Trickster's Point

CHAPTER 6

The summer before Jubal Little died, Cork and several members of the Iron Lake Ojibwe had helped Rainy Bisonette build a tiny cabin of her own on Crow Point, thirty yards east of Meloux’s, set against a line of aspen that ran along the shore of Iron Lake. Before that, she’d slept on a cot in her great-uncle’s cabin. When she decided that she would stay with the old Mide indefinitely in order to learn all she could from him about healing, word had spread across the rez, and folks had gathered in the meadow to give her a little place of her own for privacy.

By the time Jubal Little was dead, Cork knew the inside of Rainy’s cabin well. She’d furnished it simply: a bed with a small stand next to it where a kerosene lantern sat so that she could read at night before sleeping; a table and two chairs; an open shelving unit of honey-colored maple that Cork had built for her himself and that held her folded clothing; and a small, cast-iron boxwood stove that provided heat. A wealth of books stood stacked knee-high against one wall. (Cork had promised that he would spend some time during the coming winter building her a substantial bookcase.) Above the bed, she’d hung three photographs of herself with her children, who were now grown. The room still smelled as if the pine walls were newly cut and planed, and whenever Cork spent the night with Rainy he went to sleep and woke with a fragrance that was, to him, the breath of heaven.

They didn’t make love that night but lay together under the soft, heavy quilt and talked.

“Why would someone kill him?” Rainy asked. Her cheek was against his shoulder, and her warm breath ghosted over his bare skin.

“You didn’t know him,” Cork said.

“And if I did, I wouldn’t have to ask?”

“He was a complicated guy. A lot of good in him, and that’s what he showed most people. But there was a dark side to Jubal he didn’t like people to see.”

“But you saw it?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And yet you were still friends.”

Cork said, “I don’t know.”

“You weren’t?”

“We were best friends when we were kids, but people change. We changed.”

“I don’t think the essence of who we are changes much, Cork.”

She was right. Who Jubal was at heart, Jubal had always been. “When we were kids,” Cork said, “it was easy to overlook.”

“What was he like as a kid?”

“Like I said, complicated. He had a reputation for not tolerating bullies. He went to the mat for a lot of kids who couldn’t defend themselves.”

“I heard you were that way, too.” She kissed his shoulder.

“Yeah, but when Jubal stepped into a situation, he could back it up. Me, as often as not, I got my face pushed in.”

“It didn’t stop you from trying.”

“I did it because I thought I had an obligation. It was what I thought my father would have done, or would have wanted me to do. Jubal did it because he could. In a way, it was his form of bullying. He just bullied the bullies.”

“You’re right,” she said. “Complicated.” A wind had come up, and the cabin creaked, and Rainy listened for a moment. “What else?”

“You couldn’t always believe what he told you.”

“He lied?”

“Not exactly. He was kind of a politician even back then. He said things in a way that led you down one track while the absolute truth lay in the track next to it. You were always going in the right direction, just not necessarily on the right path. Do you see?”

“Not really.”

“His father, for example. He told me he’d lost his father, and the way he said it made me believe his father was dead, but that wasn’t true.”

“We all know about his father.”

“Sure, now. Jubal’s been trading on what happened for years. But it was a big secret for him then, and you can understand why.”

Something tapped the window, and they both fell silent.

“An aspen branch,” Rainy said. “The wind.” Then she said, “Tell me more.”

When Cork was fourteen, the summer before he entered high school, he began working for Sam Winter Moon. Sam usually hired high school kids to give him a hand during the season, and Cork became one of them. Because the business Sam ran in the old Quonset hut was not about making a lot of money-he was very Ojibwe in his approach to wealth; what you made you shared-Sam Winter Moon was a peach of a boss, and a lot of kids in Aurora, white and Ojibwe, got their introduction to the working world at Sam’s Place.

Cork had been on the roster at Sam’s for a month when Jubal Little asked if there might be a chance he could work there, too.

“My mom needs some money,” Jubal explained. “I thought maybe I could help.”

Cork understood. His own mother had begun to let out one of the upstairs bedrooms, and there’d been strangers in the house, summer people up to enjoy the season. It was uncomfortable, but a financial necessity. He talked to Sam, explained to him about Jubal’s father being dead and his mother needing extra money, and Sam was congenially accommodating.

Jubal wasn’t only a quick study; he also very soon became the favorite of customers. He had an easy, assured manner and assumed a brash familiarity with everyone that still somehow never quite crossed the line beyond politeness. Folks responded to him in the way they might have a cheeky but beloved cousin.

On Jubal’s first day of work, Sam spoke to him in Ojibwe.

Jubal gave him a blank stare in response.

“Anishinaabe indaaw?” Sam said again, which, Cork knew, meant “Are you one of The People?”

