Tamarack County

CHAPTER 20

Henry Meloux had once directed Stephen to sit for a day in the meadow on Crow Point and do nothing. Just sit. Meloux gave no other instruction nor did he give a reason. Stephen did as the old Mide asked. From the moment the sun climbed above the ragged tree line until it set below the far shore of Iron Lake, he sat among the wildflowers and tall grass. Mosquitoes and blackflies plagued him, and the sun was hot, and he grew thirsty, but still he sat. A wind came up, and the grass bent. The wind died, and the grass grew still. A couple of turkey vultures circled on the thermals above him, spiraling upward until they were like small ashes against that great hearth in which the sun burned. Because he didn’t know the reason he was there, had no purpose that he could understand, his mind was filled with a flood of debris-pieces of thoughts, drifting images, half-formed questions.

Near the end of the day, his eyelids grew heavy and his mind grew quiet and he saw something he had not seen before. He saw that he was no longer sitting in the place he’d sat that morning. He hadn’t moved, yet nothing around him was the same. He realized it had been that way all day. In every moment, everything had abandoned what it had been in the moment before and had become something new. He was looking at a different meadow, a different lake, a different sky. These things were very familiar to him, and yet they were not. He was keenly aware of each scent as if he’d never smelled it before, each new sound, new breath of wind, new ripple in this new universe.

When, at twilight, Meloux emerged from his cabin and crossed the meadow, he said nothing to Stephen, simply stood looking down at him. And Stephen realized that Meloux was different, too. He saw that the old man was older. He saw that the old man was dying, dying in every moment. It was a startling realization, but not a sad one, because he understood.

Meloux didn’t speak of the experience or of what Stephen might have learned from his time on Crow Point that day. He said simply, “I have made soup.”

Things changed. That was the nature of all creation. Stephen knew this and tried to accept it, but that morning, standing in the lobby of the Four Seasons, waiting for Skye Edwards to come from her room, acceptance was difficult. He stared through one of the windows overlooking the empty marina and the frozen white of Iron Lake. He didn’t want things to change. He wanted Marlee. He wanted her not to be angry with him, if anger it was. He wanted to be near her. At the same time, he felt himself resisting that temptation. He was full to bursting with contradictory impulses. He felt hot and cold toward Marlee at the same time. His mind, in a single moment, said to him two different things. It said, “Stay,” and it said, “Run.” His heart felt as if it was flying dizzyingly high and free, and yet was also imprisoned. He didn’t like this mix-up of emotions. He didn’t like that he felt out of control. On the other hand, he so enjoyed where that lack of control sometimes led him. For all its tragedy, the day before stayed with him in a way that did not feel tragic. He couldn’t shake the image of Marlee’s breasts, the dark eyes of her areolas staring at him, the feel of her flesh warm and yielding in his palm. Even now, to his great embarrassment, he had an erection.

“Stephen?”

The voice brought him suddenly out of himself. He shifted his left hand so that the coat he was holding covered him below the waist. He turned and found himself face-to-face with a tall, slender woman whose smile, from that first instant, won him.

“Skye?” he asked.

“This is such a pleasure,” she replied. “Annie’s told me so much about you. You’re every bit as handsome as she says.”

She offered her hand, then saw that his was bound in gauze. “Oh my, what happened?”

“Long story,” Stephen said and didn’t elaborate.

“Well, if I can’t shake your hand,” she said. She stepped to him and gave him a hug, heart to heart. She smelled of milled soap, fresh and clean, and he didn’t mind in the least the gentle force with which she pressed him to her.

When she released him, Stephen said impulsively, “Minobii-niibaa-anama’e-giizhigad.”

She smiled but was clearly baffled.

“It’s Ojibwe,” Stephen explained. “It means ‘Merry Christmas.’?”

“That’s so lovely. Thank you.”

“If you’re ready, I’ll take you out to see Annie.”

“Just let me get my coat.” She’d thrown the parka over the back of an easy chair in the hotel lobby. She lifted it and laughed. “Every time I put this on, I look like I’ve gained a hundred pounds.”

At the Land Rover, which was parked in the hotel lot, Skye eyed the trailer where the Bearcat sat. “We’ll need that?”

“Yes,” Stephen said.

“What is this Crow Point exactly?”

“A special place. It’s kind of isolated. You’ll see.”

“Jesus,” she whispered and shook her head.

Stephen drove south around the tip of Iron Lake and began up the eastern shoreline toward Allouette on the Iron Lake Reservation. Skye asked questions, a million of them, like a schoolgirl introduced to a new subject that fascinated her. Stephen happily obliged, answering and easily elaborating.

“The Ojibwe call this lake Gitchimiskwasaab,” he told her, “which basically means big ass. We have a story that tells of it being created by Nanaboozhoo, who’s kind of the trickster in our legends. See, Nanaboozhoo tried to steal the tail feathers from a great eagle, but the eagle took flight. He flew really high, and Nanaboozhoo finally had to let go, and when he fell to earth, he landed here. His butt cheeks made the indentation for the lake. The fall hurt him pretty bad, and he cried, and his tears filled the indentation with water.”

“You say ‘we,’ when you talk about the Ojibwe. Annie doesn’t.”

“The O’Connors are more Irish than Anishinaabe,” Stephen said.

“Anishinaabe?”

“Another name for the Ojibwe. A lot of people know us as the Chippewa. Some of us prefer one name, some another. Sometimes we just call each other Shinnobs. For me, it’s the Ojibwe part of who I am that’s most important. I can’t tell you why exactly except that I’ve always felt that way. For Annie, her relationship with God has always been the most important thing.”

“Yeah,” Skye said, not pleasantly. “God.”

