Trickster's Point

CHAPTER 26

W hen Cork left Lester Bigby, he drove directly to the Iron Lake Reservation. The afternoon had turned remarkably warm, especially considering the spitting snow and sleet of only a couple of days earlier. The sky was the soft blue of a baby blanket, and the sun, already well past its zenith, put a fire to everything so that the forest and the lake and even the pavement of the road itself seemed to pulsate with electric vitality.

He pulled into Allouette and saw Isaiah Broom’s pickup parked next to Willie Crane’s Jeep in front of the Iron Lake Center for Native Art. The door to the establishment was just opening, and both men were coming out. Cork drove past them and watched as they ambled down to the Mocha Moose and went inside. He made a U-turn and parked on the street across from the coffee shop. Broom and Crane stood at the counter while Sarah LeDuc made them something to drink, then they sat at a table near the front window, leaned toward each other, and appeared to talk in the way of intimate friends.

The roads that led to friendship were, Cork knew, as numerous as those in a Rand McNally atlas, but the underlying construct was always the same: a true sharing of self with another, a deep and vulnerable trusting. In the case of Isaiah Broom and Willie Crane, the friendship had begun in childhood, a connection between two boys painfully awkward in their own ways and filled with a terrible sense of isolation. Willie’s situation was obvious, his difficult gait and tortured speech. Isaiah Broom’s problems were less so but, in their way, just as challenging. His father had never been around, and his mother had dropped out of the picture when Isaiah was still a small child. Like Willie and Winona Crane, he’d been taken care of by a laundry list of relatives. He was a big kid, but unlike Jubal Little, whose size and physical ability were proportionally equal, Isaiah Broom was hopelessly uncoordinated. He lived in a body that seemed beyond his control, and perhaps even his comprehension. Cork had seen him sit for long periods of time staring at his big, meaty limbs as if they totally confounded him. Willie Crane, on the other hand, seemed determined to rise above the limitations of the body he’d been given, and although every word he spoke was a struggle and every step he took a battle, he faced the challenge of his life with the heart of a warrior. Probably more than anyone else on the Iron Lake Reservation, he understood what the clumsy, bearish Isaiah Broom was up against.

But maybe most important in their relationship was the fact that, when they were kids, Willie Crane had saved Isaiah Broom’s life. It had happened this way.

It was early summer. They were fishing on Iron Lake, in an old aluminum rowboat Broom had borrowed from one of his uncles. They’d rowed out a good half mile from shore and cast their lines off an island called Gull, where legend had it, a monster muskie dubbed Old Flint liked to feed. They were eleven years old. Broom had the bulk of a kid several years older. Willie was small and slender, but strong because he exercised constantly to compensate for his weak, sometimes spastic, left side. They’d been out maybe an hour when the storm came up. It blew in from nowhere, a huge, angry bluster, wind and rain and lightning that shoved the lake into a rage of whitecaps. They tried to make it back to the old dock in Allouette, each boy bent over an oar, pulling for dear life, but the boat began taking on water, wave after wave, and the vessel grew more sluggish and their arms more tired as the waterline crept toward the tops of the gunwales.

They were still fifty yards out when the boat swamped completely, and they took to the water. They swam for shore. That is, Willie swam for shore. Broom didn’t know how to swim. He flailed, arms like great tree limbs beating the water, throwing up sprays of desperate white in the troughs between the waves. Willie went back for him. Broom reached out, grasping wildly in his panic, but Willie stayed away. The oars from the boat had lifted from their locks and were easily riding the wild undulations of the lake. Willie latched on to one of them and shoved it toward his friend. Broom grabbed it, and Willie shouted for him to hold on. He swam them both near enough to shore that his feet found bottom, but by then Broom had taken in so much water and was so exhausted that the oar slipped from his hands and his body slid below the surface. Willie dived after him, wrapped his hands around fistfuls of Broom’s T-shirt, and dragged him to solid ground. He dropped him in the wash of the waves and saw that the boy’s chest had ceased to rise and fall. He cocked Broom’s head back, locked his lips against Broom’s blue lips, and breathed life back into his friend.

