Jack Pine, page 19
Gus huffed up to the two men and stared at the teepee.
“Tommy in there?” he whispered.
“No.” Gary shook his head solemnly. “That lodge is empty.”
Reuger grabbed Gary’s arm.
“You sure there?”
“I know these things here, Reuger,” he said gesturing to the clearing. “Something that is handed down, you know, through the generations.” He motioned to his forehead. “You either have this sense or you don’t and I can tell you that lodge is empty for sure.” He stood up. “Here, I’ll show you.”
“Gary, why don’t we go around back just to make sure?”
“You hired me for this, you know,” he said, pushing through the underbrush toward the teepee.
They watched Gary stride into the clearing with his buckskin coat and calf-high mukluks and long black hair flying back in the sun.
“Well, he sure looks the part, Reuger,” Gus nodded.
Gary continued toward the teepee as a black missile streaked over his head. He dove to the ground.
“Fucking bitch!”
“Got yerself one hell of a tracker there,” Gus murmured, shaking his head.
Gary spit dirt from his mouth then called out in Ojibwa, then English.
“Hey! Running Bear! It’s Gary Chatoee. I’m coming in. We want to talk to you!”
A thin voice rose like a violin note in an empty hall.
“Hey fuck you, Gary Chatoee. You can eat shit!”
“One hell of a tracker,” Gus nodded as another arrow streaked out of the forest.
Reuger picked up the Winchester and levered a shell in the chamber. “Cover Gary. I’ll get behind her.”
Gus called out in a low voice.
“Stay there, Reuger’s goin’ to get behind her!”
Well, I’m not going anywhere here,” Gary muttered, spitting more dirt.
Reuger slipped back through the pines then began to circle around. He watched the feathered branches for movement, tripping on granite knifing the forest. He smashed whorls of bunchberries with juice squirting his pants then veered into sarsaparilla with the greenish white flowers tickling his legs. The forest was still and quiet.
“Hey, fuck you, Gary Chatoee! You and your asshole friends can get off my property!”
Reuger continued pushing through light and shadow, walking slowly toward the voice.
“Hey, fuck you, Gary Chatoee. You just a white man in Indian skin.”
He heard the whoosh of another arrow and saw a woman in a corduroy coat with a jean skirt and long dark hair. She pulled up another arrow as he raised the rifle.
“Hold it, Running Bear!”
Her eyes crossed like marbles against a plane of white. She was a statue of an Indian with her arm breaking the curve of the bow. Reuger advanced slowly.
“Put the bow and arrow down slowly.” He stepped through the bushes with the rifle tight to his shoulder. “Now!”
“Fucking Gary Chatoee,” she muttered, dropping the bow and arrow.
“Any other weapons on you?”
She turned away and Reuger grabbed her arm.
“Come on.”
They passed through the forest to Gary Chatoee on the ground by the teepee. He raised himself to his knees and brushed off his coat. Dust sanded his hair white and he couldn’t get it out of the rough of the buckskin.
“After everything I did for you and your brother, you shoot arrows at me! That’s the kind of fucking thanks I get here! You ruined my coat!”
Running Bear stared straight ahead with defiant eyes the color of thick black ink. Large hoop earrings jangled her neck and a string of colored beads looped her hair. Gary Chatoee walked to the teepee and whipped back the cloth opening.
“Gus, keep an eye on her for me,” Reuger nodded, kneeling down by Gary.
The teepee smelled of wet blankets in a trunk with plastic bunched in the corners. Light peeped slats in the plywood. A Buddha incense burner crested a box of kitchen matches on folded blankets. Gary reached in and picked up a Sony boom box.
“Hmmm, Diana Ross and the Supremes.” He turned. “I gave those to her, you know,” he said pointing to the brown calf-high moccasins. “And this is the thanks I get. You tell these people to let this shit go…look at this,” Gary said disgustedly. “Is this any way to live?”
Reuger stood.
“Let’s go ask her if she’s seen Tommy.”
