Sweetgirl (6 page)

“How much further?”

“Not much,” he said. “We'll get there before the storm hits again.”

“What?”

“This storm's about to take things up a notch,” he said.

“It's not even snowing.”

“Well,” Portis said. “It's about to.”

“I think the storm has passed, Portis,” I said. “I haven't seen a flake of snow since the cabin.”

“This storm's a long way from over,” he said.

“How can you tell?”

“It don't matter,” he said, and held out his gloved hands. “C'mon. Let me carry the baby for a bit.”

“I don't know if I can carry your pack,” I said. “It probably weighs more than she does.”

“I didn't say you had to carry any pack.”

“I'm fine with her, Portis. Really.”

“I ain't going to drop her,” he said. “Hurry up and do it while she's still fussy. That way we only have to settle her once.”

“What about your leg?”

“What about it?” he said, and left his hands held out between us.

I was too tired to fight him any further. Besides, my shoulders were on fire and I was desperate for a break from that carrier. I lifted it off and handed Jenna over.

Portis's hair fell forward off his brow and as he gathered Jenna close he pushed the strands back to keep from disturbing her. He put the harness over his right shoulder and swung the papoose in and carried it like a football. The rope was too small to loop across the other side, but Portis barely seemed to register the weight as he folded his left arm beneath the right and walked.

Jenna fussed harder at first, but her cries soon steadied and then receded altogether. She fell asleep in Portis's arms and I felt the muscles in my shoulder and back loosen and go to jelly.

“Portis,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

“You can,” he said. “But only because I don't think I can stop you.”

“Did you ever think about asking Mama to marry?” I said. “When you two were together?”

“Well,” he said. “This took a turn.”

“It's something I've always wondered.”

“I thought about it,” he said. “Sure.”

“How much?”

“Who knows?” he said. “A lot, I guess.”

“Then why didn't you?”

“No reason, really.”

“There had to be some reason,” I said.

“There wasn't.”

“Did you love her?”

“I did.”

“She was pretty, wasn't she?”

“She was as beautiful a woman as I'd ever seen. And I have not seen one like her since.”

Portis, though prone to hyperbole and outright fictions, was telling the straight truth about Mama's looks. I have a picture of Carletta when she was my age, outside her papa's house in a summer dress. She is in a field and there are wildflowers scattered in the tall grass—the chicory and primrose blooming while she stands there and looks like she just strolled off some Hollywood set.

Mama's been up north for years, but she's from the South and still sounds like it. She used to say I was her rebel daughter because I talk like her, while Starr talks northern. I never con
sidered my speech to sound like anything, but I could hear the difference between Mama and Starr.

Either way, she split her good looks evenly between us. Starr got the breasts and the blond hair, while I got the blue eyes and height. The flip side of that coin is my bird chest and black hair, while Starr is cursed with stubby legs. If Mama was a ten and we both came out sixes then it's pretty clear our daddy, or daddies, whoever they were, contributed little of value in the looks department. Which was exactly what they contributed in the rest of the departments.

“So why didn't you ask her?” I said. “To marry you?”

“I told you the truth,” he said. “When I said there wasn't no reason.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“I might have thought there was a reason at the time. But if I can't remember it now it wasn't much of a reason, was it?”

Portis had stopped walking.

“Here it is,” he said.

I couldn't see the shanty in the dark but I could tell we'd come to the edge of Trout Pond. I could feel the open air and the absence of the pines.

“The shanty's out there?” I asked.

“It's out there,” he said.

“Is it safe?”

“You've fished with me in that shanty before. I don't recall anybody falling in.”

“I'm talking about Shelton,” I said. “He won't come back here looking?”

“Shelton's lazy ass?” Portis said. “No. I don't think he will hike out to find us on this pond. Of that I'm nearly certain.”

“Certain would be better,” I said.

“Best not to start thinking about what's better,” he said. “That's been my finding.”

