12
THE DOOR TO the Sawhorse Tavern had an ax embedded in it, the blade stuck in the wood as if someone had hurled it from afar. Slater grabbed the handle and stepped inside. Instantly, he caught a whiff of the past.
Up front, the bar was lined with a dozen stools. A painted nude reclined above the hard liquor. The Sawhorse had been built to store cabbage—thousands and thousands of cabbages, which were shipped everywhere by rail in the’30s and ’40s. Now it was full of denim—locals out of work or working-class guys up for the summer.
Harp led the way to a booth in the back. Razkowski, the bartender, came over to take their order.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
“Give us a minute, Razz,” Harp said. Toward the front of the Sawhorse, a short man in a red and white Hawaiian shirt sent Harp a little nod of recognition. Harp returned it and looked away.
“You did glue with Lane last night,” he said.
“She did glue. I watched.”
“That stuff is deadly. I like to get high like anybody else, but glue will kill you. You should try to make her stop.”
“Me?” Slater said. “What about you? I just got here.”
The waitress floated up to the table. She was firmjawed with blond hair to her waist and an expression of imperturbability.
“Mike Slater,” Harp said, “Linda LaGood.”
She gave Slater a blissed-out nod and Harp ordered a pitcher of Labatts. They both turned to watch her blond hair sway as she floated away.
“Remember Katie?” Harp asked.
“No,” Slater said. “I don’t remember Katie.”
He did, of course. Katie was a rich girl, of high Ford or GM lineage, and wild. She was from the music camp down the road; they met her in the Sawhorse on the night Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, but she went home with Harp. Slater ended up on the beach alone, watching Neil Armstrong without the aid of a TV. Later, they heard she’d been expelled.
“Those were the days, huh?” Harp said. He pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and put it on the table. “I found this by your car last night. You lose it?”
Slater took it and looked at both sides. “It’s not mine,” he said. “Maybe it’s Lane’s.”
“She doesn’t have this kind of money.”
Slater watched Harp’s face for clues. He decided to take a chance. “How long have you been together?” he asked.
“A while.”
He waited for more, but that was all there was.
“I’ve got a job lined up tomorrow,” Harp said. “I’m building a pole barn for Howdy Broodson.”
Broodson had been their high school guidance counselor. “You’re kidding me,” Slater said. “Broodson’s still alive?”
“Apparently.”
Linda LaGood brought the beer. Harp used the hundred to pay for it. “He told me I was bound for woe,” Harp said. “Those words exactly. What kind of guidance is that?”
“Maybe he said it to everyone. He’d have been right half the time.”
They drank to that. There was woe spread all over Northern Michigan. They’d seen plenty on the road into town. Abandoned farmhouses in fields of purple wildflowers. Rusting double-wides with big cars in front. A long stretch of fence posts where no fence remained. And the signs. Stump blasting. Worms for sale. I do drywall. People piecing their lives together.
The summer tourists brought money, but it was unreliable and never enough, and besides the tourists clogged everything up, rubbernecking at the scenery, buying postcards and taffy. On the drive in, Slater and Harp had gotten stuck behind some of them—a slow-moving Cadillac full of senior citizens. We’re here to serve tourists, Slater had said. I like mine medium rare. Finally, the Caddy came to a complete stop in the middle of the road. A granny in tourist stripes and bluish-white hair got out and stood blocking the way while she took a picture of a one-room schoolhouse that had been converted into a junk shop. 10,000 Hubcaps Inside the sign out front read. Harp reached over and hit the horn. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Now they want our hubcaps too?”
Slater emptied his glass and poured himself another beer. The afternoon sun slanted through a dirty window overhead.
“So,” Harp said. “How was the desert? They get you fixed?”
“You mean, do I drool or anything like that?”
“Lane said you seemed solid enough.”
“Really? What else did she say about me?”
“She said she looked deep down in your soul. And she saw a yellow-bellied woodpecker inside.”
He couldn’t tell if Harp was joking. And maybe it was true. Maybe he was a yellow-bellied woodpecker.
