Although often the subject of ridicule—“Puddle Pirate,” “Crick Dick,” “Boat Bacon”—in some ways DNR officers actually had more authority than the police. They carried a wider variety of weapons and patrolled much larger jurisdictions. They could write tickets, make arrests, secure crime scenes, and were trained to do it all in hip waders if necessary.
The truck’s door opened, a jackboot appeared, and then a park ranger got out. He was short haired, clean-shaven, and all business. While some of the hunters had smiled and waved to us, and one man even happily accepted a Jell-O shot, the ranger acted like we weren’t even there and instead headed straight for the few remaining hunters and their boats. Equipped with a sidearm snapped into a holster, along with a radio, binoculars, a small mace dispenser, and a sap, all competing for space on his belt, I heard the squeak of patent leather as he marched past.
He took several minutes checking hunting licenses and counting life jackets. Finding no infractions, he turned his attention to us.
“What exactly are you ladies doing?” he’d asked, obviously annoyed. “Prancing around like you own the place?”
I have searched my brain, yet have found not a single memory of prancing. Yet many others, people we loved and held in high esteem, had asked us a more sincere variation on that same question.
What were we doing out there?
What was it about Drummond that drew us back, year after year?
Our husbands and boyfriends had asked us and so had our children. Our parents had asked, and George had asked us, too. There was no sandy beach, they’d reminded us. No shopping mall, no casino, no gourmet restaurants, no wineries, no five-star hotels, and certainly no health spa. Drummond Island didn’t have one single amenity most people would probably associate with a women’s weekend away.
Our island was sometimes called “The Gem of the Huron,” usually in tourist brochures and on bumper stickers. It was no diamond, though, and sparkled instead in a way only certain people could see. We were some of those people. When we’d started the trip, not one of us could have afforded to go anyplace fancy. Now that some of us might have been able to, we’d found that wasn’t what we wanted at all. Regular vacation spots just seemed too commonplace, too accessible.
Linda had chosen the island because our home lives—our children, our families, our jobs—could really only spare us for a weekend. Even though Drummond wasn’t that far away (from Peegeo’s parking lot it was only 180 miles), once we were there it seemed like a separate world. The Mackinac Bridge, the coastal highway, the car ferry through DeTour Passage, then the rocks and the thick forest made the place feel both exotic and feral. As once-wild girls, now tamed by marriage, motherhood, or management, we had a longing for the safety of that wilderness. We wanted to reconnect with each other and with our own inner lives, beyond carpools, diapers, tip jars, date nights, or laundry that perpetually needed folding.
We needed to climb on rocks, walk in the woods, get our cars muddy, play pool, and be part of something bigger than our insulated day-to-day lives. And you couldn’t do any of that at a mall, a spa, or a five-star hotel. Drummond was an actual place. You could point to it on a map, and it had a set latitude and longitude. But by the time that park ranger asked us what we were doing there, the island had become more than a location; it was a feeling. A closeness only we could conjure, and only when we were together.
That had never been an easy thing to explain to our families. I could not imagine how we would explain it to the DNR.
“It’s a free country,” Linda observed, exhaling a squall of cigarette smoke.
The rest of us nodded in agreement. It was indeed.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bev cock her head at Linda and indicate something she had cupped in the palm of her hand. In between her fingers was an object the size and shape of a hard-boiled egg. A pink, rubbery, hard-boiled egg.
“Go for it,” Linda mouthed.
Bev held her hand out to the ranger, smiled, and opened her fingers.
“Homemade Jell-O?” she asked.
The ranger stared at the offering in disbelief. Andrea reached into our cooler, pulled out a pressurized can, flipped off the cap, and pressed down on the nozzle. There was a sound like a fart and whipped cream bloomed on top of the cherry glob.
The ranger took it in his thumb and forefinger, held it up to the light.
“Ladies.” He sighed. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Try it.” Bev giggled, doing a little shimmy. “You might like it.”
He narrowed an eye, appraised Bev’s wiggle, and then did something that surprised us all. He smiled.
