Winter of the Wolf Moon (13 page)

“No thank
you,
master,” he said just before I closed the door. “I live to serve you.”

On a good day I would have taken Lakeshore Drive all along the bay to Six Mile Road, but with the wind blowing all over the place, I figured I’d be better off staying on the main roads. I noticed the car behind
me just as I left Paradise. When I hit M-28 and headed east, the car was still behind me. In the rearview mirror I could see that it was a midsize sedan. There were two men in the front seat.

Just for the hell of it, I stopped at a little store in Strongs and went in and got a newspaper. I didn’t see the car in the parking lot, but when I got back on the road it was behind me again.

Well, well, I thought. So maybe I wasn’t just imagining it. I really am being followed. But who could it be? Bruckman, maybe? With one of his hockey goons? Wouldn’t
that
be convenient? Here I am looking all over for him and he could be right in back of me.

I tried gunning it for a few miles, just to see if the car would stick with me. It did, keeping at a constant distance of about a quarter mile behind me. Then I slowed down to thirty miles per hour. If the car wasn’t tailing me, it would have gotten closer. It didn’t. It stayed back there, just close enough so that they could react to anything I did, but far enough away that I wouldn’t notice it in my rearview mirror. Or so they apparently thought.

I stopped again in Raco, went into another little store and then peeked out the side window. The car had pulled off the road. I stood there watching it, wondering what to do.

“Can I help you find something?” the man behind the counter asked. He was an older gentleman with a kind face.

“No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I’m just waiting for some friends to show up.”

“They say it’s gonna snow today,” the man said.

“So I hear,” I said, as I opened the door and went out. I’m sure the man was shaking his head as I left.

Okay, boys, I said to myself as I got back in the truck. Let’s try something different.

When I got back onto M-28, the car was behind me again. I started looking for the right kind of road to turn onto, something with a little bit of cover so I could open up some distance on them without being obvious about it. We were about to leave the Hiawatha National Forest and I knew everything would be wide open soon, so I’d need to find something within the next couple miles.

A side road came up on my left, leading north through the pine trees toward Brimley. This could work, I thought. I took the turn and punched it, spinning my wheels in the snow for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the truck found some purchase and I was moving again. I went as fast I could safely go, looking for some kind of turnoff. Somewhere that I could hide the truck and then wait for them.

I saw a couple driveways, but they were long and open. I went around a curve and almost missed another driveway. A good one. I pumped the brakes, trying to stay on the road. I squeezed the steering wheel, trying to
will
the truck to stop. When it finally did, I slammed it in reverse and backed up. Perfect, I thought, if I can just back into this driveway before they catch up to me. Hurry up, goddamn it. Careful, careful …

I stopped the truck. I was about twenty feet from the road, behind a stand of pine trees that were all but smothered by a thick cloak of snow. I had just enough of a sight line to see them coming, and just enough
distance to get my truck back onto the road to stop them. Whoever was in that car, I’d be getting a good, close look at them in just a few seconds.

I took a long breath. I patted the gun in my coat pocket. You never know, I thought. If Bruckman’s in that car, it might come down to this.

My heart was beating fast. Relax, Alex. Slow down. Breathe. Make yourself breathe.

I waited. Any second now.

No sign of the car. It might be slow going for them. It’s not an easy road with this much snow. Just be patient.

I waited.

Nothing.

Where are they? They should be here by now.

Keep waiting, Alex. Just a little more. Give them time.

I waited.

Damn it. They saw through my little game. They’re not taking the bait.

I waited another minute, and then I slammed the gear shift into first. Nice going, Alex. Now they know you spotted them, too.

I went back the way I came, back toward the main road, swearing at myself, at Bruckman, at the snow, and everything else I could think of.

And then I saw them.

The car was stopped, the front wheels off the road. One man was standing waist-high in the snow, trying to push the car backwards.

They’re stuck, I thought. Son of a bitch, they’re stuck in the snow. I’ve got ’em. Just drive right on up, nice and slow, see what they do.

The first thing I noticed as I got closer was that neither one of the men was Bruckman. The second thing I noticed was that they both had hunting caps on. I didn’t recognize the man pushing the car, or the man driving, as much as I could see of him. But I didn’t take much notice of the other hockey players that night, so I couldn’t be sure.

I pulled up next to them and stopped. I rolled down the window.

The man kept pushing and swearing softly to himself. The driver kept working the wheel. They weren’t going anywhere. Neither of them even looked at me.

I just sat there, watching them. The road was nothing but snow and pine trees. No houses to be seen in either direction. A few lazy snowflakes started to fall. If this was the big snowstorm everybody was talking about, it had a lot of work to do.

Finally, the man outside the car gave me a furtive little look and then a little wave. His face was red from all the pushing. “S’all right,” he finally said to me. “We’re okay here. Thanks anyway.” A totally natural response when you’re stuck in the snow and a man in a truck pulls up.

I didn’t move. I kept watching them.

“We’ve got to get it rocking, for God’s sake,” the man said to the driver. “Forward and back, forward and back. Come on!” But the two men couldn’t settle into the same rhythm. The man gave me a wave again. “We’re fine,” he said. “Go on.” He still wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Looks like you boys could use some help,” I said.

“No, no, really,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’ll never get unstuck that way,” I said. “You’ll be here until spring.”

“We’ve got it,” the man said. “I feel it coming now. Look out, please! You’re in the way there!”

“Nah, you’re stuck all right,” I said. “I’m gonna have to pull you out.” I opened the door and stepped out of the truck.

