Chapter 13
I’d known Cordell Bishop all my life. It’s like that in a small town, but it’s even more significant if you share a heritage.
Cordell and I played basketball together, for both Aurora High and the reservation team, the Iron Lake Thunderbirds.
We still played together with the Old Martyrs.
When Cordell and I were much younger, around fifteen years old, Henry Meloux sent word that he wanted to see us both.
It was Sam Winter Moon who picked me up that day.
Let me explain about Sam. After my father was killed in the line of duty, Sam Winter Moon stepped in to fill his shoes, became like a father to me in so many ways.
My father began the work of showing me the way into my manhood.
Sam finished that work. He also helped me understand and embrace the Anishinaabe part of my heritage.
When he was killed during a protest over Native fishing rights, I discovered that in his will he’d deeded Sam’s Place, the Quonset hut he’d converted into a burger stand, to me.
“A sweat?” I said, after Sam had explained the reason for the trip to Crow Point. “Why?”
“Henry didn’t say. Just asked me to bring you. Cordell’s uncle Jake is bringing him.”
Sam parked at the double-trunk birch, at the beginning of the path to Crow Point. I figured Cordell and his uncle would be coming from the other direction, from Allouette, which was the larger of the two communities on the rez.
“Why do we need a sweat?” I asked again as we walked the two miles through the woods.
“Just prepare yourself,” Sam said. “Quiet your mind. And here.” He gave me a small pouch of tobacco. “For your offering.”
We found Henry Meloux at his sweat lodge on the east side of Crow Point.
Cordell and his uncle were already there.
A fire had been built in front of the lodge.
The Grandfathers, which are the large stones heated for the sweat, were sitting in the flames.
Meloux greeted us, and I offered him the pouch of tobacco.
Then he said to the men simply “It is ready.”
We stripped naked, Cordell and me and Meloux.
Uncle Jake handed us towels, and we wrapped them around our waists.
I remember looking at Henry, who must have been in his early sixties then, and thinking that for an old guy, he was in pretty good shape.
He’d lived at the edge of the great wilderness all his life and was a renowned hunter.
Sam had told me that he’d heard Henry once killed a bull moose that was charging at a man, brought that great creature down with a single shot through the eye at over a hundred yards.
I went first, crawled through the low opening of the lodge on my hands and knees, then moved clockwise around the center pit, where the Grandfathers would be placed.
Cordell came next, then Meloux. When we were seated, Sam brought in the Grandfathers.
Because they were of good size and hot from the fire, he used a pitchfork to carry them.
There were seven stones, the number for healing.
He placed them one by one in the pit. Finally, Cordell’s uncle brought in a wooden bucket filled with water and a ladle.
When he backed out, he closed the flap and the lodge became dark.
Meloux dipped the ladle and poured water onto the rocks, which sizzled and sent up a cloud of steam.
Then he sprinkled tobacco in offering and sang a prayer in Ojibwemowin, which I understood only in part but knew was invoking the help of Kitchimanidoo.
I’d been taught not to speak in sweats unless I had a respectful request to make.
All I had were questions, so I kept silent.
Again Henry poured a ladle of water onto the Grandfathers, sending another cloud of steam into the air. The lodge grew hotter and hotter.
There are several rounds in a typical sweat.
Sometimes they’re called doors. Between rounds, there’s an opportunity to refresh yourself with water, if you’d like.
Still, by the final round, your spirit is mush and open to whatever the Creator, or your guide in the sweat, has in store for you.
It wasn’t until the final door that Meloux told us why we were there. By then, I was ready to melt.
“I have seen a binding together of your spirits. I do not know the true nature of this binding, but it is dark. That much I understand. Today, I have asked Kitchimanidoo, the Creator, to reveal the truth.”
The truth for me was that I was about to pass out.
But Cordell said, “I’m walking a long road, but it’s made of water.
Cork’s with me, beside me. There are broken pines all around us, like a storm has torn up the forest. And there’s a smell, a bad smell, like rotted flesh.
It’s coming from close behind us. Something’s there, but I’m afraid to turn. I’m afraid to look.”
“Turn and look,” Meloux said.
Cordell slowly turned his head toward me, and his eyes grew huge with fear. “Oh, God,” he cried. “Oh, God, it’s the Windigo! It’s come for us! Run, Cork! Run!”
“Enough,” Henry said.
The flap on the sweat lodge was lifted and light flooded in. I crawled out, dripping with sweat, trembling, shaken. I saw that Cordell was in the same state.
“Come,” Meloux said.
We followed him to the edge of Iron Lake, let our towels fall away, and stepped into the cool water.
It’s never wise to drink straight from the lake, but that’s what I did.
When we came out, refreshed, we toweled off and dressed, then went to the stone ring behind an outcropping of rocks where a fire was already burning.
It was evening by then, the sun below the treetops, the sky gone amethyst. The air was dead calm. The surface of Iron Lake had become a mirror of the heavens. I remember watching a great blue heron glide over the lake, its reflection sliding along the water mirror below.
Sam brought Meloux a pipe and a pouch. The Mide sprinkled tobacco in the four directions, then filled the pipe and lit it. The pipe went to Sam, then to Cordell’s uncle Jake, then to Cordell, then to me. I passed it back to Meloux.
“The Windigo,” Meloux finally said. “This is what binds you.”
“I didn’t see it,” I said. “I didn’t see anything. What does it mean, Henry?”
“I have fought the Windigo,” Meloux said. “I was not much older than you boys. It is the reason my hair has always been white.”
“Are we going to have to fight the Windigo?” Cordell asked. “When?”
“That is up to Kitchimanidoo. But you have been warned.”
I looked at Cordell, and he looked at me. I could see the fear in his eyes. My eyes probably looked the same.
“Okay?” I said.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” he said.
And then, over the years, we forgot.