A Stolen Season

Steve Hamilton
Chapter One

From the beginning, everything about the night was wrong.

Everything.

It was cold. That was the first thing. It was cold and there was a wet fog hanging over the water. The kind of fog that creeps into your bones, no matter how many layers you’re wearing. The cold gets into your lungs and chills you from the inside out.

I was in Brimley, too-the last place I’d expect to be. It’s normally just a stop on the road, halfway around the bay if you’re driving from Paradise to Sault Ste. Marie. There are two restaurants in town, with two different strategies for serving liquor, one of life’s essentials on a night like this. Willoughby’s has a separate bar in back, and the Cozy switches over at nine o’clock every night, when everyone under twenty-one is kicked out. There’s one gas station with a little store on the side, and that’s about it, the whole town right there, just down the road from the Bay Mills Indian Community. The rez. On a clear night I could have stood there on the shore and seen the casino lights across the water. But this was anything but a clear night.

I figured Vinnie was probably over there, working at the blackjack tables, keeping order in his own quiet way. He had been a dealer for a few years. Now he was a pit boss. Vinnie’s a Bay Mills Ojibwa, even though he lives off the rez. He’s my neighbor, in fact, and one of my three last friends in the world. But I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him that night, even if he was just around the bay. I leave the man alone when he’s working. Hell, I leave him alone most of the time. That’s just the way things are with him.

Normally, I’d be back in Paradise on a night like this, spending my last waking hours at the Glasgow Inn. I’d sit in one of the big overstuffed chairs by the fire. Maybe there’d be a game on the television over the bar. Jackie Connery, the owner of the place and the Supreme Commander, was another friend. Although, unlike Vinnie, I seldom left Jackie alone. He’d never admit it, but Jackie would be lost without me, without my daily commentary on the way he makes breakfast, runs his bar, builds a fire, you name it. He tries to return the favor, but I ignore most of his advice. And his insults. Despite everything, he always has a cold Molson Canadian waiting for me, every single night without fail. He drives across the bridge to Canada once a week to buy a case for me, supposedly on his way to do something else. I think it’s just a ritual to him now. An excuse to get out from behind the bar. Either that or he really wants me to have my Molson.

Yeah, a cold beer and my feet up by the fire. That would have been another plan for this night. Instead of standing here on the edge of Waishkey Bay, in a stranger’s backyard, looking out at the cold fog. Waishkey Bay opens up into Whitefish Bay, and beyond that lies the vast unbroken surface of the biggest, coldest, deepest lake in the world. Lake Superior. I could hear it out there. I could feel it. I just couldn’t see it.

I wrapped my coat tighter around my body and tried to convince myself I didn’t need to shiver. I knew once that started, it wouldn’t stop until I went inside. I wasn’t ready to do that yet. There was too much noise in there. Too much smoke. I wanted to stay out here a little longer, by myself, looking out at the fog and what little I could make out in the night sky. Later, there would be fireworks, maybe invisible but fireworks just the same, right here over Waishkey Bay.

Yes, that was the other strange thing about this night. I was standing here cursing myself for not wearing a warmer coat on the Fourth of July.

It wasn’t right. I swear, this was not fair at all. We live for the summers up here. It’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for God’s sake, as far away from civilization as you can get without leaving the country. The winters last forever up here. Or at least they feel that way. It’s brutally, inhumanly cold. The snowstorms gather their strength from the lake and then they unleash themselves on us like they have orders from God to bury us forever. In 1995 we got six feet of snow in one day.

Twenty-four hours.

Six. Feet. Of Snow.

Most years, it doesn’t even melt until May. Then we might get a quick flash of spring. The temperature might break forty and we’re practically lying on the beach in our bathing suits. That’s how desperate we are for a little sunshine. The snow will sneak back a few times and dump a few more inches in the middle of the night. Just teasing us. Then finally the earth will tilt into position and the summer will seem to come all at once. The old joke, how summer was on a Thursday last year. That’s how brief it seems. How fleeting.

But God, what a summer it is. For one blink of an eye, this becomes the most beautiful place in the world. There’s a light up here. You have to see it to know it. The way it hits the water in the evenings. The way the wind comes off the lake and you can look all the way down a long straight road and see the trees moving one by one.