They stood around Running Bear with her arms crossed and back ramrod straight. Gary spoke to her in Ojibwa. She turned her nose up and said something that sounded like “Fuck you.” Reuger nodded.
“What did she say, Gary?”
“Ya,” she said. “Fuck you.”
Reuger gestured with the rifle.
“Tell her that if she doesn’t answer our questions here I’m going to put her in jail for assaulting a deputy sheriff.”
“I didn’t assault anybody,” she snapped.
“I saw an arrow my way a few days ago from someone with their face painted black.”
She glared at him, black eyes snapping like onyx.
“Poachers and trespassers are the only ones I chase off.” She frowned and moved her shoulders. “Which one are you?”
Reuger walked in front of her. She jerked her chin away and looked over her shoulder.
“Running Bear, if I have to, I’ll call in a seaplane here and have you picked up and taken back to a dark cell in Ely, where you’ll sit until I get back.”
“Ya, she’s too stubborn and dumb to help herself,” Gary muttered.
Her eyes narrowed, and she spoke quickly. Gary retorted and gestured to the woods. She jerked her chin up and spoke.
“She says Tommy came and went a day ago,” he said glancing at Reuger. “She thinks he was headed for Manomin Lake….He said he was going to meet somebody.”
Reuger pulled out his map and traced the lake with his finger. He looked at Gary.
“Trust her?”
“She might be lying, you know, but I told her if she wasn’t telling the truth we would come back for her. She said her brother is an asshole who never fixes the cabin, and she wouldn’t bother to lie for him.”
Reuger squinted down the hill toward the lake.
“Then we have some portaging ahead of us then.”
Running Bear spoke over her shoulder.
“Reuger, she wants to know if we can leave her some food?”
“Leave it on the shore,” he nodded.
She broke her stance and went into the teepee with the leather flap coming down. Her hands appeared, then the flap was pulled in and lashed. Gus pissed by a red pine then went further into the woods with a roll of toilet paper. They waited around, and Gary walked to the teepee.
“We’ll leave the food by the shore,” he shouted outside the flap.
Gary waited then clapped his sides and shrugged. When Gus came back, they started down the narrow trail toward the boat.
40
PAIN BRANDED REUGER’S neck with the muddy path flowing under the curved tip of the canoe. He breathed heavily in the aluminum cavern with sweat banding his hat and tickling his nose. The shoulder pads of the canoe hammered his neck as Gus trudged behind carrying the fifty-pound pack with their tent and food. In each hand, he lugged a gun.
They had taken the boat as far as they could on Basswood Lake and left it in Rice Bay on a beach of slate-colored rocks. On Basswood, they passed an old scarred, wooden sluiceway, a remnant of the big log drives where water churned through in a white torrent. Through this narrowing wood trough, thousands of logs had passed on their way down to the mills on the lower lakes. They hiked a narrow portage trail with the canoes, headed for Manomin Lake.
After twenty minutes gluing the dark line, Gary stopped and swung his canoe down. Reuger lowered his canoe with relief rushing through his shoulder muscles as he stretched out the cramps moving through his neck. Gary had shed the buckskin coat and soaked his shirt through the back. Gus was hunched over with the pack, his arms weighed down by the shotgun and the Winchester like some old miner.
“Must be an old logging camp,” Gary nodded, pointing through the trees.
Two headlights winked through a patch of wild sarsaparilla. The truck had bowl fenders and a rounded top with cyclopic headlights earring the radiator grill. The windshield was spidered with cracks and the truck body had rusted graveyard orange.
“CCC, I’d wager. Had camps all through here in the thirties,” Gus nodded. “Somebody want to help me get out of this here mule harness?”
Gary lifted the heavy pack.
“Damn! That thing there will make yer old before yer time,” he said, stretching his back.
Reuger walked to the truck. He could smell the cooked leather of the seats and saw weeds below the floor where the metal had rotted. Gary put his boot on the running board.
