Chasing a Blond Moon(148)

“Santinaw, me and Service came to talk with you,” Mecosta yelled from the front of the cabin.

The old man stepped outside, holding a pipe. His loose, shoulder-length hair was bright purple and lime green, and he was smiling.

“Young Service,” he said with a big smile. “Lucky you got here at all, following Jake. Come in, come in.”

The interior was tight and dry and warm, a small fire going in a wood stove. There were cured furs on the walls, tools, rifles, a honed crosscut saw, a shelf filled with old crocks and bottles, and a rack with fishing rods. The wooden floor was shiny from use, no dust.

Jake and Service put their packs on a small table, opened them, dug out the contents. Coffee, tea bags, brown sugar, snuff, pipe tobacco, matches, aluminum foil, duct tape, smoked whitefish, some cigars. “For you,” Mecosta said.

Santinaw ignored the goods, asked them to sit. “Just about to make some tea,” he said. “I took honey off a bear.”

“We saw a bear on the way here.”

Santinaw smiled. “That’s him. The tyke’s been hanging around ever since I took his honey, hoping I’ll share. I might, but don’t be tellin’ him. Good to keep bears and women guessing.”

St. Andrew put on a teakettle and sat down with his visitors.

Mecosta touched his own hair, said to the old man, “That the new look in Rock River country?”

“Got a woman over to Eben. Her idea. Said it makes me look like a rock star, whatever that is.”

Mecosta smiled. “How old, twenties?”

Santinaw pursed his lips. “She’s a mature woman—thirty at least.”

Mecosta looked at Service and rolled his eyes.

“We need help,” Service said, and told the man the whole story of the murders, the blue boat, the bear, everything.

Santinaw listened without interrupting.

“You think they brought this animal up into the Laughing Whitefish country?” he asked when Service had finished.

“I’m guessing,” Service said. “They sank the boat off the point for a reason. If they were going to transfer it to a truck, they could’ve done that elsewhere.” In Hancock, for example.

“You say this is a sacred bear?” Santinaw asked.

“Not sacred—rare. And if it’s real, maybe the only one of its kind that anybody’s seen.”

“That makes it sacred,” the old man said.

“You’ve been all over the area,” Jake Mecosta said.

Service said, “We’re looking for a camp, not sure of the size, but we figure it’s isolated, not that easy to get to. Probably not on the lake.”

“Be easier if you knew the owner,” Santinaw said.

“We think the people we’re looking for are Asian: Korean or Chinese. They’ve brought the animal here for a reason, maybe to sell it.”

“I’m not a holy man. I don’t see futures,” Santinaw said. “Except in bed with that woman in Eben. I always know what she’s going to do.”

“Like dye your hair?”

“I didn’t see that one coming,” Santinaw said with a wink. “You know maw-wi-win a-tik-a-meg.”

“Weeping whitefish,” Service said.

Santinaw nodded. “Your father taught you well, young Service. We fought together, you know; Guadalcanal, Okinawa, all those places, a long time ago. Too much blood, too much blood.”

Service thought they were about to lose him, but the old man recovered, heard the teakettle whistling, filled cups, added tea bags, let them steep. “Ja-ga-nash, the English, could not read a brown face. They came here and found many whitefish in the river, took the fish, did not offer to share, saw some of our people crying and thought they were laughing.”

He paused. “They cried not for the fish. Match-i manito lived up the river, above the lake in the canyon ma-da-gam-ish-ka ni-di.”

“Where the water moves quickly?” Service said. “I’m a little rusty. Match-i man-i-to?”

“I can’t speak it at all,” Jake said.

“Yes, fast water, above the lake. Matchi manito is the one ja-ga-nash called the devil. To us that is matchi or wa-ni-sid—unclean.”

“An evil spirit.”

“For Christians, the evil one, but our people knew him since time began. He would come to that place above the river to do things that would make our people cry.”

“But there’s no place for a camp up that way,” Mecosta said.

“Now,” Santinaw said. “Now.”

He got up, added honey to their tea, dumped two huge spoons of sugar into each, and gave the cups to his guests.

“It is true,” Santinaw said. “Nin ba-ba-mosse, ond-jish-ka-osse, bi-jiba-osse, qwai-a-kosse, be-dosse, ki-ji-ka, nan-do-dish-kig.”