Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

The shot had hit its target, Ben Svenson’s heart, and the man was truly dead.

  They laid his body in the O’Connors’ canoe, the one Cork and his friends had taken to the lake, but it would be Cork’s father and his deputy who would paddle the body back the next day.

  They sat around the fire on Eagle Point, and although they were boys only nearing manhood, Cork felt that he and his friends belonged in the company of men that night.

  It had been a long day for them all. When it came time to get some sleep, the sheriff assigned each of his small posse a watch during the night to ensure that Nick Skinner, should he choose to return, wouldn’t surprise them.

  But Cork couldn’t sleep. He lay awake, thinking, still trying to make sense of the world as he saw it now, a place where there was no longer any sure, safe haven. When it was Sam Winter Moon’s turn on watch, Cork joined him, and they sat feeding the fire and keeping an eye on the woods and the water. Across Sam’s lap lay his hunting rifle, just in case.

  “You fought in the war,” Cork said.

  “Me and lots of other Shinnobs.”

  “Were you ever scared?”

  “All the time. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I thought I was going to die, Sam. But that didn’t scare me so much. What scared me was thinking that Jorge and Billy might be killed.”

  “You know what that is, Cork? That’s brotherhood. It’s a precious thing, hard to come by.”

  “There’s something else.”

  Sam waited with the patience of the Ojibwe while Cork tried to gather his thinking and find the right words.

  “I got saved tonight. Nick Skinner and Mr. Svenson, they were about to…” He tried to say the words but couldn’t quite call them up. “Then the moon disappeared. There weren’t any clouds in the sky, but the moon just disappeared. And those men looked up, and it was like they were seeing a monster. That’s what gave me a chance to get away.”

  “What do you think they saw?”

  “I think it was Big John. You were out on the lake then. Did you see him?”

  “For us, the moon was always there. It lit our way the whole time.” Sam let a minute pass. Out on the lake, a loon gave a forlorn and eerie cry. “Crazy as a loon,” he said. “That’s what white folks would say about Skinner if he told anyone that the spirit of Big John had scared him. If you tell your dad, he’ll probably find some rational explanation for whatever blacked out the moon. He’s white and Irish on top of that. Stubborn as they come in what he’s willing to accept or not. But you, Cork, you’re different. You’ve got Shinnob blood in you. You’ll always be a spirit divided, always trying to figure how to put those two worlds together. There’s nobody can help you with that one. Not me or your mom or Dilsey.”

  “Henry Meloux, maybe?”

  “Maybe. But knowing Henry, I’m guessing he’ll leave it to you to solve that puzzle.”

  Sam looked away as Liam O’Connor stepped to the fire.

  “Time for you to get some shut-eye, Sam.”

  “Sleep can wait. Sit with us awhile, Liam.”

  And he did, settling himself so that he was on one side of Cork and Sam on the other. He put a hand lightly on his son’s shoulder.

  “I wish I could’ve spared you all this,” he said.

  But that wasn’t something Cork wished. It felt right for him to be there, between these two men. Though one of them was his father, what he felt toward them now was something different, something Sam had called brotherhood. It was a hard place to come to, and he’d left much behind, but there was no going back.

  CHAPTER 61

  On a Saturday morning three weeks later, Cork O’Connor stood in front of the carriage house at Glengarrow, where a station wagon with a U-Haul trailer attached behind it was parked. Jorge came down the steps from the upstairs apartment, holding a large manila envelope. They walked to the dock beside the boathouse so that Jorge could take one last look at Iron Lake.

  Fall was not yet in the air, and the day was warm and exceedingly sunny. Cork had been tapped to be a part of the honor guard for the Boy Scouts of American Voyageurs Area Council later that morning, and he was dressed in his uniform. The two young men sat on the wood planks of the dock, their backs against the upright pilings. The big motor launch and the little Sunfish that had been moored there were gone, sold along with everything else at Glengarrow.

  “Four days,” Jorge said. “We’ll stay tonight in Des Moines, tomorrow in Denver, Monday in Phoenix, and get to California on Tuesday.” With his finger, he drew an imaginary line of travel across the weathered boards of the dock. “Wish I had a driver’s license. I could help.”

