by E A Lake
Funny, I hadn’t heard anything. “Or that that couple across from us is doing it right now,” she added, not sounding interested in looking. I opened my eyes to find her grinning at me. “You missed that too, didn’t you?”
I didn’t bother answering and felt her lips on my cheek. “Goodnight, Bob.”
“Goodnight, Violet,” I murmured as the sandman overtook my consciousness.
It had been back in my college days I decided. That was the last time I had gone to sleep in the morning and slept all day. Okay, maybe it happened once or twice in the first few alcohol-laden days in No Where, but it was college before that.
When I was finally able to pry my eyes open, I noticed two things. First, the sun was on my back, filtered through the canvas siding. That meant it was already in the west. And given the angle it appeared to be at, it had to be late afternoon.
Second, my bunkmate was curled into a tiny ball, her back to me. Sometime during my slumber, I had wrapped my left arm around her. If she was awake, she must have been enjoying this cuddle time. And as much as I wanted to not lead Violet on, I chose to close my eyes and enjoy the last of our quiet time together.
In an hour or so, we’d get up and check with Potter again. He’d told us last night that he would check over some older rosters from the other nearby camps to see if Daisy’s name appeared anywhere.
He wouldn’t promise anything, but I appreciated his effort. No sense in giving up just as we’d began our search, I figured.
But doubt crept in where sleep failed to take hold. Let’s face it, I thought, we’re on a wild goose chase and we don’t even know if it’s a goose we’re after. And if it was a goose, what lake was it at?
I’d failed my duty to my friends. No one but the man inside of me was to blame. I knew it, Wilson knew it, and worst of all, Violet knew it. I just wondered if Daisy felt the same.
And who could blame her? Certainly not me. If we did find her, would she be happy to see me? Or would she turn away and refuse to come home with the man who had left and let her down so badly?
I sighed, feeling my mood darken. Sleep wasn’t coming back, but the guilt sure was.
Day 1,156
Early our second morning in the camp, Violet and I took to the road again. No Daisy in Ironwood Fish Camp. No news of her ever being there, and no clues as to where to look.
The next stop for us was the former Presque Isle State Campground, now known as Presque Isle Fish Camp. By road, Presque Isle was 45 miles from Ironwood, fish camp to fish camp. But we were told to follow the shore. There was a fairly decent trail carved out of the wilderness over the past four years. And it was a little less than half the distance, saving us a full day.
The going was easy and we noticed no other travelers before taking our first break. Watching the gentle waves of the lake crash into the shore, I offered Violet a pull from the canteen.
For some reason, I couldn’t shake the melancholy mood I had woken up with. It must have shown on my face.
“What’s wrong?” Violet asked, handing the canteen back to me.
I tried to smile but found it too difficult to fake it. “This is all my fault,” I admitted quietly. “The whole damn reason we’re on the road looking for Daisy when we should be at home. If I hadn’t gone after Barster like I did, everything—”
“No,” Violet cut me off forcefully.
I looked at her, ready to prove her wrong. “Yes, I was stupid to be so focused on revenge. That’s all it was you know, simple and plain revenge. He killed Dizzy. I had to kill him.”
She rose from her spot on a downed tree and took a spot next to me. “You did what you thought was best. Second chances are nice, but life doesn’t work like that.”
I didn’t understand her logic and my face must have shown it.
“All of us,” she continued, “me, and Mr. Wilson, and even Daisy knew you had to go after that crazy man. He was never going to leave us alone.”
“You and Daisy wanted me to stay, fight him if he ever showed back up. You even said so.” That made her face turn sour.
She knelt and took my hands. “Do you think Daisy would have really ever let you go if she wasn’t behind you?” She had a point. “Do you think I would have let you leave if I didn’t think you made a proper decision? There’s no chance on Earth I would have let you leave, Bob. None whatsoever.”
“I did it for the wrong reason.”
“You did it to keep us safe,” she countered. “You thought of us, not yourself. You could have been killed by Barster. But you still went. Your reasons were pure. And we had no way of knowing the Weston’s were going to show up when they did.”
Though everything she said should have made me feel better, none of it did. I went back to my brooding. “I let Daisy down, in more ways than you’ll ever know.”
I felt Violet’s hand on my shoulder. “You mean what you did with that Jean woman?”
Shit, she knew. My guilty face couldn’t hide the burning shame I felt.
“That might have been your last night on this earth, Bob. If Daisy would have still been at home when you came back, you would have told her.”
I watched the water for a while, trying to figure out how she knew.
“I heard you confessing to Mr. Wilson,” Violet said softly, running her fingers through my shoulder-length hair. “And what he said was the truth. We all fall short of what we can be; it’s what you do next that matters most. Not what you did.”
Until that moment, I had never realized how mature Violet had become. She had every reason to judge me, but she didn’t. She had every reason to call me a scoundrel, and yet she told me in her own way she understood.
I looked at up her. For the first time since I’d met the young lady with purple hair, I saw the woman standing beside me.
“Do you think Daisy would have forgiven me?” She nodded and I felt a lump in my throat.
There was a bigger question. Ghosts are one thing; the living can react differently.
