Chapter 4
By the time we’d parked at the double-trunk birch on the gravel county road north of Aurora and begun to walk the two-mile path to Crow Point, it was late afternoon, the deep shadows of the pine forest darkening our way.
I figured we’d be returning well after sunset, so I brought along a couple of flashlights.
The two boys ran ahead, but the men walked.
The way to Crow Point can have a strange effect on people.
I’ve always felt it as a spiritual preparation for spending time with Henry Meloux, trying to open myself to the wisdom the old Mide offers.
I don’t always understand what Henry tells me, in large part because he’s seldom straightforward.
Sometimes I have to work at some riddle or puzzle he’s couched his advice in, and I admit that occasionally I leave frustrated.
But that’s not Henry’s fault. That’s just my thick head.
“I’m thinking maybe we should reconsider the Boundary Waters trip,” Mal said after we’d walked some distance in silence.
“Why?” I asked.
“Dad.” Stephen looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“This heart thing? The doc said it’s nothing.”
“That’s not exactly what he said,” Stephen replied.
“Mild arrhythmia. Heart flutter. Hell, isn’t that what happens when every teenager falls in love?”
“You’re no teenager,” Mal pointed out.
“I’ll be fine. We’re not canceling the trip. Luke and Waaboo are looking forward to it so much and I’d hate to disappoint them.”
“I’d hate for you to have a heart attack miles from anywhere,” Mal said. “And how do you think that might affect Waaboo?”
“Not going to happen,” I said.
“And you know this how?” Stephen asked.
“You think you and Waaboo are the only ones who have visions? I’ve seen my death.”
Stephen stopped dead in his tracks. “Wait. What?”
“When I was fifteen years old.”
“And how did this happen exactly?” Mal asked.
“I was swimming in Iron Lake with Nels Jensen. You know him, Stephen.”
“Sure. I was in CYO with his daughters, Katie and Ellie.”
“His grandparents owned the Northern Air Resort, which was just south of where the casino is now. Ten cabins, canoe rentals, a nice swimming area with a rumpus raft about thirty yards out. Nels and I were on that raft when the son of one of the families staying at the resort swam out. We were just lying there, soaking up the sun, and this kid climbs on. It’s clear right away that he’s a privileged asshole.
Rich. Bragging about how his daddy’s a hotshot Chicago lawyer.
He’s going to get a Corvette on his sixteenth birthday.
Blah-blah-blah. So, there’s an island another quarter mile out in the lake. ”
“That would be Squatter’s Island, right?” Stephen said.
“Exactly. This kid challenges us to a swimming contest out to Squatter’s Island and back.
We’re not interested, but the kid calls us chicken.
So, we say all right, let’s do it. Nels was a way better swimmer than me and also better than the kid from Chicago.
He’s out there ahead of us by a good fifty yards.
Then the kid gets a cramp, panics, starts flailing.
Nels is stroking away like crazy toward Squatter’s Island, has no idea what’s going on behind him.
I was a Boy Scout, knew about the cross-chest carry.
I’m trying to get a hold on the kid, but he’s big and strong and gloms on to me so that I can’t swim either.
We both go under. I’m fighting to get loose.
The kid’s pushing me down, trying to use me to keep his own head above water.
Then he kicks me in my solar plexus, knocks all the air out of me, and suddenly I’m breathing in water. ”
“Drowning?” Stephen says.
“Yeah, basically. They say that when you’re about to die, your life passes in front of you. That wasn’t my experience. I saw my death. And it wasn’t going to be then or in that lake. Next thing I know, Nels has grabbed me and is swimming me back to the raft. I’m puking up water.”
“What about the other kid?”
“Nels could only save one of us.”
“So tragic,” Mal said.
“You saw your death,” Stephen said. “What did you see?”
“I’ll keep that one to myself. But if what I saw was the truth, I don’t die of a heart attack in the Boundary Waters. Okay?”
Stephen said, “I never heard you talk about this drowning kid before.”
“Not something I like to remember.”
It was a dark story and put us all in a somber mood. We were pretty quiet the rest of the way to Crow Point.
The two boys had reached Henry long before we arrived.
The old man sat on the wooden bench in front of his cabin, the boys seated on either side of him.
The sun was low in the sky, its rays long and slanting so that the Mide and Waaboo and Luke were all bathed in soft gold light.
Prophet, Henry’s constant companion on Crow Point, was nowhere to be seen.
“Boozhoo, Henry,” I greeted the old man. I gave him an offering of a pouch of tobacco, which he set beside him on the bench.
“Mishomis knew we were coming,” Luke told us with amazement.
“He always does,” I said.
Henry leaned in to Mal’s son and said, “When this forest speaks, I listen, Makoons.”
“Makoons?” Mal said.
“It’s the name he gave me,” Luke said with obvious pleasure. “It means ‘little bear.’ Like Waaboo means ‘little rabbit.’ ”
“Makoons.” Mal gave a nod of approval.
“Sit,” Henry said, motioning toward the ground in front of his bench.
We sat, Mal, Stephen, and I. Our backs were to the setting sun and our shadows stretched out and touched the bench where Henry sat. His face, full of wrinkles as numerous as lines on a road map, glowed in all that golden light.
“So.” That was all. Henry was never one to waste words.
“I had a vision, Mishomis,” Waaboo burst out.
“I had one, too,” Stephen said. “Almost the same as Waaboo’s.”
“Tell me,” Henry said.
Waaboo related his vision, and Stephen did the same. I admit that although I’d already heard both these accounts of my chest being ripped open and my heart torn out and eaten, these new tellings in Henry’s company had a more chilling effect. For some reason, the visions felt more real to me.
For a while, Henry said nothing, which wasn’t unusual at all.
For a man who was well over one hundred years old—no one, not even Henry, knew exactly how much beyond that century mark—he seemed to look at time as if he still had a huge storehouse of it.
He closed his eyes against the gold light, and I thought he might actually have fallen asleep. Then his dark brown eyes opened.
“We are liars, all of us,” he said. “Sometimes to others, but more often to ourselves. The truth can seem to be covered in quills like a porcupine and we simply cannot swallow it. Then it is up to others, those whose love can stand the pain, to see the truth. Perhaps this is the reason for the visions.”
“Then my heart is in trouble?” I asked.
The old man was quiet again, until Waaboo said, “Please, Mishomis, tell us that Baa-baa will be okay.”
The old man smiled at my grandson. “Only the Creator knows this for sure, little rabbit.”
Then he looked at me. By then the sun had sunk below the distant treetops, and Crow Point had slipped into the blue-gray shadow of the pines. I felt a chill that wasn’t from the coming of evening.
“There is another possibility, Corcoran O’Connor,” Henry said.
I was almost afraid to ask, but I had to know. “What’s that?”
The look in his dark eyes was hard, his voice as cold as ever I’d heard from him when he replied, “Maybe you are the wolf.”