Thunder Bay

TWENTY-SEVEN

Henry rose with the sound of the first birds. The clouds that obscured the moon had passed, leaving the sky clear and full of stars. A faint glow along the eastern horizon suggested dawn.

He built a fire, filled the pot with lake water, and began coffee brewing. He made oatmeal and flapjacks. A few minutes after the sun came up, Wellington emerged from his tent. He went immediately toward the woods to do his morning business. When he returned, he poured himself coffee and stood staring at the lake. Henry had seen men hungover, and Wellington looked hungover.

“What do you do all day?” Wellington said.

“Cut wood for the fire,” Henry replied. “Fish. Hunt. Gather things to eat from the woods.”

Wellington was silent and sipped his coffee. He blinked against the morning sun. “What about Maria?”

Henry stirred the oatmeal. “She reads her books.”

“All day?”

“I can’t leave her. She comes with me when I go after food.”

“She doesn’t scare away the game?”

“She takes well to the forest.”

“She swims,” Wellington said. “I’ve seen her hair wet. But I haven’t seen wet clothes.”

“She dries her things over the fire.”

The flap of Lima’s tent swung open and the man stepped out. He coughed and spit. He went into the woods, and the noise of his business was loud and unpleasant. He came back and took the coffee Henry held out to him.

“Let’s go over the maps,” he said to Wellington.

They sat together looking at their charts, drinking their coffee, eventually eating the food Henry had prepared. After passing an hour in this way, they climbed into their Folbot and headed southeast across the lake.

When they were out of sight, Henry slipped into Maria’s tent. He kissed her forehead. “Wake up.”

Her eyes, brown like acorns, fluttered open. “What is it?”

“Time to go hunting.”

She dressed. They ate and started off. The morning was crisp, and at first their breath popped out in gray-white puffs. The sunlight sharpened the edge of everything, gave fine definition to color and shape. Henry had shown her how to walk in the forest on the outside of her feet to reduce the noise of her passage. He’d instructed her to keep silent, explaining how sounds in the woods carried far. They made their way to the place where Henry had found the moccasin tracks.

He eyed the western ridge that curved around the end of the lake. He pointed, indicating to Maria that that was the way.

The trail was a day old now, but Henry had little trouble following it. Whoever had left it wasn’t concerned about being tracked. Henry wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but hoped it meant the watcher didn’t think he’d been seen and was careless. The trail led them along the bank of a creek that edged the base of the ridge and curled into the folds of the land to the south. After an hour, the tracks joined a deer trail that angled up another ridge. When they reached the far side of that ridge, Henry paused and pointed toward a white patch of haze in a hollow below.

Maria whispered, “Smoke?”

Henry put his finger to her mouth to silence her. He nodded.

The next mile they moved at a crawl. With Maria behind him, he took no chances. He paused frequently to listen. Eventually he heard the chunk of an ax biting into wood. They came to a path through the undergrowth along a small, fast-running brook. The path led in the direction of the chopping. Henry debated following it. A path that well used was a danger. On the other hand, it would reveal to them quickly who held the ax, and with Maria, who still did not move with Henry’s stealth, it would mean a quieter approach. He chambered a cartridge and moved ahead.

He glimpsed the cabin fifty yards through the trees. He signaled Maria to drop into a crouch. They crept forward this way, low to the ground. The chopping stopped. Henry stopped. He listened. Suddenly the sound of whistling came from ahead. Henry spotted movement, then saw a figure carrying a load of split wood in his arms. The figure was dressed in buckskin britches. Long gray hair flowed over a buckskin tunic. Henry also saw moccasins on the feet. The figure stepped through the cabin door and disappeared. Henry signaled Maria, and they moved forward again and slipped into brush that edged the small clearing where the cabin stood. Henry lay on his belly. Maria did the same beside him.

The brook flowed behind the structure, which was a log construction similar to the cabin Henry and Woodrow had built on Crow Point, but looked much older than theirs. A winter supply of wood lay cut and stacked against the west wall. The cut wood occupied almost as much space in the little clearing as the cabin did. Fifteen yards away was another, smaller structure that Henry recognized as a smokehouse. A cleaned deer hide was stretched across the smokehouse wall. A chopping block stood a dozen yards from the cabin door, an ax blade sunk into the scarred, flat top. Split wood and wood chips lay strewn about the base like bone fragments. Whistling came from the cabin, but it was too dark inside for Henry to see anything.

