Steve Hamilton - Ice Run

“Natalie, where are you?”

I went through one more room, this one with piles of old magazines on one wall, and on the other wall a set of shelves filled with mason jars. There was a door. It was half closed, the light streaming out onto the floor.

“Natalie?”

I pushed the door open.

She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by more boxes.

“Natalie, didn’t you hear me calling you?”

She didn’t answer me. She held an old photograph in her hands, its edges curled with age.

“What’s the matter?” I said. I winced as I bent down beside her.

She didn’t say anything. A single tear ran down her right cheek.

“What is it?” I said. “What are you looking at?”

She didn’t show it to me, but I could see just enough of it to make out three men. The photo was in color, but it had that washed-out look to it, the way color photos looked in the sixties. I was guessing the older man was her grandfather, and one of the other two men was maybe her father. She had come down to pack up all these boxes of old photographs, and had stopped to look at this picture of the grandfather she loved and the father she had hardly known. And that this had gotten to her, in the same way it would have gotten to me or to anyone else.

I was wrong.

“I talked to the doorman,” she finally said.

“What?”

“At the hotel.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The first night I got there. I talked to him. What did you say his name was? Chris?”

“Yes, but what does-”

“He helped me with my bag,” she said. “He rode up in the elevator with me, and he asked me how bad the roads were. I told him I had a Jeep, and that I knew how to drive in the snow. He asked me how far I had come.”

“Yeah?”

“So I told him I came from Canada. I’m pretty sure I said from Blind River. That old man, the man who left the hat, the man who died in the snow… You told me he was the doorman’s grandfather, right?”

“Natalie, I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She looked down at the picture and swallowed hard. “I need to tell you something, Alex.”

“What is it?”

“When you asked me to come over to Michigan, the first thing I thought of was this promise I had made to my own grandfather.”

“What did you promise him?”

She looked up at me. “I promised him I would never set foot in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.”

“What? I don’t get it.”

“He hated that city so much, Alex. Once, when I was a teenager, a bunch of us went over the bridge to go to this bar. God, I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he found out. I never saw him so mad.”

She looked back down at the picture.

“Why did he feel that way?” I said. “I mean, I remember you telling me he thought it was a wild place.”

“There’s one thing we never talked about in this house,” she said. “My father’s death was the one forbidden topic. But now, I think it makes sense.”

“What? Tell me.”

“My father was killed in Michigan, Alex. In Sault Ste. Marie.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shrugged. “I thought it was time to grow up, you know? My father’s been gone for thirty years now, and my grandfather’s been gone for fifteen.”

“Okay, so go back. What does all this have to do with the doorman at the hotel? Or his grandfather?”

She handed me the picture. I flattened it out. There were three men. The man on the left was the oldest of the three, maybe in his fifties. He was robust and he had a stern smile, and he was dressed in an old suit with a string tie. He stood with his hands on his hips, like he wasn’t quite sure whether he approved of the scene before him. The man in the middle of the picture was young, in his twenties. He had a big wide smile and he was wearing a light linen suit. He was moving toward the camera, his arms spread as if he were about to embrace the photographer. The man on the right was just as well dressed, his suit coat unbuttoned to show off his suspenders. His hands were in his pockets, and he stood watching the man in the middle with a thin smile.

“It was meant for me,” she said. “I’m the one he left it for.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look,” she said. She pointed at the man in the middle of the picture. “Look at what’s on my father’s head.”

It was the same shade of gray, the same band. The same shape. Forty years later, it would end up filled with ice and snow on the floor of a hotel hallway, but in this picture, it belonged to a young man from Canada. Sure, there were thousands more just like it. That much we knew. But somehow, we knew something else-the way you know in your gut that the most improbable thing in the world has to be true.

This was it.

This was the hat.

“It was my father’s hat,” she said. “But why? Why would that old man go to all that trouble just to tell me he knew who I was?”

She finally looked up at me. It was like she was seeing the damage on my face for the first time.

“Alex.” She reached out to me. “This all happened because of me.”

“No,” I said. “Come on. It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” she said, looking back down at the photograph. “Of course it is. It was my father…”

I looked more closely at the three men-starting with the old man on the left, who had obviously worked hard his entire life, who had seen so many long Canadian winters. Then the younger man in the middle, Natalie’s father, with the big easy smile, all charm and optimism. He was stepping toward the camera, drawing the attention to himself. Then the third man.

“This man on the right,” I said.

“Albert DeMarco. My stepfather.”

I felt a sick flutter in my stomach. “The one you told me about?”

“Yes, he was my father’s best friend back then. His family lived just down the road.”

I bent down closer to look at him. “You say he’s dead now?”

“They all are,” she said. “All three of them are gone. Two of them left too soon, and Albert not soon enough.”

“Do you recognize where this picture was taken?”

“It’s right here at the house, standing out by the driveway.”

“When was it taken?”

“I don’t know exactly. I think I remember that car, though. It was still here… Years later, I mean. It was a beat-up old thing by then, just sitting in back of the barn.”

Behind the men I could just barely make out the tail end of a car. “So this must have been what, late sixties maybe?”

“Yes. Somewhere around then.”

I touched the photo where the corner was peeling away from the backing. “This is a Polaroid,” I said. “One of the early ones. The picture would come out and you had to stick it on the cardboard and smooth it out.”

She shrugged. I might as well have been talking about a box camera with the big black hood and the gunpowder flash.

“What else is here?” I said. “Any other pictures?”

She pushed open the lid on the box. “There’s all sorts of old stuff here. Pictures. Souvenirs.”

“What about these other boxes?” There were six or seven in all, lined up against the wall in this small room. Above them there were shelves with dusty old radios, lampshades, one of those old milkshake mixers with the steel canisters like you see in diners.

“More history,” she said. “Most of all this was from before I was born. God, Alex.”

“Why don’t we bring some of this stuff upstairs?”

She wiped her face on the back of her sleeve and stood up. “I’m almost afraid to. What else are we going to find?”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go up. It’s freezing down here.”