South of Superior Read Free

had time to notice you’d come into one before you were out again. She stopped often, as much to satisfy her curiosity as for the coffee, and her progress was slow, but she told herself that was all right. She could almost hear Emmy telling her to enjoy the journey, not to think ahead too much to its end.
    At eleven fifteen she cruised through Crosscut—big enough to have a school and two gas stations and an auto supply store; not big enough for a McDonald’s or a Pamida, which seemed to be the north’s miniature version of Walmart—and turned north for the last leg of her journey. By noon she was approaching McAllaster, where Gladys Hansen and her sister Arbutus were waiting. It was just a dot on the map at the edge of Lake Superior, a tiny village settled for some reason that by now must be defunct—fur trading? fishing? lumber?—at a scoop in the shoreline called Desolation Bay. It was the edge of the earth. And her birthplace, though she remembered nothing of it. Jackie Stone had left when Madeline was a baby. It had never been anything but a hazy idea to her.
    Suddenly, it was real. She came around a bend and over a small rise, and the lake and town appeared below her. It was as if the road had been unfurling for all these miles for just this purpose: to bring her to this spot.
    The town sat at the base of a steep hill at the edge of the water, a lonely collection of buildings she could take in all in one glance from this distance. Huddled Under the sleet that had been falling for hours, it looked stark and desolate. And beautiful. There was still snow on the ground—had been, for the last twenty miles—and small icebergs bobbed near shore, waves lashing over them. Madeline had read that Lake Superior was as big as the State of South Carolina. It looked like an ocean. Without it, McAllaster might have been any of the small, drab hamlets she’d driven through today. With it—and from this vantage point high above—the effect was somehow thrilling.
    Madeline slowed to a stop and sat motionless at the wheel, her hands still carefully placed at the ten and two o’clock positions, staring. Even in the driving rain the lake glittered and shone with movement, with the mystery of its whole huge self. It dawned on her that everyone’s cautions had been correct, even if for the wrong reasons. This was a foreign, otherworldly place, complete with magic and perils and tests.
    Madeline spent a long moment gazing at the town. She Understood in a way she hadn’t before that if she drove down that hill, her life would change forever. Was it really too late to forget this idea? She shifted the car back into gear: of course it was. She had plenty of faults but being a coward wasn’t one of them. She would not make herself ridiculous by turning back now, no matter what her misgivings. She cruised down the hill and pulled Up in front of a grand old empty relic of a building—faded lettering above the second-floor windows proclaimed it “The Hotel Leppinen” but Madeline doubted anyone had stayed there in fifty years—and looked at Gladys Hansen’s directions.
    Pass the Hotel on Main , the note said. Go left on Edsel two blocks, left again on Lake, and right on Bessel. Go just past the big hemlock that’s cracking the sidewalk. We are the third house from the corner, number 26 . Madeline had read this a dozen times before she left. It hadn’t seemed quite real. But now she was at the hotel and could see the sign for Edsel and there was no going back.
    She started the Buick again. From high on the hill, the town had appeared mythical, a symbol of man’s insignificance in the great scope of nature. Up close it was far more prosaic. She saw a hardware store, a grocery, a gas station, a bank, a bar, a few parked cars and pickups, and not one person. A dog trotted down the center of the street, as purposeful as a pedestrian out on errands. She turned