They waited patiently. In ten minutes, the figure emerged and headed back to the block. This time Henry could see the face clearly, and he was surprised. The skin was very dark, mud brown. He glanced at Maria, who gave him a look of puzzlement. The man gathered an armload of wood to add to the stack against the wall. Henry made his move.

He strode forward before the man could unburden his arms and said, “Stop.”

The man dropped the wood, spun toward Henry, saw the rifle, and looked poised to run.

“Don’t move,” Henry said.

The man held himself tense, ready, but he didn’t move.

“Maria,” Henry called.

She came from the underbrush and stood beside him. The man’s eyes shifted from Henry to Maria. Something changed in them, but Henry couldn’t tell what that meant.

“Who are you?” Henry demanded.

The man didn’t respond.

“Maybe he doesn’t understand English,” Maria suggested. “Bonjour,” she said.

The man waited, then nodded tentatively to her. “Bonjour.”

“Votre nom?” she asked.

“Maurice,” he replied.

“Je m’appelle Maria Lima,” she said. She touched Henry. “Henry Meloux.”

For the next couple of minutes, while Henry held the rifle and the man did not move, Maria carried on a conversation with him. At the end, she said to Henry, “He didn’t mean any disrespect by watching me. He was just curious about who’d come to his land.”

“His land?”

“That’s what he called it.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I came with my father and my father’s friend.”

“What about me?”

“I told him you were my husband.”

Henry looked at her.

“He saw me swimming naked and you watching. I thought it was best. He’s apologized. I think you can put the rifle down, Henry.”

Henry studied the man’s face. It was old in a way that couldn’t be pinned down in years. A face worn by the wilderness and what the wilderness required. Henry had seen the same weathering in Woodrow’s face.

“He’s a Negro,” Henry said.

Maria laughed. “That’s very observant, husband, but it’s no reason to keep holding a gun on him.”

Henry and the man locked gazes. Henry indicated that he was going to lower the rifle. The man nodded. Henry pointed the rifle barrel toward the ground and shifted the weapon to his left hand. If the man attacked, it would be difficult-probably impossible-to swing the rifle up in time to be of any use. Both men understood that.

Maurice spoke to Maria, who translated for Henry. “He’s asked if we would eat with him.”

Henry said, “We should accept.”

She smiled. “I already have.”

Inside, the cabin was spare but neat. It was a single room, like Henry’s cabin on Crow Point, with a floor of hewn pine. Maurice had built a hearth and fireplace of stone. There was a bunk in one corner with a wool-blanket covering. In the center was a small table with two chairs. The man, Henry thought, had not always been alone.

They shared a meal of venison stew and, while they ate, Maria and Maurice talked.

“He has been here twenty winters,” Maria told Henry. “He came with his wife whose name was Hummingbird.”

“Hummingbird?”

“She was Odawa, he says.”

“Odawa?”

Kin. Long ago the Odawa, like the Ojibwe and other Algonquin people, had migrated west to the Great Lakes after their enemy the Iroquois drove them from their land near the eastern sea.

Henry addressed Maurice. “Anin,” he said, in formal greeting.

“Anin,” Maurice replied. In the language of the Odawa, which was very nearly the language of Henry’s people, Maurice and Henry talked.

“I am of the Iron Lake Anishinaabeg,” Henry told him.

“I am from Quebec,” Maurice replied. “I married an Odawa woman and lived with her happily for twenty years here.”

“Where is she?”

“She died five winters ago.”

“Your children?”

“We had none. Only each other.”

“What is he saying?” Maria asked.

“He is a widower. A man, I think, who still misses his wife.”

Maria spoke to Maurice, who smiled and said, “Merci.”

“Why did you come here?” Henry asked.

“Because I was a black man in a white world. Here the color of my skin doesn’t matter.”

That was something Henry understood well.

“We need to go back,” Henry finally said.

“You will come again?” Maurice asked eagerly.

“He would like us to return,” Henry told Maria.

She smiled at Maurice and said, “Mais oui.”