“Ya, that Civilian Conservation Corps brought unemployed men to the forest and put them to work during the Depression, and they replanted these trees in straight rows. They were from the cities and were given white shirts and floppy hats.” Gary pulled on the radiator cap and shook his head. “They didn’t know shit.”
Gus shook his head.
“Yep, most had never handled an ax before and when the war came they all left.”
Gary Chatoee bent down and picked up a clear bottle and a flat red Folgers can.
“Syrup and coffee, ya, they were loggers, all right.”
“Yep, I was just a boy, but I remember these men come into the forest and weren’t a damn thing there, and they had to build their own cabins to sleep in.” Gus chuckled. “Cut a lot of trees and planted a lot but they was the skinniest bunch you ever saw.”
Reuger followed a series of rocks laid out in a walkway and looked over the clearing. An amber hunk of metal in a shrub of beaked hazel turned into an iron stove. An old water tank became a circular edifice of rust. He walked to a blackened fire ring and kneeled down next to Gary.
“What do you make of it?”
Gary brushed his hands in the ash then handed Reuger a brass shell.
“He was here, all right. Still warm. I found this in the coals. It’s a .44 you know.” Gary raised his eyebrow. “Magnum load for a Winchester.”
Reuger flipped around the shell and blew ash off a silver percussion cap.
41
THE FIRE BURNED fast, crackling cedar and birch and glimmering blue on the Winchester and shotgun. When they finished the three frozen steaks, they sat around the fire and drank coffee sweetened by condensed milk. The lantern hissed from a branch and the coffee pot spouted; a strip of cold dusk lined the pines.
Gary Chatoee rested on his elbow with his coat spreading out like amber grass.
“So…who’s this girl Tommy’s supposed to have raped.”
Reuger stoked the fire up then leaned back. “Sixteen-year-old looking for answers in the wrong places.”
“Like a woodshed,” Gary scoffed. “What was she doing in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what’s she say now?”
“Haven’t talked to her since it happened,” Reuger answered.
“Well, he must have done it if she said Tommy was the one!” Gus cocked his eyebrow. “But that damn Riechardt won’t let us near the girl now.”
“Ya.” Gary nodded. “He wants to protect her and make sure they lay it on an Indian.”
“Tried to kill herself sure as day, and if Reuger there hadn’t gone a knockin’ on her door at the Stafford, she would have!” Gus spat off to the side again. “Dug into her wrists with a razor, that one did.”
“Ya, she’s sitting on something then,” Gary said with the flames in his dark eyes.
“Somebody’s getting nervous,” Reuger murmured. “Had a bullet through my kitchen window a couple of days ago.”
Gary sat up.
“They tried to shoot you?”
“They wanted to make a point.”
“Things are getting out of hand here,” Gus gestured with his pipe. “Yer better be more careful.”
Gary frowned and stoked the fire, shooting sparks toward the trees.
“Sounds like Tommy maybe. Probably thinks you betrayed him or some shit by going after him. I don’t know much about this police work here, but when I saw Jorde out there at the reservation trying to talk to Tommy and then these loggers end up dead, you know,” Gary gestured to the darkness. “I started thinking that maybe they’re in it together, and maybe Jorde hired him to do it, you know. Maybe even rape the fucking girl.”
Reuger crossed one boot over the other.
“You and the sheriff think alike.”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “But maybe they figured you know it would get the lodge in trouble there or maybe Tommy just went crazy and did it anyway.” Gary gestured to the darkness. “I’ve known Tommy a long time, and I always hoped he’d change his ways, you know. I hoped on the reservation he would grow up to be somebody that would help the people.” He shook his head. “But he was always just a fuck-up and made a lot of trouble for everyone, and now he’s done it again by raping this white girl.”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” Reuger pointed out. Gary stared at the eyes under the brim.
“Maybe.” He turned. “But it’s probably better if this thing here is solved and done with you know. Tommy Tobin fucked up one too many times the way I see it, and somebody has to hang for it so the tourists can feel safe again.”
“Doesn’t sound like justice.”