The sunsets.

The desolate, heartbreaking beauty of this goddamned place. This home of mine.

But not this year. For whatever reason, we’re skipping summer altogether. We’re rushing right back into those fall months when the lake turns into a monster. Almost overnight, six-foot waves ready to batter the great ships again. To miss out on the promise of summer, it is the cruelest thing imaginable, and everyone, every last person living up here, has been feeling it.

For me, there’s even more to regret. But not just now. No use becoming completely suicidal. It’ll be there when I finally make it home to my bed. When I close my eyes and remember what her face looks like. When I wonder what she’s doing at that very moment, five hundred miles away.

I heard footsteps behind me. I was expecting it to be Leon, my third and last friend in the whole world, and the reason why I was here in Brimley that night. But instead it was the man named Tyler. I had just met him a couple of hours ago, so I didn’t know the man. What I did know was that Tyler must have cut quite a figure back in the sixties. He still had long dark hair tied in a braid down his back. Up here in Ojibwa land, that doesn’t set you apart too much, but everything else about him did. He was wearing a bright red and green tie-dyed jacket, and it looked like he got his little round eyeglasses from John Lennon’s estate sale. From what I gathered, he’d been a musician most of his life, and he’d come up here to be the entertainment director when they opened up the bigger casino in Sault Ste. Marie. He’d bought this old house in Brimley because it had a huge garage, bigger than the house even, with plenty of room for him to work on his old cars. Within a year, he’d quit the job at the casino and had turned half the garage into a state-of-the-art recording studio. He had the whole setup in there, with the sound damping walls and the separate little room for him to sit in with all of his equipment. I couldn’t even imagine how much it all cost, or where an old hippie had gotten all that money. But apparently the studio had become a local success story, with musicians from all over the state coming up to record just a few yards away from the lake.

The best part? Aside from this guy building his own recording studio and fixing anything with four wheels, he was also a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Hair and all. Although I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Any man who can survive up here year-round has to be great at a dozen different things and pretty damned good at a dozen more.

“Can you believe this?” he said. “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a monkey. No, wait, that’s not right.”

“Brass monkey,” I said. “My father used to say that.”

“Brass monkey. Whatever that is. I’ll try to remember it.”

“Are Leon and the boys ready yet?”

“Almost,” he said, looking back at the garage. He shook his head. “As ready as they’re ever gonna be, I guess. Whaddya think of this, Alex?”

Two hours in his acquaintance, and he was already treating me like a long lost friend. Or a kindred spirit, perhaps. Somebody who seemed to think we had a lot in common, despite our outward appearances. Hell, maybe we did. God knows I could have used another friend. Jackie, Vinnie, and finally Leon. That was the whole deal right there.

Leon-I had met him at the Glasgow one night. Leon with the wild orange hair and the flannel shirt, the big local goofball that nobody had ever taken seriously, not for one second. He had come up to Paradise to fight me in the parking lot, all because he had lost his dream job as a private investigator. The lawyer who was paying him had somehow convinced me to take his place, but the job turned out to be anything but a dream. Not long after that, I found out that Leon actually knew what he was doing. And that I most definitely did not.

We were partners for a while. I still have some of the business cards he had made up. Prudell-McKnight Investigations, his name first because it sounded better that way. Or so he said. With the two guns on either side of the card, pointing at each other.

Of course, I had no desire to be a PI. With Leon as my partner or not. But that didn’t stop the trouble from finding me. I can’t even count the number of times Leon helped me. With the computer stuff, or hell, just the fact that he had a gun for me after I threw mine in the lake. I owed him my life.

I started feeling bad about it, the way I’d only go see him if I needed his help with something. I promised myself I’d make a point of taking him out to lunch every so often. Or stopping by his house, even though the sight of me still made his wife nervous.

Or watching him play. That’s right. Leon and his band. Just when I thought he was done surprising me, he called me up and told me he was getting his old band together to record a demo.

“What band?” I had said. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a rock-and-roll band. We used to play together in college.”

“At Lake State? You were in a band?”

“Yeah, we played in all the bars. Didn’t I ever tell you about that?”

“What was your band’s name, pray tell?”

