The Ravens (4 page)

THE
NEXT
DAY
he was driving aimlessly through the streets of Duluth when he caught sight of the redbrick building that housed the Great Lakes Aquarium. The building drew his attention in an inexplicable way, luring and enticing him, as if promising that it contained something he needed.

After he bought a ticket and hung his jacket in the cloakroom, he stood in the middle of the huge hall, his mind blank as he looked around. The few other visitors who were present only served to make the place seem emptier; both their bodies and their voices seemed to disappear inside the space. Outside the windows on the east wall the white icy expanse stretched out until it met the blue sky at a razor-sharp divide. Only the small, dark figures of the ice fishermen broke the perfect barrenness out there.

The aquarium’s three huge fish tanks rose vertically through the central part of the building, looking rather like giant test tubes filled with water and fish. Consequently, the middle of the building was open all the way up to the glass roof high overhead. In these tanks the fish swam in various layers through the water, clearly distributed according to the depth that each species preferred. At the very bottom were several sturgeon—big, prehistoric-looking fish, maybe five feet long.

Lance closed his eyes for a moment and listened. The whole aquarium was pervaded by the steady, bubbling sound of oxygen
being pumped into the various tanks. The sound vaguely reminded him of being underwater. It was the lake that had lured and enticed him. Because the lake was inside here too, in the bubbling from the tanks, in a silvery fish flapping its tail fin in the light shining through the glass roof, and in the sensation that he was underwater. Lance knew that the moment he opened his eyes, he would see the lake’s frozen nothingness stretching out toward the horizon.

When he did open his eyes, he felt a flicker of fear pass through his brain, and instantly began moving away from the center of the big, vaulted space.

There were no other visitors in the room with the model of the Great Lakes. Gratefully Lance sank down onto a chair at the western end and let his gaze wander over the huge display table, many square feet in size. On exhibit was an exact model of America’s five Great Lakes and the surrounding terrain. The cities were marked by tiny houses and bridges. The old Aerial Bridge in Duluth, which was the town’s most prominent landmark, was not depicted to scale; instead, it was larger than the tallest buildings. If Lance leaned forward and stretched out his arm, he would be able to touch it, but he didn’t like the thought of touching his own world from above, as if he were some sort of giant in a comic book. A freighter was also included in the display, no doubt loaded with taconite. He could have picked it up between his thumb and forefinger to lift it high above the lake with water pouring in a steady stream off the hull, and then he could have tossed it against the mountain ridge, where it would have crushed a countless number of old wooden houses along with the people inside. Suddenly everyone who was outside would be craning their necks to stare in terror at the giant looming overhead in the sky. His hand alone was larger than the biggest building in town. The streets of his childhood would be filled with the sounds of panic. But wasn’t there something familiar about that enormous face? It was so big and round and reached so high into the sky that it almost looked like the sun. Sooner or later someone would shout: It’s Lance Hansen! Look how big he is! Yes, and how horrible, someone would add. Look how he’s destroying our whole world. Why is he doing that?

Through the window at the other end of the room Lance could see the ice fishermen sitting next to the holes in the ice, waiting for something to bite. Their lines reached down into the depths, and no one knew what they might catch.

One time he had stood at the deepest spot in the lake, 1,332 feet below the surface, and felt the marrow in his joints start to freeze. During the nearly eight years that had passed since he’d had that dream, Lance had never awakened with even a scrap of a dream in his head. Not even with a feeling that he might have dreamed something but had simply forgotten what it was. For him, sleep was merely a big nothingness into which he disappeared every night. As he sat there studying the model of the five Great Lakes, and as the ice fishermen jigged their lines in the westernmost part of the real Lake Superior, Lance felt his inability to dream like a nutritional deficiency that was eating him up from the inside.

