person’s face.”
“You’re trying to be funny, right? This is a joke.”
“I’ll look after the cabins,” he said. “I promise. Now get your stuff together.”
“Okay, I get it,” I said. “This is your cute little way of telling me I haven’t been coming around much lately.”
“Yeah, it’s been killing me,” he said. “Nobody to tell me I’m doing everything wrong. Nobody to make dinner for whenever he snaps his fingers. It’s been a real nightmare.”
“I was gonna stop by tonight,” I said. “Really.”
“The hell you were,” he said. “Look at you. Look at this crap you’re reading. ‘A heart-stopping tale of murder and revenge.’” He picked up another book and then plunked it back down. “‘A true story of deception and naked greed.’ If this is what you’d rather do than come harass me all night, so be it. It doesn’t bother me one bit, believe me. Not until everybody starts asking me questions. ‘Where’s Alex, Jackie?’ ‘How come Alex doesn’t come in anymore?’ ‘What the hell’s wrong with Alex, Jackie? I said hello to him at the post office and he walked right by me like he didn’t know me.’”
“Who was that?” I said. “Who said hello at the post office?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You don’t care. You don’t need us anymore. Any of us. This is the goddamned loneliest town in the whole country, and you still have to hide in your cabin. So I figured, what the hell, there’s only one thing to do with him. Send him north! Let him live with the bears!”
“Are you about done?”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I came here to give you an ultimatum. I’m not leaving until you choose. Either I take you to the airport and put your ass on a plane to Moosehide, or you come play poker with me tonight.”
“Poker? Where, at the Glasgow?”
“No, in the Soo. At this guy’s house. You haven’t met him.”
“Since when do you go out playing poker?” I said. “Who’s gonna run the place?”
“We usually play at the bar,” he said. “Not the old crowd you used to play with. This is a new thing. You’d know that if you ever came by. Win wants to show off his new poker table, so I figured I’d let my son look after things. It’s called a night out, Alex. It’s what sociable people do sometimes.”
“Jackie, I really don’t feel like playing poker with a bunch of guys I don’t know.”
“Too much of a strain, I understand. Okay, I’ll help you get packed.”
“Knock it off. I’m not going to, where you’d say? Moosehide? Is that really a town in the Yukon?”
“I told you, Alex. One or the other. I’m not leaving until you pick one.”
“None of the above, Jackie. Thanks for the offer.”
“You’re gonna have to forcibly remove me,” he said.
“Since when do you use words like ‘forcibly’?”
“Poker or the Yukon, Alex. I’m waiting.”
What else was I going to do? I sure as hell wasn’t going to the Yukon, and I didn’t feel like forcibly removing him. So I chose poker. It seemed like the easy way out.
Little did I know.
Jackie has a silver 1982 Lincoln Continental that he supposedly bought for three hundred dollars in 1990. Since then he claims to have put on another 200,000 miles on top of the original 150,000. But then Jackie has been known to exaggerate. No matter how much he had paid for it, and how many miles he had gotten out of it, somehow he kept driving it every year, even in the dead of winter when four-wheel-drive vehicles were sliding off the road all around him.
“I don’t see any camping equipment,” I said when I got in the passenger’s side.
“It’s all in the trunk,” he said. “This thing has a huge trunk.”
“Uh-huh. I’m sure that’s where it is.”
“I hope you brought some money,” he said. “The stakes might be a little higher than what you’re used to.”
“This feels like a mistake already,” I said. I watched the town roll by as we headed south down the main road, past the Glasgow Inn. It felt strange to be passing it without stopping. As we paused at the blinking yellow light, I looked at the new motel they had put up on that corner. The gas station was across the street, then another bar. There were two gift shops on the west side of the road, then another little motel. For a moment I wondered if maybe Jackie’s Yukon idea wasn’t so bad after all. If Paradise, Michigan was starting to look too busy for me, maybe it was time to head into the woods.
A half-mile south of town, we crossed over a thin, curving strip of land that separated the lake on one side from a pond on the right. It always made me feel like I was driving on a tightrope when I came this way myself. Jackie kept one hand on the wheel and kept his speed up all the way around the bend. Never mind that one false move and we’d slide right into Lake Superior.
The sun was just beginning to set when we hit Lakeshore Drive. It’s a twenty mile stretch along the southern rim of Whitefish Bay, maybe the emptiest road I’ve ever been on. In the wintertime you’d be a fool to try it, but on a summer evening it was the only way to go.
We drove in silence for a while. “You really missed me, didn’t you,” I finally said.
“If you want to live like a hermit, that’s your business,” he said.
“Admit it. You missed me.”
“Get over yourself, Alex.” If Jackie had stayed in Scotland, he might have ended up one of those old caddies who carry bags all day and then head to the local pub. Instead he came here to the Upper Peninsula and eventually opened up his own pub, complete with the overstuffed chairs and the fireplace. He had been here over fifty years, and yet you could still hear the hint of a Scottish burr in his voice. On the rare occasions when he talked about his childhood in Glasgow, that old burr seemed to grow even stronger.
“Reason I asked you,” he said, “was because we needed another player. Swanson couldn’t make it, which would have left us with five. You know how much I hate poker with five players.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You can’t play high-low or all those other horseshit games you like to call.”
He just shook his head at that one.
“Swanson,” I said. “Do I know him?”
“You’ve seen him around,” he said. “He’s a lawyer in the Soo.”
“A lawyer,” I said. “My favorite.”
“He’s not so bad,” Jackie said. “Just because he’s a lawyer…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“There are good lawyers in the world.”
“Yeah, three of them at last count.”
The road was deserted, as always. We wouldn’t see a single car until we got to Brimley. There was nothing but pine trees all around us. And the lake. There’s always a wind of some sort coming off the lake, but tonight it was almost calm.
“Where are we playing again?”
“Win Vargas’s,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve met him. You’d remember if you had.”
“Uh-oh. This doesn’t sound promising.”
“He’s good for a few laughs,” he said. “Among other things.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “I just hope you don’t mind expensive whiskey and cigars. I may have mentioned your little obsession with Canadian beer, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a case waiting for you. If he does, remember to make a big deal about it. He likes to impress people.”
“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
