Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

  “Big John,” Cork said.

  “Ah.” Sam nodded. “Anything specific?”

  “I stopped by the mission today. I saw where they’ll bury him.”

  Sam waited and Jorge went on eating.

  “He was baptized and confirmed Catholic,” Cork said. “He went to Mass pretty often. But he committed suicide, which is a mortal sin. So, I didn’t think he could be buried in the cemetery.”

  “Probably couldn’t in the Catholic section of the cemetery here in Aurora. But the mission’s on rez land. On the rez, we can do what feels right to us.” Sam’s dark eyes held on him for a long while, then Sam said, “But I’m guessing there’s something else.”

  “Yeah,” Cork said. But before he was able to tell Sam about what he’d glimpsed at Lightning Strike, Daisy hollered from the serving area, “Rush coming.”

  Sam stood and put a hand on Cork’s shoulder. “We’ll talk more at the wake tonight.”

  When they were alone, Jorge reached into his back pocket and brought out a folded sheet of drawing paper. He opened the sheet and swung it around on the tabletop so Cork could see it clearly. “My newest monster creation.”

  Cork was chewing the last bite of his hamburger, but nearly choked when he saw the drawing. He coughed and coughed and finally rasped, “When did you draw that?”

  “After we went out to Lightning Strike and found… well, you know. It’s kind of vague at the moment. I don’t know what it’ll become. But I love those scary eyes.”

  Cork stared down at Jorge’s drawing. It was just a vague scratching of charcoal, a kind of dark cloud, but in the middle of all that darkness two burning eyes stared out.

  “You okay?” Jorge asked, seeing the look on Cork’s face.

  Cork wasn’t okay, not at all. Because what Jorge had drawn looked very much like the thing Cork had seen, or thought he’d seen, towering among the shadows in the pines at Lightning Strike.

  CHAPTER 7

  Home, Liam had often heard, is where the heart is. If that was true, his heart was in a white, two-story frame house on Gooseberry Lane. There was an elm out front, still young as elms go because Liam had planted it to celebrate his son’s birth. A roofed porch ran the length of the home’s front and a swing hung there, suspended on two galvanized chains. Lilac hedges served as property boundaries on either side.

  The house had been built by Colleen’s father, an O’Connor who was a distant relative to Liam’s father. He’d come to Aurora as a teacher and had become the superintendent of schools. He’d worked with Dilsey, Colleen’s mother, to improve education on the rez, and they’d fallen in love and married. He’d built the house on Gooseberry Lane and had raised his family there. When her husband died, Dilsey had moved back to the small house on the reservation where she’d spent her childhood, leaving the big house in Aurora to Colleen and Liam. She often visited, however, and sometimes stayed the night in the guest room.

  Colleen was at work in the kitchen. The house smelled of hamburger stew, one of Liam’s favorites, a concoction of ground beef, corn, green beans, stewed tomatoes, onions, lots of savory spices, and because his wife was half Ojibwe, wild rice, of course. It was more typically a winter meal, but Colleen often prepared it for large gatherings because it was quick, easy, and popular. The stew was for Big John’s wake that evening.

  He found her at the sink, washing up the bowls and utensils she’d used in the stew’s preparation. He liked that she was full-bodied, with lots of soft, rounded areas. Her hair was auburn, a genetic mix of her father’s Irish red and the darker tone that came from her mother’s Native heritage. When she heard him enter the kitchen, she turned, and her earth-colored eyes settled on him warmly. Liam took a spoon from a drawer and dipped out a bit of the stew to taste.

  “If you’re hungry, I’ll make you a sandwich,” she told him. “It will be a good long spell before you eat.”

  He knew what she meant. A wake could go on for quite a while before the ceremonial sharing of the meal.

  “Got the report today on Big John’s blood alcohol level,” he said.

  “And?”

  “He was definitely intoxicated when he died.”

  Her back was to him, but he saw her go stiff. Like everyone else on the rez, she refused to believe what the evidence indicated.