  “Where will you stay when you get there?”

  “Relatives. My mom’s cousins. For a little while anyway, till we find a place of our own.” Jorge looked across the lake at the distant shore. “Never met them. Hope they’re nice.”

  Cork said, “I’ll come and visit sometime, visit you and Billy.”

  “Right,” Jorge said.

  “Really, I mean it.”

  Jorge slapped at a deerfly that had settled on his arm. “Mom got a letter from Nick Skinner. From jail. He said he was sorry for everything.”

  “Is she going to write back?”

  “No. She says she’s done with men. From now on, it’s all about her and me. Here. This is for you.” Jorge handed him the big envelope.

  Cork opened it and pulled out several pages torn from a sketch pad. They were all monsters, renderings from Jorge’s vivid imagination, except for one they both knew was real.

  “I haven’t seen him since Moose Lake,” Cork said. “Nobody has.”

  “All he wanted was the truth, I guess.”

  “He knew the truth. He just wanted everyone else to know it, too.” Cork shooed away a deerfly buzzing around his head. “I heard some rich lawyer bought Glengarrow.”

  Jorge looked back at the grounds of the estate and the mansion. “Ask me, this place is cursed. I don’t mind leaving it behind.”

  Jorge’s mother called to him from the carriage house.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  The boys stood and shook hands, and Jorge walked back to the station wagon. He waved once before getting into the passenger side. Then his mother gunned the engine and Cork watched as Jorge rode out of his life.

  Billy Downwind was gone, too, back in L.A. with his father and mother. He was no more excited about returning there than Jorge had been about going in the first place. What Cork had told Jorge was true. He fully intended to see his friends again. But intentions could be like cloud animals in the sky, so clear for a while, then shifting, then fading, then gone.

  * * *

  It was Grandma Dilsey who suggested they all visit Crow Point that evening. Cork’s father brought tobacco as an offering, and Cork’s mother brought two loaves of freshly baked rhubarb bread. They gathered around the fire ring. Henry Meloux’s pipe was filled with tobacco and passed. When it came to Cork, he looked to the Mide for permission to join in the smoking. Meloux’s dark eyes held on him, expressionless, and Cork figured he would simply be instructed to pass the pipe on. But Meloux’s eyes changed, softened, as if they were pellets of iron melting, and he gave a nod. As the light relinquished its hold on the day, Cork, for the first time, joined in smoking from the sacred pipe.

  Makwa lay quietly at Meloux’s feet. Cork could hear the chirring of crickets from the meadow and the song of tree frogs and the voice of the wind as it spoke in the rustling of the aspen leaves along the shore of Iron Lake. Grandma Dilsey shared a story about Henry Meloux as a young man, one Cork hadn’t heard before, and at the end of it, after they’d all finished laughing, Meloux said, “We were young then, Dilsey.”

  “And had much to learn,” Cork’s grandmother said.

  “We still do.” Meloux turned his face to Cork, who’d been silent in the firelight. “It is good when the lessons we learn make us laugh, but it is also good when the lessons make us think. You have much to think about, Cor
coran O’Connor.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the crumbs. Did you know where they would lead?”

  “What I knew is that there is always a way to the truth, but it is not always easy to find. I believed you would find it. But where it would lead you, I did not know.”

  “Did Big John have a hand in where it led me?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I guess I think anything is possible.”

  His father said, “More things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.” He looked at Cork’s mother. “Congreve?”

  “Shakespeare,” she said with a smile.

  “Sometimes…” Cork said, then paused.

  “Yes?” Meloux said.

  “Sometimes I wish things would never change.”

  “That is like trying to stop the dawn,” Meloux said. “Better, I think, to open yourself to what each new day offers.”

  “What if it offers only pain, Henry?” Cork’s father said.

  “In my experience, pain is never the only offering. What we receive depends on what we open our hearts to.”

  “We’re only human, Henry,” Cork’s father said.

  “Oh, Liam O’Connor, we are so much more than that.”

