FORTY-SEVEN
I was tired, but I tossed and turned in a restless sleep. I didn’t think Wellington would have us all murdered in the night; still, there were a lot of unanswered questions flapping around in my brain. Why had Morrissey followed me to Meloux’s and tried to kill the old man? Was he acting on his own or under orders? Orders from whom? The Wellingtons had something to lose, maybe, if the truth of Meloux’s story was ever made public, but I figured a lot of fortunes had been built on the graves of innocent people. It wasn’t that startling, and Leonard Wellington’s treachery had happened a long time ago. Both sons-Rupert and Henry-seemed civilized, if a little on the chilly side. On the other hand, a lot of civilized people have convinced themselves that in the right cause it’s acceptable-noble, even-to bloody your hands. If neither of the Wellingtons was responsible, then who? If it was all Morrissey’s idea, then why?
I wasn’t thinking only about Meloux, however. Jenny was heavy on my mind.
Sure, we would help her make a life for herself and her baby, but it wouldn’t be the life we’d dreamed of for her or that she’d dreamed of for herself. That made me sad. I had no doubt she would love her child fiercely and be a great mother, but I knew that there would always be the demon of if only harping away in the back of her mind. Every life lived fully is going to have some regrets, because every risk is not worth taking, but you don’t always see that in time. Or if you do, you convince yourself that you’ll be the one to beat the odds. Jenny and Sean had gambled, and it wasn’t that they’d lost exactly. The dealer had simply swept all the chips off the table and placed them in the hands of an unborn child.
The tyranny of love. Love demands all, everything. Jenny was up to the challenge. Sean, it seemed, was not. I wasn’t angry with him. I didn’t think any of us were. We were just disappointed. I figured that in his own life, no matter how he played it, when Sean looked back, Jenny and his child would be one of his regrets. And that made me sad, too.
I slept off and on. Every time I woke, the pattern of moonlight on the floor of my room had shifted. I looked at the clock on the stand next to my bed. Three A.M. I got up, used the toilet, and went to check on Meloux. His room was empty. I slipped my pants on and went downstairs. The house was dark, except for a light under the door of the study where, earlier that day, Wellington had greeted us and Meloux had told his story. I listened at the door and heard the rustle of a page being turned. I considered knocking, but decided against it. I didn’t think Meloux would be reading.
I had another idea. I went out onto the rear deck where I could see the lake, a great pool of silver poured out from the moon. I also saw what I thought I might see: the silhouette of Meloux standing alone on the dock. I walked across the yard, carefully because I was barefoot. The ground was cool against the soles of my feet. I coughed as I approached so that I wouldn’t startle the old man. His head half-turned, but he didn’t speak.
“Mind if I join you, Henry?”
“Your company is always welcome, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“Get some rest?”
“Yes. I was tired.”
“No wonder. Long, hard day. Hungry?”
“The morning will come soon enough. I will eat then.”
I put my hands in my pockets and stared up at the stars the moonlight hadn’t swallowed. “I’m sorry, Henry.”
“Why?”
“I hoped, I don’t know, that Wellington would be the son you wanted.”
“How do you know he is not?”
“He hasn’t been what I would call enthusiastic about seeing you.”
“He has also not turned me away.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Henry, but you set your sights awfully low.”
Meloux didn’t reply.
“What do you want to do now?” I said.
“I want you to smoke with me,” he said.
He took a pouch from his shirt pocket and sprinkled a bit to the four points of the compass, acknowledging the spirits that governed each, then he sprinkled some in the center. We sat down on the dock. He took papers and, in the moonlight that bleached his old hands white, he expertly rolled a cigarette. He lit it with a wood match that he struck to flame on his thumbnail. For the next few minutes, we smoked in silence. On the lake, two loons called back and forth, but I couldn’t see them. In the woods on either side, tree frogs and crickets chirred. The surface of the water was so still and shiny that it could have been made of polished steel. All this felt little different from any lake I’d ever sat beside on a Minnesota night, and I was aware that the vast wilderness, which began near the border of Canada, still ran relatively unbroken to the other side of the Arctic Circle. We were in the middle of a great, enduring beauty, and despite the danger and confusion involved in our being there, I couldn’t help but feel a profound sense of gratitude. Probably, that was exactly what the old Mide had hoped I might feel when he asked me to share the tobacco and the moment.
I heard the deck door open and close. I saw Meloux cock his head slightly, as if he’d heard, too, but he didn’t turn. Half a minute later, I felt the dock shiver under an added weight.
“I have seen you,” Wellington said at our backs. “In visions. I’ve had them all my life. I never understood them or understood why they came to me.”
Meloux spoke toward the lake. “You are my son. You have a gift.”
“I isolated myself here years ago to try finally to understand that gift. It’s been lonely and difficult. I was about to give up.”
“Perhaps that is why I’m here.”
“Mother never told me about you. She believed you were dead.”
“Why?”
“She came back with Leonard the next spring and went to Maurice’s cabin. She found the remains of two bodies, which the scavengers had cleaned to mostly bone. She thought one was Maurice and the other was you.”
“She married Leonard Wellington.”
“That was part of the bargain she struck with him. When her father died, she agreed to marry Leonard and give him access to her father’s money. In return, he promised not to tell the police about your part in the death. She had no idea he’d already been here or what he’d done.”
“How do you know these things? Did she tell you?”
“She wrote them in her journals.”
Wellington walked to where we sat. He held out a book bound in soft leather. Meloux took it and opened it. Glancing, I saw that it was written in thin, precise script that would be difficult to read by moon-light.
“There are more than a dozen like it,” Wellington said. “She left them to me, in the care of her attorney, not to be read until I turned twenty-one. I was a fighter pilot in Korea when I turned twenty-one and had no interest in reading them. I didn’t get around to it until after Leonard died.”
“He was a good father?” Meloux asked.
“We fought all the time. I could never please him. He was a man too absorbed in his own affairs. Finally I gave up trying. Poor Rupert, though, he worked so hard to be noticed. The man treated him badly, but Rupert just kept coming back for more. When I read the journals and finally understood that Rupert was his real son, it made me sad. Me, I just came with the contract, but my brother was truly his son, and Leonard still treated him like a dog.”
In front of us, a small fish jumped, creating a circle of ripples that widened until they captured the reflection of the moon.
“I used to come here with her, just the two of us, and she would tell me stories about an Ojibwe hunter, very brave and handsome and noble. She called him Niibaa-waabii. She said it meant Sees At Night. She died when I was ten. After that, whenever I felt alone, whenever I felt that Leonard was a dense, unfathomable fog, I would imagine that the hunter was my father and that he was pleased with me.”
Meloux said, “I am pleased.”
He sat beside the old Mide. “After all these years, why did you come looking for me now?”