The power line could have killed him, he thought. People died all the time from less deadly stuff. A slip in the shower, a piece of meat in the windpipe, a bad choice of words. He’d survived 33,000 volts, but only by chance. If the line had been just a little lower, it would have sliced through his neck and sent his head bouncing along the track, an electrified grin on his face. The fact was, he’d been given a second chance by the grace of God or whatever random bingo caller happened to be running the show that day. All he had to do now was not fuck it up. So of course fucking it up was all he ever did. With Selda for sure. The horror with Dickinson. And now this. He had reached a point, it seemed, where the faintest whiff of his own life set him to convulsively snapping his fingers. He should just tell Harp what he’d done—say it and take responsibility. I did something bad with Lane. I slept with your girlfriend.
“I went to a topless bar in Tucson once where the women did backflips,” he said instead. He threw his hands up slightly, as if to flip.
“That doesn’t sound sexy,” Harp said. “Got a quarter?”
“You just found a hundred-dollar bill.”
“I need fifty cents for the pool table.”
Slater dug in his pockets and came up with two quarters. Harp picked up the coins and left, taking his beer. “Private meeting,” he said. “Wait here.”
“So you got my message,” Charlie said. He took two cues from the rack and handed one to Harp. “I take it that means you’re interested.”
Harp examined the cue Charlie handed him and took a different one from the wall. “I didn’t say that.”
“You might get interested when you see what I brought you.” Then he turned to the booth where Slater sat alone. “Who’s the doofus?”
“A friend of mine,” Harp said.
“You brought a friend to our meeting? That concerns me.”
Charlie racked the balls and bent over the table to break. His stroke was wild and barely nicked the cue ball. “Do over?”
Harp shook his head.
“Good,” Charlie said. “I don’t like do-overs. Get it right the first time or die trying, that’s what I say. The thing is, champ, I worry more about friends than enemies. I mean, he doesn’t look too hazardous to me. But who knows? He could be a talker. And then we’d be in trouble.”
Harp sent the three-ball into the side pocket. “He’s not a talker. And I trust him.”
“Even worse. Trust will kill you every time.”
Harp’s combination off the rail didn’t fall. He walked to his standing spot at one end of the table. Charlie came and stood beside him.
“Here’s the deal, champ,” he told Harp. “I need something unbuilt. Blown to bits, you might say, if you get my drift. I thought you might be my man.” He motioned to a paper bag sitting next to his Budweiser. “I brought that for you. Don’t look inside just yet, but I’ll give you a hint. It’s a bag full of boom.”
Harp snorted. “I don’t know who you think I am. But I don’t do that kind of shit.”
Linda LaGood passed by collecting bottles. Charlie put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, sweet thing. You ever see the sand dunes down by Wakashi Lake? Beautiful dunes. Miles of pure, fine sand. Almost as beautiful as you are.”
Linda LaGood looked at Charlie’s hand. He removed it from her shoulder.
“There are no sand dunes at Wakashi Lake,” Harp said.
“Not anymore,” Charlie said. “Somebody moved them.”
Linda LaGood floated away, untroubled.
Charlie stepped up to shoot and overpowered a finesse shot. He leaned against the table, facing Harp.
“Let me ask you this, champ. What would you do with the most beautiful sand dunes in America? Lay out there and smoke dope? Build sand castles? Maybe take my sister out in a dune buggy and try not to get sand in the wrong places? Something like that? Am I right?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
“My point is, you’d go out and enjoy yourself. Dig the natural beauty. But not your average businessman. He looks at these dunes and you know what he sees?” Charlie moved closer to Harp. “Concrete. A million tons of highgrade concrete. He creams his pants thinking of what he could build with all that.”
Harp lined up a shot and missed. “You’re a weird fucker, Charlie,” he said.
“That I don’t deny. But do you know what they did, these businessmen? They hauled away every last grain of sand from Wakashi Lake. And the sad part is that people like you and Miss Honey Britches over there have no idea the dunes were ever there. It’s like they never existed. All because some jerk-offs in fancy suits figured out how to turn sand into money.”
Harp returned to his standing spot. “It’s your shot, Charlie. Take your turn.”
