So I took Detroit Street to Grove, which led me toward town, where the homes and lives improved considerably. There were the local well-to-do in their big brick houses, and beyond them the shoreline where the real cash was. The downstate and Chicago money put their roots down in sand—their seasonals all perfectly placed along the water for maximum panorama, and not a soul there to enjoy it because it wasn’t nice that time of year.
I couldn’t blame them. It was the middle of January in Cutler County, Michigan. We’re at the northwest tip of the lower peninsula, the top of your left ring finger if you map it by the back of your hand, and unless you go in for the whole Jack London, ends-of-the-earth vibe, why wouldn’t you fly off to somewhere else if you could? It was only nine o’clock at night and downtown was already three blocks of black windows behind high banks of snow and there wasn’t a single other car in the streets.
I sailed through a blinking red onto 31 North, then took the highway past the old cement plant and the Shoreline Estates trailer park. The wind was hard off the bay and I could see the shape of the north hills in the distance—a jagged, soot-colored line through the snow.
I wished I could stop at Portis Dale’s. Portis was the closest thing I had to a father and he had a cabin not a half mile from Shelton’s. I’d have much preferred to take him to the farmhouse with me, and would have begged him gladly if I thought there was half a chance he would.
The problem was, Portis quit chasing Carletta years ago and was liable to bind me to a chair for the duration of the winter if I so much as made a whisper about Shelton Potter’s. I could hear him clear as day.
“That farmhouse ain’t no place for a girl,” he would say. “No place for you.”
Portis might have been right, but I drove on anyway. I drove despite the broken promises and heartache and all the lying and stealing and flimsy, sorry-as-hell excuses. I ignored my own good sense and the coming storm and exited the highway onto Grain Road and took it along the Three Fingers River.
The road and the river ran a crooked line and halved the hills from top to bottom. To the east was nothing but deep forest and some fishing ponds, while the west was a wide scatter of cabins and trailers connected by two-tracks and snowmobile trails.
The north hills were only five minutes from town, but they might as well have been a hundred miles from those big houses along the bay. The second you turned into the hills it was like somebody flipped a switch. The high trees swallowed the stars and the city lights and there were times it felt like you were dropping. There were spots in the hills where you could see out, clearings that let in some light, but the drive up felt like shooting straight down a mine shaft.
I took the switchbacks and was surprised the radio signal held—Kid Rock going on about fishing walleye while I peered out and looked for my turn.
Grain Road was paved beneath the snow but I’d have to veer off to get to Shelton’s. It concerned me some, but the farmhouse wasn’t too far off the river and I’d avoid the tangle of two-tracks that run farther west.
My high beams weren’t much use against the dark, but I saw the bend where the river hit the big rocks between ice floes and shot white water. The entrance road to Shelton’s was at the next break in the pines and I let the old Nissan ease through a fishtail when I took it.
The road was narrow, but there was a stretch a quarter mile in where it swung out and showed the clearing where the farmhouse sat on the edge of Jackson Lake. On a nice day you could spot the color of the front door from that ridge, but in the dark I couldn’t see anything beneath me but a big, empty bowl of black.
I came off the ridge and the road tightened as it wound deeper into the trees. I drove until I came to the edge of Shelton’s property where a million flagged stakes and tree-nailed signs were marked NO TRESPASS. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Shelton Potter’s property rights, but I didn’t want to go much farther and get pinned in by the snow. I could already feel my tires starting to drop, so I idled the truck and sat inside while I plotted the best course in by foot.
I figured I was a mile from the front door by land. The quickest route would be across the lake, but I hate to walk hardwater in the dark. I knew the ice was likely to hold, but say it didn’t? One misstep and I could be in a bad way quick—ice crackling as the splits spread like taproots and opened into breaks.
I would have to hike the rest of the way through the woods, then cross open land to get to the farmhouse. It would be cold and dark and purely miserable, but I’d keep walking until I got there because I didn’t have a choice. Carletta had to be got.