Fly by Night (28 page)

“Nah. Point of no return, Am, point of no return.” He tapped the screen of the GPS with his finger. His voice was light. “Once we get to Duluth it's a hop, skip, and a jump to Bayfield.”

She wasn't so sure. Amelia had seen lake-effect snow once before while visiting a friend up in Buffalo, but this was different.

“Bet ya dinner it's falling three inches an hour,” she said.

“Oh, so now you're Ms. Caution, are you?”

She tapped his arm and laughed in a conciliatory way.

“Hear from the bro yet?” Bryce asked.

She glanced at her phone on the dashboard, wondering about reception in the storm.

“Maybe he's out of town.”
Or maybe he wants nothing to do with me.
TJ hadn't mentioned being away; maybe he was out in the field.

The sky closed around them like a dome. Everything darkened and though it was early morning, it looked like dusk. Snow clouds hushed down in steel-gray puffs, enveloping the tops of trees almost midway toward the bottom of their trunks. The road narrowed to one lane, closed in by walls of white.

Amelia was glued to the red taillights of the car ahead; her shoulders cement as she gripped the wheel. They slowed to 30 mph, then 25. It seemed they were the only two cars on the road.

“You okay driving?” Bryce asked.

She glanced at her watch but didn't answer. It was taking far longer than the three hours, seventeen minutes the GPS had indicated.

The wheels were floating and it felt like the Jeep was bucking to slide into the oncoming lane without notice. There was no center guardrail to block such movement.

The car she'd been following put on its blinker and exited.

“Shit,” she murmured. Whether at its destination or giving up, it left them on the road alone. Snowflakes had knitted together a tunnel, accentuating the narrowing of the road.

Amelia looked at her watch again.

“I can take it from Duluth,” he suggested.

“I won't fight you,” she said, and rolled her shoulders to try and relax.

The windshield began to fog. Ice inched up on the outside, invading her line of sight despite the defroster working at full bore.

“Pull over and I'll scrape,” Bryce suggested.

She wanted to but ahead she spotted a new line of dim taillights following what appeared to be a snowplow.

“I don't want to lose sight of them.” She gestured, fearing whiteout conditions. There was no place to pull over. They'd already passed stranded vehicles.

“Damn,” she said. “You're right about having planned this better,” she admitted.

“Hey—what's life without a little excitement,” he said and play-punched her shoulder. “Can you reach the scraper?”

She felt his eyes on her.

“Thanks.”

Amelia reached under the seat and felt the familiar plastic handle and handed it over.

“Allow me.” Bryce rolled down the window, hoisted himself out, and scraped as far as he could reach. Snowflakes covered the sides of his hair and the top of the camo cap as he sat back down.

“Your turn.” He handed it over and took the wheel; his foot nudged hers off the gas pedal.

Amelia rolled down the window, stood and did the same, feeling the wheels sliding.

*   *   *

The streetlights had clicked on like it was night just as they reached the Duluth city limits before noon.

“Pull in there.” Bryce pointed to the first gas station/convenience store.

Once parked, the Jeep's doors wouldn't open.

She shouldered the door.

“We're frozen in,” Bryce said and then laughed. “This is like that drive through New Brunswick.”

It took several more shoulder butts before Bryce's side gave. Amelia then climbed over the gearshift and out. Then he opened the driver's side. The entire exterior was iced over, with clumps of frozen snow jammed up into the wheel wells and under the wipers.

Amelia stood and stretched.

“That was rather harrowing,” Bryce admitted and again scraped off the windows. He grabbed the last bottle of pink de-icer from a wooden pallet and headed inside the store.

The store's warmth felt good. Amelia dug her fingers into her neck muscles.

“Hi.” She walked up to the attendant.

“You guys in from the Cities?”

“Yep, on thirty-five.” Bryce set the pink jug of de-icer on the counter.

“Some storm, eh? Coupla fellas just came in. Whiteout conditions going west,” the young man said, looking out the window at the Jeep. “Lucky you—got the last gallon of that, probably walk outta here and sell it for a cool fifty.” The attendant chuckled. “More's comin' tomorrow. Any gas?” The clerk held his fingers just above the register keys.