“Do you forgive me, Violet?”
She wiped away the tears I hadn’t realized had sprung loose from my eyes.
“I understand what you did. I admit it made me feel terribly jealous when I heard it. But I really do understand.”
My eyes narrowed, trying to read between the somewhat blurred lines of her response.
“But you don’t forgive me.” I thought I understood.
She laid her head in my lap, playing with a hole in one of my pant knees.
“It’s not my place to forgive you or not. If you’re asking me to forgive you for Daisy, I say I do.”
That didn’t make things any clearer.
“You know how I feel about you,” she said, digging her finger deeper in the hole she’d found. “I’ll forgive you for anything, Bob Reiniger. As long as you stay alive, I promise to never give up on you. Do I forgive you for what you did with Jean? Yes. Just please don’t do it again. I’m not sure my heart can take it.”
I had two strikes against me in Violet’s eyes. One, I’d chosen Daisy over her. But that wasn’t my fault. Two, I’d been with another woman after I knew how she felt about me.
There was no us, at least not in the traditional sense. Still, I felt guilty knowing that she knew. I’d hidden it from her because I knew it would upset and hurt her. But she handled it with grace and poise.
I needed Violet almost as much as she needed me. Just in two completely different ways. The difference was I knew what she wanted from me and I pushed her away.
But Violet knew all I truly wanted was her help in finding Daisy, “the other woman” to her. And she followed me blindly. No questions, no pouting, no regrets.
She was the bigger of the two of us. And it wasn’t even close.
Day 1,156 - continued
We made it to Presque Isle Fish Camp with daylight to spare. Thanks to Violet, I should add. It’s not like she dragged me along. But I just as easily could have sat by the lake and watched the rest of my life pass by. My
mood needed to get better. Perhaps Presque Isle held the key.
“No one here by that name or description,” a man named Moody informed us. “We ain’t anywhere near as big as Ironwood, so you’re free to look around if you’d like.”
Boy, he wasn’t kidding when he mentioned the size comparison. The previous camp went on for what appeared to be miles. This one was made up of eight tents and two open-sided structures, which I assumed were the cleaning stations.
“What’s the next place up the lake?” I asked, feeling any last ounce of hope I’d managed to regain fade away.
He smiled the kind of crooked smile that suggested I’d like the answer. “Lafayette Landing. About 10 miles up the shore. Kinda dangerous at night. I can have a man with a lantern take you; I got some stuff to send that way.”
I leaned in close to Moody, not even flinching at his fishy smell after two days at Ironwood.
“You ever trade with Stuart Callies or the Weston’s from Covington?” My question made his lips curl.
“Never trade with the devil, son. That way you stand a chance of not ending up in hell.”
“Do you have anything to eat here besides root vegetables and fish?” Violet asked, causing me to jump. I had forgotten she was standing beside me.
His sad smile gave his answer. Fish and rutabagas again for dinner…and breakfast.
It was well after dark, sometime in the middle of the night when we arrived at our next stop. Violet admitted she needed to stop and sleep, which was good. My legs had been screaming for a break for the last several hours.
A woman showed us to a tent with a bed for Violet and I. A low, dim light inside let me know four other couples were already sleeping. The chances of waking these overworked souls were nil, but still, I whispered to Violet, “This place looks as small as Presque Isle. Should be another easy search in the morning, and we can get on the road right away.”
Lying down next to her, I noticed her tired yet unhappy expression. “She might be here. You know that, right?”
Maybe I did. But if that were the case, why couldn’t I feel her presence? Why, instead, did I feel the despair taking a stronger hold?
Violet’s arm wrapped over my chest and around my ribs. Before I could utter another word, sleep won out.
Another morning, another collection of terrible despondent souls. And no Daisy.
“Next camp is a little more than 20 miles from here,” the old woman, who’d refused to offer her name, said. “Silver City. And it’s a sizable one. A place where the Weston’s might have traded.”
She knew the story already. I spit out as much as I could manage as Violet filled in the holes. She just didn’t know that when I stared at the map on her wall, the futility of our mission became very clear.
“How far to Marquette?” I summoned, trying to add up the numbers on the faded highway map.
“At least 120 miles,” she answered mechanically, sorting her fish counts from the previous day.
“And if we go up the peninsula first?” I asked, already regretting the answer.
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, her face contorted several times. “I suppose double that. But I have to warn you, north of here is kind of rugged. Terrain and people. Plenty of folks out there with nearly nothing who would kill you just for the boots on your feet.”
I glanced back at Violet; she rolled her eyes. In other words, she was fine.
“Thanks for the bed and the breakfast,” I offered, grabbing my pack from the floor. “You need us to clean fish for a couple hours as payment?”
She shook her head no, not bothering to look up from her work.
“I need you to give up what you’re doing,” she answered in a low voice. “Don’t keep at it. Go home and live.”
We left without answering. I felt Violet take my hand. We were living, the best we knew how.
Day 1,157
Well into the day, we hiked on an easy-to-travel section of road, making good time towards Silver City, a place we hoped held a golden-haired treasure, if for no other reason than that we could stop searching the world’s smelliest encampments.