  “I was out at his cabin. He left his truck there. His canoe was gone as well. It wasn’t at Lightning Strike either, so I think he must have walked. Which means he had to have passed through Allouette carrying two bottles of Four Roses and enough rope to hang himself, but nobody on the rez admits to having seen him.”

  Colleen stirred the stew. “Maybe he didn’t want to be seen. It strikes me that suicide is a very private act.”

  “Which he seems to have thought out well.”

  That wasn’t unusual, Liam knew. As a cop in Chicago, he’d worked enough suicides to understand that some attempts had been meant as calls for help and were poorly carried out. But people who truly wanted to die often spent a good deal of effort in ensuring their end.

  Colleen turned from the stove. “Dilsey called while you were out. She told me Cork was at Lightning Strike today. Billy Downwind asked him to go.”

  Liam closed his eyes. “Oh, God. That’ll just feed his nightmares.”

  “But you can understand Billy wanting to go.”

  “I suppose. Only why did he have to take Cork?”

  Before his wife could answer, Cork came in through the mud porch door. Jackson, who’d been lying sleepily in a kitchen corner, bounded to him, tail wagging a mile a minute.

  “Hey, boy.” Cork gave the dog a good patting, then went to the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of milk, and poured himself a glass. Then he said “Hi” to his parents.

  “Have a seat.” Liam nodded toward an empty chair at the table.

  Cork must have heard something in his voice because he looked concerned. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Like I said, have a seat.” Liam waited until Cork had taken a chair, then he sat down at the table, too. “I understand you went out to Lightning Strike today.”

  “Billy wanted me to go with him. To show him—you know.”

  Liam gave a nod. “He wanted to see where it happened.”

  “He’s trying to figure out why his uncle did it.” Cork looked into his father’s face, then turned and looked at his mother, who was watching from the stove, the wooden stirring spoon in her hand. “Why do you think he did it, Mom?”

  Colleen laid the spoon on the stovetop, came to the table, and sat down beside their son. “You know that Big John had struggled with a drinking problem.”

  “I thought he licked it.”

  “It’s hard to know what someone’s going through, the demons they wrestle with. I know some of what drove Big John to drink in the first place. When a lot of men came back from the war, alcohol was a way they tried to forget what they’d seen and what they’d done.”

  “Not Dad. Not Sam Winter Moon.”

  “Every man is different,” Liam said.

  “Okay, so maybe that’s why he started drinking, but he stopped. What made him start again?” When his mother didn’t reply, Cork looked to Liam, who shook his head.

  “I never saw him drunk, not once,” Cork insisted.

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t drinking,” Liam said.

  “I’m never going to drink.”

  “I hope you hold to that.” Colleen leaned and kissed his forehead. “Finish that milk, then get yourself cleaned up for the wake.”

  CHAPTER 8

  A fire burned in a ring of stones outside the community center in Allouette. The fire had burned for four days, ever since Big John’s body had been discovered at Lightning Strike. It would burn until the next day, when Big John was laid in his grave.

  Cork and his parents walked past the fire and entered the community center. The coffin sat atop a low table surrounded with flowers. It was positioned with the head to the west, the direction a spirit would follow on
the Path of Souls. Though an open casket was more typical, the lid was closed. Cork had seen what remained of Big John and understood why.

  In one corner, a prominent display of photographs of the dead man had been created by his family, all of them showing a great bear of a human being, generally with a broad smile across his face.

  Rows of folding chairs had been set up, two separate sections, one for family of the deceased and one for friends and others. When the O’Connors arrived, there were already a dozen people in each section, talking quietly among themselves. Though death was no stranger to any of them, they all seemed to eye the coffin in disbelief. Because Big John was special. Big John had battled his whole life, and in a way, his huge spirit embodied the struggle of his people. Or that was Grandma Dilsey’s assessment, and one she’d shared with Cork on numerous occasions, along with the larger-than-life history of the man.

