Trickster's Point

CHAPTER 29

The Escalade was parked in front of the Tamarack County courthouse. When Cork pulled up behind it, Kenny Yates stepped from the driver’s side to meet him. The man was dressed in black and, under the streetlamp, looked like the kind of huge form that might emerge from the closet in a child’s nightmare.

“Couldn’t do this at Jubal’s place?” Cork asked.

“I just drive,” Yates said. “I don’t ask.”

He opened the back door, Camilla Little swung her long legs into the light on the street, and Yates offered his hand to help her out. She seemed unsteady, maybe a little drunk.

“Thank you, Kenny.”

“No problem.” Yates spoke in a voice that was gentle and assuring.

Cork walked her to the passenger side of his Land Rover and helped her in. As he came back around, he saw that Yates had moved forward to study the hole in the windshield.

“We heard about this,” Yates said.

Cork didn’t ask how they’d heard. He figured the Jaegers were probably keyed in to every aspect of the investigation, through one of Holter’s people or someone in the sheriff’s department. There weren’t many doors that money and political power couldn’t open.

“I told Mrs. Little that I’m real uncomfortable with this,” Yates said. “I’d like to follow you, if that’s all right.”

Cork shook his head. “Where we’re going, I’d rather go alone.”

Yates reached inside his leather jacket and drew out a small handgun, a Beretta Tomcat. He held it out toward Cork. “Jubal told me you don’t carry. I’d rather you did on this trip.”

Once again Cork gave his head a shake. “We’ll be fine.”

The pupils of Yates’s eyes were as dark as bullet holes. “Anything happens to her, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”

“That’ll make two of us,” Cork said.

“I’ll be waiting right here,” Yates told him.

“We may be a while.”

“I said I’ll be waiting.”

Cork got into his Land Rover and drove away.

Camilla stared ahead, offering him mostly profile, lit by streetlamps, in light, then in shadow. Her hands lay clasped on her lap in a way that made it clear to Cork how pensive she was. That and her silence. Which he didn’t mind. It was, after all, Winona Crane to whom she wanted to speak.

In his own mind, he remarked again on what a lovely woman she was, in a grand and stately way. She’d been raised in the political arena, trained in the etiquette of diplomacy and the nuance of statesmanship. She’d attended National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., along with the daughters of presidents and diplomats. For college she’d chosen Mills, and law school at Stanford, specializing in environmental issues. She’d been an attorney for the Nature Conservancy when she met Jubal Little at that cancer fund-raiser in Saint Paul. She had, as Jubal once told Cork, a brain, a body, and a beautifully broad view of the world. Which meant, apparently, that she understood about Winona Crane.

Jubal had also told Cork, on more than one occasion, that it was she who’d chosen him. Or more likely the Jaeger family who’d chosen him for her. He was big. He was handsome. He was articulate. He was Indian. And he was beloved. He was made to run for politics.

And the Jaegers were just the family to groom him for it.

Senator Arnold Jaeger desperately wanted a son to follow in his political footsteps. Except for the unfortunate legacy of his time aboard the USS Cole — a face that could have scared a badger-Alex Jaeger, with his military credentials, his political savvy, and his deep hunger to be a player in that world, would have been the perfect choice. His brother, Nick, wasn’t an option. He’d rather have been hunting polar bear or musk ox in Canada’s Northwest Territories than beating the bushes for votes in a congressional district. And Camilla, for all her intelligence, beauty, and legal knowledge, lacked an element that her father considered essential in being ultimately successful in the national political arena: a penis. Jubal had told Cork that Jaeger was fond of saying, “There will never be, in my lifetime, a woman elected to the White House. It’s unfair, yes, but it’s the truth. No matter how liberal they say they are, most voters, in the end, believe it takes balls to run this country.” So when his daughter began to be seen with Jubal Little, Senator Jaeger put a bull’s-eye on Jubal’s back and, in the end, bagged the man who would carry forward the Jaeger political flag.

Jubal won his first election-U.S. representative from the district that included Tamarack County, in which he maintained his official residence-by a landslide. He bought a luxurious town house in Georgetown. Camilla was usually in D.C., where she had a huge circle of friends from her childhood, or in the Twin Cities, where she had family. When Jubal came north to Tamarack County, unless he was campaigning, he came alone. It was always put out officially that he was up north to relax, to fish, to hunt, to enjoy the solitude of the great Northwoods. The truth, which Cork and very few others knew, was that, more often than not, he came because of Winona Crane.

