Winter of the Wolf Moon

by Steve Hamilton

  The lights were on at the Glasgow Inn, but I passed it by. I don’t have to stop in there every single night, after all. After eighty or ninety nights in a row, a man is entitled to a night off.

  A mile north of the intersection, there’s an old logging road that heads west into the forest. The first cabin on the left is Vinnie’s. I knew he wouldn’t be home yet—he was doing his designated driver routine for his teammates, dropping them off at the Bay Mills Reservation, and probably having to talk to a hundred tribal relatives who still didn’t understand why he moved away. He’d be lucky to make it home by daybreak.

  The next six cabins were mine. My father built them in the sixties and seventies, one per summer until he got too sick to build them anymore. When I left the police force, I came up here figuring I’d stay a little while and then sell them. That was fourteen and a half years ago.

  Maybe Sylvia was right. Maybe I was hiding from the world.

  I didn’t want to think about it. I was tired. My muscles were already starting to stiffen up in the cold. For that night I wanted only a warm bed. Beyond that simple desire, there were only two other things I could ask for. My first wish was not to wake up the next morning feeling terrible. A little soreness I could take. Just let me get up and walk without screaming. My second wish was not to have to deal with that Bruckman clown ever again. Guys like that bring out the worst in me. Just don’t let me run into him again.

  Just those two tiny requests. Surely that’s not too much to ask for in a man’s life.

  Is it?

  CHAPTER THREE

  I woke up the next morning. I tried to lift my head. Bad idea. I winced, held my breath, regrouped, tried to push myself up to a sitting position. Another bad idea.

  Good Almighty God in Heaven, I thought. I’ve really done it this time.

  I tried to stand. I failed. There are certain muscles that get a real workout when you crouch down into the ready position, when you move your body from side to side. I know this because I used those muscles every day when I was playing ball. The hip flexors. The quadriceps. Now those same muscles were letting me know how unhappy they were. Twenty-four years of not using them and then last night.

  I grabbed on to a chair and pulled myself up. Oh, and the back muscles, tight as piano wire. The hamstrings. The groin muscles. I am such an idiot. If I ever get my strength back I’m going to strangle Vinnie.

  A shower. Hot water on my body. I pointed myself at the bathroom. Nice and easy, no sudden movements. Take a step. God that hurts. Another step. God that hurts. I made my way across the cabin, the wood floor cold and unforgiving under my feet. Through the window I could see that it was snowing softly.

  I got to the shower somehow, turned it on and waited for it to get hot. I looked at myself in the mirror. Forty-eight years old is not supposed to feel like this. This is ridiculous.

  I let out a scream as I stepped into the shower. There was a little rim on the bottom of the shower I had to step over, which meant actually lifting my leg into the air. I let the water pound on me for a good thirty minutes. When I was done I felt a little better. I cleared that rim like it was nothing.

  I put some clothes on. Once I got the pants on, life got easier. I shaved, made some breakfast, sat at the table and looked out the window while I finished my coffee. It looked like about four inches of new snow. Around here, that qualifies as scattered flurries.

  I went out and got the truck going, ran the snowplow down my road. I headed west first, deeper into the forest. I lived in the first cabin, the one I helped my father build in the summer of 1968. The second cabin was a little bigger. He built that one himself the next year. It was empty now. The man from downstate had called to cancel at the last minute.

  The third cabin was a little bigger, and so on until the sixth and last cabin at the end of the road, each one marking another summer of my father’s life. At this time of year, the renters were all snowmobilers. You could hear them during the day, roaring up and down the trails on the state land. I have this thing about snowmobiles. The noise, that oily blue smoke. And the people who drive them, wrapped up in those snowmobile suits, looking like the Michelin man, most of them full of beer and schnapps. If the wind is right you can even hear them out there in the middle of the night, riding those stupid machines. That’s when the accidents happen. Every week, you’ll read about somebody driving into a tree or falling through the ice. The one I remember most was the man who went off the trail onto a farm, ran right under an old wire horse fence. Imagine the poor guy riding behind him who had to pick up that helmet with the head still in it.