“We were Leon and the Leopards back then.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“But if we really get back together, I’m sure we’ll get a new name.”

“Leon,” I had said. “You are something else.”

“Hey, if I can’t do the one thing I love the most…”

He didn’t have to finish the thought. I knew exactly where he was going. He even tried to do it on his own once. Rented the office, put his name on the door. The whole thing. It didn’t work out. He’d been working down at the custom motor shop ever since, selling snowmobiles.

“Well, music might be a distant second,” he had said. “Put it that way.”

He was the drummer, which made sense, I guess. If Leon Prudell was going to be in a rock band, it would have to be behind the drums. Just like I had to be a catcher back in my ballplaying days. It just seemed to fit my personality.

“Tell me the truth,” I said to Tyler. “Are these guys any good?”

“They’re a little rough. But they’ve got…something.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They do. It’s something.”

“You’re a master of diplomacy.”

“You gonna come back inside?”

“I was just getting some air,” I said. Truth was, I had already sat in the studio listening to them for an hour, until my head started to hurt. Between the bright lights, the noise, and for God’s sake the cigarette smoke. Either Tyler had people smoking in there in shifts, twenty-four hours a day, or else he was using the place to cure tobacco leaves. I’ve heard that they’ve all but banned indoor smoking in some states now, but the idea sure as hell hasn’t gotten to Michigan yet.

“It’s getting worse,” he said, stepping closer to his dock. “You can’t even see the Point now.”

“The Point? Where’s that?”

“It’s about a mile out. There was a lumber mill out there, long time ago. You can still see where the bridge was.”

“A bridge?”

“Look down this line. You can see the old pilings.” He gave the air a slow karate chop, and as I followed the line I started to see the dark shapes in the water. There seemed to be two separate lines of them, about five feet apart, running parallel out to where the island must have been.

“What was it, a railroad bridge?”

“Exactly. It was quicker just to go right through the bay, instead of going around. The line ran right through my backyard.”

“When did they close the mill?”

“It burned down one day, around the turn of the century. I’ve got an old newspaper picture hanging in the house.”

“And they just left those things in the water, all the way out there?”

“They go about halfway. If it wasn’t so foggy, you could see where they end. You have to watch out for them when you’re out in the boat.”

“I imagine.”

I kept looking at the old wooden pilings in the water. It looked like the backs of two long sea monsters, swimming side by side into the fog. Then I heard another voice behind me.

“Did the fireworks start yet?” It was Leon. He had a baseball cap on now, with the script D of the Detroit Tigers.

“Doesn’t matter much,” Tyler said. “We won’t be able to see them. Did you guys decide on a track yet?”

He looked back at the studio. There was a big picture window overlooking the lake, and the light was casting a faint glow on the backyard, all the way down to the water’s edge.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to record anything tonight,” he said. “I’m sorry to waste your time like this.”

“You’re not,” Tyler said. “What else would I be doing on a night like this?”

“It feels like November,” Leon said, rubbing his arms. “Whatever happened to global warming?”

We heard a faint boom just then, from somewhere around the other side of Waishkey Bay.

“They’re trying to do the fireworks,” Tyler said. “I can’t believe it.”

There was another boom. We could see a few red streamers in the air. Just barely. Michigan is already pretty loose with its fireworks laws, and on the reservation it gets even looser. You can fire off just about anything short of an intercontinental missile, but on this night it was a total waste of gunpowder. Whoever it was over there, he fired off five or six more before finally giving up.

“Well, that’s it for this year,” Tyler said. “I think summer is officially canceled.”

“Wait, what’s that sound now?” Leon said.

From inside the studio behind us, somebody ran through a few guitar chords.

“That’s your man Eugene,” Tyler said. “Pretending he’s Jimi Hendrix. Does he know how to tune that thing?”

“No, I mean out there,” Leon said.

The guitar stopped. The three of us stood there in the near silence, listening. There was a low droning noise, somewhere out on the bay. It was getting louder.

“It’s a boat,” Tyler said.

“Is it safe to be out there?”

“As long as you know where you’re going.”

“You can’t even see where you’re going.”

“You have to have the right equipment.”

The noise was getting louder.