  In the days when so many Native children were wrested from their families and forced into government-run boarding schools, Big John had resisted. He’d run away many times from the Pipestone Indian Training School, and always they’d come to the rez and hauled him back. Until the last time he escaped. He was twelve years old then—the same age Cork was now—and to ensure his freedom, Henry Meloux had helped him flee into the Northwoods and had taught him how to make his way there, hunting and fishing and foraging. At the age of sixteen, he began to earn a living guiding others, mostly white men, into the Quetico-Superior Wilderness, an area he’d come to know intimately. At nineteen, he was tapped by the federal government and drafted. Though he could probably have disappeared again deep in his beloved Northwoods, he went to war instead, as did many young men from Tamarack County, white and Native alike. When he returned, he was a man who drank mightily.

  From his own father, Cork had been given a general understanding of what might have driven Big John Manydeeds to hit the bottle. As an officer of the law, Liam O’Connor had seen some pretty bad things, but he’d told Cork that war was far worse than anything he’d ever encountered in civilian life. Whenever his curious son had pressed him for more information, he refused to share the horrific details of his experiences. Big John was different. When he drank, he grew angry and bitter and loud and violent, as if he were still fighting in the war. Which landed him in jail on many occasions, some of those arrests made by Liam O’Connor.

  Grandma Dilsey had told Cork that it was Henry Meloux who’d guided Big John out of his darkness. He did it with ceremonies and with medicines and with compassion and with persistence. By the time Cork was old enough to have memory, Big John, it seemed, had put the drinking behind him.

  But from comments he’d heard in Aurora, Cork understood that in the opinion of a lot of white people, Big John would forever remain just another drunken Indian.

  So, there were not many white faces in the community center at Allouette. Mrs. Pflugleman, the pretty wife of the pharmacist in Aurora, was there, because like Cork’s mother, she was half Anishinaabe. Mrs. Andersen and Mrs. Krabill, two widowed sisters who owned Borealis Outfitters—they were known as the Borealis sisters—were there because they’d employed Big John as a guide for years. Although he was to have no part in the wake ceremony, Father Cameron Ferguson was there because he’d given the Holy Eucharist to Big John at the mission for the last several years; Cork understood that the two men were friends.

  Cork’s mother spent a few minutes with Billy Downwind’s family. Billy and Cork said “Hey” to each other, but that was it. His parents greeted many of those already present, then sat in the area designated for friends of the family and spoke little as they waited. For an hour, in the quiet of the big room, folks drifted in, paid their respects, and found chairs. There were more than a few who gave Cork’s father a cold eye, men he’d arrested or the families of men he’d arrested. Cork knew his father had a few friends on the reservation and among the Ojibwe who lived off-rez, but he’d also heard Grandma Dilsey caution that many saw only one thing when they looked at him—the oppressive authority of white law.

  The chairs were mostly filled when Henry Meloux entered. Cork felt something enter with him, the sense of a great presence, and there seemed to be a change in the room, like the ripples that went out from a stone dropped in water.

  Meloux was not a big man. In height, he was well under six feet, and slender, like a young birch tree, and like a birch, he stood straight and strong. Although he was fifty years Cork’s senior, his hair was still as black as a moonless night, and he wore it long and flowing down his back. He was a member of the Grand Medicine Society, a Mide, a healer, and Cork had always felt something calming in his presence, soothing in his voice, magnetic in his deep brown eyes.

  The Mide walked to the family of Big John and spoke to them quietly, then went and stood next to the coffin. Abby Manydeeds, one of Big John’s young cousins, moved about the big room with a clay dish in which sage smoldered. As she passed, each person drew the smoke to their bodies, cleansing themselves. Billy Downwind and one of his cousins, Skipper Manydeeds, rose from their chairs and took two bowls from a small table next to the casket. The bowls were filled with loose tobacco, and the young men moved among the rows of chairs, dropping pinches of the tobacco into the opened palms of those who’d gathered.

  Meloux spoke in Ojibwemowin. Cork had been to many wakes, and although he couldn’t translate most of the words, he understood that the Mide was explaining the importance of the tobacco. Then Meloux said in English: “Take your tobacco to the fire outside and give it to the flames, along with your offering of prayers so that the smoke may carry them to the Creator.”

