Trickster's Point

by William Kent Krueger

  The truth, which he didn’t understand until much later, was that he kept his grief deep inside because he didn’t want to give it up. He was afraid that to let go of his grief would be to let go of his father forever.

  Aurora Junior High School had a flag football team, and Cork was on it. After his father died, Cork continued to play. He was tall for his age and lean. He was also fast and elusive and was tapped to play end. The team’s quarterback was Jubal Little, who had a powerful arm and a natural feel for strategy. Games were played on Friday afternoons, usually immediately after school. Two weeks after Cork watched his father’s coffin lowered into the earth, the team played its final game of that season in the town of Virginia, an hour bus ride from Aurora.

  Cork always remembered that afternoon as overcast, which may or may not have been true. The teams were pretty evenly matched, but with less than a minute left to go, Aurora was behind by a touchdown. Jubal had moved the ball within scoring distance. In the huddle, he looked to Cork and said, “Can you get free?”

  Cork said he could.

  At the snap, Cork gave an inside fake to the kid who defended him, then cut for the corner of the end zone. A safety moved to cover, closing quickly. When Cork looked back, Jubal had already lofted the ball in his direction. Crossing the line of the end zone, he had two steps on his opponent. His hands were up and the ball sailed into them. Then it slipped free. Cork tried to readjust, turning in midstride, bobbling the ball. In the next instant, it was in the hands of the Virginia safety, and the game was over.

  No one blamed him openly, and the coach, a decent man named Porter, told them they’d played a hell of a game and had nothing to be ashamed of. The bus ride home was quiet, and when they arrived at the junior high and disembarked, Cork walked away alone.

  He didn’t hear Jubal Little coming up behind him, but the big kid was suddenly at his side.

  “Mind if I walk with you?” Jubal asked.

  Cork shrugged. “I was thinking of going to Sam’s Place to get a burger.”

  “I could use a bite,” Jubal said.

  They walked a bit without talking. It was evening by then, the sky a gloomy gray-blue. The town was quiet, and their sneakers slapped softly on the pavement.

  “It was a good season,” Jubal finally said.

  “I wish it had ended better.”

  Jubal laughed. “It was just a game, and a pretty good one.”

  “I lost it for us.”

  “Bullshit. We had plenty of chances to win it. They just played a little better today. Next time it’ll be different.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You’re good,” Jubal said. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  When they got to Sam’s Place, Sam Winter Moon greeted Cork through the serving window with “Boozhoo,” a common Ojibwe greeting. “So how’d it go?”

  “We lost,” Cork said.

  “But we played a good game,” Jubal tossed in.

  “Well there you go.” Sam smiled at Jubal. “Boozhoo. I’ve seen you around, but I haven’t caught your name.”

  “Jubal Little.”

  “Sam Winter Moon.” He stuck his hand through the open serving window, and Jubal took it. “Tell you what. Dinner’s on me today. What’ll you guys have?”

  They sat at the picnic table under a big red pine near the shoreline, and each of them ate a Sam’s Super and a chocolate shake.

  “What does boozhoo mean?” Jubal asked.

  “It’s kind of like saying ‘howdy.’ Sam thinks you’re Ojibwe. You look Indian.”

  In a way, Cork meant it as an opening, hoping Jubal might say something about his past.

  “You seem to know him pretty well,” Jubal said.

  “My father and him were good friends.”

  “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Cork bit into his burger and swung his eyes out across the lake. The evening was windless, the water flat and empty.

  “I lost my father, too,” Jubal said.

  “When?”

  “Couple of years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You get over it,” Jubal said with an unconvincing shrug.

  Cork wanted to ask how it had happened but thought maybe that was stepping across a line.

  A car drove up to Sam’s Place, and a bunch of high school kids piled out. Donner Bigby was among them. Jubal stopped eating and watched the small crowd gather at the serving window and order. Bigby noticed them and said something to the others. A lot of eyes swung their way.

  Jubal said quietly, “Bigs ever bother Winona Crane and her brother?”

  “Not that I know of,” Cork said.

  “You fixed him pretty good that day in Grant Park.”

  Jubal eyed Bigby. “Guy like that, it’s just a matter of time before you have to fix him again.”

  Bigby and the others took their food and drove away. Cork and Jubal stood up from the picnic table and got ready to leave. The light was almost gone from the sky. A flight of Canada geese coming from the north swung in a loose V over Iron Lake and came to rest on the water, which was gunmetal gray and looked cold. It was nearing the end of October, and already Cork could sense winter in the air. But he felt a little better at that moment, a little more connected, and he knew it was because of Jubal.

  “I gotta get home,” Jubal said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I’m thinking of putting together a touch football game tomorrow. You interested? You could use the practice.” Jubal gave him an easy grin.

  “Sure,” Cork said. “Thanks.”

  In the dusk, they went their separate ways, Jubal to his fatherless home and Cork to his.

  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.