“Just this and two coffees,” Bryce said.

“We're headed for Bayfield,” Amelia said. “Know anything about the roads?”

The attendant pointed at the TV monitor in the upper corner of the ceiling, indicating a large and expanding splash of royal blue fingers moving northeast.

“Worst is on your tail,” the attendant said. “But them little coastal towns along the lake'll get hammered in no time.” He looked up at a clock embedded into a neon Point Beer sign and leaned on the counter as if telling her in confidence. “Storm just closed down the Cities. Airport, buses, MOA.”

“MOA?” she asked.

“Mall of America.”

“Ha.” Amelia laughed, thinking of Jen and turned to Bryce as he approached the register. Her cheeks glowed with warmth. Something about the closure was deeply satisfying.

“Storm closed down the mall.” Amelia grabbed his arm and shook it. “No buses, airport's closed.”

His eyes widened. “Really.” They both smiled a secret, greedy smile and looked at each other. “Would've made for a quiet day at home.”

“Think Jen's stranded?”

He shrugged. “Bet she will be if the cop is.”

“If she's lucky they'll get stuck in Macy's,” she said. “Just imagine the two of them snuggled up in those poufy, cozy-looking Ralph Lauren down comforter display beds they have in the front window.”

They both chuckled, imagining Jen. “Bet she'd be like the princess and the pea, though,” Bryce said. “That girl's happiest sleeping out on a rickety boat dock somewhere in the South Pacific.”

Blaring beeps from the TV station's weather alert made them all turn. Radar flashed as the image recalibrated, now showing dozens of blue and white fingers stretching east toward Lake Superior to gobble up the entire Bayfield Peninsula. Red-banded warnings crawled across the TV screen about blizzards, wind-chill, whiteout conditions.

“Well?” Amelia looked up at Bryce.

“Well what?”

“Keep on going?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Well, hell yeah, Am.” Bryce turned on her as if she'd lost her mind. “You're not getting soft on me now—no way we're turning back; we'd be driving back into the worst of it.”

“He's right, you know.” The attendant nodded somberly as he caught Amelia's eye and then looked out the storefront window up at the sky. “Hittin' the city limits just about now. Better leave if you're headed east—roadworker guy left right before you got here.” He pointed toward the door like a hitchhiker. “Plows'r already out.”

As the three of them studied the TV weather storm coverage, Amelia's stomach jumped. She looked at her phone, nothing from TJ.

“Is there cell phone reception in Bayfield?” she asked the attendant.

“Ooo—can be pretty spotty up there even when the sun's shining. Lotsa hills, that old Iron Range is up there, you step twenty feet, your bars disappear and you're in a dead zone.”

It made her feel better to think that maybe that's why TJ hadn't called.

Just then a white Jeep Grand Cherokee with Wisconsin plates whipped into the parking lot just shy of bumping into the storefront's plate-glass window. Amelia noticed the same rust pattern along the bottom edge of both doors like a Rorschach inkblot.

“Here's Darlene.” The attendant motioned to the window and then stepped out from behind the register, past the roll of Lottery Quick Picks and 5-hour Energy drink displays. “She'll update ya 'bout the roads.”

A dream catcher dangled from the woman's rearview mirror. A youngish woman hopped down, cigarette dangling from her lips, an unzipped camo-patterned sweatshirt with hood hanging off her shoulders, a Packers T-shirt underneath. She had long dark hair strewn as if not having had a comb-through in days, not a stitch of makeup as she trudged toward the door. The woman took one long pull from the cigarette, yanked open the door, and ditched the butt into a snowbank without breaking stride. Amelia nudged Bryce.

“BFW.” She whispered as the woman entered.

“Too young,” Bryce said, his eyebrows rising slightly as he checked the woman out. They played this game: BFW meant Bryce's Future Wife. And then there was AFH, which for some reason was always funnier.

The woman stomped snow off on the rubber mats by the front door.

“Hey, Darlene.”

“Hey, Kev.” She rushed toward the soft drinks, slowing ever so slightly past Bryce before opening the refrigerator door and grabbing a couple of Red Bulls.

“These folk're heading out to Bayfield.”