Cork said, “He’s not Indian, Sam.”

“No?”

Sam laid his dark eyes on Jubal, who held steady under their gaze, smiled amiably, and said, “Nope. I’m all American.”

Sam nodded and replied gently, “So am I, son.”

It was a good summer, working with Jubal. Cork had many friends, but he began to think of Jubal as the best of them. They fished together on Iron Lake, and floated down Mercy Creek in inner tubes, played baseball, and went to the Rialto Theater on Saturday nights when they weren’t working at Sam’s Place. They biked the ten miles to the Ojibwe reservation on the far side of Iron Lake to visit Cork’s grandmother Dilsey, who lived at the edge of Allouette, the larger of the two rez communities, and who took an immediate liking to Jubal. Whenever they were in Allouette, Cork kept an eye out for Winona Crane, who’d begun to dominate his thinking in a way that made him intense and nervous. Occasionally he’d run into her in town with Willie, and whenever he first caught sight of her, dark-eyed and willowy, his heart always did a little ballet leap.

One day in late August, Cork invited Jubal to go ricing. This was an annual, seasonal tradition for the Anishinaabeg, one Cork loved being a part of. His mother took them to Allouette in her station wagon and dropped them in front of George LeDuc’s general store, which also functioned as the town’s post office. That day, LeDuc had turned operation of the store over to his wife. He greeted them both with a hearty “Anish na?” which meant “How are you?” He didn’t wait for an answer but said to Jubal, “I’m betting I can get a good day’s work from you.”

“Yes, sir,” Jubal said.

LeDuc was black-bear big. He had a long ponytail, a broad, honest face, and dark eyes that danced nimbly over the boys and were full of good humor. “Sir?” He laughed. “ ’Preciate your manners, but you can call me George. Let’s go, boys.”

They piled into LeDuc’s dusty, black Chevy pickup and headed east on an old logging road, which nature had almost entirely reclaimed. While they bounced along through high weeds and timothy grass that nearly hid the track, LeDuc explained to Jubal the importance of wild rice to The People. In the old times, he said, it was their primary source of food, and the gathering of rice, which he called manomin, was vital to their survival.

“We begin in August, manominigizis, the month of rice,” he told Jubal. “We’ll keep at it until probably November. Right now, the best place for ricing is going to be in shallow lakes with muddy bottoms. Later, we’ll harvest the big lakes. Today, we’re headed to Nagamowin. That’s what we call it on the rez anyway. It means ‘singing.’ On a map, you’ll find it called Mud Lake. We named it first, but white people make all the maps.”

They parked among tamaracks on the shore of the lake, which was a little over half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, full of tall green stalks. LeDuc had Cork and Jubal help him pull the canoe from the back of the pickup. The frame-ribs and planking, rails and deck, thwarts and seats-was constructed of wood: white cedar, white spruce, and ash. The hull was khaki-colored marine canvas. They cradled it on their shoulders, carried it to the water, and waded in. Cork understood immediately why, on maps, the lake was called Mud. He sank to his calves in goo that sucked hard at his sneakers. LeDuc gave the signal, and they flipped the canoe onto the lake. He returned to the truck and came back with a long pole, forked at one end, and with four smoothed sticks, each about three feet in length. Cork knew that the pole was made from tamarack wood so that it would be strong and light. The sticks were made of cedar, for the same reason.

“Here,” LeDuc said and handed each boy a pair of the sticks. “Those are knockers, Jubal, for harvesting the rice. Cork’ll show you how. Let’s get started.”

LeDuc took the long pole and a place in the stern. Cork and Jubal spaced themselves out ahead of him. LeDuc began to pole them across the water and slid into the nearest patch of rice stalks, whose tops stood a couple of feet above the gunwales of the canoe.

“I use a forked push pole so I won’t hurt the roots of the plants,” LeDuc explained to Jubal. “Show him how to harvest, Cork.”

Jubal watched as Cork reached out to the right with one of the sticks and bent the stalks there quickly over the gunwale. With the other stick, he knocked the ripe grains free, and they scattered across the bottom of the canoe. He released the stalks, which sprang upright again, and he immediately turned to the left to repeat the process. LeDuc poled smoothly through the rice bed, while Cork swung his arms left and right, harvesting.

“It’s important not to harm the stalks,” Cork said. “And you’ve got to let some of the grains drop into the water to keep the beds growing. Now you try.”

As with everything Cork would ever see him attempt, Jubal was a natural.

They spent the day on Nagamowin, and it was clear to Cork why the Anishinaabeg of the Iron Lake Reservation had given the lake that name. The air was full of song. The calls of red-winged blackbirds, warblers, dark-eyed juncos, sparrows, and meadowlarks mixed with the music of the wind across the wild rice reeds and the drumbeat of the knock sticks. Cork loved harvesting because, under a blazing sun, atop the cool indigo water, within the pale jade walls of the rice beds, he forgot, for a while, all the cares of the world he’d left behind.

