Free Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger Page A

had been a dry summer, and the Bronco kicked up a thick tail of dust that hung a long time in the still morning air. A quarter mile along, I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw an SUV swing off the highway and plow into the cloud I’d raised. I felt a little bad throwing up all that dust, but there was nothing I could do about it.
    Another mile and I pulled to the side of the road and parked near the double-trunk birch that marked the trail to Meloux’s cabin. Stevie opened his door and Walleye leaped across him eagerly. The dog’s tail was going crazy, and it was clear he was happy to be in his own territory again. Stevie saw it, too, and he sighed.
    I opened my door just as the SUV behind us shot past. It was silver-gray, but coated everywhere with the red-brown dust of the county road, except for a couple of streaky arcs on the windshieldwhere the wipers had tried to clean. I yanked the door shut, glad I’d pulled far off to the side. Whoever was driving the SUV couldn’t have seen the Bronco in time to avoid hitting it. As it was, I almost lost the driver’s door. The SUV sped past and kept heading northeast.
    Stevie and Walleye trotted ahead. I trailed behind, noting my son’s slumped little shoulders. I found myself agreeing with Jo. A turtle was no kind of pet for a boy.
    We broke from the trees amid the buzz of the grasshoppers still infesting the woods. On Crow Point, smoke drifted up from the stovepipe on Meloux’s cabin. Walleye loped ahead, barking. Meloux opened the door and stepped into view. He smiled at the sight of his old friend, bent down, and his ancient hands caressed the dog.
    Looking up at us as we approached, he said in formal greeting,
“Anin,
Corcoran O’Connor.
Anin,
Stephen.” He stood up.
“Migwech,”
he finished, thanking us.
    He had on a pair of worn khakis held up with new blue suspenders. The sleeves of his denim shirt were rolled above his elbows. He wore hiking boots, much scuffed about the toes. His long white hair fell over his shoulders. His eyes were clear and sharp. He looked healthy. He looked very much like the Meloux I’d known all my life.
    “I have made coffee,” he said, inviting us in.
    We stepped out of the sunshine into the cool shade of his cabin. He closed the door, but not before a couple of grasshoppers slipped into the cabin with us.
    There were three chairs around his table. Stevie and I sat down. Meloux went to his black potbelly stove where coffee sat perking in a dented aluminum pot. He poured dark brew into three cups already placed around the table, as if we’d been expected. Stevie looked at the coffee then at me. I nodded okay.
    Walleye had padded quietly back and forth with Meloux. When the old man finally sat down, Walleye settled at his feet. Stevie watched the dog dolefully.
    I sipped the coffee, which was hot and strong. “Henry, I was more than a little surprised to hear that you’d left the hospital.”
    The old man shook his head. “The surprise for me was finding myself there. I did not realize the weight I carried on my heart, it had been there so long. Tell me about my son.”
    Wisps of steam rose from our speckled blue cups. Stevie blew across the surface of his coffee and lifted his cup. He jerked back from the touch of the hot brew against his lips.
    “He’s a sick man, Henry.”
    I explained as simply as I could what I had observed. The old man listened without showing any emotion. As I talked, the two grasshoppers explored the cabin. When they took to the air, their wings made a sound like the rattle of tiny dry bones. They hit the wall a couple of times, small, dull thuds. Meloux didn’t seem to notice.
    When I finished, the old man said, “He would not come?”
    “No, Henry.”
    Meloux nodded and stared for a little while out the small window at the sunlit meadow beside his cabin.
    “It may be that the weight I felt on my heart was not mine alone. It may be that I felt his, too.” He touched his