Trickster's Point

CHAPTER 31

He rose early, long before the media might arrive at his door, dressed, put a note on the kitchen table explaining things to Jenny and Stephen, and left the house. He didn’t call Borkman; the guy needed his sleep. He hoped the early hour was reasonable protection for his family, and he planned to be back before it got too late.

Another November overcast had moved in, and Cork drove under a sky still inky from night and promising nothing better than a day capped with clouds the color of despair.

He’d awakened that morning with an uncomfortable thought, a thought about Winona Crane, and he needed to talk it over with Henry Meloux. The morning was cool, almost cold. Before starting down the path to Crow Point, he zipped his leather jacket up to his chin, pulled his gloves on, and settled a red stocking cap over his ears.

Half an hour later, he broke from the trees and saw, against the gray sky that backed the meadow, smoke vining upward from both Meloux’s cabin and Rainy’s. The meadow grass was long and dry, the color of apple cider. Against the walls of the two small cabins, cords of split wood lay stacked, banked in anticipation of a winter just over the horizon. The wood made the walls look unnaturally thick, and the image reminded Cork of those wild animals who, in the fall, grew their coats huge to protect them from the brutal cold that was to come. Behind the branches of the bare aspens along the shoreline, Iron Lake was a great slab of fractured gray slate. The only sound was the cry of the crows that perennially used the trees as a rookery and, in that way, had given the point its name.

He headed to Rainy’s cabin first. He knocked; she didn’t answer. He went on to Meloux’s, where he found them both having breakfast. Rainy gave him a kiss, then gave him coffee and offered to fix him something to eat. He settled for a couple of hot biscuits with homemade blueberry jam.

When they’d finished their meal, Meloux sat back in his old birchwood chair. He appeared well rested and refreshed, something Cork envied.

“You look like an animal of burden, Corcoran O’Connor, given too much to carry.”

“Are you going to tell us about the bullet through your windshield, Cork?” Although she tried to speak casually, there was a note of irritation in Rainy’s voice.

“Jenny told me you called. Sorry, Rainy. The battery on my cell phone was dead.”

“It could have been you instead of that battery,” she replied.

“Niece,” Meloux said gently. “He did not come for a scolding.” His eyes, brown as old pennies, settled expectantly on Cork.

“Henry, I want to talk to you about Winona Crane and Jubal Little.”

“Then talk.”

“If I told you I thought that she might have killed Jubal Little, would you say I was crazy?”

“Crazy is trying to tickle a bull moose, Corcoran O’Connor. I would not say you are crazy.”

“Winona loved Jubal, and I know Jubal loved her. But I’m wondering if it was the other side of love that might have made her kill him.”

Rainy said, “You think that, in the end, she hated Jubal?”

Cork shook his head and nodded toward Meloux. “Your uncle once told me that the other side of love isn’t hate but fear. Here’s the deal, Henry. In those three hours I spent with him before he died, Jubal told me a lot of things he clearly wanted to get off his chest. Some of it I’ve told the sheriff’s people, but some I’ve kept to myself. One of the things Jubal told me was that he came north this time to tell Winona good-bye for good. He said he’d made a decision never to see her again.”

“Why?” Rainy asked.

“She’d become a liability to him.”

“He was preparing to reach the mountaintop,” Meloux said.

“You know about Winona’s vision?” Cork asked.

“It came to her here, long ago.”

“After Donner Bigby died, when you worked to heal her?”

“And Jubal Little. They both needed healing, but there was more to it than just that. There was something unusual about them. They were two pieces of the same broken stone. Winona had the vision then.”

“What was the vision?” Rainy asked.

Cork said, “She saw Jubal alone on a mountaintop, holding the sun and moon in his hands, and the stars singing around his head.”

“Did you tell her what the vision meant, Uncle Henry?”

Meloux shook his head. “It was her vision. She believed she knew what it meant. Who was I to say she was right or she was wrong?”

“What did she think it meant?”

“That Jubal Little was destined for greatness. That he would have to achieve it alone.”

Cork said, “So when she ran away from Aurora right after that, she was somehow trying to fulfill the vision?”

“Maybe,” Meloux allowed. “Or maybe it is simply a hard thing to accept that someone you love will someday abandon you.”

“But her vision wasn’t fulfilled,” Rainy pointed out. “Jubal Little died before he reached the top.”

The old man shrugged. “A vision is not necessarily what will be. It is more like a light showing the way toward what could be. And sometimes it is a warning.”

Meloux’s old dog, Walleye, got up from the corner of the cabin where he’d been lying with his head cradled on his paws. He came to the table, to Rainy, who scratched his head. Then she frowned at Cork. “What did you mean when you said that Winona had become a liability to Jubal?”

“He was going to be in the public eye in such a way that everything he did would be watched. His relationship with Winona would be too risky. If it’s true that he had his eye ultimately on the presidency-and knowing Jubal, that’s exactly where his ambition would push him-he had to make sure that he appeared to be squeaky clean.”

Rainy didn’t look convinced. “If all her life Winona’s known that Jubal would have to abandon her, for the mountaintop, as you put it, why believe that she killed him just as he was poising himself to get there?”

On his fingers, Cork counted off the reasons. “One: Sam Winter Moon taught her to bow-hunt and still-stalk. Two: She knows the area around Trickster’s Point well. And three: I tend to agree with the guy who said that hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”

“I’m going to ignore for the moment the sexist nature of that last comment and repeat what Uncle Henry told you, that hate isn’t the other side of love. That would be fear. So if Winona Crane killed Jubal Little, what was she afraid of?”

Cork shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m really just thinking out loud.”

Meloux put an old hand in the center of the table, his fingers spread like the points of a star. “Does your heart, Corcoran O’Connor, agree with the way your head is trying to lead you?”

“No,” Cork had to admit. He sat back, feeling defeated again. “I’m flailing here, Henry.”

“Did you come hoping for advice? Or did you come hoping for something else?”

“I was wondering if you might be willing to talk to Winona.”

Meloux fell silent as he considered Cork’s request. Walleye circled the table and nudged his old head under the Mide’s right hand, and Meloux idly stroked the dog’s yellow fur.

“If she comes to me, I will talk to her,” he finally agreed. “But my purpose will be to help her spirit heal, if that is what she wants, not to help you put her in the hands of the police.”

“Fair enough, Henry,” Cork said, and he rose to leave. “Migwech.”

Rainy walked him across the meadow to where the trail entered the trees. Morning had arrived fully, but because clouds sealed the entire dome of the sky, there was no sun.

“Do you think you can convince Winona to talk to Uncle Henry?” she asked.

“If I can find her. She’s gone into hiding again.”

She smiled at him and reached out to touch his cheek. “Do you know what Uncle Henry says about you?”

“No, tell me.”

“He says you’re like a dog who can’t remember where he’s buried his bone. You just keep digging until you find it.”

“Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“I don’t think so at all.”

She kissed him just as his cell phone began to ring. He pulled it from his belt holder and saw that it was Ed Larson calling.

“This is Cork. What’s up, Ed?”

Larson said, “You might want to come down to the sheriff’s department, Cork. We just brought in Isaiah Broom. Holter’s insisting we arrest him for the murder of Jubal Little.”