They weren’t the only ones ricing that day. In a small, wooden rowboat, three other Ojibwe worked the beds at the south end of the lake. A few times they came within hailing distance, but not a word passed between them. Cork could see who was in the boat: Winona Crane; her brother, Willie; and Willie’s best friend, Isaiah Broom. LeDuc had brought along a cooler full of sandwiches made of bologna-what folks on the rez called “Indian steak”-and lemonade in a big glass jar. At lunchtime, he signaled the three kids, who came and joined them on the shoreline. They’d brought their own meal, which was canned tuna, cheese, and crackers. And they’d brought something else. Beer. They didn’t pull out any cans or bottles, but Cork could smell the yeasty scent on Winona’s breath. If LeDuc noticed, he didn’t say anything.

Willie had grown taller but was thin as a sapling. His muscles still seemed at odds with his brain’s attempt to control them, and his speech was still difficult to catch. Isaiah Broom was a kid every bit as huge as Jubal Little, but clumsy as a big-shoed circus clown, something he would never outgrow. He was clearly love-addled. Every time he looked at Winona, his brown eyes went dopey and hopeless. Cork understood. He was still hopelessly in love with Winona, too. She didn’t pay any particular attention to either of them. At this point in her life, she was working on acquiring the wrong kind of reputation. She and Willie had continued to be passed from one relative to another, and she was growing into a beautiful young woman with a wild streak that stood out in neon. “Just like her mother” was what a lot of people on the rez said. She was in and out of trouble, nothing serious yet, but Cork feared that bad things might be on the horizon for her.

There was a powerful energy at work during the shoreline lunch that day, something unspoken but palpable, and it flowed between Winona Crane and Jubal Little. They barely looked at each other, and that, in itself, was a dead giveaway to Cork. They were two of the most striking people he knew-Winona with her flowing black hair and soft, tawny skin and fawn eyes; and Jubal with his big, chiseled body and good looks and easy grace-yet it was as if, over that long hour of lunch, they didn’t exist for each other.

When they separated to return to their work, Cork watched closely. Jubal, though he did his best to fight it, couldn’t help looking over his shoulder at Winona Crane, who was eyeing him from a safer distance.

That Winona preferred Jubal-hell, what girl wouldn’t? — stung Cork, and he found himself envying his friend. It was something that he often felt and that he fought against, but there it was. Jubal had been blessed in so many ways, with good looks and an incredible build and an easy way with people that won them over instantly. Compared to him, Cork felt small and unimportant. But where Winona was concerned, Cork thought maybe there was hope. He could see clearly that neither Jubal nor Winona was prepared to acknowledge how they felt, so he held to the naive belief that as long as it went unspoken, the attraction might pass, and Winona’s eyes would someday open to what Cork had to offer, smaller offerings maybe, but given with a full heart.

Late that afternoon, they returned to LeDuc’s store. From the bed of the pickup, Cork, Jubal, and George unloaded burlap sacks filled with the wild rice that would eventually be dried, parched, hulled, winnowed, and shared. George gave them Big Chief grape sodas, and Cork called his mother to come and get them. While they waited, Cork and Jubal strolled through Allouette toward the shoreline, where the broad, sparkling blue of Iron Lake stretched away to the west.

“Winona’s something,” Cork said. “But if she doesn’t watch herself, she’s headed for trouble.” It was a warning to Jubal, whose own reputation in Aurora was sterling. But Cork didn’t fool himself. A good part of his motivation was to plant a kernel of doubt in Jubal’s mind that might keep him from turning his attention to Winona.

Jubal stared absently at the sky. “I guess.”

“We worry about her.”

“We?” Jubal said.

“Those of us who are Shinnobs.”

“Shinnobs?”

“It’s short for Anishinaabeg.” Cork said it as if being Ojibwe set him and Winona apart from Jubal, put Jubal on the outside of an intimate connection that he and Winona shared but Jubal never could.

Jubal suddenly broke away and stomped angrily to the edge of the water.

Cork caught up quickly and said to his friend’s back, “You okay?”

“What is it with you and being Indian?”

“What do you mean?”

“Jesus, just look at this place.” Jubal pointed toward the gathering of mostly BIA-built homes and trailers that was Allouette, where many of the streets were still unpaved and a lot of the yards were covered with skeletal dandelion stalks that stood in grass long unmowed, and where rusting cars, tireless, sat up on cinder blocks. “Who’d want to live in a place like this? And look at you. You don’t even look Indian.” Jubal picked up a rock and flung it at the water as if the lake had insulted him.

“I’m only a quarter Ojibwe,” Cork said. “But look at you. You could pass for Indian in a heartbeat.”

