Steve Hamilton: Ice Run

In a land of hard winters, the hardest of all is the winter that fills you with false hope. It’s the kind of winter that starts out easy. You get the white Christmas, but it’s a light snow, six inches tops, the stuff that makes everything look like a postcard. The sun comes out during the day. You can take your coat off if you’re working hard enough. The nights are quiet. The stars shine between the silver clouds. You celebrate New Year’s. You make resolutions. It snows again and you run the plow. You shovel. You chop wood. You sit inside at night by the fire. You say to yourself, this ain’t so bad. A little cold weather is good for a man. It makes you feel alive.

That’s what I was thinking. I admit it. Although maybe I had other reasons to believe this winter would be easy. Maybe this winter I could be forgiven for letting my guard down. One good look at the calendar would have put my head back on straight. Spring doesn’t come until May, Alex. Which meant-what, winter had ten rounds left in a fifteen-round fight? That was plenty of time. That was all the time in the world.

When the storm finally hit, I was down the road at the Glasgow Inn. Jackie had the fire going and had just made a big pot of his famous beef stew. He had the cold Molsons, bought at the Beer Store across the bridge and stored just for me in his cooler, for the simple reason that American beer cannot compare to beer bottled and sold in Canada. That and a Red Wings game on the television over the bar were all I needed. On that night, anyway. I had plans for the next day. I had big plans. But for now I was happy just to be with Jackie, and to do everything I could to slowly drive him insane.

“Alex, you’re gonna tell me what’s going on,” he said for the third time. He was an old Scot, God love him, with the slightest hint of a burr in his speech. Born in Glasgow sixty-odd years ago, the son of a tugboat captain, he came to Michigan when he was a teenager. He had been here ever since, eventually opening up the Glasgow Inn. It looked a lot more like a Scottish pub than an American bar, which meant you could spend the whole evening there without getting depressed or drunk or both.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Like hell you don’t. You’ve been bouncing in here, saying hello and how are you. Smiling and laughing.”

“I’m happy to see you,” I said. “Is that so bad?”

“Since when are you happy about anything?” He gave me that Popeye squint of his. “It’s January, for God’s sake.”

“Almost February,” I said. “How many inches have we had?”

“Don’t even say that, Alex. You’ll jinx it. You know a storm’s coming.”

“I had another cancellation today. There’s not enough snow to ride on.” This time of year, snowmobiling was the biggest business in Paradise, Michigan. Hell, it was the only business. Every rental cabin in town, and every motel room, was booked months in advance. On most January nights, Jackie’s place would be crawling with men from downstate, most of them with their big puffy snowsuits zipped down to the waist.

And that sound. The whine of the engines, coming from every direction. It always drove me crazy. But this night was silent.

“Tonight,” he said. “We’ll get buried. You watch.”

I shrugged and looked up at the hockey game. “Bring it on.”

“And what’s with the salad, anyway?”

“What salad?”

“Lettuce and vegetables, Alex. That salad.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For dinner. You had a salad.”

“I had the stew, Jackie. Since when can I pass that up?”

“You had a little bowl of stew and a big salad.”

“Okay, so?”

“You don’t eat salads for dinner. I’ve never seen you eat a salad in fifteen years.”

“So I felt like a salad, Jackie. What are you getting at?”

“You’re not drinking as much beer, either. Try to deny it.”

I held up my hands. “Guilty. You busted me.”

“You’re working out, too. I can tell.”

“You’ve been bugging me for years to take better care of myself,” I said. “So now maybe I am. Is there something wrong with that?”

“You finally decided to listen to me? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes, Alex. It is. You’ve never listened to me. Not once.”

The door opened at that moment, saving me from Jackie’s third degree. It was my friend and neighbor, Vinnie LeBlanc, bringing in a blast of cold wet air.

“Holy Christ,” Jackie said. “You can smell the snow coming. It makes my bones hurt.”

“Who’s winning?” Vinnie said as he took off his coat. It was a denim coat with a fur collar, the only coat I’d ever seen him wear, no matter how cold it got. He was an Ojibwa Indian, a member of the Bay Mills community. He had moved off the reservation a few years ago, and had bought the land down the road from mine and had built his own cabin. We were friends for a while, and then we weren’t. Then I helped him look for his brother. What we found was a hell of a lot of trouble, but somehow we also found our friendship again. Just like that, without a word.

“Wings,” I said. “Two to one. They just waved one off for Colorado.”

He sat down next to me and asked Jackie for a 7 Up. The man never touched alcohol, going on nine years straight.

“Jackie’s right,” Vinnie said. “It’s gonna snow. You better not be too far away from home when it does.”

“That’s a good one,” Jackie said. “Since when does Alex go anywhere?”

Vinnie looked down at his glass. He rattled the ice. He had a smile on his face, a smile so subtle you wouldn’t even see it if you didn’t know the man as well as I did.

He knew. He was the only one who knew my secret.

I just couldn’t tell Jackie about it. Not yet. I knew he had strong opinions about some things in life, and this was one thing he’d have a lot to say about. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Or maybe I didn’t want to ruin it. Maybe talking about it in the light of day would make it all vanish like a fever dream.

For whatever reason, I kept my mouth shut that night. I was happy to sit by the fire and watch the rest of the hockey game. The Wings gave up a late goal and after the five-minute overtime had to settle for a tie. Vinnie put his feet up and closed his eyes. There was still white tape on the side of his face, where the bullet had taken off part of his ear. I knew he was spending a lot more time over at the reservation now, looking after his mother. I didn’t see him nearly as much.

We heard the wind picking up. There was a soft ticking at the windows. The snow had started. Outside this building, not a hundred yards away, lay the shoreline of Lake Superior. The ice stretched out a quarter mile, into the darkness of Whitefish Bay. Beyond that there was nothing but open water-water so cold and deep it was like a cruel joke to call it a lake at all. It was a sea, the Sea of Superior, and tonight it would feed the snow gods.

“You’re gonna be plowing,” Vinnie said. He kept his eyes closed.

“I’m ready.”

He opened one eye. He started to say something and stopped.

“What is it?” I said.

He smiled again. Two smiles in one night.

“You’re not going anywhere tomorrow,” he said. “You’re gonna be stuck here.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said. But I knew he was probably right. God damn it.

We finally left around midnight. I said goodbye to Jackie and he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

“You got him a little worked up,” Vinnie said as we stepped out into the night. There were already three inches of new snow covering the parking lot. “He doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on.”