“Ah, what the hell,” he said, tipping his head back, opening his mouth, and tossing in the Jell-O shot.
When it hit his tongue he froze, his body stiff as a tree trunk, his only movement the vertical bounce of his Adam’s apple. His eyes watered a little, and he finally took a breath.
“What was that?” he gasped.
Did Linda say the next word or did I just want her to?
“Decoy” was what I heard.
A coughing fit hit him broadside then and echoed out over the open water. A flock of mallards took flight and banked in the direction of the nature preserve. Without another word, the ranger marched off, climbed into his truck, and drove away.
“He wanted me,” Bev said, smoothing her hair. “I could tell.”
CHAPTER FOUR 1998
Mary Lynn, Linda, Bev, Susan, and Pam rock hunting together on Drummond’s southern shore.
We had all passed into adulthood years before, but the eight of us still did a lot of growing up between 1997 and 1998. Andrea had given birth to her first child, a daughter. I’d helped start a book review magazine with two business partners. Linda and Kenny had discussed getting married, and Bev had bought a house, the first she’d ever owned with only her name on the deed. Mary Lynn got a promotion and a raise at the printing company where she worked, Jill’s divorce from Marty was final, and to our great joy, she’d returned to the island with us.
Perhaps the most visible change impacting us that weekend: We’d graduated out of Frank’s trailers and rented a log cabin on the other side of the island. It was big enough for all of us to stay in together and had a name that seemed to reflect the direction our lives were headed: Fairview.
We had to share bedrooms, and beds, too, but we were used to that, and when I close my eyes even now I can hear the sounds of us moving in and claiming that rustic little cabin for our own. Stockinged feet scampering up the log stairs, suitcases and duffel bags tossed onto beds, window shades snapped open, and voices all talking excitedly at once. After we were settled, we left to explore our new “neighborhood”—a secluded cove on the island’s southern shore, populated with narrow winding two-tracks, aromatic cedar trees, occasional views of the water, and moss so green it seemed lit from within.
We’d been on an afternoon rock-hunting excursion together at Big Shoal Beach when the afternoon sky turned a strange greenish black and Mary Lynn had started shivering. It grew so dark that if there had been any streetlights on that part of the island, they’d have turned themselves on, even at two o’clock in the afternoon.
“Don’t you leave on my account,” Mary Lynn had tried to command through chattering teeth. “I can’t tell the good rocks from a cement block, but I don’t want to be blamed for you guys leaving any behind.”
Big Shoal was a township park on the southern coast of the island several miles east of Fairview. Part of the shore was sandy, a rarity on the island, so in the summertime it filled up with swimmers and kayakers. In the fall, though, it was often deserted, and in other years we’d had good luck finding fossils there. Dolomite with squiggles of leggy creatures inside, whole rocks that looked like thumb-sized shark’s teeth but were actually petrified coral, and composite stones with ancient fan-shaped shells solidified in granite and time.
We’d planned to stay longer, but one look at Mary Lynn had changed ou
r minds. There was no cold like the heavy damp that gripped the Great Lakes in the fall. Linda suggested the only remedy was a greasy cheeseburger fresh from the grill at Chuck’s, and back on the road I remember seeing the place appearing up ahead, vibrating at the tree line like a mirage. We’d decided to go there to warm up instead of driving back to Fairview because although both places were about the same distance away, the bar was on a main road and would take only a couple minutes to get to. Our cabin was deep in a cove, on a dirt road, down twists and windings, and would take us a half hour or more. We didn’t think Mary Lynn should wait that long.
Just before the trip, Andrea had bought another Ford Bronco, a bigger, shinier, and more luxurious version of the Chuck Truck she’d named Bruno. In front of us, with Mary Lynn wrapped in extra coats in the passenger seat, Linda veered her Explorer into Chuck’s parking lot. Andrea followed closely behind and two sets of muddy tires skidded to a hard stop on the gravel. Andrea’s curly hair took the bounce like a Slinky, then returned to its pre-skid style.