Lance got up, leaning his hands on the edge of the big display table and bending forward over Lake Superior. Even the rivers that emptied into the lake were depicted. There he saw the Temperance River, where he’d parked his car before starting the last drive of the deer hunt. And there the Cross River entered the lake. A tiny cross marked the place where Father Frederic Baraga had miraculously survived a storm in August 1846 when he was on his way to Grand Portage to help the Ojibwe who were suffering from smallpox. It was near Baraga’s Cross that Lance had discovered the murdered body of Georg Lofthus. And it was there that he’d lain on his back a few months ago and listened to Andy topple backward into the underbrush after the shot was fired. Only a few inches farther along the shoreline was the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, marked by a canoe floating on the water. The canoe was as big as the freighter that was docked in Duluth, and when Lance leaned closer, he saw a man sitting in the canoe, holding on to a tiny paddle. That’s Willy, he thought. He didn’t know where the thought came from, but once it took hold, he couldn’t get rid of it. Down there, paddling the canoe, was his former father-in-law Willy Dupree. Lance thought about the Ojibwe relationship to dreams and how it had always governed their lives. He leaned even closer to the canoe and the tiny
man sitting inside. Willy couldn’t see the gigantic face hovering above him, but Lance hoped that he would somehow sense it was there.

“Help Lance dream again,” whispered the face.

AFTER
TAKING
a long and complicated route through the snow-covered forests and along icy waters, Lance pulled up in front of Willy Dupree’s house in the Grand Portage Indian Reservation. It was almost midnight, but for safety’s sake, he parked behind the garage so his car couldn’t be seen from the road.

He felt a great warmth flood his chest when Willy opened the door.

“Come in,” said the old man.

More than two months had passed since the last time Lance was here. That was back in November, and he and Andy had finished the first day of their deer hunt. What happened on the second day hadn’t yet taken place. No ice storm, no shot fired in the dark, or the sound of Andy falling backward with icicles clinking all around. But as Lance took off his coat in the hall, he remembered that he’d had blood on his hands. He’d hit a cat as he was driving out to see Willy, and he’d been forced to kill it with a wrench. And the more he’d struck the poor animal, the more pleasure it had given him. His hands had been spattered with blood, and there were also drops on his face, like dark freckles on his nose and cheeks. Willy had pointed this out to him, but not until Lance was about to leave. During his entire visit the old man had sat there looking at the blood on his hands and face without saying a word or asking any questions.

When they were each settled in an easy chair, Lance dutifully
ate one of the cookies that Mary was always baking, a painful reminder of the normal life he’d once lived. Then Willy clasped his hands over his stomach and gave his ex-son-in-law a solemn look.

“You might as well tell me the whole story, don’t you think?” he said.

On the phone Lance had merely said that he wasn’t in Norway but in Ely, and that he needed to talk to Willy.

“I can’t.”

“Then tell me what you can.”

“Okay. So, I’ll start with the obvious. I’m not in Norway. I didn’t go there at all. And if I know myself, I’ll never go there. Instead, I’ve been in Kenora, in Canada, and I spent two months there, lying in bed in a hotel room, watching TV. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I came back here to the States. Right now I’m staying in Ely.”

“But aren’t you working anymore?”

“I’ve got tons of vacation days saved up. I could practically take off a whole year, if I wanted to.”

“So you’re actually on
vacation?
” asked Willy.

“Sort of.”

“But why? Why the whole story about Norway? Jimmy got postcards from there. What exactly are you doing?”

“That’s what I can’t tell you. You just have to trust me, the way I trust you. You can’t tell anyone about this, not even Jimmy. You’re the only one I can trust, Willy.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I’m part Indian,” said Lance.

Except for the ticking of the clock on the wall, the room was utterly silent. Lance stared at the two old photographs hanging on the wall over the sofa. A man and a woman with white hair and sunken, toothless mouths in furrowed Indian faces. Under them hung a dream catcher that was gray with age. Several minutes passed as neither Lance nor Willy spoke.

“What do you mean, you’re an Indian?” Willy said at last.

“One of my great-grandmothers was Ojibwe.”

“When did you find out about this?”

“Sometime last summer.”

“And you haven’t told anyone until now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Lance paused before replying.

“I guess I’m afraid it will change things,” he said.

“But you already know,” said Willy. “And Jimmy is Ojibwe, no matter what. So who’s it going to change things for? Your brother and his family? Your mother? Do you really think it would turn their lives upside down if they found out that this great-grandmother of yours was Ojibwe?”

“I know it sounds stupid, but . . .”

“Could it be that you’re the one you’re protecting by not saying anything?”

“Maybe that’s what I’m always doing,” Lance said. “Protecting myself by acting as if I’m protecting others.”