“Does she know I’m coming?” Camilla asked.

“I called her brother. He relayed the message. Sure you want to do this?”

She looked ahead, into the dark of the long road to the rez. “I have to do this.”

Willie Crane’s cabin was lit from inside. Cork parked, the cabin door opened, and Willie stood silhouetted against the light. When Cork escorted Camilla to him, Willie said, with as much graciousness as his twisted speech would allow, “Boozhoo, Mrs. Little.” Bz’yooMizLil.

“Boozhoo,” she replied naturally. “Thank you for allowing me to come.”

Willie stepped back and let them in.

Every time Cork visited Willie Crane he was struck nearly dumb with wonder at the beauty of the photographs that hung on the walls. The wildlife shots were particularly amazing. Willie, with his clumsy gait, had somehow managed to photograph animals who spooked if you were within a mile of them and you breathed too hard. He caught them in poses so relaxed and so integrally a part of their surroundings that they might have existed in a world where humans or other predators never intruded. And maybe, in a way, that was true, at least as far as humans were concerned, because Willie Crane went deep in the Northwoods, far from any roads, to do much of his shooting. Cork figured that, in order to move such a distance and to do it quietly enough that he didn’t scare away the animal life, Willie had to walk agonizingly slow. But he also figured that, if Willie’s life had taught him anything, it was probably the virtue of patience.

Camilla scanned the cabin, and Cork could tell she was uncomfortable. Or maybe just nervous at the prospect of finally meeting the woman her husband had loved all his life.

“Is she here?” Camilla asked.

“No.”

“But she’s coming?”

“I told her,” Willie replied. “She said she would think about it.”

“What do we do?”

“We wait.” He went toward the refrigerator. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“Beer, Cork?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Willie took out two bottles of Leinie’s Original, unscrewed the caps, and handed a bottle to Cork.

“Migwech,” Cork said.

“I heard your windshield took a bullet,” Willie said.

“A deer slug actually.”

“Careless hunter?”

“Yeah.” Cork let it go at that.

Willie clearly wasn’t interested in pursuing the topic. He looked at Camilla Little with great interest and said, “I always knew this day would come. And I guess I knew that Jubal would have to be dead first.”

Which was Cork’s sentiment exactly.

The week before his wedding, Jubal Little came north. He came quietly, and Cork might not have even known he was in town except for Willie Crane.

When Winona returned to the reservation after her rescue from the McMurphys, she kept mostly to herself. Whenever he encountered her, Cork found a woman who’d grown beautiful in a distant way and who eyed him as if he were on the far side of some secret knowledge that was hers alone and who spoke to him as if he were very young in his understanding of the world and she very old. The Shinnobs on the rez talked about her as if she were some kind of witch.

Because Jubal came north a lot, Cork often saw his old friend, although they didn’t connect in the former way. The powerful friendship of youth was mostly memory, but a good one still, and one they both respectfully acknowledged.

The powerful connection between Jubal and Winona did not diminish over the years, but it was a relationship kept deep in the shadows. A small town and the rez, especially, were difficult places to keep secrets. Even so, if Cork hadn’t already known the whole history of Jubal and Winona-two halves of a broken stone-he’d have suspected nothing. When he heard about Jubal’s engagement, it made him wonder. It also made him a little angry: What about Winona? But it was, after all, none of his business. Until early one summer morning when he received a desperate call from Willie Crane.

He was a deputy with the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. He’d worked late the night before, a fatal accident on Highway 1 because of an unusually thick fog, and then the paperwork after. He was groggy but woke up quickly when Willie explained the situation.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he promised.

It wasn’t yet dawn, just the promise of morning in a faint evanescence above the tree line to the east. He drove fast, and the whole way, Willie’s words kept echoing in his head: Jubal’s going to kill Winona.

The sky was peach-colored by the time he reached Winona Crane’s little house outside Allouette. Her truck was parked in the dirt drive, alongside her brother’s modified Jeep, but Jubal’s vehicle was nowhere to be seen. In the garage, Cork thought, looking toward the small structure so rickety a strong wind might blow it down. If Jubal and Winona didn’t want anyone to know he was there, that was the place for him to park.

As Cork approached, Willie opened the front door. From inside came Jubal’s voice, drunk and angry.

“Why, goddamn it? Give me one good reason.”

