Trickster's Point

by William Kent Krueger

  “Doan caw her at,” Bigby mimicked.

  “Just leave,” Jubal suggested evenly.

  “Fuck if I will.”

  Cork stepped next to Jubal, and together they filled the alcove as they faced Bigby. At that same moment, Mr. Hildebrandt passed along the main hallway. He taught English and was the assistant football coach and one of the chaperones at the dance. He was big and broad, a lot of power and authority contained in his frame. He glanced into the alcove, took in the body language of Cork and Jubal and Bigby, and must have understood immediately what was going on. He approached them.

  “What’re you drinking there, Donner?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Bigby said and slipped the flask into his back pocket.

  Hildebrandt nodded, considered all the young people in the alcove, then said, “Why don’t you go on home, Donner?”

  “I don’t want to go,” Bigby snapped.

  In the face of the kid’s anger, Hildebrandt brought out his coach’s voice. “Go home, Donner,” he ordered. “Go home now.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “What did you say? No, don’t repeat it. Bigby, you’re out of here. And don’t bother suiting up for practice on Monday. Men like you I don’t need playing for me.”

  Bigby looked as if he was contemplating taking a swing at his former coach. Then his eyes, burning through a thin alcoholic haze, passed over Cork and Jubal and Willie and finally Winona, and he didn’t have to say what he was thinking. He turned and rejoined Gloria outside, and as they vanished into the night, Cork heard him say, “Let’s blow this shithole.”

  When they were gone, Hildebrandt breathed deeply and nodded as if he’d simply finished a rational discussion in which a rational decision had been reached and said, as if nothing extraordinary had just transpired, “Winona, Willie, you guys are great up there. Love the music.” He headed back to the gymnasium.

  The alcove was silent for a long moment afterward, then Jubal shrugged. “Guess that’s that.”

  “You think so?” Winona said. Her eyes were focused beyond the open door, as if she knew absolutely that the darkness there hid demons.

  * * *

  What happened later that night, Cork didn’t learn about until the next morning. He was at the breakfast table in the kitchen, dressed for Mass at St. Agnes and working on a bowl of Wheaties, when a knock came at the front door. He found Deputy Cy Borkman standing on the porch, hat in hand.

  “Your mom home, Cork?” the deputy asked.

  “No, she’s already gone to church, Cy. What is it?”

  “Well, it’s really you I want to see. Mind if I come in?”

  They sat in the living room, and Borkman told him about Winona Crane. She and her brother had been packing up their equipment after the dance. By then, the only vehicles left in the school parking lot were the janitor’s station wagon and the Cranes’ old pickup. They had almost everything stowed in the bed of the truck when Willie remembered that he’d left his hat, a fine black Stetson with a band that Winona had braided for him and that was adorned with an eagle feather, an item sacred to the Anishinaabeg. He went back into the building. The hallways were mostly dark by then. Willie made his way to the gymnasium, but the lights were off, and he couldn’t see well enough to locate his hat. He went in search of Mr. Guerrero, the janitor, whom he found in the basement, adjusting the furnace for the night. Together they returned to the gym and located the hat, which was under the bleachers and, to Willie’s great dismay, had been stomped flat. The braided band had been ripped into pieces, and the eagle feather was gone. Mr. Guerrero was sympathetic but needed to close up, and he accompanied Willie to the school door. Ruined hat in hand, Willie crossed the parking lot to the truck where he’d left his sister. But Winona wasn’t there.

  Willie called for her and got no answer. He made his way back to the school as quickly as his awkward legs would carry him, and he pounded on the door until Mr. Guerrero opened up again. Then he explained his situation. Mr. Guerrero went to his station wagon and took a flashlight from the glove box, and together he and Willie began to search the grounds.