“That’s because I am, stupid.”

The admission hit Cork like the rock Jubal had thrown at the lake. “What?”

“My name’s not Little. It’s Littlewolf. Jubal Littlewolf. My mother changed it after we left Montana. She didn’t want anyone to know.”

“I don’t get it.”

Jubal picked up another rock and another, taking out his anger on the lake.

“You tell anyone what I’m about to tell you,” he said, facing Cork with a fistful of stones, “and I’ll break you into pieces.”

“I won’t say a word, I swear.”

Jubal turned away and stared where the sunlight danced on blue water with a lightness that seemed to mock his dark mood. “My old man’s not dead.”

“Where is he?”

“In prison. Deer Lodge. That’s in Montana.”

“What for?”

“Manslaughter.” With a grunt as if it pained him, Jubal wildly cast stone after stone, which the lake swallowed with barely a ripple.

“He killed someone?”

“That’s what manslaughter means, stupid.”

“I’m not stupid.” Cork waited a minute for Jubal to empty his hands, then asked cautiously, “Why?”

Jubal finally sat down on the shoreline, and Cork sat down beside him. The day was hot, but an easy wind blew out of the west and skated across the lake and cooled them. Jubal pulled a long blade of wild grass from the ground and viciously tore it apart, bit by bit, as he spoke.

“My dad’s Blackfeet, full blood. He’s a carpenter. Builds houses and stuff. Built houses,” Jubal corrected himself. “Four years ago my aunt Chrissy, that’s his sister, she was… well, she was raped.. by three white cowboys. It was in a town called Mosby way the hell out in the eastern part of the state. She was working in a bar there. The Mosby cops, they wouldn’t do anything about it. I guess the cowboys talked like it was some kind of joke. My dad went out there, and when he came back one of the cowboys was dead and the other two were in the hospital, beat up real bad. They arrested him, and at his trial, he said he was just doing what the law wouldn’t. What the white man’s law wouldn’t. There were lots of people in Mosby who swore Aunt Chrissy was drunk and acting slutty and asking for it. Me, I didn’t believe it for a minute. I never saw her like that. They were lying through their teeth. But that frigging jury, they convicted my father, and he’ll be in Deer Lodge until he’s an old man.”

Jubal finished torturing the blade of grass and pulled another.

“It was a big deal in Montana. Reporters crawling all over us all the time, even after the trial was done. We got letters and calls. Some of them were from people who thought my dad got a raw deal, but a lot of them were just stupid assholes saying dirty, hurtful things to my mom. We were living in Bozeman. Got to where we couldn’t walk down the street without being stared at, so Mom decided she had to do something. We moved to Denver for a while, and she changed her name. And mine. It was pretty hard for her, I guess, all alone, so we moved up here because we could live with my aunt. She made me promise never to talk about what happened in Montana.”

They were both quiet a long time. Jubal tore at the blade of wild grass until there was nothing left.

“I guess I understand why you told me he was dead.”

“I never actually said he was dead,” Jubal shot back defensively. “Whenever anybody asks, I just say I lost him and let them think what they want. But he’s as good as dead.”

“You don’t ever talk to him?”

“Why would I?”

“He’s your dad.”

“He should’ve thought about that before he went off and killed a man.”

“He probably didn’t plan on killing anybody.”

“What difference does that make? He should’ve stayed home where he belonged, and then he’d still be with us.” Jubal yanked a handful of wild grass and heaved it as if throwing another stone at the lake, but the blades went nowhere, just fluttered to the ground at his feet.

“So,” Cork said, trying to find slightly different ground to cover, to give Jubal room to move away from his anger. “Why Little? Why not your mom’s maiden name or something?”

Jubal finally cracked a smile. “Her maiden name’s Krupfelter. I told her I’d never be a Krupfelter. We compromised with Little.”

“Why not Wolf? That’s kind of cool.”

Jubal stood up, rose to his full height, and grinned down at Cork. “I like the look on people’s faces when I tell them my name is Little.”

Cork’s mother came to get them, and they rode back to Aurora. Although the sky stayed blue and Jubal had brightened, it still felt to Cork as if they were under a cloud the whole way. Jubal asked to be dropped off on Center Street, and there they separated, each kid heading toward a home where the sound of a man’s voice was a rare thing now.

That night, as he lay in bed, Cork thought about Jubal’s father and Jubal’s anger. The truth was that, after his own dad died, Cork was sometimes angry with him, too. There were still moments when, in his thinking, he held onto a little stone of bitterness, wondering uselessly why his father chose to have a job in which he wore a gun on his belt every day. But Jubal’s dad had worn a carpenter’s belt, and what had hung from it had been a hammer, and, in the end, this hadn’t made any difference. Jubal’s father had been lost, too.