Chapter 43
I kept my vigil on the point of land until dusk and spotted no one else who might stumble into harm’s way.
As dark descended, a powerful wind came up that created waves whose crests wore thin necklaces of foam.
Only the ignorant or foolhardy would be on the lake that night.
I watched the Kennedy brothers put together a fire.
They had no food, so it wasn’t for cooking.
But there are lots of reasons for a fire.
A light in the dark. A way to help keep fear at bay.
A place to gather round and share stories, scary or not.
As I watched their dark silhouettes hunched against the light, I wondered what the two men were talking about.
I had no brothers, but I had cousins on the rez and lots of friends, and our time around a campfire was always something to anticipate with joy.
I figured there was no joy around the fire I was seeing.
The wind brought a chill with it, and I went back to camp and built a fire of my own.
I made minestrone soup from one of the packs of dehydrated food.
It hit the spot. As I ate, I thought about the Kennedy brothers and how their guts were probably complaining about being empty, maybe especially Ollie’s.
You stare into a fire and your thoughts go a million places. They float up from somewhere inside you like smoke and are carried off with the wind.
I considered the fact that I’d been in the wilderness for five days.
Four of those had been in the company of Stan and Ollie.
Depending how soon Stephen and the others had been able to exit the Boundary Waters, the search for me and the two brothers had been going on for at least a couple of days now.
I’d been part of what kept us from being found, following routes far afield from where any reasonable search might be conducted, making the brothers as miserable as I could along the way.
But maybe the spirits of that wilderness had played a part, too.
Maybe the brothers weren’t meant to be taken through the justice system.
Maybe they were meant to face a different kind of justice, one meted out by that unforgiving wilderness itself. If so, I wanted to see it happen.
Then I began to think about my family, and I was so grateful that I was there alone and they were somewhere safe.
I thought about Rainy, how wonderful it felt to lie with her at night and talk quietly before we both drifted off.
I thought about my children and how proud of them I was.
I thought about Waaboo, the funny, brave little boy that he’d become and the seed I could already see inside him of the good man he would grow into.
I thought of them all in the house on Gooseberry Lane and wondered if they’d gathered around the table that evening to a good meal that maybe Rose, who was the best cook I knew, had prepared.
Of course they said grace. We always said grace before a meal.
My guess was that Mal, the ex-priest, was the one who offered the prayer.
Probably, along with the gratitude for the food they were about to share, Mal asked the Creator for my safe return.
In my mind’s eye, I could see them all, and it gave me great comfort.
Which made me think about my heart. I’d had no problems since I swam across Devil’s End and felt the arrhythmia.
I wondered if I was simply too focused on my survival or making sure others in the wilderness were safe from the Kennedys or too deep into my enmity toward the two men.
Thinking about my heart took me to thinking about the wolf in the vision Stephen and Waaboo had shared.
And finally, I thought about what Meloux had offered, his suggestion that maybe I was the wolf.
I admit that sometimes the wisdom Henry offers me falls on deaf ears.
Or it’s more that the old Mide delights in couching his wisdom inside some riddle.
But alone by the fire, deep in God’s country, I thought I understood what he had been getting at.
I’d been thinking of the Kennedy brothers as monsters.
A monster is an easy thing to hate, to want to kill.
But maybe what Henry was trying to tell me was this: When you begin to think of someone as other than human, you risk becoming something other than human yourself.
I considered the two brothers again. Ollie was a brutal man, no doubt about it.
But he’d been fathered by a brutal man. He was also the older brother, and Stan had told me how Ollie had done his best to shield him from the worst of their father’s brutality.
Maybe that was why Stan was different. Not so hard.
A man who loved his sons and wanted only the best for them. That was something I could understand.
The moon had risen, and wind-driven clouds scudded across its face, obscuring its light for long periods.
The lake was a thing with two different personalities—one a brilliant reflection of the heavens, the other an all-consuming darkness.
In a moment of dark, I heard a man’s voice crying out for help.
At first, I thought it was a trick of the wind as it blew through the branches of the trees on the island.
But it came again, this time clearly a desperate plea.
I jumped up, left the fire, and went quickly to the edge of the island, where waves washed hard against the rocks.
The cries were coming from somewhere out on the water.
A cloud obscured the moon. When it passed, I scanned the lake, saw no canoe, no kayak, nothing but the dark waves with their silver crests.
I ran back, retrieved the binoculars, and panned the lake.
Another cloud sent everything around me into darkness.
The desperate calls kept coming. When the moon emerged again and lit the lake surface, I spotted him.
Anyone who was experienced enough to make it into the Boundary Waters as far as we’d come would have known better than to strike out on that lake in the dark with conditions as dangerous as they were that night.
Unless they were in serious trouble. Or totally insane.
Or very greedy and very desperate. I knew absolutely which of these it was.
Stan was forty or fifty yards out in the channel, bobbing in the water.
Wave after wave washed over him, and he disappeared for long moments at a time.
He was struggling against the push of the water and the wind, trying to reach the island.
I couldn’t imagine how he got there, but then I remembered my life vest, which Ollie had taken into the tent to use as a pillow.
Although it was keeping his head above water, Stan was still in serious trouble.
The wind was pushing him out of the channel and into the large body of the lake, where, even with the life vest on, he had a pretty good chance of drowning in the high waves.
The wolves went at it in my heart. The dark wolf snarled to let him die. Wasn’t that what I’d wanted, maybe what the spirits of the wilderness had meant for him all along? And maybe I was meant to be witness to the justice of the wild?
The other wolf spoke to me of the man who’d thrown the map into the fire so that his brother wouldn’t shoot me, the man who had two sons he loved as much as I loved my own children, the man full of regret.
Even as I stood watching, battling with myself, the fierce elements carried Stan farther and farther away.
Maybe you are the wolf.
Meloux’s caution came to me. I understood that if I let this man die, in the end it would tear out my heart.
I launched my canoe, almost tipping in the waves that lifted and dropped it.
I was perpendicular to the drive of the wind, a dangerous orientation, one that gets you swamped.
As quickly as I could, I brought the bow around and put the wind at my back.
In all this battle, I lost sight of Stan, but I dug the paddle into the water and made for the general area where I’d last seen him.
He wasn’t hard to locate. His cries guided me. As I neared him, I hollered, “Grab the bow and hold on!”
Which he did. His weight made maneuvering the canoe difficult as hell.
I dug the paddle into the water with all the strength I could muster.
It was hard work, stroke after stroke against that wind, and I found myself thinking that if anything was going to interfere with the normal beat of my heart, it would be this rescue effort. But I had no choice.
At last, we returned to the shoreline where the campsite lay.
Stan found footing and let go of the bow.
He stumbled up onto dry land, turned, grabbed the bow, and held the canoe as I disembarked in the water.
Together, we drew the little craft safely onto land.
He turned to face me and thrust out his arm.
I thought for a terrible moment that he might be holding the Glock.
Then I saw that his hand was empty, and he said, “Thanks for saving my ass.”