  They found her lying on the torn and muddy football field, found her because they heard her crying. When Mr. Guerrero shone his light on her, they saw that she’d been beaten. They saw something else in that hard circle of light, something that Deputy Borkman refrained from mentioning but that Cork heard about later. Winona, that night, had dressed in a denim skirt whose hemline she’d embroidered herself with clan images: a bear, a crane, a loon, an eagle, and others. When her brother and Mr. Guerrero found her, she no longer wore the skirt.

  “Did she see who did it?” Cork asked, his gut gone hard as a fist.

  Borkman shook his head. “Too dark. And she was attacked from behind. Whoever did it hit her several times, and she doesn’t remember much after that.”

  “You know who did it,” Cork said.

  “No, son, we don’t. Do you?”

  “Donner Bigby,” Cork said.

  “His name’s been mentioned,” Borkman acknowledged. “And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. We understand there was some kind of altercation at the dance last night and that you were involved.”

  “Nothing happened,” Cork said. “Except Bigs got thrown out of the dance. You should talk to Mr. Hildebrandt about that.”

  “We have. You didn’t see Donner Bigby come back to the dance?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t lurking around somewhere.”

  “Gloria Agostino says he wasn’t. She says they left the school grounds and Donner was with her until well after one o’clock.”

  “She’s lying.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out here, Cork.”

  “It was Bigs,” Cork said angrily.

  “Careful there,” Borkman said. “We don’t want to go accusing anyone without proof. After he left the dance, you didn’t see Donner Bigby again last night?”

  “No.”

  “Ken Hildebrandt told us that Winona Crane was involved in the altercation with Bigby. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Bigby make any threats against her?”

  “Not directly, but she was scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “That he might do something.”

  “Because of something he said?”

  “No, he’s just that kind of guy.”

  “Did he make threats against anyone?”

  Cork thought back and couldn’t remember Bigs saying anything that was actually threatening. “He called Winona a bitch.”

  “But he didn’t threaten her, or anyone else?”

  Cork was forced to shake his head no.

  Borkman stood up. “All right, Cork. Thanks for your help.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’ve got a few more people I’m supposed to talk to. The sheriff’s out interviewing people, too. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

  After the deputy left, Cork called Jubal’s house. No answer. He ran upstairs, changed his clothes, wrote a note to his mother explaining that something had come up and he’d miss dinner and not to worry about him. He was just opening the front door when Jubal pulled up in his mother’s rusted Pontiac. He got out and met Cork on the sidewalk.

  “You hear?” he asked.

  “Yeah. A deputy was just here.”

  “The sheriff himself came to my house,” Jubal said. “I told him it was Donner. He said Donner had an alibi.”

  “Gloria Agostino.”

  “I told him she was lying,” Jubal said.

  “Did he believe you?”

  “Who knows? But I’m not waiting. I’m going to find Bigby now.”

  “I’m going with you,” Cork said.

  They piled into the Pontiac and headed to Donner Bigby’s house, which was a mile or so outside of town on the Old Soudan Road. It was a big place, perched on a slight hill, surrounded by woods. There were a couple of ceramic d
eer in the front yard and a nice flower bed that had already been cleared down to the topsoil in preparation for winter. Bigby’s mother opened the door. She was older than the mothers of most of Cork’s friends. She looked frail and worried and wary.

  Jubal took the lead and lied his ass off, telling the woman that they were Donner’s friends from school, and they were trying to put together a game of touch football at Grant Park that afternoon. She seemed relieved and told him that Donner was gone.

  “Rock climbing,” she said.

  “That’s right.” Jubal nodded as if he should have known. “He’s a Crag Rat.” That was an organization in Aurora made up of guys who liked to climb. Bigs aside, they were an okay bunch.

  “You don’t happen to know where he’s climbing,” Jubal said, smooth as ice cream.

  “Someplace that sounds like . . .” She thought a moment. “Tracker’s Point, I think.”

  “Trickster’s Point?” Cork said.

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jubal said with a parting smile.

  They went back to the Pontiac, and Cork said, “She didn’t seem so bad. Bigs must’ve got all his asshole genes from his old man.”