“Whoever it is,” Leon said, “he’s going fast.”

“If he’s been here before, he can follow one of his old GPS courses…But yeah, you’re right. Even if you’re on a safe line, I don’t think you want to be going that fast. You don’t know what might get in your way.”

It got louder. It was coming closer to us.

“Wait a minute,” Tyler said. “It sounds like-”

“He’s coming this way,” Leon said.

“He can’t. Not this close. He’ll run right into the pilings.”

Louder and louder. The unmistakable roar of a powerful boat, and now that it was getting closer, the slapping of the hull against the water.

We saw it. A dark shape, moving fast. Like it was coming right at us. Like it would leap onto the shore and run us over.

“Stop!” Tyler yelled. He ran down onto his dock. “Cut your motor!”

It was useless. There was no way the driver could hear him. The boat kept coming, and then finally it turned to its port side. It wouldn’t hit the dock now. But the pilings.

“Stop! Turn around!”

It didn’t. The boat was still just a dark shape in the water, and from where we were standing we could barely tell how big it was. But one thing was certain. The realization probably hit all three of us at exactly the same time. We were about to witness something truly horrible.

I didn’t just hear the impact. I felt it in my stomach. It was the long wrenching scrape of the boat’s hull against the wooden pilings, far worse than nails on a blackboard. It all happened within two seconds. Before I could even draw another breath the boat had stopped dead. The engine was still churning at the water.

“We need to get out there,” Tyler said. He was already moving.

“Your boat…”

“It’s on land. I’ll get Phil’s.” He was heading toward his next-door neighbor’s house. “Call 911! Tell them to send an ambulance and to relay to the Coast Guard.”

Leon pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket and started dialing. As he spoke to the dispatcher, I went down to the dock and looked out at the wreck. It was maybe two hundred yards out. I had no idea how deep the water was. I was wondering if I should dive in, but decided against it. If Tyler could get a boat running, I’d be a lot more helpful riding along with him.

“I’m calling from Brimley,” I heard Leon say into his phone. “Lakeside Loop, right by where the old bridge went out to the point…No, I have no idea…No, we can’t see anybody. It’s too foggy. Yes, we’re gonna try that…Tyler Barnes is here. He’s Coast Guard Auxiliary.”

Tyler came running back down the yard, heading to the dock next to his. Leon was right behind him. By the time I got over there, they already had the boat uncovered and untied.

“Should I go grab the other guys?” Leon said.

“Don’t worry about them,” Tyler said. “We’ve got to get out there fast.”

“Get in,” I said. It was a runabout, maybe twenty feet long. “I’ll push off.”

Leon jumped into the boat. I gave it a good shove and tried to hop in over the bow. I almost made it, had to hold on tight as one leg went into the water. God, it was cold. I pulled myself up and slid in around the windshield.

“Come on,” Tyler said as he turned the key. The engine clicked but didn’t turn over. “Come on, you son of a bitch.”

“Where’s your neighbor?” Leon said. “Can he start this thing?”

“He’s not home,” Tyler said. “Good thing I know where he hangs his keys.”

He tried to start it again. Click, click, click. Then nothing.

“Start, you stupid piece of shit. Turn the hell over.”

“Tyler, those men are probably drowning out there,” I said. “We may have to swim for it.”

“Hold on,” he said. “Just hold on.”

He turned the key again and the engine finally roared to life.

“All right, you pig. Let’s move.”

As he pushed the throttle forward, the boat jumped like a startled horse and nearly threw us all overboard.

“Hang on,” he said. “Let’s go see what we can do for these guys. What the hell they were doing out there…God, did you see how fast they were going?”

“Be careful,” Leon said. “Don’t run into those things yourself.”

“I know where I’m going. Don’t worry.”

It only took us a few seconds to get out to the boat. As we got closer we could hear the whine of their engine. The propeller was still spinning hard.

“We’ve gotta kill that engine,” Tyler said. “That’s the first thing. Here, Leon. Take this.”

He gave Leon a flashlight. For the first few seconds, the beam did nothing more than reflect in the fog, but as we pulled up to the boat we got our first good look at the damage.

“Holy shit,” Tyler said. “Look at that thing.”

