He watched the plane grow small as a dragonfly and disappear beyond the ridges to the south. Then he let himself sink into the ice blue grip of the lake, which squeezed him until he was numb all the way down to his heart.
TWENTY-NINE
Henry sat all afternoon feeding the fire, watching the southern sky, though he knew it was useless to hope. He beat himself with the unknowns. Would Maria ever come back? Would he spend the rest of his life in prison? Should he run now instead of waiting for Wellington to bring the police? If he did that, how would he ever find her?
No matter how he looked at the situation, Maria was gone. Gone forever.
He’d lost much in his life, but losing Maria left him wanting nothing but to die.
A familiar voice at his back startled him out of his reverie. “I thought you had left.” Maurice came from the trees and sat by the fire near Henry. “I heard the airplane,” he said. “You look terrible, my friend. What happened?”
Henry explained the events. “They know about you, Maurice. They will be back. I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.
Maurice thought awhile. “Come with me.”
“But if they come back-”
“They won’t be back today. Come with me. There’s something I want to show you, something that might help.”
Henry followed in dismal silence. Never had the woods felt so empty. Never had he seemed so far from home.
They reached Maurice’s cabin on the swift little stream. Maurice led him inside and blew into the embers of the fire and stoked the flame. He put water on to boil.
“Some tea will help. Hummingbird’s recipe. Burdock root, sheep sorrel, slippery elm, and red clover.”
Henry sat in the cabin, but his mind was still on the airplane he’d watched lift off the lake that morning, spray streaming from the floats, Maria vanishing.
The hot cup was suddenly in his hands.
“Drink,” Maurice said gently. “And listen to me.” He settled into a chair facing Henry and leaned close. A shaft of afternoon light came through the open window and struck his face. The sharp cheekbones above his beard were like dark, polished cherry wood. “In all my time among white people, the one thing I understood best was that for them, money forgives everything. In their courts, money can undo any wrong, even murder.”
“Not murder,” Henry said hopelessly.
Maurice shook his head. “Money will buy a good lawyer, and a good lawyer with enough money behind him can sell a lie to anyone.”
“What lie? I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“You kill a white man, it doesn’t matter why. They won’t listen. Money will make them listen.”
“I don’t have money,” Henry said miserably.
“What I want to show you.”
Maurice rose from his chair, went to the bunk, and pulled it away from the wall. Henry saw the outline of a trapdoor beneath, cut into the floorboards. A knotted rope served as a handle. Maurice grasped the rope and lifted. He beckoned Henry to look. Beneath the floor lay a dozen deer-hide pouches, each larger than a man’s fist.
“Take one,” Maurice said. “Open it.”
Henry lifted one of the pouches, surprised by its weight. He undid the leather cord and looked at the heaping of yellow grains inside.
“Do you know what that is?” Maurice asked.
Henry said, “Gold.”
“It’s yours. As much as you want.”
“Why?”
Maurice smiled kindly. “I came looking for this. Once I had it, I realized I’d found something better here with Hummingbird. Happiness. We had each other. We had food and shelter. We had this land whose spirit is generous and beautiful. Children would have been good, but…” He shrugged that thought away. “So we stayed. When Hummingbird died, I thought about leaving. Except all my memories are here. Her spirit is here, too. I feel her with me all the time.” He put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “What need do I have for gold?”
Henry closed up the pouch and carefully tied the cord. “If I take the gold, they will know where it came from. They will he hack.”
“They will be back anyway. It is only a matter of time.”
“I will think about it,” Henry said.
He stayed awhile with Maurice, but his mind was drawn to the campsite and the empty sky above the lake.
“I should go back and wait,” he finally said.
“I’ll wait with you,” Maurice offered.
Henry didn’t want to risk the white men seeing Maurice. “I will wait alone.”
Maurice nodded. “If that’s what you want. Remember, the gold is here for you. It will always be here.”
They left the cabin. Maurice looked at the sky and sniffed the air.
“Your people don’t come back soon, it won’t matter much,” he said to Henry. “Snow is on the way. I can smell it. I’ve got food if you need to spend the winter.”
Henry thanked him and left. He made his way to camp and sat down to wait.
That night, Henry slept in Maria’s tent. The smell of her on the sleeping bag was next to heaven. In the night, he heard music, the little chime of the gold watch. He found it among the things she’d left behind. He went outside and stirred the embers and stoked the fire until he had a flame bright enough to see by. He spent the rest of the night dividing his time between staring at the stars and staring at Maria’s tiny image. Near dawn, he put the watch in his pocket, where it would stay. He didn’t care if it was stealing.
They didn’t come the next day or the next. That night Henry dreamed: The lake had turned to ice. The ridges were white with snow. He stood at the shoreline staring at Wellington’s plane, which sat on frozen water. Flakes began to drift from the cloudy sky, and soon a curtain of falling snow descended, so that all Henry could see was the dim outline of the floatplane. He wanted to rush to it, to find out if it had brought Maria back to him, but his feet wouldn’t move.
The door opened. A figure clambered out. Henry thought it was Wellington, but he couldn’t be sure. The figure walked toward him.
As it came, it grew, taking on huge dimensions. The head became a ragged growth of shaggy hair. The fingers grew into long claws. Through the white gauze of snow, the eyes glowed red as hot coals. Henry realized that what was coming for him was not a man but a windigo, the mythic beast out of the horror stories of his childhood, a cannibal giant with a heart of ice. He turned and tried to run, but he could not move his legs. He looked back. The beast was almost upon him. Henry tried to cry out. His jaw locked in place, and only a terrified moan escaped. The foul smell of the windigo-the stench of rotted meat-was all around him. He saw the great mouth open, revealing teeth like a row of bloody knives. The beast reached for him. Henry tensed and cringed, prepared to be torn apart.
He jerked awake in the cold gray of early morning. Outside the tent, the sky was overcast. In the air, he could smell the approach of snow.
The airplane came at noon. Henry was napping. He heard the low thrum in the sky from the eastern end of the lake. He grabbed his jacket and ran out of the tent. The plane dropped toward the water like a swan descending. The floats touched, shattering the glassy lake surface, and the wings squared toward the shoreline where Henry stood. He couldn’t see into the cockpit. The engine cut out, the blur of the propeller ceased, the blades froze. The plane nosed up to solid ground. The door opened.
Leonard Wellington climbed out. He walked along the pontoon with a rope in his hand. Leaping ashore, he tethered the floatplane to one of the large, heavy rocks that littered the shore. He went back to the cabin door and spoke to someone inside. Finally he looked at Henry.
“Wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” he said, stepping off the pontoon. “If I was you, I’d have taken to the woods. Vamoosed.”
Henry only half heard. He was staring at the open cabin door. His heart was a wild horse galloping in his chest. He could barely breathe.
Another man climbed from the belly of the plane. He carried a rifle. Henry’s hope cracked into a thousand pieces.