“All hail the power of a salon-quality mousse,” she deadpanned.
“And an object is either at rest or moves at a constant velocity,” I added, verbal proof I was no longer able to leave even the most mundane thoughts of my sons behind.
That year, they were three, eight, and ten. My oldest was in the fifth grade and his class was studying Newton’s Laws. I have no idea what was going on inside of Linda’s car at that moment. In Andrea’s, we were talking over Van Halen, fixing our hair, and making sure all laws of physics still applied.
“We’re back, Chuck,” Jill announced then. “Did you miss us?”
With Jill along, I felt like we girls were whole again. She spoke hardly at all of her missing years, and would only say that after Linda had shared the story of our encounter with the park ranger, she’d returned in order to protect us from ourselves.
Jill had always been the tough one. Still, I’d thought her offer of protection was a joke until I saw the knife. She and Andrea had just picked me up; we hadn’t even left Traverse City before she’d reached under Andrea’s backseat and grabbed the leather sheath she’d stashed there. Holding it aloft, she’d slid out a ridiculously large bowie knife.
“Girls,” she’d said, “you get into any trouble this year and I got your backs.”
I couldn’t believe what I saw. I trusted Jill, I’d liked working with her at Peegeo’s because she was so capable, and she was the kind of person you’d want nearby if something bad happened. But I did not like the idea of having a weapon along. It scared me.
Andrea was not a worrier like me, and when she looked in her rearview mirror and saw it gleaming, she seemed both entertained and taken aback.
“Good God, Jill!” she asked. “Where’d you get that thing?”
“Just some guy gave it to me.”
What guy, and what it meant when “some guy” gave a newly divorced woman a giant knife, was left to our imaginations. Bev wasn’t in the car yet when Jill assured us she really had only brought it along as a joke. She’d heard about Pam’s sheriff’s badge, and for her return she’d wanted to bring something equally amusing.
A knife didn’t seem as funny to me. A knife didn’t seem funny, period. When we pulled into Chuck’s to warm up Mary Lynn, we’d been on the island for two days and Jill hadn’t mentioned it again. I didn’t think Bev even knew about it, or if she had, she’d either forgotten it was along or had chosen to ignore it. I was glad. I was a worrier, but about little things. When it came right down to it, not much really frightened me. And that had.
“Hello, all you lucky people!” Bev announced, pausing in the doorway at Chuck’s.
She was not being ironic; Bev really believed fortune was shining on whoever happened to be inside that bar because she’d arrived. Along with the rest of us, of course. And that night, the rest of us included Earl II.
At some now-forgotten moment, bachelorette Earl had been lost or wrecked and on Bev’s arm that afternoon was a second blow-up doll we’d nicknamed “Son of Earl.” The original’s replacement had been a gift to us from George, and from the moment we’d received him, Bev had assigned herself to act as his keeper. She’d sit with Earl on the porch swing at Fairview; she’d make sure he was arranged where he could see the pool table at Northwoods when she and I were playing; and she’d pose with him in our group photographs, often grabbing his crotch just as the shutter clicked.
After all the energy I’d put into the original Earl, there was a time when it wouldn’t have seemed possible I’d someday forget the details of his demise, but I had. My strange need to impress other people with how much I liked my friends was gone. I supposed it had been born of insecurity, and where the girls were concerned, that was gone, too.
We’d only gone to Chuck’s to warm up Mary Lynn and get a quick bite, but it was also an opportunity for Son of Earl to meet People of Chuck’s, and I was more than happy to let Bev make the introductions. Her attachment to him was not from any inner turmoil, like mine had been, but from her simple and lighthearted search for fun. For the occasion, she’d dressed him in a beanie hat, a pressed tuxedo shirt, a black vest and bow tie, but no pants.
Bev’s enthusiasm for Earl was not contagious, however. The novelty had faded and as Bev held him in the doorway and announced our arrival, several heads did turn our way, and I heard a couple of embarrassed snickers, but then only silence.
“Well, we’re here anyway,” Bev told the room, “so get over it.”
