EXCERPT
Chapter One

The night felt wrong already, even before the boat wreck.
     It was cold. That was the first thing. It was cold and there was a wet fog hanging over the water. The kind of fog that creeps into your bones, no matter how many layers you’re wearing. The cold gets into your lungs and chills you from the inside out.
     I was in Brimley, which is normally just a stop on the road, halfway around the bay when you’re driving from Paradise to Sault Ste. Marie. There are two restaurants in Brimley – Willoughby’s has a separate bar in back, and the Cozy switches over at 9:00 every night, when everybody under 21 is kicked out. There’s one gas station with a little store on the side. It’s right next to the Bay Mills Indian Community. The rez. On a clear night I could have stood there on the shore and seen the casino lights across the water. But this was anything but a clear night.
     I figured Vinnie was probably over there, working at the blackjack tables, keeping order in his own quiet way. He had been a dealer for a few years. Now he was a pit boss. Vinnie’s a Bay Mills Ojibwa, even though he lives off the rez. He’s my neighbor, in fact, and one of my three last friends in the world. But I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him that night, even if he was just around the bay. I leave the man alone when he’s working. Hell, I leave him alone most of the time. That’s just the way things are with him.
     Normally, I’d be back in Paradise on a night like this, spending my last waking hours at the Glasgow Inn. I’d sit in one of the big overstuffed chairs by the fire. Maybe there’d be a game on the television over the bar. Jackie Connery, the owner of the place and the Supreme Commander, was another friend. Although unlike Vinnie, I seldom left Jackie alone. He’d never admit it, but Jackie would be lost without me, without my daily commentary on the way he makes breakfast, runs his bar, builds a fire, you name it. He tries to return the favor, but I ignore most of his advice. And his insults. Despite everything, he always has a cold Molson’s Canadian waiting for me, every single night without fail. He drives across the bridge to Canada once a week to buy a case for me, supposedly on his way to do something else. I think it’s just a ritual to him now. An excuse to get out from behind the bar. Either that or he really wants me to have my Molson’s.
     Yeah, a cold beer and my feet up by the fire. That would have been another plan for this night. Instead of standing here on the edge of Waishkey Bay, in a stranger’s backyard, looking out at the cold fog. Waishkey Bay opens up into Whitefish Bay, and beyond that lies the vast unbroken surface of the biggest, coldest, deepest lake in the world. Lake Superior. I could hear it out there. I could even feel it. I just couldn’t see it.
     I wrapped my coat tighter around my body and tried to convince myself I didn’t need to shiver. I knew once that started, it wouldn’t stop until I went inside. I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Too much noise in there. Too much smoke. I wanted to stay out here a little longer, by myself, looking out at the fog and what little I could make out in the night sky. Later, there would be fireworks, maybe invisible but fireworks just the same, right here over Waishkey Bay.
     Oh yes, that was the other strange thing about this night. I was standing there cursing myself for not wearing a warmer coat on the Fourth of July.
     It wasn’t right. I swear, this was not fair at all. We live for the summers up here. It’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for God’s sake, as far away from civilization as you can get without leaving the country. The winters last forever up here. Or at least they feel that way. It’s brutally, inhumanly cold. The snowstorms gather their strength from the lake and then they unleash themselves on us like they have orders from God to bury us forever. In 1995 we got six feet of snow in one day.
     Twenty-four hours.
     Six. Feet. Of Snow.
     Most years, it doesn’t even melt until May. Then we might get a quick flash of Spring. The temperature might break forty and we’re practically lying on the beach in our bathing suits. That’s how desperate we are for a little sunshine. The snow will sneak back a few times and dump a few more inches in the middle of the night. Just teasing us. Then finally the earth will tilt into position and the summer will seem to come all at once. The old joke, how summer was on a Thursday last year. That’s how brief it seems. How fleeting.
     But God, what a summer it is. For one blink of an eye, this becomes the most beautiful place in the world. There’s a light up here. You have to see it to know it. The way it hits the water in the evenings. The way the wind comes off the lake and you can look all the way down a long straight road and see the trees moving one by one.
     The sunsets.
     The desolate, heartbreaking beauty of this goddamned place. This home of mine.
     But not this year. For whatever reason, we’re skipping summer altogether. We’re rushing right back into those fall months when the lake turns into a monster. Almost overnight, six foot waves ready to batter the great ships again. To miss out on the promise of summer, it is the cruelest thing imaginable, and everyone, every last person living up here, has been feeling it.
     For me, there’s even more to regret. But not just now. No use becoming completely suicidal. It’ll be there when I finally make it home to my bed. When I close my eyes and remember what her face looks like. When I wonder what she’s doing at that very moment, 500 miles away.
     We heard a faint boom just then, from somewhere around the other side of Waishkey Bay.

******

     “They’re trying to do the fireworks,” Tyler said. “I can’t believe it.”
     There was another boom. We could see a few red streamers in the air. Just barely. Michigan is already pretty loose with its fireworks laws, and on the reservation it gets even looser. You can fire off just about anything short of an intercontinental missile, but on this night it was a total waste of gunpowder. Whoever it was over there, he fired off five or six more before finally giving up.
     “Well, that’s it for this year,” Tyler said. “I think summer is officially canceled.”
     “Wait, what’s that sound now?” Leon said.
     From inside the studio behind us, somebody ran through a few guitar chords.
     “That’s your man Eugene,” Tyler said. “Pretending he’s Jimi Hendrix. Does he know to tune that thing?”
     “No, I mean out there,” Leon said.
     The guitar stopped. The three of us stood there in the near-silence, listening. There was a low droning noise, somewhere out on the bay. It was getting louder.
     “It’s a boat,” Tyler said.
     “Is it safe to be out there?”
     “As long as you know where you’re going.”
     “You can’t even see where you’re going.”
     “You have to have the right equipment.”
     The noise was getting louder.
     “Whoever it is,” Leon said, “he’s going fast.”
     “If he’s been here before, he can follow one of his old GPS courses… But yeah, you’re right. Even if you’re on a safe line, I don’t think you want to be going that fast. You don’t know what might get in your way.”
     It got louder. It was coming closer to us.
     “Wait a minute,” Tyler said. “It sounds like…”
     “He’s coming this way,” Leon said.
     “He can’t. Not this close. He’ll run right into the pilings.”
     Louder and louder. The unmistakable roar of a powerful boat, and now that it was getting closer, the slapping of the hull against the water.
     We saw it. A dark shape, moving fast. Like it was coming right at us. Like it would leap onto the shore and run us over.
     “Stop!” Tyler yelled. He ran down onto his dock. “Cut your motor!”
     It was useless. There was no way the driver could hear him. The boat kept coming, and then finally it turned to its port side. It wouldn’t hit the dock now. But the pilings…
     “Stop! Turn around!”
     It didn’t. The boat was still just a dark shape in the water, and from where we were standing we could barely tell how big it was. But one thing was certain. The realization probably hit all three of us at exactly the same time. We were about to witness something truly horrible.
     I didn’t just hear the impact. I felt it in my stomach. It was the long wrenching scrape of the boat’s hull against the wooden pilings, far worse than nails on a blackboard. It all happened within two seconds. Before I could even draw another breath the boat had stopped dead. The engine was still churning at the water.
     “We need to get out there,” Tyler said.

This ends the excerpt from Steve Hamilton's novel, A Stolen Season.
Return to A Stolen Season page.