  Cork and his family joined the long line that snaked out of the community center, circled left around the fire, delivered their tobacco to the flames, and returned to their seats.

  Meloux spoke again in Ojibwemowin, and Cork understood that he was talking about the path to Gaagige Minawaanigoziwining, which lay far to the west, and how it had been created. Then Meloux explained in English that the spirit of Big John needed to eat on his long journey, and food had been prepared for him and also to share with those who’d gathered. If those present didn’t eat, the spirit of Big John would not eat. He encouraged everyone to join in the feast.

  They took their time with the meal, and when they were finished, they sat again. The Mide spoke once more in the language of his people and after a pause, interpreted what he’d said for those who couldn’t understand. He explained that he was helping to guide the spirit of Big John Manydeeds to Gaagige Minawaanigoziwining, telling the spirit what he would see in order to be sure that he was on the right path. Cork knew it was a long journey and wouldn’t be completed that night but would end with Meloux’s final guidance at the funeral the next day.

  Meloux concluded with a prayer spoken in Ojibwemowin which he didn’t translate into English. At last he said, “That is all I have to say for tonight.”

  People rose and talked quietly to one another and began to move toward the door. Mrs. Pflugleman walked past Cork’s family and spoke for a moment with Cork’s mother. In that moment, Cork caught a powerful scent that, when he recognized it, gave him a jolt. It was the same fragrance he’d smelled on the folded piece of stationery in Big John’s grave. The woman strode out the door before he could pull himself together enough to speak, but even if he’d had his senses about him, he had no idea what he might have said.

  “Liam, why don’t you and Cork wait for me at the car,” Cork’s mother said. “I’m going to give a hand cleaning up from the meal.”

  Cork followed his father outside. There was still light in the sky, a soft, evanescing blue reflected on the placid surface of Iron Lake, which was visible through the trees along the shoreline. Billy Downwind was waiting, and he gestured to Cork to join him. In the dying light, Billy looked pale.

  “You okay?” Cork asked.

  “Yeah. Mom’s pretty upset. And Uncle Oscar isn’t helping any. He’s been drinking again, and he keeps getting her riled up. All she does is cry.�
�� Billy looked away. “He called your dad a damn chimook. Says he’s just sitting on his ass.”

  “Chimook.” Cork gave a shrug. “Well, he is white. But heck, he’s been called worse by other chimooks. He isn’t just sitting on his ass though.”

  The boys caught sight of Henry Meloux as he exited the community center. After he’d spoken a moment quietly with Father Cam Ferguson, they approached him.

  “Mr. Meloux, could we talk to you?” Cork said.

  “What is it, Corcoran O’Connor?”

  People were still coming from the community center. “Maybe over by the fire?” Cork said.

  Meloux followed them, and when they were away from the others, Cork said, “Billy and me, well, we went out to Lightning Strike today.”

  He waited for Meloux to comment on a move that everyone else seemed to think was a big mistake, but the elder said nothing.

  “Go on, Billy,” Cork said. “Tell him.”

  Billy Downwind stumbled a little as he said, “My… my uncle was there.”

  Although the old man’s face showed nothing and he didn’t speak, Cork thought he saw a change in Meloux’s eyes.

  “His spirit’s not on the Path of Souls, like you said tonight,” Billy insisted. “He’s out there at Lightning Strike.”

  “You saw him?” Meloux asked.

  “Not exactly,” Billy replied.

  “You felt him?”

  “Yeah, more like that.”

  “And you, Corcoran O’Connor?”

  Cork thought about the huge, dark shape he’d seen, but decided to refrain from saying anything about it. Instead he said, “I felt something, too.”

  “Do you know about that place?” Meloux asked.

  “My uncle said it’s a special place, a spiritual place, and they should never have been logging there,” Billy jumped in. “He said that’s why the lightning hit.”

  “Maybe it was just that you sensed the spirit of that place itself,” Meloux said.

  “It was more than that. It was Big John. And he wants something. I could feel it.” Billy was almost in tears. He looked earnestly at Meloux, then said, “Ah, hell, I should’ve known no one would believe me.”