The next couple of days carried him blindly out of Minnesota and into Wisconsin via Duluth and Superior. Very little else registered with him but the roar of the engine and the blur of the trees as they whizzed past him. Exploring the byways no longer appealed to him as it had before his misadventure, and the main roads seemed to lead him from one “Virginia” to another, each belching smoke into the air and tearing up the terrain to make someone rich. It was getting urgent for him now: he just had to get away from all that. He whipped through the northwestern tip of Wisconsin in a day, drawn on by his very ignorance of what lay ahead. Another day and he was halfway across Upper Michigan: Ishpeming, Negaunee, Marquette, and beyond. The wide clear expanses of Lake Superior were now lying before him, but even then he did not stop to have a look.
Around him now towered his rolling verdant hills. Beside him tumbled his crystal brooks. On both sides of him were his berry patches laden with fruit. But none of it registered with him.
It was late afternoon and he was halfway between Marquette and Munising when clouds began to gather over the lake and move in towards land. A storm front formed above the water, drawing a dark curtain across the horizon as it sped towards the shore. Waves were already sending spray over the road and the still air hung in breathless expectation of what was coming. Then it hit. A vicious gale caught Steve broadside. He gripped the handlebars fiercely to keep the cycle on course. He lowered his head into the driving rain and hurtled on through the sudden darkness. The lake heaved and waves battered the rocky shoreline right next to the road. Steve was drenched. Then came the lightning and thunder. Locals call it “the Lake effect.” It can come out of nowhere and happen at almost any time.
Steve didn’t realize that he was speeding along behind the storm front and thus lodging himself within the most torrential section of the downpour. His first glimpse of Munising was veiled by gray sheets of rain, denying him a view of one of the most serenely beautiful towns in the North. He was oblivious to its sturdy quaint homes and saw nothing of the crescent of majestic hills that abruptly rise at the end of its short streets or of the sea of azure glass that normally stretches out deep and pure before it. He roared right through the heart of Munising in the belly of the storm.
Just east of town the highway swung inland and the shoreline receded northward. In less than an hour twilight and darkness closed in, trapping the young cyclist in the even blacker delirium of the unabated storm. His sense of direction abandoned him. All he really cared about was pressing ahead, staying on the move. He was stone-faced and stiff-armed. He plowed on through the night until an erratic flash of lightning happened to reveal a narrow trail that disappeared into the dark forest north of the road. Benumbed and soaked, on impulse he swung off onto the trail and plied his way along it, dodging ruts and gullies as best he could. Guided by blind determination alone, he fought his way ever higher into the blackness. At a fork in the road he took the narrower one. Up and over a great hill and down the other side he went, then up and over a smaller one, bouncing through the trees and over the rocks in the trail. Then suddenly as he was descending a steep slope a little too fast, he ran head-on into a tree fallen across the trail and flew off the cycle into a bed of drenched leaves. And there he lay. The shock of the fall had fortunately shut off the engine and now only the sound of the storm could be heard, moaning in the treetops.
Presently it stopped raining and the thunder grew more distant. The moon came out and, beaming down onto the forest floor, it glittered in each standing drop of water and lit up the figure of a young man in a shiny leather motorcycle jacket lying fast asleep on the ground.