Siobhan must have been waiting by the window, because she came running down the front steps when I drove in. The yard and the house looked normal enough. I remember the time I went over there after the hunting incident. Randy and his buddies were heading out to Michigamme to shoot rabbit, and Siobhan emptied out all the kerosene in their cooking stoves. She pictured Randy starving to death out there in the woods. I was nervous about that one, but no one was even suspicious.
“Go on back inside,” I said. “Kate's buckled in her car seat. It's going to take a couple of minutes.”
“Let me do it.” Siobhan gave me a push with the side of her hip, and I stepped out of the way.
“Is everything okay here?” I took another look around the property. “Did you put the rake and shovel back in the garage?”
“She's adorable,” Siobhan said. “You know I think she's precious, don't you?”
“Remember, I'm going to be bringing Randy home in a couple of hours. I want to make sure he's not going to suspect anything.”
Siobhan lifted Kate out of the backseat. “We're fine here. Just fine.” She held out her hand for Kate's day bag of diapers and an oversized stuffed choo-choo train. The blue-and-white striped train is a present from Siobhan; Kate never plays with it at home, but at Siobhan's she seems to love it. I find her in the middle of the living room floor pulling the train in circles and laughing when it tips over. She screams when I have to pack it away, but when we get home she won't even look at it.
I started to follow them into the house, but Siobhan turned around and told me that I should get going.
“I thought the hospital wasn't going to release him until noon,” I said. “There's still an hour to get rid of.”
“You don't want to be late.” Siobhan had Kate balanced on her hip, and the day bag was over her shoulder. She's taller than I am and doesn't look cluttered with all of Kate's stuff. “The roads might be icy. That's a bad stretch of highway there.”
Siobhan was right about Highway 28 getting icy. There's nothing but a few pine trees to block Lake Superior, and the wind comes straight across with the speed of all that open space. But the weather had been still that weekâthe same heavy gray sky hanging over us for days.
Siobhan gets moody after the accidents, so I left without complaining about her rudeness.
It was a Saturday, but the streets felt empty. Munising had been upset with a pack of strangers the past two weeks. A whole team of cameramen had come up from Detroit to film a Kawasaki snowmobile commercial. They brought fifteen snowmobiles and about that many Stuntmen. The guys rented out ten rooms at the Best Western and were bothering everybody in town. Two of them dressed up in a bear costume and walked into the Dogpatch trying to scare away the locals. I heard the bear outfit was part of the commercial they were filming. Supposedly a guy drives one of the snowmobiles into a cave. It comes tearing out the other end, but the guy's gone and there's a bear driving the machine. They've been hanging around town so long because they're waiting for fresh snow. Someone asked them how long they plan to wait and they laughed and said, “How long does it take for the snow to come?” Someone should tell them we've had snow as late as May up here.
I drove to the Dogpatch and checked out the cars in the parking lot. Denny Kennedy's red-and-black LeMans was parked by the side of the building. He's an old friend from high school and he sometimes picks up an odd shift at the Dogpatch. He and the owner have been drinking buddies for years.
There wasn't any sun that day, but it still took me a few minutes to get used to the yellow light. Denny was sitting behind the bar leaning forward on his elbows. He didn't move a muscle when I walked in.
“You hung over, Denny?” I pulled out one of the stools and sat in front of him.
“Not too bad.” He held out his hand, palm down. I could barely see his shakes.
Everybody says there's no hope for Denny. His father was an alcoholicâonly made it out of Munising to die in a dry-out clinic in Arizona. Denny's the same way. He told me a person doesn't know what a real drunk is until they've shit in their pants. I asked him how many times that had happened to him and he laughed. “No use counting,” he told me. “There aren't no reason in the world to keep track of a thing like that.”
There's nothing wrong with the way Denny looks. Most of the girls in town have had a crush on him at one time or another. A few of us have even slept with him, but most nights he gets too drunk to be horny. I'd help him if he'd let me, but he doesn't seem to need anybody.
