Free Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger Page B

chest.
“Miziweyaa”
—which meant wholeness—“is here. The way is always here. But sometimes a man needs help in understanding the way.”
    The coffee had cooled. Stevie took a polite sip and squeezed his eyes against the bitter taste.
    “We will return to the island called Manitou,” Meloux declared. “We will see my son together, and I will show him the way toward
miziweyaa.”
    I started to object, but Meloux cut me off.
    “If my son is ill in the way you say, we need to leave today, this afternoon.”
    Twice over I owed Meloux my life. And what was he asking for, really? In the decades I’d known him, I’d experienced things that had no rational explanation, and I felt the rightness of what he was pressing for now. Still, I was a man with obligations of my own.
    “Tomorrow, Henry,” I offered. “We’ll go tomorrow. I have things to do first.”
    “What things?”
    “I have a business to put in order. I have a wife to explain this to.” I didn’t mention Jenny. “Give me a day, Henry. One day. Please.”
    He seemed to realize what he’d asked. “I’m sorry, Corcoran O’Connor. I was being selfish.”
    But I was the one feeling selfish, knowing that if it were Stevie in trouble, sick in the way Meloux’s son was sick, I’d want to leave immediately.
    “First thing in the morning,” I promised.
    I reached into my shirt pocket and drew out the watch. I handed it to Henry. He opened it and spent a moment staring at the photograph inside.
    “Come on, Stevie,” I said, standing.
    Stevie leaned over and patted Walleye. “Good-bye, boy.”
    Meloux got up, and the dog with him, and they saw us to the door. The meadow was full of grasshoppers. They jumped around in front of the cabin, climbed the log walls. A big grasshopper lit on Meloux’s arm. He eyed the bug, and the bug eyed him.
    “What do you make of all these insects?” I asked the old Mide.
    He thought a moment. “The lakes and rivers are full of grasshoppers. The fish who eat them are fat. The bears who eat the fish are fat. If our people still ate the bear, we would all be fat.” He grinned, plucked the bug off his arm, and put it on the ground, rather gently I thought. “Tomorrow, Corcoran O’Connor. When the sun comes up, I will be ready.”
    We crossed the meadow and entered the woods. Stevie kept in step beside me without a word. In that heavy silence, the walk back to the road felt long.
    We found the Bronco covered with grasshoppers. They flew off the doors as we reached for the handles. The grill was full of the insects we’d plowed through on our way there.
    When we were inside Stevie asked, “Are there grasshoppers everywhere?”
    “I think so,” I said. I put the key in the ignition.
    “This many everywhere?” he said.
    I was glad to see he was curious and had moved on to a subject other than Walleye.
    “I don’t think so, buddy,” I said. “This is pretty unusual.”
    I turned the engine over.
    “There were grasshoppers smashed all over the Canada car,” Stevie said.
    “What Canada car?”
    I checked the road behind me, preparing to turn around and head toward town.
    “The one that went by when we stopped.”
    “It was from Canada?” I looked over at my son. “How do you know?”
    “The license plate in back. I saw it.”
    Even deep in his concern over giving Walleye back to Meloux, my son had caught details that escaped me. But then, I’d been more worried about the SUV taking off my door. It wasn’t necessarily a significant thing. Canadians came across the border into Minnesota all the time. But it struck me as chillingly coincidental, especially in light of the fact that up the gravel road where the SUV had gone there was no real destination.
    Instead of turning around, I drove straight ahead. Not far from the double-trunk birch, I came to one of the old logging trails, unused for so long it was mostly overgrown with weeds. Parked just far enough among the trees off the road so that it couldn’t be