Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

“I will take care of that,” his mother said.

  “It’s okay. I can do it.”

  Jorge swept up the glass, and Cork held the dustpan. By then, Jorge’s mother had filled a bucket with water and soap, and she ran a mop over the floor to clean up what was left of the whiskey and any remaining glass.

  “We’ll finish the game later,” Jorge said.

  Cork bid them good night. He descended the outside stairway, got on his bike, and in the last light of that day, headed toward home.

  CHAPTER 21

  Even before he heard the voices coming from the front porch, Cork could smell the aroma of the Cherry Blend tobacco in his father’s pipe. The other voice belonged to Sam Winter Moon. As Cork came from the garage, where he’d put away his bike, the two men stopped talking abruptly.

  “Home early,” his father said.

  “Didn’t finish the game. Hi, Sam.”

  The two men sat on folding chairs brought from inside the house. It was dark enough that the glow of the embers in the pipe bowl illuminated his father’s face. Cork had the sense that he’d interrupted a conversation the men were reluctant to continue in his presence.

  “There’s something you should know, Dad, something that happened at Jorge’s house tonight.”

  Although Jorge’s mother had said the two boys should tell no one, Cork hadn’t actually made her that promise. So, he told the men about what had occurred at Glengarrow. His father, as he listened, took the pipe from his mouth and leaned toward Cork, as if afraid he might miss something important.

  “The court would be on his side? That’s what Mary Margaret said?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And she said adultery. She used that exact word?”

  Cork nodded. “Like in the Ten Commandments.”

  “Big John? And MacDermid’s wife?” Sam said, as if it were an impossible idea. “How would she…?” He broke off his thought, scratched his cheek, eyed Cork’s father, and finally said, “How would they even know each other?”

  “There’s something else, Dad. That bottle he threw on the floor? When I was helping Jorge clean up the mess, I saw the label. It’s the same kind of whiskey we found out behind Big John’s cabin.”

  “Four Roses,” his father said, as if this were no surprise, then he was quiet for a long time while the embers in his pipe went dark. “He battered her. If I could, I’d put him behind bars for that alone. But if I press her about it, she’ll deny everything, say she fell or ran into a door. I see this kind of thing way too often.” His father stared west, where the sky held only the palest memory of daylight. “You still willing to do me that favor, Sam?”

  “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, Liam, but I’ll ask around the rez. See what I can come up with about that lighter Oscar claims he found.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What about you?” Sam said.

  “I’m going after Duncan MacDermid.”

  * * *

  Cork’s mother and Grandma Dilsey sat at the kitchen table, each with a cup of coffee, and spread out between them on the tabletop was a jumble of photographs.

  “Your grandfather,” Grandma Dilsey said when Cork looked over her shoulder.

  He was a man Cork had never known. Handsome and smiling, he stood with a much younger version of Cork’s grandmother in front of a small white clapboard building, the one-room schoolhouse on the rez where Grandma Dilsey had taught and which had been enlarged to become the community center. Patrick “Paddy” O’Connor had been superintendent in the Tamarack County School District then. He’d died shortly after Cork was born.

  “Talk about Irish blarney,” Grandma Dilsey said. “That man could sweet-talk a bee into giving up its honey. And this one,” she said, holding up another photograph. “My mother, at our sugar bush camp, boiling down maple syrup.” She looked long at the photograph of a woman in a plain country dress, stirring a big, steaming pot over an outdoor fire. “I used to love to help her. Before the government took me away,” she added with a bitter note. “And here’s your mother, Cork, in her First Communion dress, seven years old. Do you remember that dress, Colleen?”

  Cork had seen most of the photographs before. This was a usual part of his mother’s birthday celebration, a parade through time via the old photographs Grandma Dilsey had kept and treasured.

  Cork went to the refrigerator and opened the door.

  “Hungry?” his mother asked.

  “When isn’t he?” Grandma Dilsey said.

  “There’s cold meat loaf and potato salad from yesterday,” his mother said.

  Cork put together a plate of the leftovers and sat at the table with the women.