  “I haven’t seen the spirit of Big John since Moose Lake,” Cork said. “Did he finally walk the Path of Souls?”

  “I believe his spirit is at rest.”

  “And the spirit of Louise LaRose?” Cork’s mother asked.

  “What does your heart tell you?”

  “My heart wants peace for her, Henry. But I don’t know.”

  “The spirit of Louise LaRose, of Big John, of you, of me, of every human being comes out of the heart of the Creator. And when our time in this flesh is over, that spirit returns to the place it came from. Our people call that place Gaagige Minawaanigoziwining. In your Catholic church, you call it heaven. What does it matter, the name we give it?” His shoulders lifted in a little shrug, as if to confirm that this was of no importance. “Every heart wants to find peace. In the end, that is the place the Creator takes us.”

  Cork’s father shook his head. “Too easy an answer for me, Henry.”

  “That does not lessen its truth,” Meloux replied.

  Cork tried to listen to his heart, to understand what it was telling him, but it seemed such a jumble of regret, of hope, of fear, of wants, of uncertainty, that it was just noise to him.

  Meloux, as if sensing this, said, “But tonight, around this fire, it is not about trying to understand what awaits us beyond this life. It is about enjoying the gift in this moment together, here under these stars, as the night sings to us. What you are afraid you have lost, Corcoran O’Connor, is not lost at all. The joy of your friendships, of your family, of moments like this when our spirits touch, this will always be with you. When the journey ahead takes you to the darkest of places, the joy in these memories will be a part of the light that helps you see your way through. This I promise.”

  Even then, Cork thought it was a brave promise. But on that night, in the company of those he loved with all his being, he watched sparks from the fire rising toward the heavens carrying prayers to the Creator, and he chose to believe it.

  EPILOGUE

  It was a year later, and jack-o-lanterns, black cats, and spiderwebs populated the shop windows of Aurora. Cork O’Connor was nearing his fourteenth birthday. Dark hair had finally begun to appear in those places that he’d always believed would be hallmarks of his manhood. He’d grown four inches and was within spitting distance of standing six feet tall. His mother called him lanky or sometimes rangy. Joe Meese had taken to calling him Bean Pole. With a clear note of pride, his father often said, “Not long and you’ll be looking down at your old man.”

  Across all those months, Jorge had sent him cards from San Diego on which he’d drawn images appropriate for the seasons but with Jorge’s bizarre artistic sensibility on display: at Christmas, a grotesquely funny—and irate—elf stomping on toys and declaring “Ain’t gonna work on Santa’s farm no more!”; an Easter Bunny with a spine and tail like Godzilla carrying a basketful of reptilian eggs; a Fourth of July card dominated by a figure of Uncle Sam that more resembled Nosferatu. In return, Cork had sent him photographs of Aurora and Iron Lake and the Boundary Waters, so that his friend would not forget.

  He hadn’t heard at all from Billy Downwind, although Oscar Manydeeds occasionally passed along bits of news.

  On that day in October when his life would change forever, Cork had already delivered his afternoon routes—he’d been doing them alone since Jorge’s departure—and was helping his mother and Grandma Dilsey rake up fallen leaves, which they would burn. They’d just begun when they heard the pop of firecrackers coming from the direction of downtown.

  “Leftovers from the Fourth?” Grandma Dilsey said.

  The popping continued sporadically for a few minutes, then stopped.

  “Must’ve finally run out of fireworks,” Cork’s mother said.

  Like their neighbors, they’d decorated for Halloween. A skeleton hung from a hook on the porch. In the front windows were pasted the silhouettes of a witch and a black cat surrounded by a flurry of bats. Two carved pumpkins flanked the porch stairs, and a scarecrow stood limp on the lawn, tied with twine to cross poles.

  The leaf pile was as high as Cork’s knees when a Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department cruiser raced down Gooseberry Lane and screeched to a stop at the curb. Joe Meese leaped out.

  “Colleen!” he called.

  “Hi, Joe,” she said brightly, then looked at his face and her tone changed. “What is it?”

  “You need to come with me.”

  “What’s happened?” Grandma Dilsey said.

