Chapter 41
Wassenoode, the heart light of Mother Earth, was still playing in the heavens as I crossed the channel between the Lost Man Lake shoreline and the island where the two women had camped.
In the sky and on the surface of the still water, the colors shifted and shimmered, violet bleeding into red, red into green, green into yellow, with bolts of white streaking through it all.
As I paddled away from the brutality of the Kennedy brothers, the Anishinaabe idea of our dancing ancestors was a beautiful thought.
The moon, nearly full, was on the rise. Its golden glow washed out some of the display of lights but didn’t diminish at all the magnificence of the whole spectacle.
The Boundary Waters, maybe any vast wilderness, offers the possibility of miracles, and what I was seeing felt like one.
It was as if the lake beneath me had become more than just water, as if the spirits of the woods had turned the path before me into gold.
As I rounded the island, I could see the fire the women had kindled that evening was still burning, not brightly, but enough to guide me to the campsite.
I stepped into the water and drew the bow of the canoe up onto a small grassy landing.
A single tent was pitched on the far side of the fire pit, nestled beneath the overhang of pine boughs.
I thought it was careless that they’d bedded down for the night without making sure their fire was dead.
Although the Boundary Waters wasn’t under a fire ban, you always make sure every ember is out before you go to sleep or before you leave the site.
The danger of forest fire is real, and that great wilderness has been ravaged many times because of thoughtless campers.
I walked to the tent. I didn’t want to scare them, so I called out gently, “Hello!” There was no reply. “Hello,” I tried again.
The beam of a powerful flashlight behind me cast my shadow black against the khaki-colored tent. I turned and was blinded by the light.
“I have a gun and I know how to use it,” the voice behind the flashlight declared.
“I’m not here to harm you. I’m here to warn you,” I said, lifting my hands above my head to show that I was unarmed. “My name is Cork O’Connor.”
A moment’s pause, then, “How do we know that’s true?”
It was clear that my name meant something to them. Maybe they’d heard about what was going on with the Kennedy brothers. Probably it was all over the news by now.
“I was sheriff of Tamarack County for a lot of years. I own Sam’s Place in Aurora. I live on Gooseberry Lane. I came into the Boundary Waters with several members of my family a few days ago. I was kidnapped, more or less.”
There was quiet on the far side of the flashlight.
“We saw men at the campsite across the channel. Were you with them?”
“I was, but I escaped.”
“Cork O’Connor, you say?” This was the first voice again. “What’s a Waaboo burger?”
A test question from someone who must have ordered food from Sam’s Place at one time or another.
“It’s a bison patty with or without cheese. I named it after my grandson, whose nickname is Waaboo, which means little rabbit. The men who kidnapped me, here’s what they’ve done.” I lifted my shirt and showed them the bruising from the kicks Ollie had delivered.
“Oh, my,” the second woman said.
“Would you mind directing that light somewhere else?” I asked. “It’s kind of blinding.”
I heard them speaking in low voices, then the beam of light shifted to my feet.
“Come ahead but slowly. There’s a log by the fire pit. Sit down facing the fire.”
I did as I was instructed. When I was seated, the two women stepped into the small circle of light still cast by the last flames of their fire.
One was tall, angular, with a strong, determined jaw and a ramrod straight back.
Her hair was a little grayish and cut very short.
I placed her somewhere in her late thirties.
The other woman was more diminutive, but she wore a sleeveless T-shirt and I could see that there was a lot of muscle to her biceps.
She was blond, with hair that brushed the tops of her shoulders, and her face was softer than that of her companion, who was probably a few years her senior.
“Just keep sitting,” the tall woman said. I could tell she was the one who’d claimed to have a gun. She did hold a weapon in her hand, but it was a hatchet, not a firearm. She lifted it for me to see. “If you make any kind of threatening move, I’ll split your head wide open.”
I liked this woman, her grit. She moved around behind me, so that I couldn’t see her. Her companion remained in front of me, on the far side of the fire pit. She held a paddle, gripped to be swung if necessary.