“Ya, since when did this country give a fuck about justice?” Gary’s dark eyes burned with the firelight. “Maybe when they exterminated the Indians and corralled the rest into concentration camps so they would starve and die of disease and took their lands, their trees, their nation. Is that justice?” Gary plunged another log into the flames. “The only justice in this country is what you take.”
The crackle of the fire returned then a wolf howl echoed in the cavern of the lake.
“Song of the kill,” Gus said, turning. “Toward Canada.”
“Best those wolves stay there,” Gary nodded, pushing a log into the center. They listened to the howl echo through the forest again.
“Ya, Tommy Tobin’s had some bad troubles,” Gary nodded slowly.
A cedar log popped, sending a spark outside the lava rocks. The coffee pot boiled and steamed from the spout. Gary’s mouth turned down.
“He should enjoy his last night in the forest of his fathers.”
42
THEY PADDLED OVER boulders beneath the water with the old logs from the drives just below the surface. The water was so clear a person could reach down and grab one of the yellowed rocks. Reuger dipped his paddle, passing through water lilies floating on the water like coasters. The sun glared hotly off the lake as he paddled for the trees and saw a portage trail leading into the forest.
They pulled the canoes into the pebbly beach then into the trees. Gary kneeled to the ground, touching low branches, examining the chopped mud of the path. “Reuger. These tracks are old.” Gary walked hunched over. “These are fresh here. The mud is dried, but a heavy man walked over this and broke the crust down.”
Reuger stared at the hacked-up mud.
“Where?”
“Right there.” Gary pointed. “See the ridge in the mud there?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s there,” he nodded. “Maybe last night someone walked down the path you know. Maybe this morning.”
Reuger stood up and stared down the portage trail.
“All right, you take the lead for now, Gary.”
They moved quickly down the trail with the tassels of Gary’s coat flying back. The trees closed in for a mile into the forest then pulled back for a clearing of swamp and tamarack then a wall of pines.
“Fresh tracks here, Reuger, maybe this morning,” Gary nodded, kneeling.
“We better get going…”
“Wait a goddang minute for an old man to take a piss will you, darn it!”
Gus pissed on a pine while they waited.
“Don’t know how you two can go all day and not take a dern piss!”
“Don’t drink as much water as you do,” Gary shrugged.
“All right.” He zipped up. “Let’s go.”
They moved back into shadowy darkness and sweated heavily in the close air. The trail opened as they followed the snaking path around trees and through dry creeks and into swamps. They hiked through the forest for another twenty minutes when Gary hunched down suddenly. Reuger crawled up next to him and saw sawdust blanketing the fireweed and second growth like yellow lava.
“Looks like someone cut up some trees here, but I don’t see any stumps,” he murmured.
“Someone’s doing a little poaching,” Reuger replied, nodding. “Let’s go have a look.”
They walked through the sawdust and examined the fallen tree.
“Must’ve dragged it,” Gus nodded, “I don’t see any cut trees around here.”
Gary stopped and kneeled down.
“Reuger…”
He lifted a pie-shaped remnant.
“By God, that’s from a tree the size of a mountain, Reuger,” Gus nodded.
The old wood was deep red. The rings were so close together they looked as if someone had drawn them with precision.
Gus shut one eye. “Lot like the piece we found there at Foster’s slasher, Reuger.”
“Oh, ya,” he nodded, fingering the wood.
Gary walked into the sun. Light shone in his black hair and laced the shoulders of his coat. He turned then fell to the ground as a shot cracked from the trees. Reuger dove and held the shotgun by his cheek in the wood shavings. Gus fell back with the Winchester clutched to his chest as bullets puffed sawdust like spouts of water.
“Gary!”
Blood stained his shoulder in a long creep toward his waist.
“Yeah,” he muttered toward the ground.
“Can you move?” Reuger called just above a whisper.
“Maybe, but I think I’m shot in the shoulder.” He talked into his arm like a man sleeping. “Don’t think it’s bad, but I have to let them think they killed me because they have you pinned down there.”
