyes to the woman dead on his floor. “It is good for us that she did not.”

Her father came at last to where Jenny sat with Waaboo crying in her arms.

“You and our little guy, you’re both okay?”

“Our little guy?” she said.

“Whatever it takes, Jenny, we’ll give this child a home, I promise.” He looked the cabin over, then asked, “Aaron?”

“He tried to lead them away from us. He didn’t have to, but he did.” She shook her head and said at last the words that, because of the circumstances and her own need to stay focused, she hadn’t even allowed herself to think. “He’s dead. They killed him, Dad.”

Tears spilled from her eyes so suddenly that she was caught by surprise. She couldn’t tell if it was grief for Aaron. Or relief at being saved. Or her deep fear, despite her father’s assurance, that now that the danger was past, she might very soon have to give up this child whom she loved as if he were her own.

She cried so hard that she couldn’t speak. She held so tightly to her baby that no one could have taken him from her.