Denny reached over and grabbed two mugs from the cooler. “Drink a draft with me?” he asked. He didn't have to move to reach the taps.
“I'm going to Marquette,” I said.
“Heading up to the base?”
“Straight into town,” I said. “Randy's got himself in another one of his accidents.”
The beer was cold, but the glass tasted of dishwashing soap. They got an automatic glass washer for the Dogpatch, but the bartender forgot to empty out the peanut shells before they washed the ashtrays, and the machine broke a week after they bought it. Now they just rinse out the glasses in a sinkful of soapy water and let them dry on the bar.
“It's pretty hard to believe.” Denny finished the draft in a couple of swallows and picked mine up to refill it. I told him I wanted a bottle of Canadian Blue.
“Sure is,” I said. “It's hard to believe one man can be so clumsy.” Denny was smelt fishing with us the night Siobhan tried to poison Randy with grain alcohol. We had made a camp-fire up on the north shore waiting for the smelt to run, and Siobhan was mixing the cocktails. It was damp, the early spring winds were cold, and we had to drink a lot to keep warm. She made our drinks with Popov vodka, but Randy's were lethal, pure alcohol she bought from some woman who brews her own.
Halfway through the night, Siobhan started complaining about being bored, so Randy suggested that we go on home. She took both sets of keys and the guys were stuck out there. Siobhan pictured Randy dying of exposure, but fluke of all flukes, Denny stayed somewhat sober that night, and he remembered an old cabin one of his friends had out there. They broke in and spent the night protected from the wind. The doctor told Siobhan the alcohol actually saved Randy's life.
“I'm not talking about Randy,” Denny said.
“Then what's so hard to believe?” I had considered telling Denny about Siobhan and her plan to get rid of Randy. He's someone who would understand about why she was doing it and about why I was helping her. But I never did. He's not sober too often, and I didn't want to get him in any trouble if she ever did manage to carry it off.
“There were two women in here this morning,” Denny nodded to the dance floor. There was a table in front of the window and I could see a few dirty glasses and some bar napkins crumbled in the ashtray. “Two beautiful, beautiful women.”
“What women?”
“I don't know who they were.” Denny grabbed the string of my purse and pulled it over to his side of the bar. He knows I don't smoke, but he still rifles my purse for cigarettes every chance he gets. “You wouldn't believe what they looked like,” Denny said. “Incredible. They didn't look real. But I know they were. I could hear them talking and laughing like real people.”
“What'd they look like? Martians?” I asked.
“They looked like they walked off a page of a magazine. Makeup on and everything.”
“You didn't know them?” I asked. “And they came here alone?” The Dogpatch isn't the kind of place that people who don't know the area would come for a drink.
“They were right there. Bigger than life. More beautiful than any life I've ever seen.” He pointed to the dirty table again, only this time I didn't turn around.
“God, they were beautiful.” Denny finished looking through my purse. I made sure my wallet and car keys were still there and then dropped it over the arm of the stool.
“They didn't have stomachs,” Denny said. “They were all flat here.” He leaned over the bar and put his hand on my stomach. I was wearing long underwear under my sweater, so I couldn't feel his hand. I know I'm not fat, but I still had weight on from having Kate and I didn't like Denny looking at me like I was heavy.
“You could put your hand around their waists,” Denny said. “I swear to God, one hand would fit around their waists.”
“Do you think they were from downstate?” I asked.
Denny ignored my question. “Do you know what they ordered?”
This time I looked over at the glasses. They weren't beer mugs so I guessed Bloody Marys.
“Benedictine.”
“What?”
“Benedictine.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn't mean anything. It's a drink.”
“And those women wanted to drink it?” I kept looking at the table. There was no ice in the glasses. I could see straight through them to the dirty window and then the brick wall.