The woman approached the register, the cans tucked under one arm.

“If you ain't leaving now better get a room.” She croaked out a smoker's laugh. “Picking up Grandma before all hell breaks loose.”

Bryce stood up straighter, looked at Amelia, and raised his eyebrows, his head tipped toward the door.

The woman's face was deeply lined with that leathery look that comes with hard living, too much sun, bad luck, and bouts of heavy drinking to make it all feel better.

Amelia strolled up to the storefront window. To the west the clouds had already changed. Thicker, lower, and an even darker navy blue. Everything was still. No birds flying, even cars looked quiet.

“Looks freaky,” Amelia said to Bryce as they headed toward the door for the last leg of the drive.

“You wanna see freaky, stick around,” the woman called after them, croaking out a laugh.

It was different from a New England sky—rawer, like the atmosphere of another planet or unexplored region of Earth. The clouds had traded celestial citizenship for earthly residence as they continued to lower to encase houses on the steep hills. The fear in her gut was exhilarating. It always was when diving in a part of the world she'd never been; where the angle of sun, soil, and water color are so unlike anything she'd seen that it's never really clear if they're friend or foe. Her eye could never take in enough differences, always teased by thoughts that these might be the last scenes she'd see.

The edge of the storm pushed up against Duluth. Snow had begun to fall unbroken by the slightest breeze; silent, gentle, and seemingly harmless all the while portending that something else was on its way. Nature's early-warning system for all who knew to listen: fly home to roost in the thickest of fir branches, burrow into the deepest dens or under the bushiest of evergreens. Cars parked along the street were already heaped like frosted cupcakes from a day-old storm. Some buried mid-door by the efforts of snowplows to clear the street, looking as if their liberation depended on nothing short of heavy equipment or the arrival of an early spring.

“Let's hit it, Am,” Bryce said as he brushed flakes from the front and back windows and then finished filling the wiper fluid.

*   *   *

Highway 13 to Bayfield narrowed to one lane. The surface was snow covered, making it difficult to determine the lanes. Bryce slowed to 30 mph.

“How you doing?” Bryce asked.

“Excited, nervous.” She glanced at him. “A bit freaked out.”

“Me too.”

Private thoughts and feelings began to seep through. Luckily Bryce was one to respect long silences. It was code on dive projects. Chatty nonstop talkers were never hired back or else sustained a direct “talking to.” The mournful solace of a sunset, the call of a baby seal waiting for its mother to come back with food did not require comment as the limitless ocean caused them to sink into the deepest recesses of beautiful loneliness. Lost in thought, crews would go hours sitting side by side on deck without speaking. The wonder and tragedy of seaside life demanded silence.

Bryce glanced into the rearview mirror.

“Look.”

Amelia turned. A low-hanging storm front was roaring toward them, as thick as a shelf, it tailgated like it knew where they were headed.

Twinges of adrenaline and longing made her want to park the Jeep and scramble down into one of the steeper ravines. Hunker down, let the storm catch them as they were tucked and sheltered under a bevy of pine boughs, to be in the storm but not of it. To smell the white ozone of its arctic heart all the while hiding with one cheek against the rotting fecundity of autumn's burnished grasses and fallen leaves, burrowed in alongside white-tailed deer curled up on the safety of the forest floor.

The houses along the highway looked cozy. Their dim interior lighting and smoke fires evoked sadness and yearning that reminded her of the little cottage in Port Jefferson with its wood-burning stove where she'd holed up with Alex as a toddler. Weathering a few hurricanes and nor'easters, they'd hide under a pile of covers from the sounds of rattling rafters. Back then, all of their belongings smelled of wood smoke. Even after they'd moved up to Cornell for graduate school, she'd pull out something that had been boxed up and the smell of smoke set off a longing that she never knew what to do with—a bottomless hollow for which there seemed to be no antitoxin as one might have for the sting of an Australian box jellyfish. Now life felt so slipshod, so pasted together, so fly-by-night.

The coastal sections of Highway 13 on Lake Superior were windswept with sculpted snowdrifts with smooth-edged grooves and curves resembling the shoulders of angels. Some reached the Jeep's wheel wells.