“Tommy in there?” he whispered.
“No.” Gary shook his head solemnly. “That lodge is empty.”
Reuger grabbed Gary’s arm.
“You sure there?”
“I know these things here, Reuger,” he said gesturing to the clearing. “Something that is handed down, you know, through the generations.” He motioned to his forehead. “You either have this sense or you don’t and I can tell you that lodge is empty for sure.” He stood up. “Here, I’ll show you.”
“Gary, why don’t we go around back just to make sure?”
“You hired me for this, you know,” he said, pushing through the underbrush toward the teepee.
They watched Gary stride into the clearing with his buckskin coat and calf-high mukluks and long black hair flying back in the sun.
“Well, he sure looks the part, Reuger,” Gus nodded.
Gary continued toward the teepee as a black missile streaked over his head. He dove to the ground.
“Fucking bitch!”
“Got yerself one hell of a tracker there,” Gus murmured, shaking his head.
Gary spit dirt from his mouth then called out in Ojibwa, then English.
“Hey! Running Bear! It’s Gary Chatoee. I’m coming in. We want to talk to you!”
A thin voice rose like a violin note in an empty hall.
“Hey fuck you, Gary Chatoee. You can eat shit!”
“One hell of a tracker,” Gus nodded as another arrow streaked out of the forest.
Reuger picked up the Winchester and levered a shell in the chamber. “Cover Gary. I’ll get behind her.”
Gus called out in a low voice.
“Stay there, Reuger’s goin’ to get behind her!”
Well, I’m not going anywhere here,” Gary muttered, spitting more dirt.
Reuger slipped back through the pines then began to circle around. He watched the feathered branches for movement, tripping on granite knifing the forest. He smashed whorls of bunchberries with juice squirting his pants then veered into sarsaparilla with the greenish white flowers tickling his legs. The forest was still and quiet.
“Hey, fuck you, Gary Chatoee! You and your asshole friends can get off my property!”
Reuger continued pushing through light and shadow, walking slowly toward the voice.
“Hey, fuck you, Gary Chatoee. You just a white man in Indian skin.”
He heard the whoosh of another arrow and saw a woman in a corduroy coat with a jean skirt and long dark hair. She pulled up another arrow as he raised the rifle.
“Hold it, Running Bear!”
Her eyes crossed like marbles against a plane of white. She was a statue of an Indian with her arm breaking the curve of the bow. Reuger advanced slowly.
“Put the bow and arrow down slowly.” He stepped through the bushes with the rifle tight to his shoulder. “Now!”
“Fucking Gary Chatoee,” she muttered, dropping the bow and arrow.
“Any other weapons on you?”
She turned away and Reuger grabbed her arm.
“Come on.”
They passed through the forest to Gary Chatoee on the ground by the teepee. He raised himself to his knees and brushed off his coat. Dust sanded his hair white and he couldn’t get it out of the rough of the buckskin.
“After everything I did for you and your brother, you shoot arrows at me! That’s the kind of fucking thanks I get here! You ruined my coat!”
Running Bear stared straight ahead with defiant eyes the color of thick black ink. Large hoop earrings jangled her neck and a string of colored beads looped her hair. Gary Chatoee walked to the teepee and whipped back the cloth opening.
“Gus, keep an eye on her for me,” Reuger nodded, kneeling down by Gary.
The teepee smelled of wet blankets in a trunk with plastic bunched in the corners. Light peeped slats in the plywood. A Buddha incense burner crested a box of kitchen matches on folded blankets. Gary reached in and picked up a Sony boom box.
“Hmmm, Diana Ross and the Supremes.” He turned. “I gave those to her, you know,” he said pointing to the brown calf-high moccasins. “And this is the thanks I get. You tell these people to let this shit go…look at this,” Gary said disgustedly. “Is this any way to live?”
Reuger stood.
“Let’s go ask her if she’s seen Tommy.”