With a great effort Denny got up and walked the length of the bar. His body tilted and he dragged his heavy right boot. Denny doesn't have a heel on that foot and has to wear a support boot. The accident happened two springs ago during the Au Train canoe races. A bunch of people were drinking down by the finish line, and Denny was sitting on the hood of Bruce Pelke's VW Bruce got in and started to pull away. He thought Denny would jump off, but Denny was too wasted to know that they were moving. He fell off the car, and his ankle got tangled in the front bumper. For a while they thought he was going to lose his whole foot. Now when he gets really loaded he'll take off his socks and show how the ankle is sewn right to the arch of his foot. But when he's got his clothes on you can't really tell anything's wrong except that he walks funny and sometimes stands way over to one side. The alcohol doesn't help the way he looks; I think it makes it worse.
Denny set the heavy bottle in front of me, but I didn't really care about looking at it. I was making my plan of what I would say to Randy. It's one of the reasons I like helping Siobhan with her attempts. It gives me something to concentrate on, something to worry about so I don't go winter crazy. Denny pulled out the small cork, then put the bottle to my nose.
“That's different,” I pushed the bottle away. The smell didn't burn like whiskey, and it wasn't sweet like schnapps.
“Want some?” Denny flipped down a shot glass and tapped it on the bar.
“I've got to go. Randy's out of the hospital at twelve.” It felt good to have a plan, to have something to do with the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. I figured we'd end up back at the house and play euchre that night.
Denny tilted the bottle and drank a sip. “Come on,” he said. “Be a beautiful woman and drink Benedictine with me.”
“I don't want to.” I got up and zipped my jacket. Denny took another sip from the bottle. He must have had his mouth open too wide, because some of the liquor dribbled out the sides and ran down his shirt.
“I'm going to find those women,” Denny said.
“Be careful, Denny,” I said.
“Yep. That's what I'm going to do. As soon as my shift ends, I'm going to go find those women.”
I shook my head and Denny raised his voice.
“Just you watch me,” he said. “The minute Bob comes walking in that door to take over, I'm out of here. I'm going to find those beautiful, beautiful women.”
“You go right ahead,” I said. “And then you tell me what you're going to do once you find them.”
Denny set the bottle down and picked up the cap. He bit into the corkscrew and I thought he had gone back to his daydreaming. But just when I got to the door, he shouted, “I don't have to worry about that right now. I've got to find them first.”
The guys at the pool table looked at me, even though it was Denny who was shouting. I ignored them and gave Denny kind of a half-wave good-bye.
Randy was standing out on the sidewalk in front of the revolving doors when I pulled into the hospital's circular drive. He was wearing blue-and-white hospital pajamas, so I figured he must have been wandering on the highway without a shirt. I stopped the car but forgot to put it in neutral, and when Randy opened the door the car rolled forward.
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” I set my foot on the brake and the car jerked to a full stop.
“Give me a minute, Caroline.” Randy slammed the door. He had a large white bandage on his head and his skin smelled like hospital soap.
“I'm sorry,” I repeated. “How're you doing? You feeling okay?”
“I'm going to live. It's just a few stitches this time,” Randy said.
“You don't look too bad,” I said.
“Where's Siobhan?” Randy bit off his blue hospital bracelet and threw it on the dashboard.
“She's home watching Kate.”
“Is she okay?”
“Siobhan?” I looked at him to see if he was making some kind of a joke, but he was as serious as he always is.
“She's fine,” I said when he didn't answer. “Just fine.”
“That's good. It's good that she's with the baby,” he said. “She loves that baby.”
“She does love Kate,” I decided to go along with what he was saying. “There's no question about that. She loves her an awful lot.”
Randy put his head back on the seat, but I was glad to see that he kept his eyes open. He might have had a concussion, and you're not supposed to go to sleep with one of those.
The wind was coming off Superior with more force than on the drive in. I kept two hands on the steering wheel to stay on the right side of the yellow line. The sky, one continuous piece of gray, looked like it was moving in closer to snow.
“She gets so upset,” Randy spoke without opening his eyes. “I feel horrible when she's upset.”