Page 22 of God’s Country

Well before I reached Little Sister, I drew up to the riverbank and stepped from my canoe into calf-deep water. I pulled the Wenonah in among the reeds and set the bow on solid ground. The only possible weapon I had with me was a Gerber multitool—pliers, scissors, can opener, screwdriver, et cetera. It had a small knife blade but nothing that could deliver a lethal wound. I looked around for a fallen branch, a stick, something to use as a club. I finally decided on my paddle. Swung properly, I figured, it could cleave a man’s head almost in two.

I crept among the pines and aspens along the river’s edge. As I approached the campsite, I could hear a man’s deep voice. I tried to gauge its timbre—was this the voice of a man who smoked White Owls and used their red-hot tips for torture?—but I got no solid feel.

I was still forty yards away, the smell of the campfire strong now, when I caught my first glimpse of the man. He was standing near the fire pit, pouring coffee into a metal cup and talking to someone I couldn’t see because there was a tent in the way—one of two small tents. He was African-American, in his mid-forties, I judged. Tall, powerful looking, broad in chest, and the biceps visible below the rolled-up sleeves of his blue denim shirt looked hard as baseballs. He wore a billed cap with the Twins logo across the crown.

Except for the fact that they didn’t seem the kind suited to a wilderness expedition, Babs had told me nothing specific about the men who’d insisted that her husband guide them. Marsha, when she’d informed me about the fake IDs the men had used, hadn’t mentioned their race. And I didn’t recall if Dillon and Declan Kennedy, who’d tortured a man to death in Duluth fifteen years earlier, were white. Could the Kennedy brothers have been black, and also the men who’d hired Cordell this time around? Why not? I thought.

The man set the coffeepot on the grill of the fire pit and sipped from his cup. He said something to the person I couldn’t see, then he laughed. Was it a cruel sound? Because I was in a state of heightened alert, I interpreted it as such and firmed my grip on the paddle.

At the moment, I knew only one of the enemy. I needed to know everything I was up against, so I began slowly, quietly to circle. Then I heard the scream. A woman’s scream. And I did something that I admit was pretty stupid. I rushed forward, crashing through the underbrush, ready to slay a monster.

The man with the coffee cup looked my way, startled. From a log on the other side of the fire pit, which I hadn’t been able to see because of the tent in the way, a young woman leaped up. When she saw me charging, paddle poised to deliver a maiming blow, she screamed again. Which made me stop in my tracks.

“What the hell?” the big man hollered.

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry.” I lowered the paddle.

I stood at the edge of the campsite clearing, feeling about as foolish as I’d ever felt. The young woman, a teenager, maybe fifteen, hurried next to the man, seeking his protection. He moved her behind him, put down his coffee cup, and said, “Who the hell are you and what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“O’Connor,” I said. “My name’s O’Connor. And I thought you were someone else.”

“Someone you want to kill?” the man said.

“I heard her scream,” I said, using the paddle to point toward the young woman.

“A spider,” she said. “Big as my hand. It’s gone now.”

“Probably a wolf spider,” I said. “They’re harmless.”

The man reached for a hatchet whose head had been sunk into one of the logs near the firepit. He wrenched it free and held it between us.

“Just let me explain,” I said.

“Okay,” he said warily. “Explain.”

It was a long story, and I tidied up the ending a bit so as not to be too graphic about the dead man I’d left behind.

“Jesus,” the girl said. “They killed him?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And you just left him there?” I couldn’t tell whether the man disapproved or whether he simply didn’t believe me.

“No choice. I need to find these men if I’m going to save my friend. You didn’t happen to see them pass by here, did you?”

“Nobody’s come by this morning,” the young woman said.

The man gave her a look meant to silence her. Over the years, I’d given that same look to my children on many occasions. I was thinking maybe they were father and daughter.

“Why should we believe any of this?” the man said.

“You don’t have to. I know what I need to know now. I’ll leave you be.”

“Where are you going?” the young woman asked, as if she were concerned for my safety. I decided I liked her.

“There’s another way off Shrike Lake. They must’ve gone that way.”

“Paternoster,” the man said. He studied me a long time. Then he said, “You shouldn’t go after those guys alone.”