“Ever been to Chicago?” Charlie asked. “’Cause if you have, you’ve seen the sand dunes of Wakashi. In a slightly more solid form. A more money-friendly form. The concrete that built Chicago is made from that sand. Some say it’s a very exciting city, Chicago. Now go look inside the bag I brought you.”
Harp picked up the bag. Inside was a metal lunchbox with scenes from The Parent Trap on the sides. Hayley Mills in pigtails.
“Nice, huh?” Charlie said. “I got it from Shannon. One of the new girls. Latest addition to the Spreadables.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “There’s five hundred dollars inside and one stick of dynamite. That’s just for yuks. The rest is in a storage locker across from Molly Hogan’s bar. When I give the word, someone’s going to haul it all over to that piece of crap known as the Whispering Sands and wire it up and solve a whole mess of problems for everyone. The five hundred dollars is just a down payment. Basically, it’s a delivery job and the person who does the delivery gets a whole lot of money. That person might as well be you.”
Charlie shot and scratched. Harp shot a tough combination and almost sank it.
“Why are you talking to me about this?”
“You’re friends with sis. Keeps it in the family. I need that lunchbox back when you’re done, by the way.”
“You can keep it, Charlie. I’m not interested.”
“We haven’t talked real money yet.” He pulled a tattered paperback from the back pocket of his shorts and wrote a figure on the inside front cover. The book was called The Price of Beaver. “Here,” he said, “read this. You might find it illuminating.”
Harp tossed the book down on the table. “You’re wasting your time. You don’t know me. And you have no sense of right or wrong.”
Delighted, Charlie stamped his foot. “Right or wrong! Right or wrong! That’s so fucking quaint!”
A couple heads swiveled in nearby booths. Charlie gave them the finger. He watched Harp shoot, then draped an arm around his shoulder.
“Think of it this way, champ. Imagine Wolverine ten years from now if you do this thing we’re talking about. If we stop these bastards in their tracks. It’ll be a town full of places like this place, full of people like you and me. Now erase that and picture Wolverine full of condos.” He gave Harp a moment to picture the tourist town Wolverine would become. “Two futures. Is one right and one wrong? Who can really say? See, it’s not about right or wrong. It’s about power versus power. Yours and theirs. These money guys from Chicago, do they have the right to flush away our future? Hell, no. But they have the power, see, and that’s all that matters.”
Charlie took a drink and wiped his mouth. “And you have the power to stop them. Their power is green and yours is more like red, if you know what I mean. But get this: their power destroys what’s here, and your power preserves it. Okay? And make no mistake, champ, they’re gonna use their power. No fucking doubt. The only question is, are you gonna use yours? That’s the only thing that cuts a good goddamn, you know what I mean? You see a girl at a party, right? I mean, is she gonna take off her panties or not? That’s all that matters. It’s all about what happens next—that’s the only thing that counts. So tell me to blow it out my ass if you want, but don’t say you don’t have the right. ’Cause nobody has the fucking right.”
Harp stood for a while and looked at the table. He’d forgotten whose shot it was. “Maybe I’ll think about it.”
“On a thing like this, champ, there isn’t any thinking,” Charlie said. “You’re either in or you’re out. I need to know which.”
Harp went back to his standing spot. Charlie followed him with the lunchbox.
“When?” Harp asked.
“Soon.” Charlie turned the lunchbox in his hands. “Great movie, by the way. You ever see it? Same kid played both parts.”
The door to the Sawhorse opened and a new group of wedgeheads blew in. A batch just like them were at the other pool tables. Oblivious to everything. They’d end up in mobile homes with pregnant girls from Durand and Onondaga. In a year or two they’d be slugging quarters into Maytags while their girlfriends changed diapers on orange tables by the dryers. They were durable guys, made for hard wear, and they would get it. Meanwhile they shot pool and swung hammers and their share of things got smaller and smaller and they didn’t even seem to notice. Their minds had been vinylized, Harp thought.
“Tell me something,” he said. “If this is such an easy job, why don’t you get one of your druggies to do it? Or maybe one of your whores?”
Charlie called a tough combination and shot it perfectly. “The Spreadables aren’t whores. They’re nice girls who sleep with my vendors. No one’s forcing them to do anything.” He made another shot and waved his stick in the direction of Linda LaGood. “It’s the American way, pal. Who do you think Goody Two-Shoes over there is banging to keep her job?”
