“In Ojibwa, yes.”
“Now I know.” I drove by a couple of fast-food places and pulled up in front of a place that didn’t seem to have a name. “You don’t mind stopping at a bar, do you?”
I knew Vinnie didn’t drink, but I’d be damned if I came all this way up into Canada without having a Molson. We got out of the truck and stretched, looking and sounding like two men who’d been driving since well before the sun came up. There were only two other vehicles in the parking lot-one truck that looked about as old as mine, and an Impala that may have been white one day, a long, long time ago. Apparently, this place didn’t draw much of a lunch crowd.
When we stepped inside, we saw a bar and six empty stools. The man behind the stick looked up at us and put down his magazine. Besides him, there were two men on the other side of the room, playing one of those barroom bowling games where you slide the metal puck down the wooden chute. There was a pool table in the middle of the room with two cues crossed in a large X on the green felt, and a jukebox that, thankfully, wasn’t making a sound.
Everywhere else, there were photographs. On every wall, on every available surface on which you could hang a picture, there was nothing but men standing next to dead animals, mostly deer, all of them strung up by the back legs and hanging upside down, tongues falling out of open mouths. Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry.
“Come on in, gentlemen,” the man at the bar said. He was a big one. He had passed three hundred pounds a long time ago, and wasn’t heading back anytime soon. “What can I get ya, eh?”
“You serve food in here?”
“Damn right we do. You in the mood for some nice venison stew?”
Vinnie and I both sneaked another look at the pictures on the wall. “You don’t actually hunt deer around here, do you?” I said.
The man looked at us for a moment and then started laughing. “I thought you were serious.”
“How about a couple of cheeseburgers,” I said. “One Molson and one 7-Up.”
The two men playing the little bowling game had stopped to watch us come in. “Where are you boys from?” one of them said, the one with the Maple Leafs jersey. His nose was taped up, and there were purple bruises running under both eyes. His friend was wearing his orange hunting jacket, with the license still pinned to the back.
“Michigan,” I said.
“You up here hunting?”
“Nope, other business.”
“Other business,” the one with the taped-up face said to the one in the hunting jacket. “What the hell does that mean?”
The bartender brought our drinks over. We sat there and watched him grill up the cheeseburgers. The two men went back to their bowling game. The pins were attached to the machine from above, and you had to slide the puck over little sensors to make them flip up. They apparently thought you needed to slide the puck as hard as you possibly could, and that you needed to swear at it very loudly.
“You gotta excuse those boys,” the bartender said. “They had a little run-in yesterday and they’re still buzzing.”
“I noticed the broken nose,” I said.
“A couple strangers came in here. One of them had a real nose on him so these two clowns start making jokes. You know, like ‘Tell us another lie, Pinocchio,’ real intelligent stuff like that. These guys take it for about two minutes before the guy with the nose stands up and hits Stan right in the face. Says ‘Here, let’s see what your nose looks like tomorrow.’ And the other guy, hell, he’s about twice as big, so Brian wasn’t gonna step in.”
“Yeah, I’m so lucky having somebody to watch my back,” the man with the broken nose said. “He’s a real friend.”
The other man just stood there with a bottle of beer in his hand. He still hadn’t said a word.
“And this game is a piece of shit, too.”
“Will you two knock it off?” the bartender said without turning around. “I swear, I’m gonna throw that machine out on the road.”
“We need more sawdust,” Broken Nose said. “This thing ain’t sliding.”
“Open up your brain and dump some out.”
“Haw haw, that’s funny.”
“They got nothing better to do, eh?” the bartender said, apparently to us. “They gotta torment me every day of the week. Get in fights with the customers.”
“We don’t got ‘other business’ to do like these fellas,” the man said. “We’re not ‘other business’ kind of guys, you know what I mean?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” the bartender said, finally turning around.
“Ask the Lone Ranger and Tonto here,” the man said.
I turned on my stool and looked at him. He and his buddy went back to their game. Vinnie sat next to me as cool as an ice sculpture. I knew he had a fuse about seven miles long, and that no matter what they said, it would get to me a hell of a lot sooner than it would get to him.
“Don’t mind those morons,” the bartender said as he served up the cheeseburgers. “They’re the only two in town, believe me.”
“Just our luck,” I said. We ate our burgers. I drank my beer and had another one. Two cold Canadian beers were the easiest part of the day so far.
I could feel their eyes on our backs. When we were done, I turned around again and watched them slide their stupid little puck down the board. “Who’s winning?” I said.
“Machine’s broken,” the man said. “It don’t keep score anymore.”
“Why don’t you keep score yourself?”
They looked at me like I was from Mars.
“You know,” I said, “when we came in, I was wondering why you guys weren’t playing pool. Now I understand. Pool’s too complicated.”
“You wanna try me, old man?” he said. He looked like he meant it, even with an already broken nose. His partner was obviously not so sure.
Before I could say another word, I felt Vinnie’s hand on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
“That’s right,” the man said. “Go do your ‘other business’ with your Indian boyfriend.”
I would have taken him apart right there, but Vinnie had other ideas. “You wanna spend the rest of the day in the Wawa jail? Come on, it ain’t worth it.”
He steered me out of there and into the truck. “I didn’t pay,” I said.
“I left some money on the bar,” he said. “Put the key in and drive away.”
I did as he said, sending a spray of gravel behind us. We had to double back through town to get back to 17, so the giant goose was there once again to say goodbye to us.
“Vinnie,” I said, a couple of miles later, “doesn’t it even bother you when people say stuff like that?”
“Who says it doesn’t? I just don’t get in fights over it.”
“I was sticking up for you, you know.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re the one they were insulting. That Lone Ranger and Tonto business.”
“That was for both of us,” he said.
“No, the Lone Ranger was a hero.”
“So was Tonto.”
“He was the trusty sidekick,” I said. “Believe me, this is one thing I know about. That was my favorite show when I was a kid.”
“Of course,” Vinnie said. “The Lone Ranger. That explains a lot.”
An hour and a half after we left Wawa, we came to a little town called White River. The Canadian Pacific Railroad crossed the road here. We sat and watched the freight cars go by for ten minutes.
Route 17 turned west in this town, heading back to the upper shores of Lake Superior. We took a right turn