Shelton rode his Polaris 500 from the Three Fingers River to the easternmost edge of the north hills and searched every nook-and-cranny trail on the way. He was twenty-five years old and he'd been riding sleds near his entire life, but he still felt that same old boyish excitement with the sled fired up and roaring beneath him.

One thing was for sure: they had needed the snow. Shelton had been disappointed in the snowmobiling so far this season, but then the storm came and winter had been reborn in the deluge. Yes, there was a baby to find, but there was also fresh powder and the hills' vast tangle of trails to explore. Shelton wasn't saying it made up for Jenna being gone, just that things weren't all bad if you knew how to look at them.

His mind was crystalline in the cold air and he could not remember the last time he'd seen such good sledding, certainly before Ionia and the entire winter he missed in the pen. He moved
freely through the poplar and paper birch, rode the wide trails with everything electric and purely white in the high beams.

Shelton rode and eventually let his mind slip from Jenna. He forgot about Kayla unconscious at the house and Old Bo being dead and gone. Shelton rode until he forgot even himself.

He shot beautiful white sprays of snow and slalomed through the trees. He stood up on the straightaways to stretch his back and then sat back down and gunned it even harder. He sang bits of the rock-and-roll anthems of his youth, the classics that Uncle Rick had raised him on before all that business with the Talking Heads. Zeppelin. AC/DC. Humble Pie. Shelton did not do this consciously, or even realize it was happening. He would simply hit a little jump or take a tight corner and belt it out: “Thirty days in the hole!”

Shelton rode and rode and rode. He rode until the night drew back above the north hills and bled out slow, until he could see a rise in the distance where the pale stars were like a scatter of river stones and morning dawned above the pines with a bluish tinge.

Shelton believed it was as pretty a thing as he had seen, that edge of cold sun, that strange arc of light, and he hammered the sled and thought he might ride straight to the top of the hills and launch himself. He wanted to see if he could touch the sun, if only for a moment, and he believed he might have if the sled had not seized and then sputtered to a halt in the middle of the trail.

“Shit the bed,” he said.

He started the sled back up and the engine turned, but she never got back to speed and when she petered out the second time it was for good.

“Goddamn,” he said.

He wiped the frost away from the gas gauge and there was the needle, on that bright red, block-letter E. He stepped off the sled and looked around. He'd been on a southeast jaunt, toward the highway, and he was a long way from the farmhouse.

He couldn't believe he hadn't even bothered to check the gas. He was a damn fool and he had failed Kayla and little Jenna, which wasn't to mention Old Bo up there in that dark, cold room. Shelton might have cried, he felt so low all of a sudden.

He wished he had figured a way to bring that nitrous tank with him. He wished he could have a party balloon out there in the woods by himself, or at least a little pint bottle to tug at in all his sorrow.

He pulled off his helmet and threw it down into the snow. He wiped some snot from his nose and felt the cold bite the tips of his ears. He yelled out for help, but there was no answer. He called out for Kayla, too, and when she didn't respond he yelled that he loved her and that he was sorry.

He understood he was coming down now. Coming down hard. Crash, crash, crashing. He felt the blackness descend, felt the emptied-out lowness and dread. His heart was suddenly torn to shreds and his nerves were as hot as crackle wires. The problem with drugs was they didn't last forever. They gave you the wings to fly and then up and took the sky away. Mayday, mayday, Shelton thought. Black Hawk down.

He ripped off his gloves, threw them at his helmet, and unzipped the front of his suit. He took a few deep breaths and then slid his hand to his beltline and pulled the Glock. The laser came
on by itself when the weapon was gripped to fire, which always tickled Shelton. It was a pretty red line, and bright against the snow, but in this instance purely ornamental; he wouldn't need it once he put that barrel to his temple.

One thing about that big head of his: easy target. One pull and it was done. He wouldn't have to worry about getting back to the farmhouse, or how he was going to have to explain to Kayla that Jenna got took while they were asleep.

Shelton adjusted his grip on the handle, felt the soft rubber, and wondered, would it hurt? He thought it might, if only for some fraction of a fraction of a second. He kind of hoped it would, though he couldn't say exactly why.