  “You really hate snowmobiles, don’t you?” Jackie once asked me.

  “Yes, Jackie. I admit it. I hate snowmobiles.”

  “Did you know that every motel in town is booked up two years in advance during the wintertime? It’s not the summer people who keep this place going, Alex. And it’s not the hunters anymore. It’s the snowmobilers. Who do you rent out your cabins to this time of year?”

  “Birdwatchers,” I said. “Cross-country skiers. Guys with snowshoes.”

  “The hell you do,” he said. “Where would you be without snowmobilers? What would you do between December and March?”

  “I’d go to Florida,” I said.

  “Yeah, I can see that. Alex McKnight sitting on a beach. Drinking a margarita.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve been up here too long,” he said. “It’s in your blood.” I remember Jackie leaning over the bar, grabbing me by the collar. “You’re a ‘yooper,’ Alex. You’re one of us now.”

  The snow was as dry and light as talcum powder. I plowed it off the road without even feeling it or hearing it. Then I turned around and went east back toward the main road. I passed my cabin and plowed right past Vinnie’ place. His car wasn’t there. Probably spent the night at the reservation. Normally I plow his driveway on my way through, but today I felt like leaving him snowed in. Let him shovel for once.

  I rumbled by, then I stopped. I backed up and did his driveway.

  I went into town, picked up my mail. I stood next to my truck and filled it with gas, feeling the cold morning wind off Whitefish Bay. It was frozen as far as you could see, but somewhere out there, maybe two miles, the water was still open. That’s the water that fed the snow gods. I could remember one night a couple years before, we got over four feet of snow in twelve hours. That’s the kind of night where you play a kind of musical chairs—wherever you are when the snow hits—bar, restaurant, house—that’s where you’re going to stay for the next couple of days.

  A big truck rolled into the gas station, pulling a trailer. On the back there were two snowmobiles, looked like they cost at least seven thousand dollars each. The driver got out of the truck. He had a new snowmobile suit on, another thousand dollars right there. He looked at me standing there in my jeans and hunting boots, my down coat that had seen twelve hard winters, standing next to a beat-up truck that was even older than my coat, with a sheet of plastic where the passenger side window should have been.

  “Howdy,” he said.

  “Howdy,” I said.

  “Nice little town you got here.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  “We’ve been driving for seven hours,” the man said. “This place is hard to get to.”

  “Not hard enough,” I said.

  He smiled and nodded. I guess he wasn’t really listening. “Well, have a good one,” he said.

  With those good wishes and a tank full of gasoline, I was all set for the day. I stopped in at the Glasgow Inn to have some lunch and to bother the owner. Jackie had the whole place done up like a Scottish pub, with the fireplace and the tables and the big overstuffed chairs. Jackie was born in Glasgow. He didn’t have the accent anymore, but he certainly looked like one of those old weather-beaten golf caddies. The place was almost empty at this time of day, just a few locals sitting with their newspapers. Jackie was sitting with his feet up by the fireplace.

&n
bsp; “Where were ya last night?” he said.

  “What, I’ve got to call in when I’m not going to be here now?”

  “Forgive me for asking,” he said. “I was just wondering where you were.”

  “If you must know, I was playing hockey.”

  “Sure you were,” he said. “Right after the aliens abducted you and took you for a ride on their spaceship.”

  “Vinnie’s got a team,” I said. “A thirty-and-over league.” I bent down very slowly and carefully. Finally, I made it into a chair. “I’m a little sore today.”

  “Alex, when they say thirty and over, that usually means over thirty and under fifty.”

  “I’m forty-eight, smartass. Now get up there and bring me a beer. And make me a sandwich while you’re at it.”