They came to the place where the 4Runner had slid onto the ice and had broken through. The hole had frozen over, but Stephen knew where it was, and he tried not to look long because the memory hurt him like a fresh wound. And while he negotiated the icy curve of the road there, he drove very, very carefully.

They entered Allouette, a small town that, when Stephen was young, had been a community of dilapidation and neglect, the result of too little money, too few employment opportunities, and too long a history of wearily battling the government bureaucracies and the hopelessly complicated policies and the stereotypes believed by too many white people. Things had turned around a good deal on the rez in recent years, the result, in large measure, of the Chippewa Grand Casino south of Aurora. Gambling income had underwritten the cost of street improvement and repair, new water and waste systems, a new, large community center with its own health clinic, new tribal offices, a new marina. Enrolled members of the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe received apportionments from the casino income as well. The money wasn’t always wisely spent-many homes on the rez were stuffed with all kinds of unnecessary crap-and it didn’t mean that someone who’d let his place go to hell before kept it up now. Still, conditions on the rez had undeniably improved.

They left Allouette behind, and Stephen drove northwest on an old, snowpacked logging road. Four miles outside of town, he pulled off onto a wide area where the snow was crisscrossed with tire and snowmobile tracks.

Skye looked at the thick wall of forest all around her. “We’re here?”

“Not yet,” Stephen said. “From here, we take the snowmobile.”

He lowered the trailer ramp, climbed aboard the Bearcat, kicked the engine over, and carefully off-loaded the machine. Skye stood by, watching his every move intently and with a look that Stephen interpreted as admiring. He let the snowmobile idle, went to the Land Rover, and took out two helmets.

“You’ll need to wear this,” he said, handing one of them to Skye.

She fit it on herself and gave her head a little experimental shake.

“Feel okay?” Stephen asked.

She grinned and gave a thumbs-up.

Stephen pulled on his thick mittens, and they were off toward Crow Point, following a trail already well broken and hard-packed through the deep snow.

The snowmobile was a troubling concern for Stephen. On the one hand, the noise of its passage was a violation of the quiet that he understood ought to have dominion in the forest. On the other hand, it was a kick to ride. Not only that but it got him to isolated Crow Point ten times faster than skis or snowshoes. It was nearly two miles, but on the snowmobile they were there in less than ten minutes.

Anne must have heard them coming. She stood outside Rainy’s cabin, in a large area in front of the door that she and Stephen had cleared of snow, shading her eyes against the sun’s glare with her hand. She wore a bulky red sweater but no coat. Stephen pulled the Bearcat to a stop a dozen yards away and dismounted. He turned to help Skye, but she’d already climbed off and had sunk knee-deep into the soft powder off to the side of the packed snowmobile track. She laughed, a lovely, mellow bell-like sound. Annie’s hand dropped to her side, and Stephen saw clearly the look of deep concern its shadow had hidden.

“Hi, Annie!” Skye approached Anne with graceful, bounding strides, kicking up powdery clouds of snow in her wake. She wrapped Stephen’s sister in her arms as if they’d been separated for years. Then she stepped back, looked around her, and said cheerfully, “Your own little convent at the North Pole? Hoping only God and Stephen could find you here, I bet.”

Anne’s eyes sought her brother, who’d remained near the Bearcat, and he saw in them a kind of pleading that he didn’t understand.

“You must be freezing out here,” Skye said. “Let’s go inside, where it’s warm and we can talk.”

Anne turned dumbly, opened the door, and went inside. Stephen started to follow, but Skye said to him, “Just the two of us alone for a while, would that be all right?”

Stephen said, “Sure. I could leave and come back.”

“No,” Anne said quickly. “Stay. We won’t be long.”

He sat on the Bearcat. The air was still, the sun off the snow blinding, the quiet oddly unsettling in a place where quiet was the norm. In his gut, Stephen felt that something was not right, but from what he’d observed, he couldn’t wrap an understanding around what the trouble might be. He liked Skye, genuinely liked her, yet he’d seen fear in Anne’s eyes. It was fear, wasn’t it? But what could a friend-and it was clear that Skye was a friend-bring to Anne that would make her so afraid?

He looked at the other cabin on Crow Point, Meloux’s. He wished the old Mide were there now. Whatever it was that troubled Anne, Meloux would know and would know, too, how to help her. Stephen hopped off the Bearcat and made his way through the snow to Meloux’s cabin. He spent a couple of minutes clearing away the deep drift that lay against the entrance. He knew the door wasn’t locked, and he opened it. Inside he caught the wonderful fragrance of the place, the smell of Meloux’s long existence there, of the sage and cedar the old Mide kept for smudging, of the herbs with which he scented the ticking of his mattress, of the succulent stews and fry bread and wild roasted meats that had, over the decades, soaked into the logs of the walls and floor. Despite the familiar look and smell of the place, he felt alone, abandoned in a way. Meloux was always around when he was needed, but not this time. Stephen thought how Meloux had urged him to dream, to try to have a vision. He hadn’t had a chance yet, but he would. Maybe tonight.

Stephen left the cabin and closed the door behind him. He waded through the snow, which came well above his knees, back toward Rainy’s. He approached from the side, where there was a window facing south. Anne had pulled back the curtain that covered the window, probably to let in as much light as possible. As he came near, a big cloud crossed the sun, and the glare off the windowpanes vanished. Through the glass, he could see clearly inside. And what he saw was Skye holding Anne in her arms, their lips pressed together in a long, passionate kiss.

He stood dead still and remembered the day he’d spent sitting in the meadow and how, in every moment, his world had changed, and he understood with a deep and abiding clarity that in the moment of this kiss his world had changed again.