It was a wooden boat, one of those antique Chris-Crafts. At least twenty-five feet, with that rich polished look you see on the real showpieces. These were the boats they take down to the big Antique Wooden Boat Show in Hessel every summer. Although if this was really one of them, its show days were over. The hull was completely obliterated, with raw wooden planks sticking out in all directions.

The thing was probably worth eighty, maybe a hundred thousand dollars before the wreck. Maybe more. Now it was kindling.

“Do you see anybody yet?” Tyler slowed us down to a crawl.

“Not yet,” Leon said. In the meager light we could make out a canvas top, but it had collapsed. Now it was like a tarp covering the whole cabin.

“This might not be good,” Tyler said. The understatement of the year. I could only imagine what the sudden deceleration had done to whoever was inside this thing. The boat had stopped in an instant, but their bodies would have kept going. And even then, when their bones stopped…Their skulls…What was inside would still be moving. At that moment, I wouldn’t have given fifty cents for their chances of staying alive.

“I’ll pull up close,” Tyler said. “We have to be careful of that engine, though.”

I could see what he meant. The whole boat seemed to be shuddering, as the propeller kept trying in vain to move the whole thing forward.

“Let’s get this top off,” Leon said. He was toward the back end of the boat now. I was closer to the front, but the boat was taking on water fast, going down nose first. I had to reach down to grab the canvas. Together we each grabbed on and pulled.

“What the goddamned fuck!” a voice said from inside the boat. “What happened?”

Leon and I nodded at each other. We pulled harder on the canvas top. It was heavier than hell, but we were finally able to lift it just enough to see inside.

There were three men in the boat, all of them looking like they’d been thrown forward from where they had been sitting. The one closest to me was lying facedown on the floor, his head in the rising water.

“Grab that guy!” Tyler said. “Get his head out of the water!”

I jumped into the boat and grabbed him. He was big, and the fact that I was standing in a sinking boat now didn’t make things any easier.

“Let go of me!” he said. “Just leave me alone!”

He knocked my arms away and went back down. With a great heave he threw up everything in his stomach, all over the place. There were beer bottles floating in the water, boat cushions, a fishing pole. And now a few pints of vomit for good measure, spreading all around the boat like an oil spill.

“Cut that engine!” Tyler said.

“I can’t get to the controls,” Leon said. “This guy’s out.” He was trying to work his way around the man at the steering wheel. I could see blood on the man’s forehead.

“We shouldn’t be moving him,” Tyler said. “But I don’t think we have much choice.”

“Let me just get this thing turned off,” Leon said. He tried lifting the man with one arm and reaching for the ignition with the other. He took a small step to shift the man’s weight, and that’s when everything went crazy. Leon lost his grip and the man fell back onto the throttle, pushing it forward and just about sending us all into outer space. As I fell backward, I saw Tyler jumping into the boat like some sort of long-haired pirate. I heard the wooden hull giving way as the motor drove us against the pilings, felt the cold shock of the water on my back. The only question was how many of us would go down with the boat, or whether the propeller itself would break free and start slicing into human flesh.

I tried to pull myself up, but the big man was trying to do the same and fell right in my lap. Leon was wrestling with his own man, trying to get to the controls. The third man was on his knees now, holding his head like a fighter taking a long eight count.

“Tyler!” I yelled. “Tyler, cut the engine!”

He climbed over everybody and fell forward, stretching out toward the front of the boat. He reached for the ignition key.

The engine kept churning at the water. The noise was louder than anything else in the world.

Then finally it stopped.

In the sudden silence, I could hear every man breathing. The big man groaned, like he’d be throwing up again any second.

“Is everybody all right?” I said.

“This guy’s out,” Leon said, his fingers on the driver’s neck. “But he’s alive.”

“These other guys…,” Tyler said. He sat up slowly, holding his shoulder. “I can’t believe they’re not out, too. Maybe the boat wasn’t going as fast as it looked.”

“Or maybe we’re a lot tougher than you think,” the man on his knees said. He pulled himself up and sat down slowly on the front bench. “Who are you, anyway? What the hell is going on?”

“Come on,” Tyler said. “We’ll get you to shore.”

“Did you hit us?”

