Chapter 46
My daughter Jenny, who is a writer, often uses the word “paradox,” which I have asked her to explain. She’s told me it’s a situation involving contradictory elements. I sort of get it. That morning, as I paddled toward the Super Cub, the situation seemed to me to fit the definition perfectly.
The day was as beautiful as any I’d ever seen in the Boundary Waters.
I could feel the Great Mystery in everything around me.
The lake, absolutely calm after the restless wind the night before.
The air, fresh and pure and smelling of the vast reservoir of clean water beneath my canoe.
The sky above me like an immense blue china platter waiting to be filled with soft clouds whipped up by the Creator’s hand.
Heaven on earth, absolutely. But there within it, along with all that beauty, were the Kennedy brothers, two monstrous wolves of hate completely capable of tearing out the heart of a decent man.
From the distance, I saw Adam exit his plane and drop an anchor into the shallow water near the shoreline.
He called out something to Stan, who answered with words I couldn’t hear.
A wind came across the water, gentle but strong enough to ease the floatplane sideways, and I lost sight of both Adam and Stan.
I continued to paddle cautiously until I was within fifty or sixty yards of the shoreline, a distance I judged to be beyond the effective shooting range of Ollie and his gun.
There wasn’t much I could do but watch and wait.
I didn’t have to wait very long before Ollie stepped into view. Adam was with that Kennedy bastard, the Glock to his head. Ollie gestured to me to come ashore. The situation was just like it had been back at Devil’s End when Ollie had the gun to Leticia’s head. I had no choice but to go to him.
As I pulled up to the shoreline, Stan joined his brother. I got out of the canoe, still holding my paddle, and walked to within a few yards of where the other men stood.
“Hey, Adam,” I said.
“Cork.” He gave me the slightest of nods.
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
Ollie removed the barrel of the gun from Adam’s head and stepped away. He was smiling like he’d just won the lottery. “Thought we’d be canoeing to Canada. Looks like we’ve got a more comfortable way to go.”
“O’Connor,” Stan began, his voice apologetic.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I said.
“He’s my brother,” Stan said, as if that explained everything. “We’ll just fly out of here and everything’ll be fine. Nobody hurt.”
“Nobody but the two dead men, and Cordell and Tucker.”
“Nobody else, I promise.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you and your promises.”
Adam said, “Either of you guys know how to fly this plane?”
“Hell, no,” Ollie said.
“Then how’re you getting to Canada? Cuz I sure ain’t flying you there.”
“No?”
Once again, Ollie leveled the gun barrel at Adam’s head.
“No,” Stan said.
Ollie considered his brother. “Okay,” he said and turned his gun on me. “How about I shoot this guy?”
“No more killing.”
“Maybe I’ll just shoot him in one knee first. Then if our fly guy here still won’t take us out, I’ll shoot him in the other knee.”
Stan looked at Adam. “He means it. Please, just fly us out of here and no one else gets hurt. We’ll pay you whatever you want.”
“Don’t need your money,” Adam said. He eyed me. “Did they really kill two men?”
“They did.”
“He’ll shoot you?”
“He will.”
Adam gave another slight nod. “No choice, then.”
“Good. That’s settled. Get the pack,” Ollie said to his brother. “In the tent.”
When Stan had gone, Ollie said to me, “You’re the biggest pain in the ass I ever ran into.”
“Likewise,” I said.
“The difference between us is that I have the Glock.”
“A lot more difference than that.”
“The big difference then.”
Looking at his face was like looking into a pit filled with vipers. His voice was calm, but rage seethed in every word. I knew, knew absolutely, that he had no intention of flying out of the Boundary Waters while I was still alive.
Stan came from the tent carrying the pack.
“Get on the plane,” Ollie said to him. “You and the pilot.”
“You get on,” Stan said. “There are some things I need to say to this man.”
“I told you to get on the plane,” Ollie said.
“Not before I talk to him, explain things.”
“Nothing to explain,” Ollie said. “Get on the damn plane.”
Stan stood looking at his brother, assessing him. Then he said, “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”
“Get on the plane.”
“I’m not going to let you kill him. The killing’s done.”
“Not till I say so. Get on the plane.” He nailed his brother with a dark look and turned the gun his way. “Or I might just have to shoot you, too.”
“You’d kill me?”
“Maybe just a knee shot. But first him.”
Once again, he brought the Glock to bear on me. He didn’t fire, because he saw the smile on my face.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded.
“I saw my death years ago. And I don’t die here.”
“We’ll just see about that.”
He raised the Glock and aimed it directly at my heart. But before he could pull the trigger, Stan intervened.
He stepped between me and Ollie. He swung the pack and hit his brother square in the chest. Ollie stumbled back.
To this day, I don’t know if it was completely an accident or if there was some deep, dark impulse that drove Ollie to a kind of madness.
But the gun went off. And Stan went down with a bullet in his heart.
Ollie stared at where his brother lay, stared as if stunned. And in that moment, he was not looking at me.
Stan had given me the chance I needed. I still had the paddle in my hand.
I took a long step forward and swung. The paddle blade connected with Ollie’s neck, slicing into the artery there.
Blood spewed forth in gushes. Ollie dropped the gun, grabbed at his gaping throat, and looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what was happening.
He fell to his knees, blood dripping from between his fingers, staining the ground.
Then he collapsed. For another minute or two, I watched as his heart pumped the life out of him.
Adam had gone to Stan and was trying to stanch the flow of blood from his chest with direct pressure. “I’ll take it from here,” I said. “You radio this in.”
Adam hurried to his Super Cub, and I pressed the heels of my hands hard against the place where the bullet had entered and blood was soaking Stan’s shirt, but I could see it was doing little good.
“O’Connor…” Stan rasped. “I had to… I made you a promise.”
“I know.”
He grabbed my arm. “Promise me.”
“Promise you what?”
“My boys… tell my boys.”
“Tell them what?”
“I… I… wasn’t a bad man.”
“I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them how you saved me. I promise.”
The ghost of a smile touched his lips. “And you… you’re a man… who keeps his promises.”
I could have tried CPR, I suppose, but what was the point? He’d lost so much blood and we were hours from a hospital. And if you have to die, God’s country isn’t a bad place to begin your walk on the Path of Souls.
Adam returned. He looked down at where Stan lay, dead now.
“I saw just the one guy,” he tried to explain. “And we’re miles from where everyone else is searching. I didn’t think…”
“It’s okay. From the start, this was all going to end here and end badly.”
“How do you know?”
I looked at the two brothers, who lay with their bodies almost touching. And I said to Adam the words Henry Meloux had once said to me, “Every falling leaf comes to rest where it was always meant to be.”