He wondered if there was a heaven and if he somehow got in, would Old Bo come running up to greet him with a ball to play some fetch?

Shelton doubted there was a heaven, though, and even if there was, he wasn't likely to get in. And even if he did, say on a clerical error, why would Old Bo come running up and want to play?

He wouldn't. Not after Shelton left him there to rot in that godforsaken coffin of a bedroom. So that would be it. Shelton would be dead and suffering an eternity of loneliness worse than he'd known here on earth.

All of a sudden it didn't seem like much of a choice. Not with Kayla back at the house and all the promise their love still might hold, if he could only get her baby back.

Then Shelton remembered he had a few joints tucked away in his pants pocket and that about sealed it. It turned out he would not be shooting himself in the head after all. What Shelton would do is
fire up a marijuana cigarette and walk down to the highway to see if he couldn't hitch a ride. He was too far from the farmhouse to trudge back through the woods, and most of it uphill to boot.

Calling Krebs and the boys for help was simply out of the question. The boys didn't respect Shelton as it was, and he could only imagine what they'd say if they found out about the sled and how he'd run her out of gas. Shelton was supposed to be in charge, but in his brief tenure he had already managed to lose a baby and strand himself in the woods.

There shouldn't have been anything to be in charge of in the first place. Everybody bought from Rick and then sold at their own discretion, there was no real organization to it, but his uncle loved him and wanted to give him a vote of confidence and so he told the boys he'd be speaking through his nephew while he was gone. That if Shelton said he needed something they should treat it like it came from Rick directly.

Shelton was just out of prison and he'd done right by his uncle when he snitched out a competitor to plea down. Now that he was out and trying to make his way in the world Rick was repaying his loyalty, even if he didn't profit from, or care for, his nephew's product of choice.

Shelton smoked his joint and sat for a while in the snow. He was in the middle of a break in the trees and he tipped his head back to take in a bit of the sky above. The clouds were coming in low and fast and Shelton swore he bore witness to the very moment the storm returned, as if the norther had waited to make sure he was watching before it erased the dawn and its valiant crease of light.

Then the snow came. And the wind. Somehow, it felt personal.

Shelton put his helmet back on and made for the highway. He must have come farther south on the trail than he realized because it wasn't long before he reached the road. The wind pushed harder in the open and the snow was whipped off the ground until he couldn't tell it from what was falling. There was one advantage to the bad conditions, though: Shelton figured people would be more likely to give him a ride if they couldn't see through the blizzard and tell that it was him.

Shelton had never seen such a storm. He'd watched Lester Hoffstead track her all week and while the weatherman had seemed downright histrionic, if anything Shelton believed he'd undersold the storm's wrath and devastating power.

She came down from Canada across Lake Superior and hit the Upper Peninsula first. Munising and the sandstone cliffs. Then she pushed inland and bleached the hayfields and the pines and balsam firs, the great emerald forests, the evergreen spine of Michigan's vast and big-hearted peninsula. She was slowed some by the trees but pushed through to Lake Michigan anyway, to Mishigami, the great water, where she rallied on the cold, black depths and finally struck Cutler in a full-blown rage.

Yes, Lester Hoffstead had done them all a disservice. Lester Hoffstead should have done everything in his power to whip his viewers into a panicked frenzy. He should have stood on his head and flapped his arms like a chicken, then read a chapter from Revelation while the camera panned across his Doppler radar.

Speaking of the Bible, Shelton had come to feel a bit like Jonah, trapped in the belly of the whale. It was as if the storm
had swallowed him whole, especially now that he was beyond the trees on the highway, where everything was flat and folded into the violent, swirling gray.

He hated the storm, but he respected it, too, as he turned his back to the wind and stuck out his thumb. And miracle of miracles, the first truck he saw pulled over to pick him up.

It was Zeke Turner in his F-150. Shelton could tell because who else but Zeke had a pickup painted so brightly purple that it shone through the storm like a giant Easter egg. Shelton ran to the passenger-side door and Zeke hit the auto locks and waved him in.