Winona’s voice in reply was measured. “I’ve given you several, Jubal. You just won’t hear them. That’s always been a problem for you. You hear only what you want to hear.”

“And what I want to hear now is one word. Yes. That’s all. Just yes.”

“No.”

Something broke-smashed against a wall.

“He has a gun,” Willie told Cork. E-as-agun.

Cork entered carefully. Winona sat at the Formica-topped table in the tiny dining room. Her hair was a little wild, but it was a look that seemed to be more from sleep than anything else. She wore a kimono, an odd dressing gown, Cork thought, for a Shinnob on the Iron Lake Reservation. He’d never been inside the house, and he was surprised by what he saw. The walls and shelves and every available flat surface held images and icons and sculptures, things that he associated with a variety of religious traditions: a fat ceramic Buddha; a Celtic cross; a clay plate kiln-fired and painted with Navajo symbols; a figure with an elongated neck, African-looking and carved from what might have been ebony; little finger cymbals of the kind he’d seen in photos of Tibetan monks. It felt clean but cluttered, like a mind in search of truth and stuffed with too many ideas of what that was.

Jubal Little towered over Winona, his back to Cork. He wore boxer shorts, nothing else. His broad back was thickly muscled and his skin deeply tanned. On the speckled Formica of the tabletop stood a bottle of Maker’s Mark Kentucky bourbon, the red seal broken, but no glass that Cork could see. He did see, as Jubal waved his hands, the gun that Willie had warned him about.

The house lay mostly in the gloom of a day not yet arrived. Only one light was on, a little lamp on a table in the corner behind Winona, a lamp with a tan shade decorated with images of dream catchers.

“Then there’s nothing to be done,” Jubal said with a despair that didn’t quite ring true. “I’ll kill us both.”

Winona’s eyes shifted from Jubal to where Cork and Willie stood. Jubal must have seen, because he turned to face them.

“Well, what do you know? Dick Tracy’s here.”

“Morning, Jubal,” Cork said.

“Is it?” His eyes, bloodshot, swung toward a window. “The dawning of a new day. Fuck.”

Cork looked at the firearm in Jubal’s hand, a small-caliber stainless-steel handgun with a rosewood grip. An expensive boutique weapon, he thought, but it could do damage. “Jubal, that gun has me a little nervous. Mind putting it down?”

“I like the feel of it in my hand. This is one thing I can control.” He threw a disappointed glance in Winona’s direction.

“I understand,” Cork said. “It’s just easier to talk-for you, Winona, me-if the gun’s not a part of our conversation. And I don’t know what you’re upset about, but I can absolutely guarantee you that Winona’s more likely to be amenable if you’re not threatening her with a gun. True, Winona?”

Winona Crane’s face was as implacable as the face on her ceramic Buddha. “He’ll get the same answer from me, gun or no.”

That wasn’t the help Cork was looking for. But he said, as if it was exactly the answer he’d expected, “There, you see, Jubal. The gun’s of no use here. Put it down and we can talk this out.”

Jubal studied Cork. He swayed a bit as he stood there, a skyscraper in a mild earthquake. He said, “You took a gun from me once. I told you never to try it again. Remember?”

“I remember. And, Jubal, I won’t try to take it from you. I just want you to put it down so that we can talk.”

“I’m done talking.” He turned the barrel of the gun toward Cork, his face a stone mask as he pulled the trigger.

Cork’s heart gave a kick, but that was all that happened. The gun didn’t fire.

“Not loaded,” Jubal said and laid the firearm on the table.

Cork walked straight at Jubal and, when he was within distance, dropped him with a right cross that Jubal, if he saw it coming, did nothing to stop.

Cork breathed fast and angry. He eyed Winona, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t shown any surprise in anything that had occurred, as if she didn’t care in the least or maybe had known all along how it would play out.

“What’s this all about?” he said.

“Jubal wants me to marry him,” she replied.

Cork looked down to where Jubal lay, his eyes glazed from the blow and the alcohol. “But you won’t?”

“I can’t,” Winona said.

“Why not?”

“He has a different destiny, a great one, and he needs a different kind of wife for that.”

“A great destiny?” Cork said.

“He’s going to stand on the mountaintop. He’s going to shape nations,” Winona replied.

“And you’re not good enough to be there with him?” Willie said. He was angry, and Cork couldn’t tell if his ire was directed at Winona or Jubal.