“So what is it you wanted to talk to me about? Do you want to be made a member of the tribe?” Willy’s shoulders shook briefly with soundless laughter.

“I’m just wondering whether it
means
anything,” said Lance, feeling a bit insulted. “For instance, does it mean that I belong here in some other way than I previously thought?”

He could see that the old man gave the question serious consideration.

“Depends what you decide to make of it. The fact is there for you to use. Or not use. It’s an opportunity for you to belong in a different way, but it’s up to you.”

It was comforting to listen to the soothing, familiar voice of Willy Dupree, to be addressed by someone who was older and knew more, and not have to bear everything alone.

“But there’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?” said Willy after a moment.

For a few seconds Lance was tempted to tell him everything, about the murder, about Andy, and about the shot in the dark on that Sunday in November. But he stopped himself. He wasn’t sure that Willy would keep quiet about a serious crime. The most serious crime of all. For the first time in ages Lance felt himself waver. Maybe the only way out of this mess was to call the FBI agent Bob Lecuyer and tell him everything he knew; accept the probable
punishment for withholding information, obstructing the police investigation, and so on. Let the whole thing run its course, and possibly send Andy to prison for life. Continuing on like this was no longer an option, at any rate.

“You’re right,” said Lance. “Something has been bothering me lately, but you won’t believe me when I tell you what it is.”

“What is it?” asked Willy.

“Are you superstitious?”

“What does superstition really mean? One man’s superstition can be another man’s faith. I trust people that I know I can trust.”

“Am I one of those people?”

“Yes, even though you have a lot of secrets.”

“Okay, well, here’s one of them. On four separate occasions, I’ve seen Swamper Caribou.”

Lance held up four fingers.

A look of boyish curiosity lit up Willy’s face. “Where?” he asked.

“The first time was on Highway 61, near Silver Cliff. The second time he was sitting in a canoe not far from the lighthouse in Grand Marais. That was on the Fourth of July, by the way. Next time I saw him sitting on the lakeshore just north of Grand Marais. He was just sitting there, staring straight ahead. And the last time I saw him in the woods when we were out deer hunting in November. Also near the lake, between the Temperance and Cross Rivers.”

“And how do you know it was Swamper Caribou?”

“I just know.”

Willy nodded.

“Does he scare you?”

“What scares me is that I can see someone nobody else sees,” replied Lance. “That makes me feel very alone.”

“Lots of people have seen Swamper Caribou’s ghost,” said Willy.

“But nobody that I know.”

“No, but other—”

“Ojibwe,” said Lance.

“Yes.”

“Do you think that’s why I see him too? Because I have Ojibwe blood?”

“I don’t know,” said Willy. “I don’t know enough about these kinds of things. But do you want him to stop appearing to you?”

“Yes.”

“Have you tried thinking about him before you fall asleep?”

“I’ve tried that lots of times.”

“Have you ever dreamed about him after doing that?”

Lance shook his head.

“No? Because it’s possible to decide who you want to dream about. At least to a certain extent,” Willy added. “I do that myself sometimes.”

“But why would I want to see him in my dreams too?”

“Because that’s the only place you can reach him. And when you meet him in your dreams, you can ask him what he wants from you. Why he’s appearing to you. Then maybe you can put an end to it.”

“Are you serious?” said Lance, in surprise.

“Sure. What would
you
suggest? Have you got his phone number or something?”

“No, but . . . the problem is that I never dream.”

“Of course you do. Everybody dreams.”

“I haven’t had a single dream in almost eight years,” said Lance.

Willy was about to say something, but he didn’t. It looked as if something had started to dawn on him.

“Not even one?”

“No. And the strange thing is that I never used to care about dreams, but now I’d be willing to do almost anything to dream again.”

“You can’t live a proper life without dreaming,” said Willy.

“Why not?”

“It’s through dreams that the other world speaks to us. If you’re in touch only with the visible world, you’re only half alive. But it’s important to find the right balance between both worlds; too much of either of them is never a good thing. I once heard a story about a man who was born without the ability to dream. As an adult he went to see a medicine man to ask for advice. Since
he’d never dreamed, he didn’t miss it, but he’d heard other people talk about their dreams, and he envied them. The medicine man instructed him to build a dream bed and gave him specific rules to follow as he fasted, and so on—all essential to dreaming the Big Dream.”

