“Sure, at the old Olympia Stadium.”
“Lonnie says he was better than Gretzky.”
“He’s right,” I said.
“You can keep it,” she said.
“I can’t keep this,” I said. “It’s probably worth a lot of money.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s all I can give you right now for helping me.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“It’s Lonnie’s,” she said. “It was Lonnie’s. The last thing I did before I left, in fact I was out the door already, then I came back in and took that stupid hockey puck. God, he wouldn’t even let me take it out of the little plastic case. Think how mad he’s gonna be now.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did you take it?”
“To hurt him,” she said. She folded her arms across her chest. “It’s the only thing I could think of. Pretty lame, isn’t it?”
“Here,” I said. I put the puck on the table. “You should keep it.”
She stared at it on the table and let out a long, tired breath.
“Is he that bad?” I said. I thought I had had this guy pegged pretty well when I met him, the kind of guy who doesn’t want to do anything else but play his sport, and can’t deal with the fact that he’s not quite good enough. I saw it all the time in baseball, guys who got cut and then spent the rest of their lives taking it out on the rest of the world. There’s one on the end of every bar in every town in America. But the way her voice sounded when she said she wanted to hurt him, maybe there was something else. Something a lot worse. “I know it’s none of my business,” I said.
“You know those wolves I was talking about?”
“Well, yeah, I kinda figured you weren’t talking about real wolves and real moose.”
“Let’s just say Lonnie’s the first wolf,” she said. “Not the worst wolf, just the first.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You shoot one wolf, there’s more behind him. Bigger wolves. With bigger teeth.”
I let that one go. I figured she was just talking about the rest of his hockey team. I should have asked her about it. But I didn’t.
The woodstove started to heat the place up a little bit. She felt comfortable enough to take off her coat and sit down at the table. She told me about growing up as an Ojibwa, getting out of the U.P. as soon as she could, going downstate for college, dropping out, working a lot of jobs. No matter how bad it got, she never thought of coming back up here. Then she met Lonnie. She didn’t tell me much more about him. She didn’t tell me what he had done to her, or why he had brought her back up here.
She asked me about myself, about why I had so many long stories. I surprised myself and told her a couple of them. Not all of them. I guess it just felt good to talk to somebody. It was the first time since Sylvia left.
“You’re the lonely man with long stories,” she said before I left. “If I could make you an Ojibwa, that would be your name.”
“What’s your Ojibwa name?” I said.
“I don’t have one anymore,” she said. “I gave it up a long time ago.”
“It’s going to be cold tonight,” I said. “You better leave the water running a little bit. Just a trickle. It’ll keep the pipes from freezing.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. She came to the door as I left. “There’s a good lock on here, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Although you don’t have to worry. You’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Thank you, Alex,” she said. “Good night.”
As she closed the door, I felt a vague, distant sadness for both of us. Standing there in the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust to it again, feeling a cold wind coming through the pine trees. We had both been through so much. Different problems but the bottom line was the same. People are bad for each other. And yet we keep trying. We can’t stand to be alone.
It was late. I needed to sleep so I could get up the next day and do everything I could to help her. It surprised me how much I wanted to help this woman. Maybe it was a chance to show myself I could still do something right, after all the mistakes I had made in the last year. Something meaningful besides splitting wood and plowing the snow off the road.
I went back to my cabin and slept. In the middle of the night I thought I heard her voice, but when I lifted my head it was nothing but the drone of a snowmobile engine. All night long those idiots keep driving those things through the woods. I cursed the man who invented them and went back to sleep.
The next morning, there was six inches of new snow on the ground. The fire had gone out in my woodstove, so I threw a couple of logs in and stood shivering before the window, looking out at the snow. I put on some clothes, drank some coffee, went out and started the truck. It didn’t even look like there was a road anymore, just a long gap in the trees. I plowed all the way down to the main road, past Vinnie’s cabin. There was still no sign of him. If he had come home during the night, if anyone had turned off onto our road, I would have seen the tracks. There were none.
I started to worry about him. It was thirty-six hours since I left him at the bar after the hockey game. I could go look for him at the reservation, I thought, or go to the casino and see if he’s working. As soon as I help out Dorothy. It’s going to be a busy day.
I plowed the other way, into the woods. I honked as I passed Dorothy’s cabin. Rise and shine. The other four cabins all had vans and trucks outside them, with trailers for the snowmobiles. The people who rented the cabins would probably never drive once they got here, just park the vehicles and ride their snowmobiles all week. But I liked to keep the road plowed just in case they needed to get out. On my way back I honked again. Here’s your snooze alarm. Time to wake up while I make breakfast.
I stopped back at my cabin and picked up some eggs and cheese for omelets, some juice and coffee. I drove back around the bend to her cabin. Funny how you think that way. She spends one night there and suddenly it’s her cabin. I knocked on the door. There was no answer.
“Dorothy?” I shouted. “Are you awake?”
I pushed on the. door. It was unlocked, I opened the door and stepped inside.
The table was turned upside down. One table leg broken off. Chairs scattered in every direction.
Nothing else.
She was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
I went back to my own cabin and called the sheriff’s office. After I hung up, I stood there looking down at the phone book. It was still open to the first page. Right there under the Police and Fire and Ambulance, the number for Protective Services. I had seen how these people operate, down in Detroit anyway. They come and get you, take you to a shelter. If I had called that number last night, I told myself, then she’d be safe right now.
I went back outside, the wind blowing snowflakes into my face. The sun had come out, one of those brief interludes when the clouds break and the light shines so brightly off the white snow, your eyes hurt just to look at it.
I stood there for twenty minutes, going over it again and again in my mind. She was so scared. I should have done something, right away, instead of waiting for morning. Was I lazy or just stupid? I wanted to go back to the cabin, start searching for something, anything that might tell me what had happened. I wanted to do something. I felt so useless just standing there. But I made myself wait. Don’t mess it up, I thought. There might be tracks there, or footprints, or God knows what kind of evidence they might be able to find. Just stand here like the useless idiot you are and don’t mess things up any more than you already have.
I couldn’t help thinking about a murder I saw firsthand in Detroit. It was my first year on the force. I answered a domestic disturbance call with my partner. He talked to the man in the kitchen while I sat with the woman in the living room. She didn’t say anything. She just rocked back and forth on the couch, hugging a pillow. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept seeing her face. Three days later, I watched them carry her body out in a