  “Who won the game?” his mother asked.

  “Didn’t finish.” Cork hesitated before digging into his food.

  His mother seemed to sense that something weighed on him. “What is it?”

  He’d made no promise to keep it secret, so Cork told them about what had taken place at Jorge’s.

  * * *

  When Liam O’Connor walked into the kitchen, he was stopped in midstride by the look his wife and mother-in-law both gave him.

  “Big John and Mary Margaret?” Colleen said.

  “He was three times the man Duncan MacDermid will ever be,” Dilsey declared.

  “It’s hearsay,” Liam said. “Maybe Cork misunderstood.”

  “I didn’t,” Cork said.

  “Who would blame her?” Colleen said. “Duncan was a bully as a kid, and he hasn’t changed one bit. Can’t you arrest him, Liam?”

  “Maybe if Mary Margaret lodged a complaint, which she won’t. Even then, it’s unlikely he’d be charged. Bud Fassbinder, our county attorney, is pretty much in MacDermid’s pocket.”

  “On the rez, we’ve been saying all along that Big John didn’t kill himself,” Dilsey said. “Seems to me, Liam, that you’ve got good reason to look real hard at Duncan MacDermid.”

  “Thank you for telling me my job, Dilsey. Now I’ve got a question for you. What do you think of Oscar Manydeeds?”

  His mother-in-law seemed caught off guard. “What do you mean?”

  “Before Big John stopped drinking, if in fact he really did, he and Oscar used to go at one another until they were both beat and bloody.”

  “Big John stopped drinking long ago,” Dilsey insisted.

  “If you say so. But not Oscar. And when he drinks, he gets mean. Everybody’s seen that.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “They weren’t brothers. They were half brothers. As we all know, not a lot of love lost there.”

  Liam had heard the story of Big John and Oscar Manydeeds from Colleen and Dilsey any number of times, especially when he’d had occasion to arrest one of the brothers. Same father, different mothers. Big John’s mother had died while he was away at the government boarding school. He hadn’t even been allowed to come home for the funeral. Not long afterward, Big John’s father had remarried. His new wife gave him two children, Oscar and a girl named Jeanette, Billy Downwind’s mother. The last time Big John ran away from the boarding school and, with the help of Henry Meloux, disappeared into the wilderness, Oscar was six or seven. Oscar was an adolescent when Big John went away to war, and his brother was already a bit of a legendary figure. Oscar often boasted of his big brother, and as he grew into the same gigantic stature, claimed he would be just like Big John. But Big John, when he returned many years later, was a changed man, a drinking man, and that’s when Oscar started drinking hard, too.

  That’s also when the fights began, half brother against half brother, bitter accusations that ran back always to deep loves for two different mothers and on Big John’s part, a profound feeling of betrayal by his father, who had done nothing to prevent him from being hauled off to boarding school again and again, and who’d remarried while Big John’s mother was still warm in her grave. The brothers were equally matched in size, but there was something more brutal about Big John. The war, people said. The deep woundin
g of his spirit. And they said that if Henry hadn’t stepped in, helped Big John to heal, one of the brothers was bound to end up dead.

  “Why are we even talking about this?” Dilsey said.

  “Because of the lighter,” Cork blurted.

  Dilsey gave him a look of bewilderment, then gave that same look to Liam. “The one he found at Lightning Strike?”

  “Says he found,” Liam put in, then scowled at his son in a way meant to keep him quiet.

  “I don’t understand,” Colleen said.

  “The lighter belongs to Duncan MacDermid,” Liam told her.

  “Whose wife was having an affair with Big John,” Dilsey said, as if capping an argument. “Doesn’t that prove that MacDermid was out there? Why don’t you arrest him?”

  “Awfully convenient, don’t you think? Oscar just happening to find it at Lightning Strike?”

  “What I think is that you’re trying to shift attention from Duncan MacDermid.”

  “The rich, powerful white man.”

  “Exactly, Liam. Who cares about Oscar Manydeeds? He’s just a drunken Indian. And isn’t that convenient? So, what are you going to do?”

