Of course they’d come, I thought. From miles and miles around.
Some of them Vinnie would know. Most of them would be strangers.
Before I got into my truck, I turned one more time and caught my last glimpse of him. He had finally gathered his nerve and was walking back to the tent.
I kept thinking about him as I drove home. Those thirty miles from the rez to Paradise, on that lonely beautiful road that follows the shoreline, all the way around Whitefish Bay. The weather stayed picture-perfect, like a consolation of pure sunlight on such a sad day. There wasn’t a hint of trouble on the water.
But of course the trouble was there, just below the surface. That cold, cold water. Just ask the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald, all of them still out there, not twenty miles from the safety of land.
No matter how beautiful the day, before you can do anything about it, without any warning at all.
The storm will come.
CHAPTER THREE
A few days passed, and I still hadn’t seen Vinnie again. I figured he was spending time with his family. That seemed totally natural to me, so I didn’t think twice about it. I drove up our road, past his empty cabin. No lights were on. His truck was gone. I kept on going all the way to the end, to the last cabin, to finish my work there. I had a few last pieces of trim to install, and then there was painting to be done on the walls of the kitchen and bathroom, where it wasn’t just the rough wood of the logs. The whole place was finally coming back together again, and it felt strange not to have Vinnie there helping me with these last details. Every time I spilled a drop of paint on the floor I could almost hear him clucking at me. I’d half turn, forgetting for one moment that I was alone.
Summer’s an odd time in the rental business. You get people visiting Tahquamenon Falls and maybe the Shipwreck Museum, but it’s not the same people every year. Not like fall, when it’s the same groups of hunters, as regular as clockwork, some of them going back so many years they can remember renting from my father. Winter is snowmobiles. Or “sledding,” as most people call it up here. Spring has become, believe it or not, birding season. More and more birders coming up every year, to watch the raptors and the shorebirds make their migration north. The birds come across the great expanse of Lake Superior and stop to rest at Whitefish Point. Hawks, owls, harriers, merlins, ospreys. Best of all, eagles. Every single day in the spring, you can see eagles. The ultimate good-luck sign for the Ojibwa. Or so I’m told. In fact, I think it was Vinnie’s mother who told me that.
She was gone now, and it felt strange, knowing that she wouldn’t be there in that house on the rez, even if I saw her only a few times a year. I could only imagine how Vinnie was feeling. How he was dealing with it. Or what he was doing to find a way past it.
The wind coming off Lake Superior is usually the biggest air conditioner in North America, but on this one strange night the air stayed warm, and I had to drag out some fans and deliver them to the cabins. I stuck around to talk to two of the families for a while. It was dark when I finally headed down to the Glasgow. The sun doesn’t even go down until after nine o’clock at this time of year, so it was late. Vinnie’s truck was parked in front of his cabin, but I didn’t see any lights on inside.
When I walked into the Glasgow, I saw Vinnie sitting in front of the fireplace. He didn’t turn when I walked through the door. Jackie was behind the bar, looking a little more agitated than usual. With that weathered old Scottish face of his, that Rudolph’s nose and whatever hair he still managed to put a comb through.
“He’s in a state,” Jackie said, nodding his head toward Vinnie. The slight brogue in his voice still, all these years later. “I’d be careful if I were you.”
“What do you expect?” I said. “It’s only been a few days.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
I stood there waiting for him to enlighten me. But he didn’t.
“Just go see,” Jackie said. “Go sit with him a bit, eh?”
I wandered over and took the other seat by the fire. Vinnie still hadn’t looked up. I watched him stare into the fire and that’s when it finally occurred to me that there shouldn’t be a fire going. It was the one and only genuinely warm night of the year, and it probably wouldn’t even go below seventy all night long. Up here, that was the kind of heat wave that would have the natives passing out in the parking lot.
“Who needs a sweat lodge?” I said. “You can just sit right here.”
He didn’t respond. That’s when I noticed the second thing that was out of place. This one was a lot more alarming than an unnecessary fire on a warm night, because cupped in Vinnie’s hands was a glass filled with amber liquid. It didn’t look like ginger ale and there was no ice in it. The glass was half empty.
That’s when it hit me. He had left his truck at his cabin, and he had walked down here. A perfectly sensible thing to do if you plan on drinking, but for Vinnie it was the last thing I ever would have expected.
I sat there watching him watching the fire. I wasn’t sure what to say. Jackie came over and he had a cold Molson. Force of habit, and on any other night it would have been the most welcome sight in the world. A cold bottle straight from Canada, not the watered-down stuff they bottle in the States and slap a Canadian label on. The real thing from the real home of beer, after a long unseasonably hot day.
I left it on the table. I sat there in silence while the condensation on the bottle made a wet ring.
“Vinnie,” I finally said. “What’s going on?”
He shook his head.
“What are you drinking?”
He looked down at the glass. “Scotch? Ask Jackie.”
I looked over at the man in question. He threw his bar towel up in the air and rolled his eyes.
“Something tells me Jackie didn’t force a drink on you,” I said. “Come on, what the hell?”
“I asked for a real drink,” Vinnie said, finally looking me in the eye. “I’m a grown-up. I’m in a bar. I wanted a drink and he gave me one. Then I paid him some money for it. Then I made a fire even though it’s the warmest night in years, because I felt like having a fire. Are we good now?”
“Yeah, we’re good. Since when do you drink scotch?”
“What’s the problem?” he said. “It’s been a hard week and I’m having a drink. You go through a case of Canadians like every night, right?”
“I don’t think I drink a case of beer every night, no.”
“A case a week then. Whatever. You’re way ahead of me, that’s all I know. So what’s the problem?”
“I’m not the one with a lifelong hatred of alcohol.” I could have reminded him of at least a dozen times when he’d left a room because of too much drinking going on. Too much liquor, too much noise, too much goddamned foolishness. I knew Vinnie couldn’t stand it.
“Maybe I need to lighten up,” he said. “Just let go of it once in a while.”
Yeah, that’ll be the day, I thought. Let’s go to the Cozy and watch a few of your cousins doing shots after their shift at the casino. You so enjoy watching that scene.
He lifted the glass and drained it. When it was empty, I saw a quick grimace on his face, the look of a nondrinker who can’t quite believe how bad liquor can taste. Then just as quickly the look was gone and he was on his feet.