It was a remarkable story, but when the Aurora Sentinel reported the incident, a lot of white folks in Tamarack County refused to believe it, refused to accept that the Indian kid they sometimes spotted limping down Center Street, and who was incomprehensible when he tried to talk, could have performed such a physical feat. But Cork believed it. He believed it because he knew the heart within Willie Crane, and he believed it because he knew that friendship, true friendship, was the stuff of miracles.

Cork got out of his Land Rover and headed into the Mocha Moose. Except for Broom and Crane and Sarah LeDuc, the coffee shop was empty. There was music playing over the sound system, and Cork recognized the flute work of Bill Miller. Sarah smiled from behind the counter and greeted Cork with “Boozhoo.”

“ Boozhoo, Sarah. Quiet today,” he said.

“Monday afternoon. Always quiet. Can I get you something?”

“A small dark roast.”

“Regular or decaf?”

“Regular. Never understood the point of drinking coffee without caffeine in it. Like drinking nonalcoholic beer.”

Broom and Crane had been talking before he came in, but with his appearance, they’d lapsed into a watchful silence.

Cork got his coffee and paid. Then he strolled to the table where the two men sat. “I was just on my way over to your place, Isaiah. Mind if I sit down?”

“Heard the cops tossed your house this morning,” Broom said.

Though uninvited, Cork pulled a chair from another table and joined the men. “They were respectful,” he said.

“Find what they were looking for?”

“You’ll have to ask them, Isaiah. I left before they finished.”

“You okay?” Willie asked. U-k?

“I feel like I’m in a vise at the moment, Willie, and the jaws are closing. Thanks for asking.”

Willie said, “I should get back to the business. Unless you want to talk to me, too.”

“No, it’s Isaiah I came to see.”

“All right.” He nodded to Broom. “Seven?”

“I’ll be there,” Broom said.

Willie scooted his chair from the table. He got up and limped out, the sound of his gait like uneven drumbeats on the old wooden floorboards.

“Seven?” Cork asked.

“Tribal Council’s holding a meeting to talk about this sulfide mining thing,” Broom replied. “Some guy from that mining company is gonna try to convince us they’ll tear up the earth safely. Kinda like Custer saying all he really wanted to do was have tea with Sitting Bull. What did you want to see me about?” He lifted his mug, sipped his coffee, and his dark eyes watched Cork closely.

“I asked you yesterday where you were on Saturday. You treated it like a joke. It’s no joke, Isaiah. Where were you?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Sam Winter Moon taught me how to hunt in the old way. He taught a lot of Shinnobs, including you. He also taught me how to make my own arrows, which is something I still do. I know that you do, too.”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Do you splice your fletches?”

“Yeah.”

“And the pattern?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Sam made his arrows using two different colors of fletching, red and green. They were round-back, with a left-wing offset. When I asked him why he used that pattern, he told me it was out of respect for the man who’d taught him. Cat-Eye Jimmy LeClair. When Cat-Eye died, Sam began using his pattern as a sign of respect and to preserve his memory. When Sam died, I began making my arrows using Sam’s pattern, for the same reason. Respect and memory. I’m just wondering if you might have done the same thing. What fletching pattern do you use?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Humor me and just answer the question.”

“I feel like a rabbit looking at a snare here, O’Connor, so I think I’m going to keep that information to myself.” Broom glanced at the clock on the wall. “And we’re finished talking here. I’ve got to see somebody in Yellow Lake about a tree they want me to carve.” He stood up and turned away to drop his mug off with Sarah as he left.

Cork watched him go.

Broom was a good Shinnob in every way. Unlike Lester Bigby, whose emotions were tattooed all over his face, Broom gave away nothing. But all that meant to Cork was that he’d have to keep digging.

After he left Allouette, Cork drove east on a road that wound for nearly two miles through a mix of marsh and popple. He came to a dirt track that split off to the right and that was marked with a sign, beautifully carved and lacquered, and into which were wood-burned the words CHAINSAW ART. He drove a short stretch, into a clearing, and pulled to a stop in front of the home of Isaiah Broom. It was a cabin of Broom’s own design and construct, not large but sturdy, built of honey-colored pine. Next to it stood another structure, almost as large but of flat-board construction, which, Cork knew, served Broom as both garage and studio.