Searching ahead, I spotted something large and metallic sticking up in the distance. I squinted, trying to figure out what it might be. With each passing hour, it became clearer.
I paused, looking back at Violet confused. “Ski lifts?”
She nodded. “Porcupine Mountain. Surely Mr. Sophisticated from the great city of Chicago has heard of that ski area?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “I just didn’t realize it was here.” I stared at the monstrous, motionless structures looming against a blank sky. “I guess I can’t really say where I thought it was. Just not here I guess. You ski?”
Violet took a spot on a tree stump, removing her shoe and shaking out some dirt. “Never. Dad did, but not me or Mom. I think he took Nate a couple of times. Mom didn’t like the cold, so neither did I.”
I gazed longer at the mountain. The old outlines of the slopes slowly appeared. “I always heard it was an expensive hobby. How could a simple man from Covington afford a ski trip, meal, and lodging at a fancy place like that?”
She removed the other shoe and shook, this time removing her sock and giving that a thorough beating against a nearby tree. “He was the president of a local electric coop,” she replied as if as dull a job as being a farmer. “So he had plenty of money.” She looked up at me. “Not that he ever lavished his daughter with any well-deserved presents.”
Ah, the poor, neglected daughter routine. Every family had seen this act over the years. “Some kind of punishment for misbehaving, I suppose?”
Her mouth dropped open, seeming insulted. “Me? God no!” Violet rose and began to hike again. “I didn’t do anything. Never drank, never smoked, no drugs. I got straight A’s in school, played in band, sang in the choir at church. I didn’t talk back much for fear of being belittled into tears all night. I was a pretty easy child.”
It was my turn to let my mouth hang open and stare.
“I had sex once,” she snorted, “after Dad was dead. I’d sure like to find Chrissy Everton right now. She’d get a piece of my mind and maybe even a knuckle sandwich.”
I grabbed her arm, bringing us both to a stop. “Who’s Chrissy Everbrite and what did she ever do to you?”
“Everton,” Violet snapped. “Pay attention better. She’s the one who told me girls can never get pregnant the first time they have sex.” She glared at me bitterly. “Well, I’ve got some news for her.”
I began to chuckle. “You didn’t really believe that, did you? I mean your mom’s a nurse. You had sex-ed, you had to know better.”
She shrugged and began walking again. “Chrissy said that was all a lie so we’d never have sex. The school, our parents, even the internet — all lies.”
“And you’ve had beer,” I countered. “I’ve watched you drink it.”
She turned and stared at me like I was crazy. “When did you ever see me drink beer?”
“That stuff that Wilson brought for you. To help with your milk.”
Her eyes shifted as she tapped her lips with a finger. “That’s beer? My God, that stuff is so awful. Why do people drink it like it’s something special? I’d never touch it if it wasn’t helping with Hope.”
Wilson home brewed his beer. It was plenty pungent, and he played with the recipe every batch. At first, I didn’t think I could choke it down. But after giving it several years to grow on me, it wasn’t all that bad.
“You don’t like it, do you?” Violet asked, almost sounding like she wanted me to agree with her.
“It’s not good. But it’s drinkable.”
She stormed away, shaking her head. “I’ll never understand you.”
I laughed to myself and trotted after her, coming to a halt as I drew near. “Horsemen,” I said barely above a whisper. Violet must have seen them too, because she retreated to my side.
“Let’s give them a wide berth,” I said cautiously, pulli
ng her towards the woods. Our hasty retreat into the thick foliage should lose them, I figured. And the woods were less than 20 yards away. We should be safe, I said to myself, but I was filled with doubt.
Day 1,157 - continued
We didn’t make it to the trees. We didn’t make it half the distance to the woods. Hell, we hardly cleared the road before three riders were by our sides. And I noticed they all had guns.
Positioning Violet beside me, I shot her a look. “Let’s just play this cool and let me do the talking. Everything should be okay.”
Two men and one woman trotted up to us. The bearded man in the lead had a large smile on his face. Maybe this was going to work out in our favor. Perhaps they just wanted to see if we were lost.
“Howdy,” the bearded one said as he sat high on his pale brown horse above us.
“Where the hell do you think you are?” Violet spewed. “The old west? Who the hell says “howdy” in northern Michigan?”
So much for me doing all the talking…and remaining calm.
I dared a step forward, away from Miss Charm-and-Grace. “Hi. How are you?”
He just smiled and nodded.
Okay, so he wasn’t a big conversationalist.
“Can I help you?” I asked, hoping he understood English.
“You’re trespassing.” he replied, spitting on the ground at my feet.
Confused, I glanced back at Violet. She just shrugged. Some help she was. “I thought this was all state-owned land. I didn’t realize the owner of the ski resort held the title all the way out here.”
“That was BTSHTF. Now Mr. Fager has title to all of this. And you’re still trespassing.” He sounded decent about it. Run along children, you can’t play on Mr. Fager’s fresh cut lawn. I tipped my head slightly. Not a lot of that made sense.
“Two questions,” I replied, raising my index and middle fingers. “First, what’s BTSHTF? Second, who’s Mr. Fager?”