I had to admire her poise. Instead of being embarrassed or standing idly by while strangers made fun of her, or worse, dismissed her and her companion altogether, she’d simply adjusted.
We sat down, Andrea put a quarter in the jukebox, a love song played at full volume—Journey’s “Stone in Love”—and at least one group of people did eventually warm to Earl II. It would have been difficult for them not to, after Bev slow danced with him right next to their booth. The song ended on a fadeout, and Bev curtsied, holding Earl’s wrist with one hand and the hem of an imaginary skirt with the other. This garnered an enthusiastic round of applause, which she accepted with grace, and she and her dance partner sat down at our table.
“Where’s this Chuck person, anyway?” she’d asked.
All out of breath from dancing, Bev was still ready for whatever might be next, and I loved to watch her when she was having that much fun. I told her the bar had probably been named after someone, but then again, “Chuck” could just as easily have meant woodchuck, ground chuck (the place did have amazing cheeseburgers, after all), or God forbid, upchuck.
The bar was the size of a double-wide trailer and contained a wood bar, an L-shaped dining room, a kitchen, and “Does” and “Bucks.” The entry door was a white hunk of dented aluminum with a fist-sized hole where the doorknob was supposed to be. Inside, though, was a paradise decorated with beer mirrors, American flags, and the decapitated heads of legendary whitetails. A hard spike of a woman named Garthalene was the owner, and despite the chilly reception for Earl II, she’d always treated us well.
While Bev had been dancing, the rest of us unloaded our purses off our shoulders, removed our jackets, and claimed the big round table. Mary Lynn had stopped shivering and was rubbing her palms together, warming up her hands. Linda took a few minutes to say hello to Garthalene’s daughter, Missy, and was the last one of us to get settled.
Anyone appraising our group may have initially slid their eyes right past Linda, obscured as she was inside an oversized coat. Especially with Bev, the human spotlight, in the room. But when Linda’s coat came off that night, out she stepped in a lipstick-red, formfitting turtleneck. With her long black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin, in one simple motion she’d gone from Camp Fire Girl to Cleopatra.
Although it was two women who ran the place, the customers at Chuck’s were often mostly men. Local rowdies and weekend bear hunters, mixed with pool players, fishermen and the occasional golfer who’d strayed from the island’s con
ference center. If I had been paying attention instead of lining up quarters for the pool table, I might have seen the man in the corner. I might have seen how he looked at Linda when she took off her jacket. But I wasn’t paying attention and neither were any of the other girls, not even Jill who’d pledged so solemnly to protect us from ourselves. I’d worked on not being so oblivious, not living so much in my head all the time, but Drummond was the one place where I still felt like I didn’t have to pay attention all the time.
“Hey Linda,” the man in the corner called out.
Even though he was sitting down, I could tell he was of average height or shorter, but well built. He was in his late twenties or early thirties, with black hair and quick eyes. He was at a table near the door with his back to the wall and with him were a dozen other men all dressed in camo. His voice sounded flat, yet when I think back there was already something challenging in his tone. The two words—hey Linda—weren’t just a greeting exactly; they’d sounded more like a directive. As if he were used to giving orders and using the fewest words possible to do it.
“How’s your mother?” Linda called back.
At first I thought that was an insult, but it turned out to be a real question.
“She’s good,” the guy said.
By then I’d started a game of pool and was playing someone I didn’t know, but because the pool table was situated in between the camo man’s table and ours, I couldn’t help but hear his back-and-forth with Linda.
She was the only one of the girls who knew him, but that wasn’t unusual. She knew a lot of people, and there’d been other times she’d seen men she knew that we didn’t. She’d told me bits and pieces of her past, and for someone now so adverse to change, I’d come to learn that she’d sure lived through a lot of it. Getting engaged young, taking Greek lessons so she could speak to her future in-laws, but calling off the wedding. Then traveling around Florida with a new musician boyfriend instead and even living at the Playboy Club. Moving in with another guy when that relationship went sour, a brute who cheated her out of her house and almost everything else she owned.
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