They stood around Running Bear with her arms crossed and back ramrod straight. Gary spoke to her in Ojibwa. She turned her nose up and said something that sounded like “Fuck you.” Reuger nodded.
“What did she say, Gary?”
“Ya,” she said. “Fuck you.”
Reuger gestured with the rifle.
“Tell her that if she doesn’t answer our questions here I’m going to put her in jail for assaulting a deputy sheriff.”
“I didn’t assault anybody,” she snapped.
“I saw an arrow my way a few days ago from someone with their face painted black.”
She glared at him, black eyes snapping like onyx.
“Poachers and trespassers are the only ones I chase off.” She frowned and moved her shoulders. “Which one are you?”
Reuger walked in front of her. She jerked her chin away and looked over her shoulder.
“Running Bear, if I have to, I’ll call in a seaplane here and have you picked up and taken back to a dark cell in Ely, where you’ll sit until I get back.”
“Ya, she’s too stubborn and dumb to help herself,” Gary muttered.
Her eyes narrowed, and she spoke quickly. Gary retorted and gestured to the woods. She jerked her chin up and spoke.
“She says Tommy came and went a day ago,” he said glancing at Reuger. “She thinks he was headed for Manomin Lake….He said he was going to meet somebody.”
Reuger pulled out his map and traced the lake with his finger. He looked at Gary.
“Trust her?”
“She might be lying, you know, but I told her if she wasn’t telling the truth we would come back for her. She said her brother is an asshole who never fixes the cabin, and she wouldn’t bother to lie for him.”
Reuger squinted down the hill toward the lake.
“Then we have some portaging ahead of us then.”
Running Bear spoke over her shoulder.
“Reuger, she wants to know if we can leave her some food?”
“Leave it on the shore,” he nodded.
She broke her stance and went into the teepee with the leather flap coming down. Her hands appeared, then the flap was pulled in and lashed. Gus pissed by a red pine then went further into the woods with a roll of toilet paper. They waited around, and Gary walked to the teepee.
“We’ll leave the food by the shore,” he shouted outside the flap.
Gary waited then clapped his sides and shrugged. When Gus came back, they started down the narrow trail toward the boat.
40
PAIN BRANDED REUGER’S neck with the muddy path flowing under the curved tip of the canoe. He breathed heavily in the aluminum cavern with sweat banding his hat and tickling his nose. The shoulder pads of the canoe hammered his neck as Gus trudged behind carrying the fifty-pound pack with their tent and food. In each hand, he lugged a gun.
They had taken the boat as far as they could on Basswood Lake and left it in Rice Bay on a beach of slate-colored rocks. On Basswood, they passed an old scarred, wooden sluiceway, a remnant of the big log drives where water churned through in a white torrent. Through this narrowing wood trough, thousands of logs had passed on their way down to the mills on the lower lakes. They hiked a narrow portage trail with the canoes, headed for Manomin Lake.
After twenty minutes gluing the dark line, Gary stopped and swung his canoe down. Reuger lowered his canoe with relief rushing through his shoulder muscles as he stretched out the cramps moving through his neck. Gary had shed the buckskin coat and soaked his shirt through the back. Gus was hunched over with the pack, his arms weighed down by the shotgun and the Winchester like some old miner.
“Must be an old logging camp,” Gary nodded, pointing through the trees.
Two headlights winked through a patch of wild sarsaparilla. The truck had bowl fenders and a rounded top with cyclopic headlights earring the radiator grill. The windshield was spidered with cracks and the truck body had rusted graveyard orange.
“CCC, I’d wager. Had camps all through here in the thirties,” Gus nodded. “Somebody want to help me get out of this here mule harness?”
Gary lifted the heavy pack.
“Damn! That thing there will make yer old before yer time,” he said, stretching his back.
Reuger walked to the truck. He could smell the cooked leather of the seats and saw weeds below the floor where the metal had rotted. Gary put his boot on the running board.