  “I’ve asked Sam to talk to folks on the rez. There are questions about Oscar I need answered. In the meantime, I will, as you say, look real hard at Duncan MacDermid, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

  “What I’m concerned about is justice, Liam,” Dilsey said. “That’s something I haven’t seen much of across my lifetime, especially when it comes to standing up to people who think their money and power can protect them from everything. People who have county attorneys in their pockets. Maybe even county sheriffs.”

  “You think MacDermid could buy me off?” Liam’s blood was rising, and his voice drew taut. “Do you even know who I am, Dilsey?”

  “Mom, Liam,” Colleen said, her own voice pitched near anger. “Let it go.”

  Dilsey set her dark eyes on her son-in-law with a steady gaze. “Deep in our hearts, I’m not sure any of us really know who we are. It’s moments like this that force us to look at the truth of ourselves. Who are you, Liam? I think we’re about to find out.”

  * * *

  Grandma Dilsey, in her anger, had chosen to return to her home on the rez that night, and long after the others had gone to bed, Cork rose, went to his window, unlatched the screen, and slipped out onto the roof of the porch, where he sat thinking, as he sometimes did at night when everyone else was asleep. The moon was high and bright, and the house cast a shadow across the front lawn, which looked to Cork like a big, empty grave. He hugged his knees and thought about the sharp tone Grandma Dilsey had used that evening in pressing his father about justice for Big John. He knew his grandmother hadn’t been thrilled when her daughter married a lawman. Grandma Dilsey’s husband had been a scholar, a schoolteacher like her, said to be firm but gentle, and although he was white, because of his tireless work in helping his wife educate Ojibwe children, he’d been embraced by the Anishinaabeg of the Iron Lake Reservation. But to Cork, his father’s badge seemed like an iron fence, and although his father did his best to reach across it, he would never be invited to the other side.

  Cork stared at the night sky. The glow of the moon ate much of the Milky Way, but in the west, the dusty trail of stars was clear. That was the direction Big John’s spirit should have followed on the Path of Souls. But more and more, Cork agreed with the cracked, bitter warnings of old Broomstraw, that something of Big John remained in Tamarack County. If not his spirit, then the shadow of something he’d done, maybe some sin. Adultery? But that wasn’t his sin. That was Mrs. MacDermid’s. The sin Big John had committed was coveting another man’s wife. Was that a cardinal sin? Whatever, it seemed to have brought with it a curse that threatened the peace in Tamarack County and in the O’Connors’ house as well.

  Cork knew that lawmen in the Old West had carried a Colt revolver nicknamed the Peacemaker. His father owned a .38 Smith & Wesson Police Special, but he seldom wore it. Yet on his shoulders seemed to rest the full responsibility for restoring peace, finding the truth, bringing justice. Sitting alone on the porch roof, Cork tried to imagine the awful burden of that great responsibility on a man who didn’t believe in the Path of Souls or roaming spirits, a man who’d come from a long line of no-nonsense Irish cops in Chicago, a man who seemed to face with equanimity the hostility that often came at him from both the Ojibwe and the whites. It all felt overwhelming, crushing. In the end, Cork crawled back inside the house and into his bed and found sanctuary in sleep.

  CHAPTER 22

  Liam slept fitfully and was up long before it was time for Cork to wake and head off to deliver his newspapers. He brewed himself coffee, fed Jackson, and at four-thirty went back upstairs just as his son’s alarm went off. He waited in the hallway until he was sure Cork was up and moving, then left the house. He could have delayed a few minutes, offered his son a ride to his newspaper drop box, but at the moment, he needed to be alone with his thoughts.

  He’d always been sure of what he wanted. Early on, he knew he would be a cop, wanted that connection with the other men of his family. The moment he’d set eyes on Colleen, he’d wanted her for his wife. He’d wanted children, and he counted Cork a great blessing. He’d wanted the job of sheriff, and it was his.

  But now he was unsure of so many things, unsure of what he really wanted going forward. He felt as if he was alienating all the people he cared about and who cared about him. Was the truth of Big John Manydeeds’s death really worth the risk of what it might cost him?