She smiled indulgently at her brother and explained, as if to a child, “I was a wild kid. A runaway. Raped at sixteen. Living on the streets of San Francisco at seventeen, doing whatever I had to do for drugs, food, a place to crash. And let’s not forget the whole McMurphy enterprise. And, as any Shinnob on the rez will tell you, I’m now a witch. What kind of wife is that for a man on his way to the mountaintop?”

“What you did isn’t who you are,” Willie fired back, but the meaning was so twisted in his speech that Cork had to spend a moment untangling the garble.

Willie seemed to give up on the argument, his anger quickly spent. He walked to his sister, put his arm around her shoulders, leaned to her, and kissed her hair. “I was afraid he really might kill you.”

“He wouldn’t,” she said. “I knew that. As his wife, I’m no use to him. To go where he’s going, he’ll have to rid himself of me. He doesn’t understand it now, but someday he will. That day will be his beginning,” she said with a sad glance at the man prone and miserable on the floor, “and my end.”

Later, Cork sat with Jubal on the porch steps in the full light of the morning sun. They each had a cup of the coffee Winona had brewed. She and Willie had gone for a swim in Iron Lake and left the two men together to talk.

“She’s always insisted on being so damn discreet,” Jubal said. “I come across on the lake or come at night and park in her garage so no one’ll see. She never comes to my place. She insists on absolute secrecy. For my sake, she says. She still believes I’m destined for great things, and she’ll only hold me back. She’s seen my future, and she’s not in it. She says when I marry Camilla we’re through. Finished. It’s not anger or jealousy, she says. It was just always meant to be this way. Bullshit, we’re through,” he finished angrily.

A dragonfly darted in front of them, held a moment, vibrating in the sunlight, then was gone.

“Let me ask you something, Jubal. Camilla Jaeger, do you love her?”

Jubal stared at the sun, stared without blinking. “I suppose. But she’s not Winona. Nobody’s Winona.”

Then, maybe it was because of the booze that still flooded his system, or the intimacy of the history he shared with Cork, or an unguarded impulse that would become rare for Jubal after he stepped into the political arena, or maybe the result of all of these things together, he confessed, “I killed for her, Cork. I killed for her, but she still won’t marry me.”

“Killed for her?” Cork lowered the cup he was just about to sip from. “Who did you kill?”

Jubal took his eyes from the sun, and his pupils had become black pinpoints. “You were there.”

It took Cork a couple of seconds to put it together. Although decades had passed, he felt an electric jolt, as if the whole incident had only just happened, or had just happened again. “Donner Bigby?” he said. “But I thought-”

“Jesus, Cork. You always knew. You just didn’t want to see.”

That wasn’t true. Was it? He’d believed the story Jubal had told him about what happened on top of Trickster’s Point. Hadn’t he?

“You killed him? In cold blood?”

“I knew the moment I started climbing Trickster’s Point that only one of us would come down. That’s why I went up and not you. You couldn’t have done what needed doing.”

“What needed doing? Jubal, we didn’t go out there to kill Donner Bigby.”

“Didn’t we? Then why were we there? You wanted him dead as much as I did. We both wanted him dead for what he did to Winona. Don’t go all sanctimonious on me. I just did what I knew you couldn’t.”

Long before the sun had risen, the birds had begun to sing, but it seemed to Cork that he was only just now hearing their songs. In the early light, there’d been clouds the color of fuzzy peaches, but he saw that they’d evaporated or moved on, and the sky was a clear blue. An innocent blue, he thought. The smell of the coffee in his cup rose up, a good aroma that filled his senses every time he breathed. This was life, he understood. This was life, and this was what, according to Jubal, he’d had a hand in taking from Donner Bigby.

But was Jubal right? When they’d stood together at the bottom of Trickster’s Point, Cork had wanted to be the one to climb up after Bigby. He remembered that. And he remembered the rage that had filled his heart. But was it a rage so intense that it was murderous? Had the real reason he wanted to climb up after Bigby been to ensure that the brute never came back down? And, as had so often been the case in those days, had it simply fallen to Jubal to do what Cork could not?

Finally Jubal said, “Winona’s always known what’s in my heart, Cork. And I’ve always known what’s in yours.”

Cork let a moment pass, a moment of further dark consideration, then said simply, “Bullshit.”

He put his cup down hard, and coffee sloshed on the porch boards, and he left Jubal sitting alone in the sunlight and he didn’t look back.