“Do you know what’s wrong?” I asked.
“His heart,” Wrigley said. “I suspect an occlusion, but we need to run tests to be sure. Only a few minutes, all right? He needs his strength.”
Meloux lay on the bed, tubes and wires running from him every which way. It made me think of a butterfly in a spider’s web. I’d never seen him looking so frail, so vulnerable. In his day, he’d been a great hunter. Because he’d saved my life, I also knew him as a warrior. It was hard seeing him this way.
His brown eyes tracked me as I came to the bedside.
“Corcoran O’Connor,” he whispered. “I knew you would come.”
I pulled up a chair and sat beside him. “I’m sorry, Henry.”
“My heart.”
“The doctor told me.”
He shook his head faintly. “My heart is in pain.”
“The doctor suspects an occlusion. A blockage, I think that means.”
Again he shook his head. “It is sadness, Corcoran O’Connor. Too heavy for my heart.”
“What sadness, Henry?”
“I will tell you, but you must promise to help me.”
“I’ll do what I can, Henry. What’s the sadness?”
Meloux hesitated a moment, gathering strength. “My son.”
Son? In the forty-some years I’d known him, I’d never heard Meloux speak of a son. As far as I knew, no one had.
“You have a son? Where?”
“I do not know. Help me find him, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“What’s his name, Henry?”
Meloux stared up at me. For the first time I could ever recall, he looked lost.
“You don’t know his name?” I didn’t hide my surprise. “Do you know anything about him?”
“His mother’s name. Maria.”
“Just Maria?”
“Lima.”
“Maria Lima. How long ago, Henry?”
He closed his eyes and thought a moment. “A lifetime.”
“Thirty years? Forty? Fifty?”
“Seventy-three winters.”
Seventy-three years. My God.
“It’s a big world, Henry. Can you tell me where to begin?”
“Canada,” he whispered. “Ontario.”
I could tell our conversation, spare though it was, was draining him. I had three pieces of information. A mother’s name. An approximate year. And a place to start looking.
“Have you ever seen your son, Henry?”
“In visions,” Meloux replied.
“What does he look like?”
“I have only seen his spirit, not his face.” A faint smile touched his lips. “He will look like his father.”
“He’ll look like his mother, too, Henry. It would be nice to know what she looked like.”
He motioned me nearer. “In my cabin. A box under my bed. A gold watch.”
“All right.”
“And Walleye. He will be alone and hungry.”
“I’ll take care of Walleye, Henry.”
Meloux seemed comforted. “Migwech,” he said. Thank you.
Outside the room, LeDuc was waiting.
“What did he want, Cork?”
“He’s worried about Walleye,” I said. “He wanted me to take care of the dog.”
The rest had been told in confidence, and I couldn’t repeat it. Nor could I say what I really thought. That what Meloux was asking was nothing short of a miracle.
FOUR
George LeDuc dropped me back at Sam’s Place. Jenny was there, looking pale, but she seemed to be doing fine. Several customers stood lined up at the serving window. I pulled her aside for a moment and asked how she was feeling.
“Okay now.” She offered me a brief smile. “Customers,” she said and turned back to her window.
As they went about their work, I filled the girls in on Meloux, what I could tell them anyway, and asked if they’d hold down the fort while I took care of what the old man needed. Jenny said she’d call in Jodi Bollendorf, who wasn’t on the schedule that day but would be glad to help.
I hopped in the Bronco and headed home.
My house is on Gooseberry Lane, a quiet street of old homes, mostly two-story wood frame. We don’t have fences, though often lilac hedges or shrubbery serve that purpose. I grew up on Gooseberry Lane, a child in the house where I’ve raised my own children. Until his death-the result of a gun battle in the line of duty-my father was sheriff of Tamarack County. He’d come from Chicago, married my mother who was half Ojibwe, half Irish. Her mother, Grandma Dilsey to me, was a true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe, though she preferred to call herself Anishinaabe-or Shinnob-as do many on the rez. That makes me one-quarter Ojibwe. Though the other three-quarters is Irish, Grandma Dilsey always swore it was the blood of The People that counted most.
Until I was elected sheriff, my heritage was never much of an issue. After I put on the badge, whenever conflicts arose between the two cultures, red and white, I found that I was never Ojibwe enough for the Ojibwe or white enough for the whites. That wasn’t the reason I resigned my office. I turned in my badge when it became clear to me that my responsibility as a lawman was often at odds with my duty as a husband and father. I was lucky. I had Sam’s Place to fall back on. At least during the warm months, between May and November. The long winters were always a concern. The PI license I’d recently acquired would, I hoped, give me something to do in all those dark months.
Stevie was playing by himself in the front yard. My son was eight, then, small for his age. With his straight black hair and hard almond eyes, he was, of all my children, the one who showed most clearly his Anishinaabe heritage. He’d recently discovered golf, and that afternoon he stood in the shade of our big elm, a driver in his hand, swinging at a big Wiffle ball that sailed twenty yards when he hit it. I spotted a number of divots in the grass. When he saw me pull into the driveway, he dropped the club and came running.
“What are you doing home, Dad?” He looked hopeful. He was the youngest kid on the block, and with Jenny and Anne often working at Sam’s Place, I knew he was sometimes lonely.
I ruffled his hair. “Work to do, buddy.”
“Mom’s working, too,” he said, disappointed.
“Where’s Dumbarton?” I asked, speaking of the neighbor’s dog. “They called him in.”
I nodded toward the driver lying in the grass. “How’s that backswing coming?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe later we’ll play a few holes together,” I said.
“Really?”
“We’ll see what we can do. Mom’s inside?”
“In her office.”
“Remember, head down and keep your eye on the ball.”
I went in the house. He turned back to his game.
It was cool inside and quiet. I walked to the kitchen, ran some tap water into a glass, and took a long drink.
“Stevie?” Jo called from her office.
“No. Me.”
A moment later she came in wearing her reading glasses, blue eyes big behind the lenses. She’s a beautiful woman, Jo. A few years younger than me, but looks even more. One of the smartest women I’ve ever known. Also one of the most courageous. For years, she’s represented the Ojibwe of the Iron Lake Reservation in litigation that has often put her on the unpopular side of a legal issue. She’s never flinched. We’ve had our problems. Show me a couple married twenty years who hasn’t. But we were in a good period that summer.
“What are you doing home?” she asked.
“Meloux’s in the hospital.”
“Henry? Why?”
“He collapsed this morning in Allouette. The doctor thinks it’s his heart. Meloux thinks so, too, but in a different way.”
“What way?”
“He has a son, Jo.”
Surprise showed in her eyes. “He’s never said a word.”
“He has now. But only to me, so you can’t say anything to anyone else.” I’d told her because she’s my wife and a lawyer and understands about client privilege. “He asked me to find this son of his.”
“Did he tell you where to look?”
“Ontario, Canada.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“The mother’s name.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. He fathered the child over seventy years ago. And he’s only seen him in visions.”