“Ya, that Civilian Conservation Corps brought unemployed men to the forest and put them to work during the Depression, and they replanted these trees in straight rows. They were from the cities and were given white shirts and floppy hats.” Gary pulled on the radiator cap and shook his head. “They didn’t know shit.”
Gus shook his head.
“Yep, most had never handled an ax before and when the war came they all left.”
Gary Chatoee bent down and picked up a clear bottle and a flat red Folgers can.
“Syrup and coffee, ya, they were loggers, all right.”
“Yep, I was just a boy, but I remember these men come into the forest and weren’t a damn thing there, and they had to build their own cabins to sleep in.” Gus chuckled. “Cut a lot of trees and planted a lot but they was the skinniest bunch you ever saw.”
Reuger followed a series of rocks laid out in a walkway and looked over the clearing. An amber hunk of metal in a shrub of beaked hazel turned into an iron stove. An old water tank became a circular edifice of rust. He walked to a blackened fire ring and kneeled down next to Gary.
“What do you make of it?”
Gary brushed his hands in the ash then handed Reuger a brass shell.
“He was here, all right. Still warm. I found this in the coals. It’s a .44 you know.” Gary raised his eyebrow. “Magnum load for a Winchester.”
Reuger flipped around the shell and blew ash off a silver percussion cap.
41
THE FIRE BURNED fast, crackling cedar and birch and glimmering blue on the Winchester and shotgun. When they finished the three frozen steaks, they sat around the fire and drank coffee sweetened by condensed milk. The lantern hissed from a branch and the coffee pot spouted; a strip of cold dusk lined the pines.
Gary Chatoee rested on his elbow with his coat spreading out like amber grass.
“So…who’s this girl Tommy’s supposed to have raped.”
Reuger stoked the fire up then leaned back. “Sixteen-year-old looking for answers in the wrong places.”
“Like a woodshed,” Gary scoffed. “What was she doing in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what’s she say now?”
“Haven’t talked to her since it happened,” Reuger answered.
“Well, he must have done it if she said Tommy was the one!” Gus cocked his eyebrow. “But that damn Riechardt won’t let us near the girl now.”
“Ya.” Gary nodded. “He wants to protect her and make sure they lay it on an Indian.”
“Tried to kill herself sure as day, and if Reuger there hadn’t gone a knockin’ on her door at the Stafford, she would have!” Gus spat off to the side again. “Dug into her wrists with a razor, that one did.”
“Ya, she’s sitting on something then,” Gary said with the flames in his dark eyes.
“Somebody’s getting nervous,” Reuger murmured. “Had a bullet through my kitchen window a couple of days ago.”
Gary sat up.
“They tried to shoot you?”
“They wanted to make a point.”
“Things are getting out of hand here,” Gus gestured with his pipe. “Yer better be more careful.”
Gary frowned and stoked the fire, shooting sparks toward the trees.
“Sounds like Tommy maybe. Probably thinks you betrayed him or some shit by going after him. I don’t know much about this police work here, but when I saw Jorde out there at the reservation trying to talk to Tommy and then these loggers end up dead, you know,” Gary gestured to the darkness. “I started thinking that maybe they’re in it together, and maybe Jorde hired him to do it, you know. Maybe even rape the fucking girl.”
Reuger crossed one boot over the other.
“You and the sheriff think alike.”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “But maybe they figured you know it would get the lodge in trouble there or maybe Tommy just went crazy and did it anyway.” Gary gestured to the darkness. “I’ve known Tommy a long time, and I always hoped he’d change his ways, you know. I hoped on the reservation he would grow up to be somebody that would help the people.” He shook his head. “But he was always just a fuck-up and made a lot of trouble for everyone, and now he’s done it again by raping this white girl.”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” Reuger pointed out. Gary stared at the eyes under the brim.
“Maybe.” He turned. “But it’s probably better if this thing here is solved and done with you know. Tommy Tobin fucked up one too many times the way I see it, and somebody has to hang for it so the tourists can feel safe again.”
“Doesn’t sound like justice.”
