“I’ve got a wife and two kids, you know.” He kept throwing big roundhouse punches with his right hand. “My wife isn’t going to get her new car now. And my kids won’t be going to Disney World like I promised them.”
I ducked a right, then another right, then another. Let’s see a left, I thought. I want a nice lazy drunken left hand, Prudell.
“I had a guy working for me, helping me out when I was on a job,” he said. “I swear to God, McKnight, that was the only thing keeping him together. If something happens to him now, it’s all on your head.”
He tried a couple more right-hand haymakers before the idea of a left-hand jab bubbled up through all the rage and whiskey in his brain. When it came, it was as long and slow as a mudslide. I stepped into him and threw a right hook to the point of his chin, turning the punch slightly downward at the end, just like my old third base coach had taught me. Prudell went down hard and stayed down.
I stood there watching him while I rubbed my right shoulder. “Get up, Prudell,” I said. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”
I was just about to get worried when he finally pulled himself up from the gravel. “McKnight, I will get you,” he said. “I promise you that right now.”
“I’m here most Saturday nights,” I said. “Hell, most nights period. You know where to find me.”
“Count on it,” he said. He stumbled around the parking lot for a full minute until he remembered what his car looked like. In the distance I could hear the waves dying on the rocks.
I went back into the bar. The men looked at me, then at the door. They reached their own conclusions and went on with the poker hand. It was the usual crew, the kind of guys you didn’t even have to say hello to, even if you hadn’t seen them in a week. You just sat down and looked at your cards. I held a napkin over my eye to stop the bleeding.
“That clown must have stood there for two hours waiting for you,” Jackie said. “What was his beef?”
“Thinks I took his job,” I said. “He used to do some work for Uttley.”
“A private investigator? Him?”
“He likes to think so.”
“I wouldn’t pay him two cents to find his own dick.”
“Why would you pay a man to find his own dick?” a man named Rudy asked.
“I wouldn’t,” Jackie said. “It’s just an expression.”
“It’s not an expression,” Rudy said. “If it was an expression, I would have heard it before.”
“It’s an expression,” Jackie said. “Tell him it’s an expression, Alex.”
“Just deal the cards,” I said.
I played some poker and had a few slow beers. Jackie went over the bridge every week to get good beer from Canada, just one more reason to love the place. I forgot all about trailer parks and pissed-off ex-private eyes for a while. I figured that was enough drama for one night. I figured I was allowed to relax a little bit and maybe even start to feel human again.
But the night had other plans for me. Because that’s when Edwin Fulton had to come into the place. Excuse me, Edwin J. Fulton the third. And his wife, Sylvia. They just had to pick this night to drop by.
They had obviously just been to some sort of soiree. God knows where you’d even find a soiree in the whole Upper Peninsula, but leave it to Edwin. He was decked out in his best gray suit, a charcoal overcoat, and a red scarf wrapped around his collar just right. The suit was obviously tailored to make him look taller, but it could only do so much. He was still a good six inches shorter than his wife.
Sylvia was wearing a full-length fur coat. Fox, I would have guessed. It must have taken about twenty of them to make that coat. She had her dark hair pinned up, and when she took off her coat, we all got to see a little black number that showed off her legs and her perfect shoulders. Goddamn it, that woman had shoulders. And even on a cold night she had to go and wear something like that. She knew that every man in the place was looking at her, but I had a sick feeling that she wouldn’t have taken her coat off at all if I hadn’t been there. She slipped me a quick look that hurt me more than Prudell’s keys.
Edwin gave me a little wave while he ordered up a couple quick drinks. He had that look on his face, that deadpan look he always wore when he was out in public with his wife.
“Tell me something,” Jackie said to nobody in particular. “How does a woman like that end up with a horse’s ass like Edwin Fulton?”
“I think it has something to do with having a lot of money,” Rudy said.
“You mean if I had a million dollars she’d be sitting over here on my lap instead?”
“I don’t know about that,” Rudy said. “Guy as ugly as you, you’d probably need five million.”
They didn’t stay long. One drink and they were gone, just a quick stop to dazzle the locals and then be on their way. She gave me one more glance as Edwin helped her into her coat. Whatever point she had hoped to make had apparently been made.
I kept thinking about her while I played poker. It didn’t help me concentrate on the cards and it didn’t help my mood any, either. Outside the wind really started to pick up. We could hear it rattling the windows.
“November winds are here early,” Jackie said.
“It’s after midnight,” Rudy said. “It’s November first. They’re right on time.”
“I stand corrected.”
About an hour later, Edwin came back into the place. He was alone this time. He stood at the bar for a while, wearing his hangdog expression this time, hoping I’d notice him. I was glad he didn’t try to come over to our table. He had actually played with us once before, and had lost his money as fast as a man can lose money playing low-stakes poker. But it’s just no fun taking money from a guy when you know it doesn’t mean anything to him. That and the way he kept yammering on like he was suddenly one of the boys. He never got asked to play again.
On most nights, I would have at least gone over to him for a minute to see how he was doing. I don’t know if I just felt sorry for the guy, or if I felt guilty because of the business with Sylvia. Or maybe I really liked the guy. Maybe I considered him my friend despite all the obvious reasons not to. But for some reason I just didn’t feel up to it on this night. I let him stand there by the bar until he finally gave up and left.
I felt bad as soon as the door shut behind him. “I’m gonna call it a night, guys,” I said. I was hoping I could catch him in the parking lot, but when I got outside he was already gone.
On the ride home, there’s a stretch on the main road where the trees open up and you get a great look at the lake. There wasn’t much moonlight coming through the clouds, but there was enough to see that the waves were getting bigger, maybe four or five feet. I could feel the truck rocking in the wind as I drove. Somewhere out there, a good thousand feet under the waves, there were twenty-nine men still sleeping, twenty years after the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. I bet that night felt just like this one.
The wind followed me all the way home, and even when I was inside the cabin I could feel it coming through the cracks. I turned off every light and crawled under my thickest comforter. In the total darkness I could hear the night whispering to me.
I slept. I don’t know how long. Then a noise. The phone.
It rang a few times before I got to it. When I picked it up, a voice said, “Alex.”
“Hello?”
“Alex, it’s me, Edwin.”
“Edwin? God, what time is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s about two in die morning.”
“Two in the… for God’s sake, Edwin, what is it?”
“Um, I’ve got a little problem here, Alex.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Alex, I know it’s real late, but is there any chance of you coming out here?”
“Where? Your house?”
“No. I’m in the Soo.”
“What? I just saw you a couple hours ago at the bar.”
“Yeah, I know. I was on my way out here.”
“Edwin, what the hell’s going on?”
I stood there shivering for a long moment, listening to the wind outside and to a distant hum on the phone line. “Alex, please,” he finally said. His voice started to break. “Please come out here. I think he’s dead.”
