Red knife

FORTY-FIVE

Cork slept better than he had in days, and he rose early and refreshed. He slipped into his running gear and hit the street while the rest of Gooseberry Lane was just beginning to crawl into Monday morning. Normally he would have asked Annie if she wanted to run with him, but he knew she’d been up late the night before finishing a paper for her English class, the last major obstacle to a clean graduation. A couple more weeks of classes without much substance, a week full of ritual closure, and she was free. Softball practice in preparation for the state championship would fill her afternoons, but that was pure joy for her. As the sun rose over Iron Lake and put down a gold carpet under his feet, he felt like a man rich beyond his dreaming.

He ran a route that took him past Sam’s Place, where he stopped for a few minutes. The lake was the color of gemstones, sapphire water and topaz light, and above it two flights of geese arrowed north. He ran his hand along the wall of the Quonset hut and felt as if he was connecting with an old, neglected friend. His plan that day was to begin again the preparations to open the following weekend. There was a lot to be done, but he was looking forward to focusing on something simpler than all that had occupied his time and mind in the last week. He was looking forward to Aurora returning to normal, to settling into the quiet, unremarkable slide into summer, to the usual preparations for the migration of tourists that would come as surely as those flocks of Canada geese.

When he returned home, Annie was finishing her breakfast at the kitchen table.

“Dad,” she said, shoveling in the final spoonful of oatmeal, “you should have gotten me up.”

He pulled a tumbler from the cupboard and began to fill it at the kitchen tap. “Unfortunately you take after my side of the family, kiddo, and need all the beauty rest you can get,” he joked.

She crumpled her napkin and threw a fastball that caught him in the back of the head. “It’s best anyway,” she said. “I’m meeting Cara. We’re walking to school together.”

“Finish that paper?”

“Yeah, and I could live forever without reading another play by William Shakespeare. Or whoever.”

Jo entered the kitchen just in time to overhear the comment. “Someday you’ll understand there’s more to life than activities involving balls, Annie.”

Annie looked at her father and they both burst out laughing.

“You know what I mean,” Jo said, but she laughed, too.

“And with that profound advice ringing in my ears, Mother dear, I bid you adieu.” Annie picked up her backpack and danced out the door.

“Stevie,” Jo called toward the living room. “Get a move on, guy. I’ll drop you off at school on my way to work.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and sipped as she turned to Cork. “So what’s on your agenda today?”

“Sam’s Place. A lot to do to get ready for next weekend. You know, I’m really looking forward to opening the place up.”

“You always do, sweetheart.” She kissed him, tasting of coffee.

Cork headed upstairs to shower, passing his son on the way. Trixie wasn’t far behind. She had one of Stevie’s sneakers in her mouth.

“I’m teaching her to fetch my shoes,” Stevie explained.

“When you get her to mow the lawn, let me know.” Cork ruffled his son’s hair and moved on.

As he stepped out of the shower, he heard Jo pull out of the driveway in her Camry. He shaved and was almost dressed when he heard another vehicle pull up and park out front. He looked through his bedroom window and saw George LeDuc’s truck at the curb. LeDuc got out and Henry Meloux with him. Cork pulled his boots on and headed downstairs. He reached the door just as the bell rang.

“ Anin, Henry. Anin, George,” he said, using the more formal Ojibwe greeting. “Come on in.” He moved aside to let the men enter. He couldn’t read their faces. “Coffee?” he offered.

“No,” Meloux replied. LeDuc shook his head.

“What’s up?” Cork asked.

LeDuc said, “Henry showed up on my doorstep this morning. He told me he had to see you.”

“Well, here I am.”

The old Mide spoke: “I told you, Corcoran O’Connor, that I had a vision of a dark, hungry thing.”

“I remember, Henry.”

“I have finally seen this thing clearly. It came to me before sunrise. It has the face of a youth. And I saw it standing in a meadow, surrounded by many bodies, also young. This dark thing was drinking their blood.”

“Do you know what it means, Henry?”

“I am not sure. But the meadow is a place I know from the stories I heard when I was a boy. It is called Miskwaa-mookomaan.”

“Red Knife,” Cork said. He knew the name, too. It had come up a few years earlier when the school district was debating the site for the new high school. They’d elected finally to build it on the place where, long before, the Ojibwe had slaughtered a hunting party of Sioux.

“One more thing, Corcoran O’Connor. I saw your daughter, Anne, among the bodies covered with blood.”

“Where is Annie?” George LeDuc asked.

“She left for school. She’s probably there by now.”

Then Cork thought about what Will Kingbird had told him, about Ulysses taking the rifle from the gun shop. Will had been afraid his son had taken it to kill Buck Reinhardt, but maybe Uly, a boy misunderstood and much picked on, had a different purpose in mind all along.

Cork grabbed the telephone in the hall and dialed Annie’s cell phone. The phone rang and rang and finally went to voice mail. He tried not to panic. Annie always turned her phone off before she went into school. It was a rule.

He hurried to the kitchen and grabbed the keys to his Bronco. He shouted to LeDuc and Meloux as he headed out the side door, “I’m going to the high school.” He didn’t wait for an answer.

He backed out of the drive in his Bronco and shot down Gooseberry Lane. He thought briefly of calling the sheriff’s office, but he had no proof that anything was going to happen, today or any other, just the vision of an old man. Besides, it would take him only five minutes to get to the high school. And what could possibly happen in five minutes?