  The day was sunny and warm, and the air was heavy with moisture that still lingered from the storm two days earlier. They went in the long way, hiking five miles on the trail off the county road. There was only one car parked at the trailhead, and they both recognized the silver Karmann Ghia that Bigby had been driving since he got it as a present on his sixteenth birthday. They double-timed it along the trail, where Cork saw boot prints that had been left not long before. They arrived at Trickster’s Point to find Bigby already halfway up the formation, working without the aid of ropes or pitons, in the full light of the sun, which had climbed nearly straight overhead. They had to shade their eyes against the glare when they looked up at him and hollered his name.

  Bigby secured his position with both feet and the firm grip of his right hand, then hung out a bit from the rock and looked down at them with a shit-eating grin.

  “What do you know? It’s Chip and Dale. Looking for acorns?”

  “Looking for you, you son of a bitch,” Cork spit out.

  Bigby shrugged. “Found me. Now what?”

  “Now you come down, and we talk about Winona.”

  “Winona? The squaw girl? Why talk about her?”

  “You know why,” Cork said. “Come on down. Or is it just girls you like to beat on?”

  “Whoa, O’Connor. How about you come up here and we talk.”

  “All right.”

  Cork started for the rock, but Jubal held him back.

  “You ever climb before?” he asked Cork.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m going up.”

  “Do you know how to climb?”

  “No. But I’m better at it than you.”

  Which was probably true. Jubal was better at everything. Still, it stung.

  “You stay here,” Jubal said.

  “And do what?”

  “If I chase him down off there, I don’t want him running away.” He looked up, as if contemplating the difficulty of the task ahead. “And if I fall, you think he’s going to go get help? I need you down here.”

  Without waiting to confer further, Jubal stepped up to the rugged face of Trickster’s Point and began to climb after Donner Bigby.

  CHAPTER 12

  Jubal was a spider, nimble on the rock. He climbed with a swiftness that astonished Cork, and Bigby was clearly alarmed. The big kid turned back to his own task and continued up the face of Trickster’s Point, heading for the top, which was still a good seventy feet above him. Jubal relentlessly closed the gap between them, and by the time Bigby had topped the monolith, fifteen minutes later, Jubal was only a dozen feet below him. Bigby stood and caught the full light of the sun, and bright yellow flickered all over his body as if he were electric or on fire. He bent over the edge of the rock and called down to Jubal, “Gee, Little, it’d be a shame if you lost your grip and fell.”

  “You let him come up there,” Cork hollered.

  Bigby laughed. “Or what?”

  Cork shielded his eyes against the midday sun and watched helplessly as Jubal approached the top with Bigby towering above him, showing his teeth in a kind of hungry grin. Cork was truly afraid that when Jubal’s hands made their final reach, Bigby would stomp on them and send Jubal plummeting. He was furious with himself for not going up along with his best friend or going up in his stead. He felt twisted and helpless watching from the ground as the drama played out a hundred and fifty feet above him.

  Bigby finally stepped back and disappeared from Cork’s view. Jubal crawled onto the flat crown of Trickster’s Point unimpeded, and he, too, was lost from sight. Cork became aware again of the oppressive humidity of the day. Each breath felt heavy in his lungs, and his nostrils seemed clogged with the dank smell of wet earth. He realized that a deep stillness had fallen over the area. There wasn’t a whisper of wind or the call of a single bird, and above him came no sound from the two kids facing off atop the great pillar.

  “Jubal! Bigs! What’s going on?”

  The minutes passed, and Cork’s concern grew. He remembered advice Sam Winter Moon had given him about hunting. “The most important skill of all, and the most difficult to master, is patience.” Why hadn’t they been patient? They could simply have waited on the ground, because Donner Bigby would have had to come down sometime. Cork knew the answer. Anger. It had clouded all their thinking. He looked up, unable to swallow and barely able to breathe.

