Page 87 of God’s Country

“You came to me expecting a miracle. I do not deal in miracles, although I know them to be true things. I believe there is a miracle waiting for you, but it is not here.”

I could feel it coming, like a wave on the horizon, mounting and mounting until it finally crested and broke over me. Sorrow so overwhelming that I began to weep uncontrollably.

“I’m not sorry, Henry,” I sobbed. “My heart is still so full of anger. But I don’t want to be this thing I’ve become. I want to be who I was before. I want everything to be like it was before.”

The old man shook his head. “In every moment, the world becomes a different place. We can never go back to the moment before.”

“And how to go ahead into the next moment, Henry? Tell me that.”

“I already have.”

I stared at him through a mist of tears. “Back into the wilderness? Henry, I’m afraid.”

“You have been afraid before.”

“Not like this. Not afraid of myself. Afraid of who I am now.”

“You are who you always were. You have never been one thing. No human ever is. We are the lion and we are the lamb. We are the rock and we are the wind. We are the creator and we are the destroyer. You are no different.”

“I’ve killed before but always with regret. This time is different. And now I wonder, am I only the destroyer?”

“What I see before me is a regretful man.”

“I would kill that bastard again in an instant,” I snapped. Then I looked into the eyes of the kindest man I’ve ever known, and I said, “You don’t see me at all. You don’t see my soul. You don’t see the darkness there.” I stood up. “I’m done, Henry. It’s clear you can’t help me. I’m leaving.”

“Your choice,” he said. “But I offer you this in parting. In the hearts of humans, there are always two wolves fighting. In the heart of the Creator, there is only love.”

“I don’t know what that means, Henry.”

“Return to the wilderness and I believe you will.”

I left him sitting there, calm as ever, and now he was the focus of my anger. Rainy and Prophet sat together on the wood bench outside the cabin.

“Let’s go,” I said to Rainy harshly.

She and Prophet stood, and they both looked at me with what I interpreted as disapproval.

“The hell with this place.” I turned to walk away. I didn’t care if Rainy followed.

She did, of course, but said nothing as we took the path back to the double-trunk birch where she’d parked her car. She didn’t say a word the whole way home, which was good, because I wasn’t sure if I could control the anger inside me.

I stepped into the house on Gooseberry Lane, the house I’d lived in most of my life, and was shocked at how alien it felt to me now. The quiet. The comfort. The warm greetings from Jenny and Rose and Waaboo. I let them hug me, but I couldn’t bring myself to return their affection. They didn’t seem to notice the smell of my days in the Boundary Waters or the stench of death that I was sure poured off me.

It was Waaboo who spoke the truth. He stepped back and looked up at me curiously. “Baa-baa?” he asked, as if the man before him was an impostor. Then he said, “You’re not you.”

Of them all, he was the one I most wanted not to be afraid of me. I smiled. “I just need a bath.”

He shook his head. “That won’t help.”

“Of course it will,” Rose said. “Go and clean up, Cork. I’ve got a meat loaf in the oven. I’ll bet you haven’t eaten a good meal in days.”

I left them and went upstairs. I shed my filthy clothes, wanting more than anything to somehow cleanse the deepest part of myself. I was responsible for the murder of an innocent human being, and in the end, I had become a murderer, too. As Waaboo had so clearly seen, I was not me anymore. I stood at the sink, eyeing the man in the mirror, wondering who was this stranger looking back at me.

CHAPTER 49

I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Rainy breathe gently beside me. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t erase from my mind the image of the paddle blade cutting into a man’s neck, releasing a fountain of blood. I realized that my hands were fisted, as if I was still holding tight to the murder weapon. Murder, that’s what it was. I was pretty sure that when I maneuvered through the justice system, the court would call it justifiable homicide. But I knew the truth. Murder was what had been in my heart.

As quietly as I could, I finally got out of bed. I put on my robe and went downstairs to the kitchen. When I turned on the light, I saw that Ernie was staring at me, that enigmatic smile on his lips. I removed his head and took a cookie from his belly, poured myself a mug of milk, and sat at the kitchen table.