“You must have seen me coming,” I said.
“We were watching the northern lights,” the woman with the paddle replied.
The display was growing dimmer now, fading naturally but also being washed out more and more by the brilliance of the rising moon.
“We saw you crossing the aqualoon.” She used her paddle to point toward the lake.
“Aqualoon?”
“That’s my invention,” she said with obvious delight. “It’s the swath of moonlight reflected on the surface of a lake.”
“Aqualoon,” I said. “I like it.”
“Explain how you got kidnapped and how you escaped,” the woman at my back said, her tone much more stern than her companion’s. She was still suspicious.
So I did. I told them the whole story, start to finish—tracking the Kennedy brothers, finding Cordell, watching him limp away, Tucker Jackson and Leticia and the devil’s asshole.
When I got to the dead man we left on Big Woman Lake, the woman with the paddle, who was clearly affected by that tragic news, said, “Do you know who it was?”
“No idea. We left his body there.”
“My god, these men are monsters.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. Then I finished my story with how I escaped that night.
The woman behind me slowly came around and stood with her companion. “Those two men you left back there, you took their only canoe?”
“That’s right.”
“Then they have no way of getting out of the Boundary Waters. With everyone looking for them, it’s only a matter of time now until they’re caught.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid some other unsuspecting canoeist may come by and end up dead like the guy on Big Woman.”
“What do you intend to do?” the second woman asked.
“Keep an eye on them until the cavalry arrives. I’m hoping you might help with that.”
“How?”
“Do you have a satphone?”
“No,” the first woman said. “When we’re in the Boundary Waters, we want to be here completely. We leave our cell phones locked in our car so we won’t be tempted, and reception is almost nonexistent anyway. We’ve never had any kind of emergency that would justify the expense of a satphone.”
“When and where did you make your entry?”
“Two days ago on Half Moon Lake.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you be willing to head back tomorrow and get word to the authorities about where these men are now?”
They took a moment to gaze at each other as if in silent conversation, then the first woman said, “I don’t see how we can say no. But it’ll still be two days before we make it out. Will you be okay? I mean, these guys have a gun. Do you have any kind of weapon at all?”
“A hatchet.”
“Against a gun?” She shook her head. “I bet you wish you’d just stayed in Aurora serving up Waaboo burgers.”
Her name, I found out, was Louisa, but she called herself Lou.
Her wife’s name was Johanna. They were from St. Paul, here to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.
They’d first met while canoeing the Boundary Waters, and it was tradition that they celebrate every anniversary with a return to this wilderness.
They fed me apple chips and a granola bar and some jerky, then offered me a blanket to sleep on, which I gratefully accepted.
Lou doused what was left of the fire with water, stirred the ashes to be certain every ember was dead.
Then they retired to their tent and I lay down on my blanket.
Since I’d entered the Boundary Waters, every day had been a trial. I was tired. I was also sore from the kicks and blows Ollie had delivered to me over much of that time. I was aware, too, that I smelled pretty bad, but the pair of women had made no mention of this. Politeness, I figured.
I wondered about Cordell and Tucker and Leticia. I hoped that they’d all made it safely out of the Boundary Waters. I’d tried my best to give them a chance. Which was far more than I’d done with the man Ollie had shot on Big Woman Lake. That was a failure I figured would haunt me forever.
The northern lights had faded to almost nothing, but the moon was as bright as a new silver dollar.
Exhausted and aching, I lay looking up at the heavens.
Before I’d freed myself that night, I’d accepted that, despite the vision I had as a drowning teenager, I was probably a dead man.
But I wasn’t. I’d bested the Kennedy brothers.
Now I was thinking about what was ahead for me.
Tired as I was, I felt a wolf still prowling around my heart.
A hungry wolf. Until those two men were picked up and put behind bars, where they belonged, I promised myself that I would continue to feast on their misery.