  “Such manners,” he said. He went behind the bar and opened up the cooler. I put my feet up on his little hassock and closed my eyes. The heat felt good. I could have gone to sleep right there.

  “Here,” he said. He put a plate down on the table next to me, along with a bottle.

  “Jackie,” I said. “What is this?”

  “It’s a sandwich, genius. Ham and provolone.” He went back to the bar, which was a good thing because I wasn’t going to give him his footstool back.

  “No, the bottle,” I said, across the room. A man in the corner looked up from his newspaper, smiled and shook his head, looked down again.

  “That’s beer, Alex.”

  “What kind of beer?”

  “Molson beer. You can read.”

  “What kind of Molson beer?”

  He let out a long sigh. “American Molson beer.”

  “Where’s my Canadian beer, Jackie?” We have this little arrangement. Whenever he goes across the border, he picks me up a case of Canadian Molson. He’s not supposed to be selling Canadian beer in the United States, but he keeps a few in the cooler, just for me.

  “I ran out of the Canadian,” he said. “I’ll get you some more tomorrow.”

  “You’re supposed to keep an eye on it,” I said. “You’re supposed to let me know if you’re getting low.”

  “Like I got nothing better to do than to monitor your personal beer supply.”

  “No, Jackie, as a matter of fact you don’t. That should be your number one priority in life.”

  “Just drink the goddamned American beer, will you? I swear, I’m gonna make you put on a blindfold some day, see if you can even tell the difference. I’ll bet you five hundred dollars you can’t.”

  The door opened before I could take him up on his bet. A blast of cold air swept through the room, and a man walked in who was just about as welcome as the cold air. Leon Prudell.

  “Oh yeah,” Jackie said from the bar, “I was supposed to tell you. Leon Prudell was here last night looking for you. I told him to come back today at lunchtime.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  Prudell came over to the fireplace and sat down in the chair next to me. “How’s it going, Alex?”

  “Prudell,” I said.

  “Call me Leon, ay,” he said. He hadn’t changed much. He was still all, flannel and messy orange hair and that yooper twang.

  “Leon. What can I do for you?” The last time he showed up here, he drank a great deal of whiskey and then he tried to take me apart in the parking lot. Come to think of it, that was the same night my whole life started turning inside out. I hoped his coming into the bar again wasn’t an omen of more of the same.

  “I just wanted to talk to you,” he said. “I got a business proposition.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t even try.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about getting back into private investigation, ay. I really miss it, Alex. I mean I still have my license and everything. Here, I had these made up.” He handed me a business card. It read “Leon Prudell, Investigation, Security, Bail Bonds.”

  “You’re serious,” I said.

  “I thought it would be a good idea to add the bail bonds in there. Did you know that there are no bail bondsmen in the whole county? Until me, I mean. If you had to get bailed out of jail, you’d have to wait for somebody to come up from Mackinac.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said. “But what does this have to do with me?”

  “Alex …,” he said. He gave the room a quick scan and then he bent his head closer to mine. “Alex, here’s the way it is. I’ve been trying real hard to be an investigator again, because it’s what I love to do. And I think I’m real good at it. I helped you out that one time, remember? Getting into that guy’s house? You could tell I was pretty good at that kind of stuff, right? Am I right?”

  I looked at him. “Yes,” I finally said. “You knew what you were doing.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But the problem is, most people, they look at me and they don’t see that. You know what I mean? They look at me and they think of that goofy fat kid who used to sit in the back of the class.”

  “Prudell—”

  “Alex, I’m not saying I remind them of that goofy fat kid. I’m saying I was that goofy fat kid, okay? Everybody I went to school with, they’re still in Sault Ste. Marie. They still see me like that. You know how hard that is to deal with?”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to be my partner.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “Are you kidding me?”

  “McKnight-Prudell Investigations,” he said. “Although, I don’t know, maybe Prudell-McKnight sounds better.”

  “Prudell, come on …”

  “Okay, McKnight-Prudell. We’ll put your name first.”