“No one.”
“Except maybe the bartender and the beer man. And half the liquor board, I bet.” He took a bead on the twelve.
“Just because you’re that way, doesn’t mean everyone is.”
Charlie straightened up and sucked in his cheeks. “If you’re thinking about Lane, champ, don’t worry. She was different. She didn’t bang the vendors. They all wanted her, of course. But she was too temperamental.”
“Just shoot, Charlie.”
“Only a stud like you could tame that girl.”
“Just finish your turn.”
Charlie called a ridiculously hard shot—cue ball off two rails, kissing the eight. He shot it effortlessly and won the game. Turning, he put a hand on Harp’s shoulder and sought out his eyes.
“You’re my man unless I hear different. Wait till I say go,” he pointed at Slater. “And not a word to Mr. Lonely over there.”
Harp held his gaze, then casually picked up the bag. He was halfway across the bar when Charlie called out to him. “Hey champ—you know how they got all that sand to Chicago? By train. Lots and lots of trains.”
On a high pole above the Sawhorse Tavern, a cast-iron weathercock with burnt-ocher eyes gazed over the yellow wedge of land along the bay. Near the tavern, at the thick end of the wedge, railroad tracks spread like the tines of a pitchfork. The tracks there were lost in weeds—a graveyard for dead freight. The rusty rails held a dozen junked boxcars and a caboose the color of dried blood.
Officially, the cars were awaiting disposition—the railroad euphemism for being left to rust and ruin. Had the cars ended their usefulness elsewhere, they might have been melted for debts. Stranded in Wolverine, they simply sat. By day they were junk; by night, they became secret shelter, places of alcohol and sex.
Beyond the cars, but still within the weathercock’s purview, sat the construction equipment and the half-built skeleton of the Whispering Sands. Farther on, three decrepit docks protruded through marshland into the bay. Past an abandoned drive-in from the ’50s, the view gave way to forest—mottled evergreen spreading and rising in both directions, ending in the bald patch known as Pregnant Point—where biology and geology meet. Just beyond the point, out of sight from the weathercock, was Lake Michigan.
The normal wind, a sou’wester, spun the weathercock’s tail as Harp and Slater left the Sawhorse. Harp led the way through knee-high weeds, passing dead freight and scaring up quail.
Of the twelve junked cars, five bore the emblem of the Great Lake Central, the bankrupt line that had left them for dead. Safety Pays was stenciled on the side of one of the cars. Daylight stabbed through gaps where the metal was torn. Weeds grew through the floorboards. The cars had been stilled by the departure of the dollar sign—the force that runs all trains and which vanishes at the end of a railroad’s life as surely as the soul departs the body, striking rolling stock immobile.
Harp walked to the edge of the dead storage yard, where the skeleton of the Whispering Sands rose, covered in huge sheets of plastic. His right arm swung wide as he walked.
“Welcome to the Whispering Sands,” he said. “Watch for snakes.”
Slater stepped gingerly through horsetail and meadow grass.
“Where we’re standing will be covered parking,” Harp said. He pointed at a Chicago & Northwestern boxcar with the words Do Not Hump on the door. “Over there, they’ll have the croquet court.”
“What about the snakes?”
“This will all be paved. But they’ll hire some wedgeheads to kill snakes, just to be sure.”
“You’re joking, right?”
A line of seagulls came from the ferry dock and crossed over the condos. “It’s just about making the numbers add up. A rat in the house may eat the ice cream. That’s all it is.”
“Ice cream?” Slater said. “What the hell?”
“Arithmetic. Money plus money. That’s all they care about.”
Wind snapped the plastic over unfinished construction. The Visqueen logo repeated endlessly along the seams.
“View of the bay,” Harp said. “Worth half your pay. Unless it all comes down and hits the grit. Then watch out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“‘Get you a foxhole, a place to hide.’”
It was Northern Michigan shorthand. Seger, trains. “I give up,” Slater said.
Harp shrugged and headed back to the road. “This whole town is bound for woe.”
