On the state highway just beyond the limits of Aurora stood a big marquee, a neon bow that shot a neon arrow in the direction of a newly paved road through a stand of white pines. “Chippewa Grand Casino,” the marquee proclaimed; “ј Mile To A Jackpot Of Good Times And Good Food.”
Growing up in Aurora, Cork had often traveled the road through the white pines. The road was gravel then and the pines part of a large county park. At that time the quarter mile led to a ball field and a huge picnic area shaded by maples and a long stretch of beach on the lake. A year ago the land had been sold to the Iron Lake band of Ojibwe so they could build a gambling casino. Under federal law, property purchased by a tribal entity became tribal land, exempt from the prohibition against gaming that constrained non-Native American landholders. Initially there had been a good deal of objection to the sale. Rust River, a good trout stream, ran through the land. Trout fisherman and conservationists questioned whether the stream would be ruined. Construction of the casino was to be bankrolled by a loan from Great North Development, and Sandy Parrant did a bangup job of assuring everyone that not only the quality of the trout fishing, but the beauty of the land itself would be preserved. He’d kept his promise. The white pines and the stream had been untouched. The ball field had become the casino parking lot. Only the maples of the shaded picnic area were razed and in their place rose the copper dome of the casino.
As Cork drove down the road through the pines, he thought, as he often did, of the lines of a poem whose title he couldn’t recall: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.” The casino was ninety thousand square feet of pure white brick, glass, and glinting copper. It sat in the clearing with a great apron of parking lot in front of it. Behind was a beautifully sculptured landscape where the trout stream ran unspoiled. Through the trees, the broad flat white of the lake was visible. The parking lot had already been plowed and dozens of cars were parked. Snow lay several inches deep on many of them, indicating they’d been there all night. Although it was possible people had been trapped by the storm, it was just as possible they would have been there all night anyway. Gambling, Cork had come to understand, affected some people in an odd way. Not unlike fishing. Fisherman would drive their pickups and four-wheelers out onto thin ice risking their necks just to catch a damn fish. Some gamblers took the same kind of chance at a blackjack table.
Although the casino was well lit inside, it seemed dark compared with the incredible brightness of the snowy morning. There didn’t seem to be much action, but the day was young.
Cork caught sight of Ernie Meloux, old Henry Meloux’s nephew, crossing the floor between empty blackjack tables, heading toward the Boundary Waters coffee shop. Cork followed and joined him just as Ernie was bending to a cup of coffee at the counter.
“Hey, Ernie, what’s up?”
Ernie nodded toward his coffee. “Getting a jump start on the day. How’s it going, Cork?”
“No complaints.”
Ernie was a small, square man, tightly built, with a mist of gray just beginning to surface through his short black hair. He sipped his coffee and played with a small strip of silver metal the size of an address label that he spun around on the countertop.
“Seen your uncle lately?” Cork asked.
“Last night. Came in here just like he’d stepped off a bus instead of walking through that damn storm. He’s a hoot, Uncle Henry is.”
“Where is he now?”
“I gave him a ride back to Crow Point on my snowmobile after I was finished here. You know, I believe he wouldn’t’ve thought anything about hoofing it back.”
“I gave him a lift into town. He was talking about seeing a Windigo. He say anything to you about that?”
“Windigo?” Ernie gave the metal strip a spin with his finger. It went round and round like a top. “Didn’t say a thing. Just bummed a cigarette and asked where Russell Blackwater was.”
“He came all the way here in the middle of that storm just to talk to Russ?”
Ernie shrugged. “I gave up trying to figure that old man a long time ago. Maybe you should talk to Russell.” Ernie jabbed a thumb toward the far side of the coffee shop, where Blackwater sat alone reading a newspaper.
“Maybe I will.” Cork nodded at the little strip of metal Ernie was fidgeting with. “What’ve you got there?”
“This?” Ernie picked it up and looked at it with mock admiration. “This is what I spend most of my time doing. Putting these little doohickeys on all the equipment that comes in.”
