“Alex,” she said. “Are you getting a lot of snow?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t noticed.”
“Yeah, right. You still think we should try this today?”
“I’ll be there,” I said. “I promise.”
Then a silence, another hesitation that should have told me something important, but didn’t.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you there. Drive carefully.”
“You, too,” I said. Then I hung up.
Now there’s only one problem, I thought. Make that two. I look like shit and I feel like shit. I took most of my clothes off and collapsed on the bed. Plenty of time to grab a little sleep, I thought. A little sleep so I could feel human again, then a hot shower, get dressed, and go over there. Plenty of time.
When I woke up, the clock read 2:14 and it was snowing like crazy again. “Son of a bitch,” I said. I got out of bed and looked outside. There was already another eight inches of snow on the ground. “Son of a bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch.”
I called Natalie. There was no answer. I left her a message, told her I was still at home, and that I needed to plow again, and that I’d still try to make it. But hell, if it was this bad out her way, maybe she shouldn’t even try. Assuming she hadn’t left yet.
But if she wasn’t answering her phone, she had to be on the road already. If she was on the road, then I was going to be on the road, too. Just plow a couple more times, I thought. Plow, then come in and call her again. Maybe call the hotel, see if she’s there yet. If she is, get cleaned up, put some clothes on. Hell, go plow a couple more times if you have to, then head to the Soo. If the road gets buried, so be it. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.
I headed out into the snow again. It was getting harder and harder to plow. There was no place to put the new snow, with the banks already four feet high. The road was getting narrower and narrower, but as long as one vehicle could get through, I figured I’d be okay. It’s not like I’d ever have a lot of traffic.
I went back and forth three times, and then headed back inside. It was hard just to walk to my front door. The snow was up to my knees now, and the wind was blowing everything sideways. I fought my way inside and slammed the door. It was insanity to even think I’d be going anywhere. Absolute insanity. So of course I’d be going. I called Natalie’s number again. I let it ring a dozen times.
“It’s ringing,” I said. “That means the phone lines are working, right? She’s just not there.”
I pictured her out on the road. I hoped she wasn’t stuck somewhere.
I called the hotel. She hadn’t arrived yet. It was after three o’clock now. God damn it, where was she?
Relax, Alex. She’s on the way. She’s taking her time.
I took a shower and shaved. I slapped some cologne on my face, felt it burning my skin. I put on an undershirt, took one look at it in the mirror and then tried to find a different undershirt. Twenty minutes later, I was finally dressed and ready to go.
I went outside and fought my way back to the truck again. The wind was screaming. The snow lashed at my face. “I’m going,” I said to myself. “I’m going.”
I had to brush the snow off the windshield again. I backed out and put my plow down for one more run. “I’m going. I’m going. I’m going.”
I drove through town. There was nobody, no sign of life until I saw the lights on at Jackie’s place. I kept driving. My wipers were clogged with snow already, and I could feel my tires losing traction every few feet. I fishtailed and swerved and swore at the snow.
There’s a stretch of road a couple of miles south of town-it runs along a narrow strip of land, with the lake on one side and a pond on the other. It was totally exposed to the wind, so I figured it would be a little tricky. As soon as I got close to it, the truth finally caught up to me.
I wasn’t going any farther.
I hadn’t turned my radio on since the day before, so I hadn’t heard it. I didn’t want to hear it. But now as I looked at the great expanse of snow-I couldn’t even guess where the snow-covered land lay, between the snow-covered ice of the lake and the snow-covered ice of the pond-I knew that there had to be a state of emergency all through the county. Even if I got through this stretch, and broke the law and tried to get to the Soo, I’d get stuck somewhere else. It was fifty miles if I stayed on the main roads, and even if most of M-123 was sheltered by the trees, as soon as M-28 broke out of the Hiawatha National Forest, it was all open ground. They wouldn’t even try to plow it until the snow let up and the wind stopped blowing.
I hit the steering wheel with both palms, and then spent the next ten minutes trying to turn the truck around. When I was finally pointed north again, I drove back into town. There was no rush now. I went five miles per hour instead of my daredevil ten miles per hour. When I got to Jackie’s place, I looked in again and saw the lights and pictured the fireplace and a cold Canadian. I pulled into the parking lot.
There were six people in the place, all locals who had walked down the road for a little company. They all looked up at me when I opened the door and cheered. It was that kind of night, when walking fifty yards was a cause for celebration.
“Alex!” Jackie said from behind the bar. “Did you walk all the way down here?”
“Can I use your phone?”
“Help yourself,” he said, pushing the phone across the bar. As I got closer, he did a double take and stared at me.
“What did you do?”
“Huh?” I dialed Natalie’s number.
“You did something.”
I shook my head at him. Natalie wasn’t answering.
“You did,” he said. “Something’s different.”
I dialed the Ojibway Hotel again. I got the same desk clerk, and this time he told me, yes, Natalie Reynaud was there. I waited while he called her room.
“Alex,” Jackie said. “You did something to your hair. That’s what it is.”
Yeah, I thought. My hair. The box said it would look totally natural, and that nobody would notice. Totally natural, my ass.
“It’s just a little thing for my gray,” I said.
“Just a little thing? You look like a lounge singer.”
I gave him a look and wondered how the day could get any worse. Then I heard her voice on the phone.
“Alex, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” I tried to pull the phone off the bar, but the cord wasn’t long enough. I waved Jackie away, but he didn’t move an inch.
“Oh my God,” Jackie said. “Now I know.”
“They said the roads are all closed out your way,” Natalie said on the phone. “I barely made it here myself. I think they closed the bridge right after I got across.”
“This explains everything,” Jackie said. “I should have known.”
If I could have reached him, I would have grabbed him by the collar and choked him.
“I’m sorry,” I said into the phone, trying to wave him away again. “It was a bad idea.”
“Don’t worry about it, Alex. It’s kinda nice here, eh? A nice hotel. It’s really good to be out of that house for a while. I was going stir crazy.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come out.”
Jackie just stood there watching me, shaking his head.
“Alex, I’m fine,” she said. “Really. I’ll just go downstairs and get something to eat. Watch the snow for a while. If you think you might be able to get here tomorrow-”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”
Jackie looked at the ceiling and sighed dramatically. I looked around for something to throw at him.
“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll stay here tonight and I’ll see you tomorrow. Call me in the morning, eh?”
“I’ll do that,” I said. Then there was a long silence while I tried to think of something else to say.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. We both said goodbye and hung up.
“A woman,” Jackie said.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“A woman. This is why you’ve been acting so weird lately.”