  “Just stop,” I said. “Please.”

  “We’d be perfect,” he said. “You’re an ex-cop. You look like an ex-cop. You’re not from around here. You don’t talk like you’re from around here. And you’ve got that.” He looked at my chest. “You know, you’ve got that bullet thing going for you.”

  I just looked at him.

  “You really have a bullet in there, right?” he said. “Next to your heart? Do you have any idea how great that sounds? People hear that, they think, ‘Now this guy is like somebody out of a movie.’ ”

  “Yeah, that’s kinda what I was hoping for,” I said. “That’s exactly why I let myself get shot in the first place.”

  “No really, Alex—”

  “Just stop right there,” I said. “Listen to me. I don’t want to be a private investigator. It’s the last thing in the world that I want to be.”

  “I get it,” he said. “You just don’t want to be my partner.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you. I just don’t want to be one. Becoming a P.I. was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, you understand me? Nothing but bad has come of it.” I wasn’t about to tell him the whole story. I didn’t even like thinking about it.

  “Will you think about it?” he said. “Will you do that much at least?”

  “There’s nothing to think about,” I said. “I’m not a private investigator anymore. And I’ll never be one again.”

  “Fine,” he said. He got up from the chair and put his coat on.

  I tried to stand up. My legs had other ideas. If Prudell ever wanted another chance to kick my ass, today would be a great day for it. “Look,” I said. “If anybody ever asks me about it, I’ll send him your way, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You do that. Thanks a lot.”

  I gave up and sat back down. Prudell left the place, slamming the door behind him.

  “What was that all about?” Jackie said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just ruined his life again.” I took a drink of my American beer and nearly choked on it. “Goddamn it, Jackie. I am not going to sit here and drink this.”

  “Canada’s thirty miles that way,” he said, pointing north. “You know the way.”

  “I might just do that,” I said. “As soon as I can walk again.”

  I sat there for another couple of hours. The plac
e started to fill up with snowmobilers. I overheard a lot of talk about which trails were smooth and how fast the Yamaha was compared to the Polaris compared to the Arctic Cat. It was fascinating. Finally, when I had heard enough about fucking snowmobiles and I was tired of sitting next to a perfectly good fire with a fucking pathetic American beer in my hand, I told my body that it was moving whether it liked it or not. “I need some air,” I said to Jackie as I left. “I’m going to Canada.”

  “Don’t bother coming back,” he said.

  “In your dreams,” I said, and then I was out in the cold air, snowflakes coming down like a million white butterflies. I stood there for a long time, just listening to the silence. It was hard to even imagine the storms of November, the constant sound of the waves pounding on the rocks. And now, nothing. No sound. Just snow.

  Then suddenly, from the woods, the silence was ripped apart by the whine of a hundred-horsepower engine. God, I hate snowmobiles.

  I climbed into the truck. It was too hard. It hurt too much. Just climbing into my stupid truck. I yelled at myself, banged the steering wheel with both hands. You used to be an athlete, goddamn it. What happened to you?

  This is some mood you’re in, Alex. What’s the problem? A little muscle soreness? A little lactic acid overload in the bloodstream? Is it the thought of three more months of ice and snow? Maybe it’s Prudell, that look on his face when you told him you didn’t want to be his partner. Like you took his dream away. Again.

  Or maybe it’s Sylvia. You’re going to drive yourself crazy if you keep thinking about her. She’s gone. Accept it.

  The daylight was already fading when I got to the International Bridge. Below the bridge I saw the frozen locks and then the burning smokestacks of the Algoma Steel Foundry. I paid the $1.50 toll and then sat in line at the Canadian customs booth. Traffic was light, so there was only one lane open. The man moved the cars through quickly, though. When it was my turn, he asked me where I was headed and why. He looked familiar. You cross enough times and they get to know you. I told him just a quick trip into Soo Canada for beer. He just smiled at me and waved me through.