“The Big Dream?” said Lance.

“It’s the one dream that will tell you who you really are and how you should live your life. Few people do it today, but this happened long ago. The medicine man offered guidance, and soon the man was fasting and sleeping at his chosen spot in the woods. But after he’d been gone for a week, two of his brothers went out to visit him. They found him in a deep sleep, and it was impossible to wake him up. Between them they carried their slumbering brother back to the village. After that he became a popular attraction, and people came from far away to see him. He became known as the ‘sleeping man.’ I think he lived more than twenty years in that sleeping state. If he had any dreams, the story makes no mention of them. Personally, I don’t know which would be worse—twenty years spent in the labyrinth of the dream world or twenty years in an unconscious state of sleep, as if he were already dead. It’s hard to know, isn’t it?”

Lance didn’t know what to say to that, but he suddenly had an idea.

“So does it work?” he asked. “Fasting until you have the Big Dream?”

“Probably not for everybody, but it worked for me, anyway.”

“You’ve done it?”

“My father coached me. I built a dream bed high up in a tree and began fasting. On the third night I dreamed the Big Dream.”

“What was it like?”

“Well, it was a dream like any other, but it showed me my spirit guide, a figure in the spirit world that is always with me and that I can turn to in special situations. To ask for advice, for instance. But I guess this sounds like a lot of superstitious foolishness to you.”

“Not foolishness, but very strange,” said Lance. “Not that I haven’t heard about this sort of thing before, because I have, both from Mary and other people. And I’ve read a bit about it too, but
hearing you talk about it as something in your own life makes it seem even stranger and at the same time more real.”

Willy nodded to show that he understood.

“It’s real if you choose to make it real,” he said. “It’s totally up to you.”

“I do want to dream again,” said Lance.

“But the dreams won’t come?”

“No. It’s like a frozen faucet. Not a drop. Not even any rushing sound in the pipes. How do I go about fasting so I can dream again?”

“You just need to fast. It’s as simple as that. You’re actually supposed to build a dream bed, a platform up in a tree, so that you’re lying high up under the open sky, but I wouldn’t recommend it when the temp is twenty below. I’m sure you can do it just as well at home.”

“Or at the motel?”

“Sure. Why not? Maybe you could still make some kind of dream bed by arranging a place to sleep on the floor so it’s different from other nights. The important thing is to fast.”

“But I won’t be able to sleep if I’m hungry.”

“Hungry?” Willy sounded annoyed. “Do you think this has anything to do with going to bed hungry? I’m talking about self-deprivation, Lance. Torture. You need to suffer until you have a vision.”

“But . . . won’t that cause permanent damage?”

“Not at all. You can survive for several weeks without food. Just be sure to drink some water. And take a few vitamins along with a little salt.”

“Do you think it will work for me?”

“Yes, I do. But you have to
choose
to do this. And make it part of your reality. As I said, it’s up to you.”

Then there was a long pause—not the uncomfortable kind that clamors to be ended but a natural pause, as if the conversation were taking a break. Lance considered the idea of fasting, which was a foreign concept for him. He was not a Catholic, a Muslim, or an Indian; he was a Protestant American with roots in Halsnøy, Norway. His people did not fast. They worked hard, ate healthy meals, and went to bed early. That was how Lance
had always lived, but if he had any hope of dreaming again, he needed to choose another way. He was convinced of that. And what would be more natural than to take the option that was part of his own past, Nanette’s option? In spite of everything, she was also part of his ancestry, and he carried her blood, although perhaps not to the same extent as his Norwegian blood. Yet it was still just as real.

“But what a man of your age needs, first and foremost, is a woman,” said Willy after a moment. “Then you wouldn’t care about all these dream problems. Or Swamper Caribou. A young man like you should be thinking about completely different sorts of things. Oh, to be your age again! I don’t mean to get too personal, but you really ought to find yourself a girlfriend.”

“And why are you so certain that I don’t have one?”

Willy threw out his hands, a small gesture that encompassed the whole situation. The two men sitting there at midnight, talking about ghosts and dreams while Lance’s car was parked out of sight behind the garage, and no one was supposed to know that he was here in the United States.

“In fact, I do have a girlfriend,” said Lance.

“Really?” Willy looked surprised.

“I think so.”

“You
think
so?”