Page 63 of God’s Country

“You don’t smoke?” I asked Stan.

“Filthy habit,” he said. “I keep telling him it’ll kill him.”

“I’ll be dead long before these things get me,” Ollie said.

“Why?” I said.

“None of the Kennedy men live to a ripe old age. Usually they die of lead poisoning.” He gave a bitter sort of laugh. “Bullets. Get it?”

“Either that, or they die in prison,” Stan added.

Ollie eyed me with a sneer. “Bet all your people die peacefully in their beds.”

“My father was killed by a bullet that clipped his heart.”

Both men looked surprised, and after a long moment, Stan said, “How’d that happen?”

I told them how my father had died as a result of a shoot-out with men who’d escaped from prison and robbed the bank in Aurora. They were trying to get away to Canada, just like the two brothers. I told them how he was shot pulling a deaf woman out of the line of fire.

“So, you lost your old man when you were thirteen? Sucks.” In all the time I’d been with the Kennedy brothers, it was the first note of compassion I’d heard come from Ollie. “Still, he was a cop. What do you expect?”

“Shut up,” Stan snapped.

That put a damper on our conversation. For a while, we just listened to the sounds of the wilderness at night. It was too early in the year for crickets, but there was a chorus of tree frogs and bullfrogs, and a whip-poor-will, and far off, the ghostly sound of two loons calling.

Then we heard the wild thrashing. It was in the woods to the north, coming our way. Ollie leaped up, stared wide-eyed in that direction, and uttered, “What the hell? Another bear?”

The crashing came nearer, accompanied by grunts and moans.

“Jesus, it’s big!” Ollie cried out. “Get the gun! Get the gun!”

The noise stopped for a few moments, whatever had been causing it hidden behind the sumac only a dozen yards away. Ollie stood frozen now, his face in the firelight glistening with sweat. Then the thrashing began again, but this time moving away to the east.

“What the hell was that?” Ollie looked at me, still clearly shaken.

“The Windigo,” I said in a mysterious voice.

“The what?”

“You don’t know about the Windigo?”

“Never heard of it. But it must be big.”

“Sit down,” I said. “I’ll tell you about the Windigo.”

Ollie sat. And in the flickering firelight, I began.

CHAPTER 35

“The Windigo is a cannibal beast,” I said. “It has a heart of ice and an insatiable hunger for human flesh. It smells of rot and decay and curdled blood. And if you hear it call your name, you better look out. You’re the one it’s hunting.”

“That’s bullshit,” Ollie said.

“Everyone thinks that until their name is called.”

“It wasn’t always a beast,” Stan said.

“You know about the Windigo?” I asked.