Steve Hamilton: North of Nowhere

“Beautiful.”

He kept driving. The sun went down. We finally came to an intersection, and there in the shadows of the pine trees sat an abandoned railroad car from the Soo Line. It was an old passenger car, half the windows covered with wood, the other windows dark with grime. A sign taped to the door read “No Trespassing!”

We passed the lighthouse at Iroquois Point, and then we hit the northern edge of the Bay Mills Reservation. We drove by the community college, then the little Kings Club, the casino that started it all, and then the much bigger Bay Mills Casino. Just past that was the new golf course. It looked almost finished now. From the road we could see a half-dozen bulldozers and excavators, sitting motionless in the dying light, their work done for the day.

“They’re really tearing up the pea patch here,” Jackie said. “It seems like they just started this thing last week.”

“What are they calling this thing again?”

“Wild Bluff,” he said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You’d think they’d come up with an Ojibwa name at least.”

We crossed the bridge over the Waishkey River. We were on Six Mile Road now, heading due east toward Sault Ste. Marie. But just as we passed the entrance to the Brimley State Park, Jackie hung a left onto an unmarked dirt road.

“Where are we going?” I said. “I thought we’re going to the Soo.”

“Sunset,” he said. He didn’t have to say anything else.

The road went north through the pine forest. The trees were close on either side, close enough to hear the pine needles hitting the windows. A mile and a half in, the road ended. There was an old boat launch there, with a wooden dock left to rot in the cold water. Jackie stopped the car six feet from the shoreline.

We got out of the car. We both stood there on the edge of the water, looking west toward the setting sun. The clouds were painted a hundred different shades of red and orange, the sky itself a color of teal blue I have never seen anywhere else.

You have to be outside to appreciate it. You have to feel the wind on your face, smell the freshwater scent in the air.

It is the largest lake in the world. It is terrifying, and deadly. There is no silt at the bottom, no soft bed to sleep in, no weeds to hide in. It is a lake lined in pure granite, a great rock crater carved into the ground by glaciers, filled with pure, sweet, cold water and not much else. A few whitefish. The splinters of broken wooden hulls. The silent steel walls of the Algoma, the Sunbeam, the Edmund Fitzgerald. The bones of the dead. The ghosts.

It is beautiful. God help me, on a summer night when the sun is going down, it is the most beautiful place on earth. This is why I’m here. This is why Jackie is here.

This is why we live through the long winters, the brutal cold, the blizzards that dump three feet of snow overnight, the incessant whining of the snow-mobiles. The long slow melt in the spring, the black flies in June, the mosquitoes in July and August. It is over so quickly, and then the air is cold again and the lake turns back into a monster.

For some of us, it is enough. We stay, year after year. Nowhere else would feel right to us. Nowhere else would be home.

In that summer of secrets, this was the biggest secret of all. Those of us who live here all kept the secret. We guarded it closely, and shared it with those few people who could not live here for whatever reason, but still chose to come back here whenever they could.

I couldn’t have guessed that even this secret would be in jeopardy that summer. I couldn’t have imagined it. How could one man ever threaten such a thing? One man.

We got back in Jackie’s car and drove to our poker game. I was about to meet that man.

The house was on the east side of Sault Ste. Marie, on the banks of the St. Marys River, right next to the old golf course. It was a big house, one of those contemporary things, all windows and angles. Every light in the house seemed to be on, including a huge chandelier that you could see through the window over the front door.

“Why are we here again?” I said.

“To play poker,” Jackie said. “And to drink his whiskey, eat his food. Like I told you. And smoke his cigars.”

“Whatever you say.”

“There’s another reason, as well. It’s a little thing we do. When we get to it, just play along.”

“Get to what? What are you talking about?”

“You’ll see,” he said.

As we stood at the doorway, an evening breeze came in off the lake. We could have gone to the Locks Park instead, taken a walk along the edge of the water and then gone to the Ojibway Hotel, had steaks in their dining room. Instead we were here. When Jackie pressed the doorbell button, it didn’t just go ding-dong. It went through eight long notes, like church bells ringing the hour.

“Do we get to see the changing of the guards now?” I asked.

“Don’t get started,” Jackie said. “Give the night a chance at least.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re right.” I liked playing poker, after all. Tonight, maybe it would get me out of my own head for a couple of hours. It might be just what I needed.

We heard a dog barking on the other side of the door. Then it opened. The man who opened it was bald. That was the first thing I noticed. He had that bone hardness that some bald men have, that extra tough bad-ass mystique. It makes you think of a bald biker who sits patiently at the end of the bar, waiting for the right time to stand up and hit you in the face with a pool cue.

“Miata, stay down,” he said. Which wasn’t asking much, because the dog was only about eight inches tall to begin with. I would have guessed Chihuahua, with the short hair and the bug eyes, but in the back of my mind I remembered the old urban legend about the couple who went to Mexico and brought back a dog, only to find out it was a rat. This might have been that animal.

“I forgot to warn you about the dog,” Jackie said.

“You must be Alex,” the man said. He shook my hand with a firm grip just this side of painful. “I’m Winston Vargas. Win for short, because that’s what I do. Right, Jackie?” He gave Jackie a wink.

Jackie rolled his eyes and stepped past him. The dog kept dancing around us and barking, its little legs moving at hummingbird speed.

“Don’t mind him,” Vargas said. “He thinks he’s a Doberman. Hell, maybe he was in his last life.”

“What did you say his name was? Miata?” I bent down to offer my hand. The dog showed me its teeth. Okay, bad idea.

“My wife named him after her car,” he said. “Of course she’s not here so I get to look after him all night. Again.”

“Well, thanks for having me over,” I said. I was giving the night a chance, like Jackie said. I really was.

“I’m glad you could make it,” he said. “Let me show you to the table.”

He led me through the house to the poker room. I guess it would have been called the entertainment room most of the time. There was a home theater set up along one wall, with a screen that had to be seven feet across. A wet bar dominated the opposite wall, with enough bottles on the shelves to restock Jackie’s place. The back wall was all windows, looking out over the river. In the center of the room, beneath a great Tiffany lamp, was one of those six-sided poker tables with the green felt in the middle and the little compartments on each side.

“What do you think?” he said. “I just got it.”

I was thinking he’d need the green visor and the red garter on his sleeve to go with it. “Quite a setup,” I said.

There were a couple of men already sitting at the table. I recognized Bennett O’Dell, an old friend of Jackie’s who’d stop by at the Glasgow every now and then. He was another tough old bird like Jackie, although a hell of a lot taller, and at least seventy pounds heavier. He was in the bar business, too, with a place called O’Dell’s over on the west side of town. Bennett’s father had opened it up back in the thirties, and it had been run by the family ever since. I remembered a story Jackie once told me about running around with Bennett when they were in high school, practically living in that bar, doing their homework at one of the tables every night. When Jackie was ready to open up his own place, he didn’t want to take any business away from the O’Dell family, which is why he bought a place out in Paradise.