“No, of course not.”

“Did you hit us with your boat? Is that what happened?”

If I could have reached him, I would have smacked him right in the face. “You hit some old bridge pilings. Now shut up and get in the other boat.”

But when I looked out, I saw Tyler’s boat drifting away from us. It had to be fifty feet away by now.

“I got it,” he said. In one smooth motion he was back over the side of the boat, swimming with his head out of the freezing water. Hippie, musician, whatever he was-he was handling everything like a pro. If I had any doubts about him being in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, they were long gone.

“You guys hit us,” the man said again. In the dim light I could see he was in his midthirties, maybe. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket. His hair was slicked back on his head, making him look like a drowned rat. The water was up to his waist now, the whole boat going under an inch at a time. “Goddamn, that’s cold.”

“Cap, what are we going to do?” It was the big man. He was apparently done puking.

“They ruined the boat, man. Look at this thing.”

“ We ruined the boat,” the big man said. “Didn’t you see those things in the water? We ran right into them.”

The man named Cap kept holding onto his head like he had the world’s worst hangover. “I can’t even see straight. God, that hurts.”

“What about Harry?”

“What about him?”

“Oh my God, look at him.”

“Holy shit,” Cap said. “Harry!”

“Is he dead?”

“Harry!”

Both men tried to climb over to the unconscious man. Leon was holding his head up out of the water.

“Be careful!” he said. “I’m trying to keep him still.”

“Harry! God damn it! Are you alive?”

“He’s alive,” Leon said. “Stop moving the boat until we can get him off.”

“We are so fucked,” the big man said. “Our lives are over. Do you realize that?”

“Just shut up,” Cap said. “Okay, Brucie? Will you just shut up?”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Maybe you should both shut up,” I said. “How about that? Just keep quiet until we can get us all back to shore.”

The big man looked at me. His face was twelve inches from mine. Brucie, the other man called him. What a name for a man the size of a Coke machine. He was about to say something, but the explosion cut him short.

“What the hell is that?”

“The fireworks,” Leon said. “They’re starting again.”

There was another explosion, and a faint red glow in the air high above us. Sitting in the ruined wooden boat, it was like we were suddenly transported back to the wrong end of a nineteenth-century sea battle.

“Oh, my head,” Cap said. “God, that noise is killing me.”

The next few explosions brought a brilliant white light, then another red light, then blue. The fog itself was turning into a very loud ambient light show. It would have been beautiful if we weren’t cold and wet, and right below the target zone. One low shot and we’d catch it right in our laps.

“Here’s our ride,” Leon said, as Tyler pulled alongside us. We helped the two conscious men into the other boat, and then Leon and I took a few long minutes to carefully lift the third man and pass him over the gunwales. He was deadweight, and we were up to our waists in water now. His head was still bleeding.

“We need to get this man to the hospital,” Tyler said when we were all aboard. “Did they say they were sending an ambulance, Leon?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Okay, good. I’m sure it’ll only take them two or three days to get out here.” He spun the boat around and headed for shore. He was completely soaked from his little late-night swim. He was shivering so hard he could barely grip the steering wheel.

“You guys didn’t call the police, did you?” It was Brucie. In the dim light of the boat, I could see he was about the same age as Cap, with his hair shaved close to his scalp. He had a little gut going, but otherwise he looked as strong as an ape. Aside from the vomit all over his coat, he looked like he could step right out onto a football field.

“The Coast Guard will come around the Point to recover the boat,” Tyler said. “And the ambulance will take your friend. Hell, they’ll want to take all of you, just to be safe. I don’t know if the police will come. Does it matter?”

Brucie looked over at Cap. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

Leon’s bandmates were waiting for us on the dock. We must have been some sight. We got everybody off the boat and wrapped up in towels. The unconscious man we laid out on the dock. In the dim light from the house, I could see that he was a lot younger than the other two men. He looked like he had just graduated from high school. Tyler covered him with a thick woolen blanket and pressed a clean white cloth against his head. I could see some superficial wounds to his scalp, but God knows what could have happened to him internally. The men all wanted to stay outside with him. So we all stood there on the dock while the fireworks kept exploding in the fog.

