Page 86 of God’s Country

By the time we stepped from the path that led through the forest to Crow Point, it was late afternoon. The shadows of the pines stretched in front of me, one more darkness I would have to navigate. I was surprised to find Prophet waiting there.

Prophet is a powerful-looking man with a violent past, so much so that he has to fly under the radar of law enforcement. He came to Crow Point hunting Henry Meloux as he would an animal of prey. The Mide set him on a different path, and now Prophet has become the old man’s constant companion and disciple.

“He’s expecting you,” Prophet said.

Of course, I thought. Part of the magic of the old man.

Prophet studied my face, looked deeply into my eyes. “You’ve been to hell,” he said simply.

He knew because, like me, he was ogichidaa and had been there, too.

He started toward Meloux’s cabin, and Rainy and I followed. I’d crossed the meadow on Crow Point hundreds of times over the years, walking toward the ancient cabin I’d visited since I was a child, where the man who’d guided me so often and so well always knew I was coming and was always waiting for me. This time, before we reached the cabin, I held back.

“What is it?” Rainy asked.

“It’s wrong, me being here. I feel like a rattlesnake in a church.”

“You can turn back,” Rainy said. “Or you can face yourself.”

To tell the truth, I was suddenly afraid of Henry, of what he would tell me. Although he was the one who’d suggested that I might be the wolf in the visions, a vision and the actuality of it are different things. Here I was, that ugly creature he’d predicted I could become, a beast steeped in the blood of a man I’d slaughtered. How does anybody return from that kind of transformation?

“Whatever it is you’re afraid of, Henry will understand,” Prophet assured me.

I went ahead, and when I entered Meloux’s cabin, he was seated at the birch table he’d made for himself decades ago. He looked up at me as I stood in the doorway, the sun at my back, my face in shadow.

“Corcoran O’Connor,” he said. “You look like shit. Have a seat.”

CHAPTER 48

Meloux asked that he be left alone with me. Prophet and Rainy stepped out of the cabin, and Prophet closed the door behind them. This worried me. What did the old man have to say to me that wasn’t suitable for the ears of others?

“You need a bath,” he said.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“All right. You are broken.”

“I know that, too.”

“But you think that you do not know how to become whole and holy again.”

“Do you?”

“It is out of my hands. Only you know the way.”

“All I know, Henry, is that I killed a man, killed a man as brutally as you can kill anyone, and it felt good to me. I reveled in it. I need a sweat or something.”

“We could do a sweat. We could do many. They would help. But this is not what will heal you.”

“God damn it, Henry, just spit it out.”

Although I’d spoken to Meloux in anger before, frustrated by the riddles he usually offered instead of giving me a straight answer, this was the first time I’d ever sworn at the old man. I should have been shocked at myself, but it didn’t bother me in the least. Apparently, it didn’t bother Meloux either. He simply looked at me, the calm expression on his face unchanged. Then he said, “In the wilderness, you lost yourself. In the wilderness is where you will find yourself again.”

“The hell with that, Henry. I’m never going back into the Boundary Waters.”

“That is your choice.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”