“Ya, since when did this country give a fuck about justice?” Gary’s dark eyes burned with the firelight. “Maybe when they exterminated the Indians and corralled the rest into concentration camps so they would starve and die of disease and took their lands, their trees, their nation. Is that justice?” Gary plunged another log into the flames. “The only justice in this country is what you take.”
The crackle of the fire returned then a wolf howl echoed in the cavern of the lake.
“Song of the kill,” Gus said, turning. “Toward Canada.”
“Best those wolves stay there,” Gary nodded, pushing a log into the center. They listened to the howl echo through the forest again.
“Ya, Tommy Tobin’s had some bad troubles,” Gary nodded slowly.
A cedar log popped, sending a spark outside the lava rocks. The coffee pot boiled and steamed from the spout. Gary’s mouth turned down.
“He should enjoy his last night in the forest of his fathers.”
42
THEY PADDLED OVER boulders beneath the water with the old logs from the drives just below the surface. The water was so clear a person could reach down and grab one of the yellowed rocks. Reuger dipped his paddle, passing through water lilies floating on the water like coasters. The sun glared hotly off the lake as he paddled for the trees and saw a portage trail leading into the forest.
They pulled the canoes into the pebbly beach then into the trees. Gary kneeled to the ground, touching low branches, examining the chopped mud of the path. “Reuger. These tracks are old.” Gary walked hunched over. “These are fresh here. The mud is dried, but a heavy man walked over this and broke the crust down.”
Reuger stared at the hacked-up mud.
“Where?”
“Right there.” Gary pointed. “See the ridge in the mud there?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s there,” he nodded. “Maybe last night someone walked down the path you know. Maybe this morning.”
Reuger stood up and stared down the portage trail.
“All right, you take the lead for now, Gary.”
They moved quickly down the trail with the tassels of Gary’s coat flying back. The trees closed in for a mile into the forest then pulled back for a clearing of swamp and tamarack then a wall of pines.
“Fresh tracks here, Reuger, maybe this morning,” Gary nodded, kneeling.
“We better get going…”
“Wait a goddang minute for an old man to take a piss will you, darn it!”
Gus pissed on a pine while they waited.
“Don’t know how you two can go all day and not take a dern piss!”
“Don’t drink as much water as you do,” Gary shrugged.
“All right.” He zipped up. “Let’s go.”
They moved back into shadowy darkness and sweated heavily in the close air. The trail opened as they followed the snaking path around trees and through dry creeks and into swamps. They hiked through the forest for another twenty minutes when Gary hunched down suddenly. Reuger crawled up next to him and saw sawdust blanketing the fireweed and second growth like yellow lava.
“Looks like someone cut up some trees here, but I don’t see any stumps,” he murmured.
“Someone’s doing a little poaching,” Reuger replied, nodding. “Let’s go have a look.”
They walked through the sawdust and examined the fallen tree.
“Must’ve dragged it,” Gus nodded, “I don’t see any cut trees around here.”
Gary stopped and kneeled down.
“Reuger…”
He lifted a pie-shaped remnant.
“By God, that’s from a tree the size of a mountain, Reuger,” Gus nodded.
The old wood was deep red. The rings were so close together they looked as if someone had drawn them with precision.
Gus shut one eye. “Lot like the piece we found there at Foster’s slasher, Reuger.”
“Oh, ya,” he nodded, fingering the wood.
Gary walked into the sun. Light shone in his black hair and laced the shoulders of his coat. He turned then fell to the ground as a shot cracked from the trees. Reuger dove and held the shotgun by his cheek in the wood shavings. Gus fell back with the Winchester clutched to his chest as bullets puffed sawdust like spouts of water.
“Gary!”
Blood stained his shoulder in a long creep toward his waist.
“Yeah,” he muttered toward the ground.
“Can you move?” Reuger called just above a whisper.
“Maybe, but I think I’m shot in the shoulder.” He talked into his arm like a man sleeping. “Don’t think it’s bad, but I have to let them think they killed me because they have you pinned down there.”