  That’s when he heard the sound, one that made his blood turn to ice. From the top of Trickster’s Point, but from the far side, came a brief, terrible scream. It hit the stillness like a rock might hit a big lake, with only a moment’s impression, then it was gone and what was left was simply the vast stillness.

  “Jubal?” Cork cried toward the sky. “Jubal?”

  He received no answer. He thought for a second of climbing Trickster’s Point but had no idea what good that would do. Instead, he ran around the base of the formation, toward the side from which the scream had come.

  The body lay on its back, bent at an abnormally acute angle across a rock slab that had, ages ago, splintered from the flank of the pillar and toppled to the earth. The sight stopped Cork instantly. His legs, for a moment, refused to move him forward, and his brain refused to believe the image his eyes delivered to it. Slowly he lifted his gaze and saw, high above, a head and shoulders, silhouetted against the sun as they bent over the edge of the pillar’s crown to face the scene on the ground below.

  Cork finally willed himself forward.

  Donner Bigby’s eyes were wide open and his mouth, too, as if he was looking up at something that absolutely astonished him. Cork stared at the body, searching for any movement of those eyes, for any faint rise and fall of the massive chest, for any sign, no matter how feeble, that there might still be life in Donner Bigby. He knew he should touch Bigby, check for a pulse, speak to him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do any of those things.

  He glanced back up and saw that Jubal was easing his way over the lip at the top of Trickster’s Point. Jubal moved more slowly, more carefully than he had when ascending. Cork figured that might have been because coming down was harder, but he also thought the reason could simply have been that Jubal was in no hurry to face what awaited him at the bottom. Knowing it would be quite a while before Jubal joined him, Cork finally forced himself to do what duty demanded.

  He leaned close, and his shadow fell over the kid’s face. “Donner? Can you hear me?” He gingerly touched Bigby’s neck with his fingertips, feeling for even a ghost of a pulse. He laid his ear against Bigby’s chest. Nothing came to him, except the smell of Bigby’s emptied bowels. Cork stood and moved far enough away that he couldn’t smell the stench of death.

  The full weight of the situation fell on him, and his legs would no longer hold him up. He dropped into a s
itting position on the wet ground and went, for a little while, into a kind of daze.

  “Cork?” It was Jubal’s voice cutting through the haze.

  Cork snapped back to the terrible reality of the moment.

  “You okay?” Jubal asked.

  “He’s dead.”

  Jubal’s face was ghost white, and he sat down heavily beside Cork. “I know.”

  “What happened?”

  Jubal was quiet a long time, and the voice that finally spoke was smaller than Cork had ever heard from his friend. “He stumbled. He just stumbled and fell.”

  Cork tried to look into Jubal’s eyes, to find some clue there about the truth of that explanation, but Jubal averted his face.

  “I want to know everything,” Cork said.

  “There’s nothing to know,” Jubal insisted, almost desperately. “I accused him of what happened to Winona. He didn’t deny it, just told me to go fuck myself.”

  “And then he . . . just fell?”

  “He swung at me. He started it. So I swung at him. Next thing I know, he’s stumbling back and falling. It was an accident, I swear. Cork, we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to say about this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We both have to tell the same story.”

  “It was an accident. We just tell them that.”

  Jubal shook his head furiously. “We can’t tell anyone I went up there with him. Who’s going to believe that I didn’t intentionally push him?”

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not. But nobody’s going to believe me. I’m an Indian. That’ll come out now. Think white people are going to take an Indian’s side in something like this?”

  “You’re Jubal Little,” Cork said, amazed that his friend had no idea how much weight that carried.

  “Jubal Littlewolf. With a father in prison for manslaughter. Like father, like son. That’s how they’ll play it.” He took Cork by the shoulders and leaned toward him until their faces were only inches apart. “You’re my brother. I’m counting on you.”

  A breeze had finally come up, cooling against his face. Cork was suddenly deeply aware of how much he loved his friend. He had a choice. He could believe Jubal or not. If he believed him, there was only one thing he could do.