“No, really!” the man said. “Please! You don’t have to do that!” The driver was shaking his head now and pounding on the steering wheel.

I went around to the bed of the truck and pulled out a long length of heavy chain. I held most of the chain in my left hand, and kept just enough free in my right hand to knock somebody’s teeth out if I had to. My gun was in my right coat pocket. “We’ll have you out in a second,” I said. “You boys are lucky I came along.”

“Yes,” the man said. “Yes, we certainly are.”

“Here, give me a hand with this,” I said. “I’m gonna see if I can tie this on to your back end here.”

The man hesitated for a moment. I saw him give the driver a quick look. “Sure,” he finally said. He climbed out of the snow and came around to the back of the car where I could get a good look at him. I gave the chain a little swing with my right hand. If he tried anything, I was ready.

When he was close enough, I looked him in the eye. He might have looked a little soft from a distance, but those eyes gave him away. Even with that ridiculous bright red hunting cap with the flaps hanging down on either side of his head, I could see he was a rock.

“See if you can hook this up under there,” I said.
“I can’t bend down real well today. I’m still sore from playing hockey.”

I gave him the chain and stepped back a little bit. I put my right hand in my coat pocket. The man looked at the chain like he had never seen one before, and then he got down onto the snow and looked up at the back end of the car. “Down here?” he said.

No, genius, I want you to stick the chain up your ass. “Yeah, right there,” I said. “See if you can hook it onto the frame there. You ever play hockey?”

“No, never did,” he said from under the car. While he rattled around with the chain, I looked at the Michigan license plate and recited the number in my head a few times. It’s a Ford Taurus, I told myself. Dark green. I looked up at the driver. He was as motionless as a wax dummy now, facing forward. I still hadn’t gotten a good look at his face. “Come on out of the car,” I called to him. “You don’t want to be in there when I start pulling.” Actually, he
would
want to stay in there and steer while I was pulling the car, but I figured it was worth a shot. The driver opened the door and got out.

“Hi, I’m Alex,” I said. I kept my hands in my pockets, my right hand wrapped tightly around my gun. I didn’t want to shake hands with the man, so I shivered a little bit for him and said, “God, it sure is cold out here.”

“Sure is,” he said. Even with the glasses and the little mustache, he looked as tough as his partner. His hunting cap was blue and his flaps were snapped up. Now that I had seen both of them, I still didn’t recognize either one of them. I didn’t think they were hockey players, or anybody who would hang around
a guy like Bruckman, for that matter. But if they weren’t with him, what the hell were they doing following me around?

I looked up and down the road. I could pull the gun on them right now, I thought. Tell the man on the ground to stay put, point the gun right at the other man’s head, and then politely ask them to start talking.

I decided against it. I had the plate number. I could describe both men. I could pick them out again if I had to. And I had the advantage of knowing that they were following me now. And the further advantage of them
not
knowing that I knew.

“Haven’t seen you boys around here before,” I said. “You up here visiting?”

The driver just looked at me and then down at the man on the ground. “You got that hooked up yet?”

“I think so,” he said.

“Yeah, we’re just visiting,” the driver said. “See if that’ll work now.”

I took the other end of the chain and looped it around my trailer hitch. I got back into the truck and gave it a little gas. The chain pulled taut and then the car started to ease its way backward out of the snowbank. For a split second, I was tempted to punch it and drag the car behind me for a few miles. See if they’d chase me on foot. In a race, my money would have been on the guy with the snapped-up blue cap.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I said as I got back out of the truck.

The car had barely stopped moving before red cap was back on the ground unhooking the chain. He handed it to me and said, “We gotta get going.”

“Appreciate it,” blue cap said. They swung the doors open on either side, hopped in, and then sprayed me with snow as they left.

I stood there watching the car. It went into another death slide and almost ran off the road again. That man does not know how to drive in the snow, I thought. And the way they just took off like that with barely a word of thanks. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear those boys didn’t appreciate my help at all.

I kept driving to the Soo, wondering when I’d see my new friends in my rearview mirror again. The snow was coming down harder now, in big wet flakes that stuck to my windshield and made it hard to see where the hell I was going.

I called the sheriff’s department again. Bill still wasn’t in, and they still wouldn’t give me his home number. I left another message for him to call me as soon as he could. I didn’t want to try to explain to a deputy over the phone that two men were following me all over Chippewa County. I wanted Bill on the other side of a desk, or better yet a table in a bar, listening to me and writing it all down.

I made my way to the east side of town, over by the ice rink where this whole mess started. The address was in a neighborhood just off of Spruce Street, near the old Union Carbide site. The map calls it a “spoiled area” now. In the summer it’s a big field of weeds and sumac trees that nobody ever touches. In the winter it’s covered by a couple feet of snow like everything else so you don’t think about it. The houses are small, with windows sealed in plastic to protect them from the wind off the St. Marys River.

I found Leon Prudell’s little red car parked in the
driveway of the house. The snowbanks on either side of the driveway were as tall as the car itself, so I almost missed it. I had just enough room to park my truck behind him and then squeeze my way between the car and the snowbank to get to the front door. When I rang the bell, it was answered by an elderly woman with thick glasses and the first real smile I had seen in days. How she could smile like that in the middle of winter was a mystery to me, but I instantly loved her for it. She was wearing a thick white sweater and holding a coffee cup in one hand while opening the door for me with the other hand. I could see Leon on the couch, holding a cup from the same set. “You must be Mr. McKnight,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “And you must be Mrs. Hudson.”