“Cap,” Brucie said, “what if he doesn’t make it?”

“He’ll make it,” Cap said. “Just stop talking.”

“What if he’s still alive but he’s like…you know, brain dead. What’s going to happen to us then?”

“If you don’t shut up,” Cap said, gritting his teeth, “I’m going to make you brain dead right here on the dock. Okay?”

Brucie kept his mouth shut after that. The time crawled by, until finally the ambulance showed up in Tyler’s driveway. I went around and led the men down to the water. A Michigan state trooper showed up a minute later. He wrote a few things down while the EMS guys got the men into the ambulance. Cap and Brucie weren’t too sure about going with them. They wanted to drive separately, even though their car must have been a half mile away, at the casino. I was starting to wonder if the trooper would have to break out his nightstick, but the men finally relented and got in the ambulance. My last sight of them was both crammed onto a single bench, squinting in the bright light, while their friend lay on the stretcher in front of them. If there was any gratitude to us for saving their lives…well, maybe they’d be sending a nice card the next day.

The trooper stayed a few more minutes. It was the driver himself who had been hurt, so there didn’t seem to be a serious crime involved, outside of being criminally stupid enough to drive an expensive wooden boat into an old bridge piling. If they found enough alcohol in the driver’s system, they’d have something to ring him up on. But beyond that the whole thing would probably go to the DA and not much else would happen.

“Those pilings,” the trooper said. “On a night like this? Those guys must not be from around here.”

“I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often,” Tyler said.

“You got that right. Hey, you don’t have any coffee, do you? It feels like November out here.”

I never saw the big orange Coast Guard boat show up. I was finally on my way home by then. Around Whitefish Bay, up the lonely dark road to Paradise. The sign in my headlights. WELCOME TO PARADISE, WE’RE GLAD YOU MADE IT! The one blinking light in the center of town.

Then the Glasgow Inn on the right side. It was still open, but I didn’t stop. I was still wet enough to be uncomfortable, and besides, I didn’t feel like hearing it from Jackie just then. Why I wasn’t there all night, what I was doing instead. He’d love the story I’d have to tell him, but it would have to wait until tomorrow.

Come to think of it, some of the evening was almost comical. The way the one guy had asked us if we had hit them. Like we’d actually be out there trying to ram any boats that came by. The big guy throwing up all over the place.

And Leon and the Leopards. That made the whole thing worthwhile, right there. I’d have that over him forever.

I turned onto my access road. There was an almost theatrical mist hanging in the air, like something out of a Frankenstein movie. I passed Vinnie’s house. It looked empty. He must have been at the casino still, not yet aware of what had happened out on the bay. I thought he’d probably get a kick out of the whole story, too.

That’s what I thought. And would go on thinking until the next morning.

Then after that…Hell, if I had known…

It seems like an impossible question now, but what were we supposed to do that night, let all three men drown?

I came to my cabin. It was the first of six, all built by my father back in the sixties and seventies. This first one was the one I helped him build myself, back when I was eighteen years old and thought I knew everything, which explains the imperfect fitting of the logs and the cold drafts that come whistling through the walls on a windy night.

When I was out of my truck, I had to wait a few moments while my eyes adjusted to the total darkness. Pine trees, birch trees, an old logging road. A small shed out back and my snowplow sitting up on cinderblocks. And my cabin. That’s all there was.

Nobody there waiting up for me.

I checked the answering machine as soon as I got inside. A green glowing zero on the display. She still hadn’t called.

I didn’t want to think about, didn’t want to wonder where she was at that moment, or what she was doing. It was becoming a routine for me, all the things I tried to keep out of my mind. I was getting pretty good at it.

Until I finally lay down in my bed, and turned out the lights. Then they were all there, the doubts and the worries and the mortal fear, having their way with me until I finally fell asleep.

And then on this night, the dream. Me back on the shore, standing in the fog. Thicker in the dream, so thick I can’t even see my feet. The sound of something on the water, something I can’t see. Just like when the boat was coming, although somehow I know this thing is bigger and moving twice as fast. I can’t move. I don’t know which way to run, even if I could. I’m just waiting for it, as it gets closer and closer. The thing, whatever it is. Coming right at me, out of the fog.