While the sauna heated, she cut herself a slice of dark bread and ate it with butter and honey. She poured a big glass of juice. As she drank it, she made a decision definitely to take the next day off. She’d spend it with Cork somehow, the whole day. Maybe get him on his skis over on the North Arm trails. Or maybe just lounge in bed all day. It would be a first, whatever they did, because at the end of it, he wouldn’t have to leave.
She went to the wall phone by the refrigerator, intending to call the Pinewood. The phone was dead. That wasn’t too unusual. Ice on the lines sometimes brought them down. Or a tree that fell in the wind. She’d take care of it later.
She rinsed out the juice glass, put away the butter and honey, and wiped the bread crumbs from the cutting board. She was just about to step outside and head down to the sauna when she heard the groan of an old plank on the stairway.
“Cork?” she called, startled. “Is that you?”
Stepping into the main room, she looked toward the stairs and listened. On impulse, she checked the woodbox. The paper sack that held the plastic bag full of negatives was still hidden under the logs. She walked to the stairs and stood looking up toward the second floor. Not a sound anywhere. The old place often gave a groan here or there, and she never took notice. But the bag was in the cabin now, and that made a difference
A single knock at the back door brought her around suddenly. She made her way cautiously to the kitchen. She couldn’t see anyone waiting on the back steps, and she debated opening the door. Why only one knock? she asked herself. And who would knock once and then leave? Finally she reached for the knob and opened the door.
A ski fell in. She jumped back startled, then laughed at herself. It was a ski that had come knocking. One of her skis that had fallen against the door. She laughed at herself. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff was getting to her.
She went upstairs and took a fresh fluffy towel from the bathroom and a pair of white socks from her bedroom dresser, then headed down to the sauna. In the dressing room, she took her clothes off and laid them carefully on the bench. Between the heat from the stove and the sunlight streaming through the windows, the room felt warm and inviting. She took the pair of white socks to wear when she ran onto the ice and she stepped into the sauna. Except for the firelight through the grating of the stove, the small room was dark. She dipped water from a bucket and threw it on the heated stones and an explosion of steam rose up. She sat on the highest bench. In a few minutes she was sweating profusely.
Closing her eyes, she began to let herself dream. Not sleep dreaming, but dreaming of how her life might be. It was a thing she didn’t often do. In her experience, good things came with great difficulty and were too easily snatched away. She’d long ago learned to accept what she had at any given moment and try to be happy with only that. She could think about the future, plan even, but not expect. It was the expectation that was the trap.
But there she was, dripping in the sauna, expecting great things of her future with Cork. It was foolish, she knew, but she let herself indulge, just this once. She was happy, happier than she could ever remember.
The door toward the lake swung open and blinding sunlight invaded her dark. She blinked at it, saw a big silhouette fill the doorway.
“Cork?” she asked, shielding her eyes, trying to see.
The silhouetted figure took a step toward her, coming in with the cold. “Guess again.”
39
“He’s not here,” Ellie Gruber told Cork at the rectory door. “Father Griffin left this morning before I got here and hasn’t been back.”
“Did he tell Father Kelsey where he was going?”
“He never says where he’s going,” she said with exasperation. “And I mean to tell you it’s got Father Kelsey more than a little upset.”
“Did he take his motorcycle or his snowmobile?” Cork asked.
“Why that old snowmobile went kaput nearly a week ago. He’s left it out at the mission, I believe. So he took that old monster of a motorcycle, must be.”
“Lazarus is still at the mission? Are you sure?”
She thought a moment. “I suppose I am.”
The reservation road curved between solid pines, then dipped into a long flat area of marsh populated by swamp alder, tamarack, and gnarled oak. Cork came to a turnoff in the marsh half a mile shy of the old mission. The turnoff was a road that had been started into the marsh so long ago Cork couldn’t even remember why. There was nothing to log, and the ground was too swampy to support buildings of any kind. Construction hadn’t progressed well, evidenced by an old bulldozer that lay sunk in the marsh near the road, only one rust-crusted corner of the blade left above the snow. Work had been abandoned before the road had gone even a quarter of a mile. The dead end turnoff was blocked now by a bank of plowed snow. Cork put the Bronco into four-wheel drive and cleared the snowbank. He drove a hundred yards into the trees until he was out of sight of the main road and he parked.
He fed a few shells into his Winchester. Then he took off his coat and his red flannel shirt, which left him dressed in his jeans-the denim had been washed so many times they were nearly white as ice-his white wool thermal top, white Nikes, and a light gray stocking cap. In the pale winter colors, he was less likely to be seen, but he was also likely to freeze if he had to spend a lot of time dressed that way. He hoped he wouldn’t.
The mission stood in the middle of a meadow beyond a hill at the end of the marsh. Cork approached the top of the rise in a crouch, keeping to the gray shadow of the snowbank. A hundred and fifty yards ahead, rising white from the white of the snow in the meadow, stood the old mission building. Smoke feathered up from the stovepipe toward the high blue-white of the sky. He knelt and watched the mission for a while. In the wide flat of the meadow and along the dark wall of pine trees and bare birch that surrounded it, nothing moved. He was to the north of the building and a little east. It was nearing two o’clock and the sun was low and bright. Staring into the glare off the field of snow made his eyes water. Finally he had to look away. The images behind him seemed darker then. The tamaracks, the swamp alders, the bare oaks. A shadow flickered over the road and a large crow alighted on a branch of a young tamarack near Cork. It cocked a yellow eye at him, but seemed content to be quietly curious. To the Anishinaabe, the crow was a symbol of wisdom. As he crouched shivering from the cold, Cork hoped the bird was a good sign that he’d find some answers before he froze to death.
He glanced again at the mission and immediately hunkered lower.
Someone stood outside the back door. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Whoever it was stood very still and seemed to be looking across the meadow to Cork’s right where a white-tail doe and her two yearlings had come out of the woods. They stepped carefully in the deep snowdrifts. The yearlings had to leap to keep up. The doe would take a few steps and pause, her body poised in an alert stance, her ears flickering left and right as she watched and listened. Each time she stopped the yearlings took the opportunity to bound to her side. All three were coming straight at Cork. If he didn’t move, the deer would lead the eyes of the watching figure right to him. If he did move, the deer would bolt. In either event, he stood a good chance of giving himself away. He sat frozen in place, watching the deer approach.
From behind him came the sound of a vehicle on the reservation road. Cork glanced back. He couldn’t see anything yet, but in only a few moments the vehicle would round the curve and drop down into the flat of the marsh and whoever it was that was coming would clearly see him. But there was no way to move without being seen from the mission. He was trapped.