I leaned toward the vents and wrapped my arms tight around my chest to pull the heat in. Mama had seen fit to steal my winter coat and gloves the night she disappeared, which meant I would be making the trek in my hoodie and blue jeans. An injustice that might have angered me if I thought it would do any good.
Snow was already piling on the hood of the truck. They cut into the radio with a weather advisory and after the warning sirens came the voice of Lester Hoffstead, northern Michigan’s most trusted name in weather. He was in a tizzy over his Doppler radar and its dire predictions and I reached out to punch the power off. No offense to Lester, but I understood it was a damn blizzard coming.
I pushed the door open and felt the cold come over me in a wash. I tightened my hood strings and ran for the cover of the trees.
I moved through the pines at the edge of the property without much problem, but when the woods cleared and I hit the open fields the snow got deep. The wind was hard against me and I had to drop my head low against the gusting. I fisted my hands at my side and walked.
It was the burning kind of cold. A tear had opened in my lip and I put my tongue to it and tasted the salty, pooling blood. There was already a throb and tingle in my toes and the air torched my lungs just to breathe it. I looked back after a minute and could not see the pinewoods or tell the falling snow in the fields from what was wind-thrown.
Shelton lived in the farmhouse, but it was his uncle Rick who owned the north hills. Rick had most everything west of the river, where he rented plots to his cronies and had built himself a spread on top that he faced toward the setting sun. Even Portis was on Rick’s land, a holdover from the days when he ran with those idiots.
Rick was raised in the hills and earned his money in cocaine and marijuana, legitimate markets in comparison to Shelton’s preference for home-cooked methamphetamines. Rick had long-standing agreements with Cutler law and was a high school football hero to boot. People still bought him drinks on account of some la-de-da record he set against Cheboygan, and every Christmas he stood on Mitchell Street in a Santa suit and roasted chestnuts for the Kiwanis Club.
Rick Potter was a pillar of the community, while Shelton had done a stint in the Ionia penitentiary and smoked his own cook—a source of considerable tension between the two. People said Shelton was the bad guy, but I didn’t like either one on principle. I didn’t care to make distinctions between the ways they conducted their criminal lives, but it was Shelton I feared as I walked through the dark.
The drifts finally lowered near the house and there were rutted trails and some hard-packed snow to set my feet in. I could see the farmhouse now, a bluish smudge through my wind-teared eyes, and Carletta’s Bonneville parked out back and buried beneath a foot of powder.
I didn’t come up the front steps. I flanked the house instead, then hoisted myself over the railing on the far side of the porch. There was a wide, double-hung window along the wall and I crouched beside it and cleared snow with my sleeve.
The living room was low lit, but I could see Shelton’s sorry behind through the glass. He was shirtless and laid out on the couch in blue jeans. He had WHITEBOY tattooed on his back—lest he be mistaken for a black albino—and I could see the Old English scrawl along the bony jut of his shoulder. I could see a rash of acne on his back as he faced the center of the room and slept.
The coffee table was cluttered with tinfoil, pipes, and ash, and there was a shotgun leaned against the wall beside it. There was a woman on the floor in blue jeans and a black sweater. Her blond hair was pulled back and I could see the hard line of her jaw and two scrawny arms stretched above her head like she’d been reaching for something. She looked familiar somehow, but I thought it was probably just that she resembled Carletta when she crashed. She was all contorted and trampled-looking and facedown on the floor like some corpse washed up on the beach.
I hurried to the back of the house where steps led to the rear entrance. The wind was deadened some by the pole barn behind me and I could hear the stereo blaring inside. I could hear the thump of bass and a man’s voice above guitars. The backdoor opened into the kitchen and I stood there in the cold with my hand against the icy knob.
I had my moment of doubt. Part of me wanted to drop the whole thing right there and hoof it back to the truck. I knew how stupid it was to walk in that back door, but Mama had to be found. There was no guarantee she would survive the storm, assuming she hadn’t curled herself into a corner of the farmhouse and died already.
The knob turned in my palm and I stepped inside and was brushed back by the stink. I don’t know why I was surprised the place smelled like the circus, but I had to take a minute and stand there with my breath held.