  “A robbery,” Joe said. “The bank. Liam… he’s been hurt.”

  They stared at him, as if the words were a foreign language whose meaning they didn’t comprehend.

  Cork felt panic grip his chest like the hand of one of Jorge’s beasts. “Those weren’t firecrackers.”

  “He’s been rushed to the hospital, Colleen. I’m taking you there,” Joe said.

  “Hurt how?”

  The deputy’s face showed his reluctance to deliver the truth, but he said, “He took a couple of bullets.”

  “He’s not… dead?”

  Joe shook his head vigorously. “But badly wounded. We need to go. Now.”

  “Go on, Colleen,” Cork’s grandmother said. “You and Cork. I’ll call Sam and we’ll meet you there.”

  Cork threw his rake to the ground and followed his mother to the cruiser. The deputy hit his lights and sirens, and the cruiser launched forward, screaming down the normally quiet streets of Aurora.

  “What happened, Joe?” Cork’s mother asked.

  “We got a silent alarm from the bank. I was in the office. Liam and Cy had left for a Code Seven at Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler. They were right across the street when a shot was fired inside the bank. Couple of seconds later, three men came running out, wearing Halloween masks, waving guns. They saw Liam and Cy, two uniforms right there across the street, and started shooting. Our guys took cover behind their cruiser, returned fire. The assholes in the masks tried to retreat to the bank, but one of the clerks had locked the door behind them. So they just crouched in the entryway at the top of the steps and kept firing away.”

  “And Liam was hit?” Cork’s mother asked.

  “Not then. Astrid Lankinen, you know she’s deaf as a post but never wears her hearing aid. She wanders out of the bookstore and into the street, right into the line of fire. Liam left his cover to grab her and haul her to safety, which he did. But that’s when he took the rounds.”

  “Where?”

  “In the chest.

  “Oh, God.”

  “He’s alive, Colleen. Hold on to that. He’s alive.”

  They parked at the Emergency Room entrance and rushed inside. Cork saw a trail of blood on the white floor tiles. It led through double, swinging doors
at the rear of the waiting area. There was already a frantic energy in the Emergency Room, the feel of crisis. A woman and her young daughter sat in chairs against the wall, their eyes gone big and horror-stricken at what they’d witnessed before Cork and the others had arrived.

  A nurse blocked their way.

  “His family,” Joe said.

  “You have to wait here, I’m sorry,” the nurse said.

  “How is he?” Cork’s mother asked, her voice oddly controlled.

  “I don’t know. I know a good team’s working on him. Dr. Braddock is there. He’s operated on lots of gunshot wounds. Hunting season, you know?”

  “But I can’t see him?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  Cy Borkman came out the doors where the trail of blood led. He looked ashen.

  “Cy?” Cork’s mother said, studying his face.

  “They’ve taken him into surgery, Colleen. That’s all I know.”

  “You should go to the surgery waiting room,” the nurse said. “It will be a while, I’m sure, before we know anything. That’s the best place for you in the meantime. Through there,” she said, and pointed toward a door.

  “Come on, Colleen,” Joe said, and gently took her arm.

  * * *

  Throughout the rest of his life, in his worst moments, Cork O’Connor would remember that long wait, recalling disjointed details that, no matter all the years gone by, still had the power to grip his chest so that he could barely breathe. His mother and Grandma Dilsey were always there in his recollections, and Joe Meese, and Cy Borkman, and Sam Winter Moon.

  He would remember Cy telling him that the men who’d robbed the bank had escaped from the prison in Stillwater and had planned to flee to Canada. Troopers from the state Highway Patrol had arrived to assist, and in the continuing exchange of gunfire, one of the robbers had been shot dead. The other two had surrendered.

  He would remember his grandmother chanting softly in her native tongue, and although Cork never knew the words she was saying, the sound of them alone provided a measure of comfort.

  He would remember the moment, after hours of waiting, that the surgeon came to them, dressed in clean scrubs, and he would remember the gentleness with which the man explained to them all that the bullets had been removed, but that Sheriff Liam O’Connor was in a coma. He couldn’t tell them what would happen now, only that more waiting would be required.