Cork took it and looked carefully at the word embossed in black across the metal. GameTech. “Why?”
“Got me,” Ernie replied. “But they pay me damn near fifteen bucks an hour to do it. A whole sight better’n pumping gas out at the Tomahawk Truck Plaza.”
“Fifteen bucks an hour?” Cork whistled. “Need an assistant?”
“To put these things on?” He took back the GameTech strip, put it on the counter, and set it spinning again. “Windigo, huh? My uncle really thought he saw one?”
“Seemed to.”
“If he says he did, he did.” Ernie glanced at his watch, picked up the metal strip, and stood up. “Time to get to work. Got a box of these suckers calling my name. Merry Christmas, Cork.”
“Same to you.”
When Ernie had gone, Cork considered Russell Blackwater. In his late thirties, tall, powerfully built, Blackwater was a striking man but far from handsome. When Blackwater had been a young militant member of AIM, his nose had been broken during a violent confrontation in the Minneapolis office of the BIA and it had never been set. Consequently, it looked like the nose of an inept prize fighter, squashed and crooked. He also bore a long scar across his left temple, the legacy of a knife fight he never spoke about. But the aspect of Blackwater’s appearance that Cork always found least appealing was his eyes. They were dark and calculating, what Sam Winter Moon had once called “hungry hunter’s eyes.” Russ Blackwater was a man Cork had never trusted.
He was the son of Vernon Blackwater, who, until his recent death, had been chairman of the tribal council, as well as a prosperous businessman on the reservation, operating a lumber mill in Allouette. Russell was one of the few college graduates from the rez. When he returned to help run the lumber mill, he came with his black hair long and braided. He dressed in beaded vests or an old jean jacket with the AIM insignia on the back. He rode a Harley-Davidson chopper. The reservation elders viewed him with caution, watching his hungry hunter’s eyes carefully whenever he spoke before the tribal council. But he had a large following among the younger Anishinaabe. He had frequently given Cork a hard time as sheriff, haranguing him for being part of an establishment and a system bent on the continued subjugation of the people of his own blood. Cork had tolerated that, even understood it, and although he never admitted it out loud, he often wrestled with the conflict in his own heritage.
Now that Russell Blackwater was manager of the Chippewa Grand Casino, he kept his hair cut short. Instead of beaded vests, he wore a charcoal suit and wingtips.
Blackwater was eating an omelette while he read the newspaper. He put down his fork and paper as Cork approached. “A little early to be messing around with that slut Lady Luck, isn’t it, Cork?”
“I’m not here to gamble, Russ. I understand Henry Meloux was looking for you last night.”
“So I heard.”
“You didn’t talk to him?”
“I wasn’t here at all yesterday. My father’s funeral,” he reminded Cork somberly.
“Any idea what Meloux wanted to see you about?”
“Probably wanted to apologize for not making it to the funeral. They were old friends, him and my father.”
Blackwater went back to eating his breakfast.
“I suppose you’ve heard about the judge.”
“What about him?”
“Dead. Killed himself, looks like.”
“The judge?” Blackwater snorted. “I don’t believe it.”
“Wrapped his mouth around the barrel of a shotgun.”
Blackwater paused and considered a forkful of omelette. “How do you know this?”
“I was there after it happened. I saw him.”
“What were you doing? You’re not the fucking law anymore.”
“An accident. I was looking for Paul LeBeau.”
“Darla’s kid?”
Cork nodded. “He’s missing. Word is that Joe John’s back.”
“Joe John?” Blackwater smiled. “I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Last I heard he was panhandling on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. I don’t think he’ll ever be sober enough to find his way back here.”
“Where’d you hear about the panhandling?”
“I heard.” Blackwater shrugged.
“Seen Darla this morning? I wanted to talk to her about Paul and Joe John.”
“She called in sick.” Blackwater gave Cork a cold grin. “You really like asking questions, don’t you? Bet you really miss that uniform, Cork. Just another white man without it.”
“You know, Russ, in those clothes you look like just another white man, too. See you around.”