  He headed north out of Aurora, past the lane through the pines that led to Glengarrow, along a country road that went from asphalt to gravel, and seven miles later, turned off where the old logging road cut through the trees to Lightning Strike. The new day was just a faint suggestion of soft blue along the horizon, and Liam’s headlights illuminated the high wild grass and the press of trees on either side. He hadn’t been back since the day Cork and Jorge found Big John hanging from the maple tree. There’d been no reason to return, but something was different now.

  He parked his pickup at the edge of the clearing. By then the low clouds in the east were flamingo colored from a sun that was still below the horizon. He got out and walked into the center of the meadow. The air was cool and a little damp against his face. Although it had been more than fifty years since the logging camp had burned nearly to the ground, he swore he could still smell the char.

  His wife’s people claimed this was a spiritual place and that was why the commercial enterprise had suffered the fate that had given the meadow its name. Big John had sometimes invited Cork to come along with Billy Downwind and spend a night in the clearing. Cork would come home with stories Big John had told about the wonders he’d seen in the great Northwoods. How many times had Cork returned gushing, “There are things out there, Dad, that you just can’t explain. Seriously.”

  Cork was young and impressionable, and in truth, Liam was happy to have him learn about the part of his ancestry that was Ojibwe. Dilsey was always working on him, always pressing Cork to learn the language, to understand his rich and noble heritage. Hadn’t Liam done the same thing on his side? Only last spring, they’d gone to Chicago for the St. Patrick’s Day parade and had watched men from Liam’s family march with their brothers in police uniforms, and had gathered afterward for drink and for stories, and he’d been proud of the heritage that had been shared with his son.

  So Liam understood that it was fitting for Dilsey and Colleen and Sam Winter Moon and Henry Meloux to steep his son in an appreciation and acceptance of what it meant to be one of The People. Which was something Liam would never be able to share. He would always remain an outsider.

  He knew that among whites in Tamarack County, his marriage was an issue. He’d first heard the term “squaw man” when he’d run for sheriff. Colleen had been educated at the Winona State Teachers’ College. Had graduated cum laude. Had taught social studies in Aurora for nearly a decade. Yet to
some people in Tamarack County she was still defined only by her ancestry. And only half of her ancestry. There were many people of mixed blood in the North Country, but a lot of them refused to acknowledge this publicly, because to be Indian at all was to be Indian completely.

  Which was something Dilsey believed Liam didn’t understand, this profound and enduring prejudice. They’d argued on occasion, and Liam had pointed out to her that his own people, when they’d first arrived from Ireland, had been spit on, too.

  “But no longer,” she’d pointed out. “Now you hold big parades to celebrate your heritage, and thousands of people turn out and cheer.”

  He understood her point. If you were white, it didn’t matter where you came from, eventually you were accepted. Being Indian was quite different.

  But dying was the same no matter where you came from. Liam walked slowly toward the lone maple. The sun had just begun to peek above the horizon, and as its red-orange rays hit the top of the tree, the leaves seemed to burst into flames.

  “Why here, Big John?” Liam asked aloud.

  He studied the section of fallen trunk Big John had put there as a perch for his fatal last step. There were no marks on the ground showing that it had been dragged to the place. It must have been carried. The section was large and heavy and would have been a chore to haul from wherever it had come. For anyone else, that would have been a two-man job. But Big John wasn’t called by that name for nothing. If he was as set in his purpose as it appeared, he could have carried that log a mile.

  And it did appear he’d been set on ending his life. It certainly looked like suicide. The evidence had been so telling. The whiskey bottles, the blood alcohol level, the history of alcoholism. And suicide was tragically common in Native communities. So, Liam had bought it.

  Which may have been exactly what he was meant to do.

  “Are you here?” He spoke aloud again. “What is it you want?”

  What did he expect? That the spirit of Big John would appear to him as it seemed to have appeared to others, and that he would be given answers? If so, he was disappointed. Except for him, the clearing remained empty.