“Get in, man,” he said. “It's cold as a witch's titty out there.”

Shelton shuddered as he climbed in the cab and Zeke tilted the heating vents in his direction.

“Thanks,” Shelton said, and pulled off his helmet.

Zeke Turner had always been a stand-up guy. He would not deny Shelton a ride even if he'd been in prison for ten years. Shelton considered him a friend, or as close as he came to one.

“I thought that was you,” Zeke said. “I couldn't tell exactly through the snow, but then I said, who else could that big motherfucker be out here by the hills but Shelton Potter?”

“I thought the same thing,” Shelton said. “I knew it was you right off, because who else has a pickup that looks like a big ole gay Easter egg.”

“Shit,” Zeke said. “You find an Easter egg that isn't gay, you let me know. I'd say gay and Easter egg go hand in hand.”

“Which begs the question,” Shelton said.

“The purple is to draw your attention to the signage on my side panels.
ZEKE TURNER ENTERTAINMENT
.”

“Okay,” Shelton said. “Well, that actually does make some sense.”

Shelton remembered then that Zeke was a singer. Or at least he was trying to be. Mostly he worked at the plastics plant, but he had dreams of his own, which would also explain why he was wearing a black cowboy shirt with white piping and sequin swirls stitched into the collar. He had on matching black pants and snakeskin boots. He wore a straight-banged black wig that sat on his head like an inverted bowl.

“You ain't wearing a coat?” Shelton said.

“Can't crease the shirt,” Zeke said.

“You got a show then?”

“Rock and roll,” Zeke said.

“Where at?”

“All the way to the Sault.”

“Even in this storm?”

“Slot machines are inside,” Zeke said. “I'm playing the brunch buffet.”

“You look like Elvis,” Shelton said. “But I know you ain't.”

“Roy Orbison,” he said.

“That's right,” Shelton said. “I'm sorry.”

Zeke waved him off.

“I get it all the time,” he said.

They drove into the flurries and the freshly dropped sky. There wasn't another car on the road.

“It wasn't snowing,” Shelton said. “And then, boom!”

“I saw two flakes come down all innocent, and then the fucker just opened right up,” said Zeke. “It's like the planet Hoth out here.”

“Well, I appreciate you stopping,” Shelton said. “And I got a little doober for your trouble, if you're interested.”

“I would say I'm keenly interested,” said Zeke.

Shelton lit the joint and passed it to Zeke first. Zeke had a toke and passed it back. They smoked the joint quietly, deliberately. Shelton looked at Zeke and tried to decide if he was wearing makeup. He thought he might be. He thought it was strange for a man to put on makeup, but supposed things were different in the entertainment industry. He pinched the joint off at the roach and dropped it in the console.

“For after the show,” he said.

“You're all right, Potter,” said Zeke. “And I've never said otherwise.”

“This is pretty good pot,” Shelton said. “It's decent anyways.”

“I'm going to crack the window a smidge,” said Zeke. “But only because I can't tell the smoke from the snow.”

“If you don't mind,” Shelton said. “I could use a ride home.”

“Sure,” Zeke said. “What happened that you're out walking in this mess anyway?”

“My sled run out of gas.”

“That sucks,” said Zeke.

Shelton shrugged.

“You know you could come up to the casino if you wanted,” Zeke said. “Sometimes there's some women to be had. Divorcées mostly. If not, I know some of the waitresses. We could get a room and see if we can't make a day of it. People up there like to party. I met a couple once and the husband wanted me to fuck his wife. It was like a Robert Redford situation.”

“Robert Redford?”

“From that movie. Where he wants to fuck Woody Harrelson's wife. Except this was opposite because this guy wanted me to fuck his own wife. He was going to watch and requested I keep my wig on and there wasn't no money involved. It was not a paying proposition.”

“Did you do it?”

“Hell no.”

“Too weird?”

“Too weird,” Zeke said. “But also 'cause the wife was ugly.”