Over the years, Isaiah Broom had tried his hand at a lot of occupations, mostly associated with heavy labor. He’d logged timber in his early years, worked on road crews laying down steaming asphalt in summer, when the days were straight out of a pressure cooker, mopped hospital floors, and finally settled on tree and stump removal. Mostly, he’d eked out a living, and what was left after he’d fed and clothed himself (never very well) he’d spent in advocacy on behalf of his people. He was known on the rez as a rabble-rouser. He considered himself a skin’s skin. He could quote at length Russell Means and Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, Chief Joseph and Black Elk, James Welch and Sherman Alexie. He’d been on the Trail of Broken Treaties in 1972, which had culminated in the taking of the BIA office in Washington, D.C. He’d twice marched across the continent in support of the sovereign rights of indigenous people, first in 1978, on what the American Indian Movement called the Longest Walk, and again thirty years later, on the Longest Walk 2. Whatever else he might think of Isaiah Broom, Cork respected the man’s dedication to the principles he advocated.

Isaiah Broom’s star was on the rise because of his ability to find, in a great chunk of wood, the spirit inside it that sought form. That was Broom’s explanation for his art, anyway, which amounted to taking large sections of tree trunk and, using mostly a chain saw, creating remarkable sculptures. He’d begun this art because his tree and stump removal business gave him easy access to the raw material, and he’d never married and so had a lot of time on his hands. Even after he’d made a name for himself, he still cut trees, but he did so only for those who wanted a part of the tree left standing and hewn into an image. On the front lawns of a number of the finer homes in Tamarack County what had once been an oak or elm or linden tree a hundred feet tall was now a ten-foot bear or an Ojibwe maiden or eagles standing guard over an aerie or a winged serpent, courtesy of the skilled hands of Isaiah Broom.

Willie Crane was pretty much directly responsible for the recent widening recognition of Broom’s art. He showed the sculptures at the Iron Lake Center for Native Art, and also at the gallery he owned in Saint Paul, and he’d introduced Broom to influential patrons. Thanks to Willie, those hands and arms, which most of his life had so confounded Isaiah Broom, had become not only the way he expressed what was deepest in him but also the manner in which he earned his living.

Cork walked across a patch of ground covered with wood chips and sawdust where, in the summer, Broom plied his art. He knocked at the front door of the cabin, but no one answered. He went to the other building and peered in a window. The space where Broom’s Explorer would have been parked stood empty. Through the panes, Cork could see the area that, in winter, Broom used for his carving. He looked around to be sure he was still alone, then went to the door and tried the knob. It was unlocked-not surprising; on the rez, no one locked their doors-and he stepped inside.

The place was a jumble of smells, all battling for dominance. There was the sweet aroma of cut pine; the sharp petroleum bite of lacquers and mineral spirits and gasoline; the heavy, metallic smell of cutting oil and engine oil; and the underlying mustiness of the dirt floor. A workbench ran along most of the length of the back wall, and it was a mess of tools-chisels, hammers, hacksaws, coping saws, planes, knives with straight blades and knives whose blades curved oddly, rasps, sandpaper, and utensils with points so delicate-looking that they reminded Cork of a dentist’s picks. Broom’s chain saws, three of them of varying size and horsepower, sat side by side at the far end of the bench.

There was a smaller worktable against the far wall. On it, Cork saw all the tools necessary for arrow making-fletching stripper and jig, arrow saw, nocking pliers. He walked to the table, where several dark gray commercial carbon arrows lay next to the tools. He picked up a can of white paint that was also on the table, and he was pretty certain he knew who’d fired the arrow into the door of Rainy’s cabin, though the why of it was still a mystery. On the upper corner of the table sat a handmade pine box. When he lifted the lid, Cork found feathers that would be used for fletching. They were turkey feathers in two colors, red and green, the same colors he used for his own arrows. Above the table, hung on hooks screwed into the wall, were the items that had drawn him into the structure in the first place: a recurve hunting bow and a belt quiver full of arrows. He drew out an arrow. It was tipped with a Braxe broadhead, the same kind Cork used. But that mattered less than the fletching. The pattern of red and green spliced turkey feathers, round-back and with a left-wing offset, matched exactly what Cork used. It was the same pattern that had been on the arrows that killed both Jubal Little and the John Doe.