Wolf Point Read Online Free PDF Page B

and a man in the back seat instead of Evan, his stepson, whom he had raised from the age of two and whom he loved dearly and from whom he was now irrevocably separated, as he was separated from his own daughter, Maura, from his first marriage, who was herself now married and living in London and had a daughter of her own, whom she had painfully explained to him he could not under any circumstances ever be alone with, breaking his heart, reducinghim to tears in her sight before she even finished speaking. Not that any of it mattered; not that he had seen any of them in more than a year; now he was this other person, this other T Walker, leading this other, until recently, vacuous life.
    By the time he exited Route 81 for Alexandria Bay, his palms were sweaty, he was nauseous, his skin was clammy, and he had a roaring headache. He picked up the scrap of yellow paper from the dash. The address read, “Cabin 12, Wolf Point.” He put the paper in his pocket and headed for a gas station just beyond the exit, where he could already see the figure of an old man hunched over some kind of reading material behind a plate-glass window. In the back seat, Lester moaned softly and started to snore.
    By the time he found the cabin and peered in through grimy windows to the dark interior, it was almost eight. The old guy at the gas station had given him easy directions before asking if he was a friend of Chuck’s, to which T had nodded and said, “Chuck’s a buddy from way back,” and then popped two Advil and washed them down with a swig from an eight-ounce Perrier, which he had been delighted to find beside the various columns of brightly colored soft drinks. “Haven’t seen him in some time,” the old man said. “He’s fine,” T answered, “been busy,” and he pushed the remaining Perrier and a six-pack of Coke and the opened Advil bottle toward the cash register. “Let me have the big bucket of that fried chicken too,” he said, and pointed to the countertop glass case ofchicken pieces on racks under heat lamps. Then he paid for the gas and supplies and left with the red-and-white bucket of chicken under his arm and a plastic bag with the drinks in hand.
    Wolf Point turned out to be a long scrap of rugged shore pushing out into the Saint Lawrence. It was lined with redwood cabins. T had parked the Rover under the wide, rambling crown of an oak tree and waited a moment to see if either of his hitchhikers would stir once the sound of the engine ceased and the loud silence of this still, dark place filled the car. They didn’t. Which wasn’t surprising, given that neither had stirred through the pumping of the gas and the exiting and entering and the dropping of the chicken and soft drinks on the car floor. If even the thick, greasy smell of Southern-fried chicken failed to wake them, no reason to be surprised that the swell of silence didn’t penetrate their sleep either. He took the black Mag light from the glove compartment, left them sleeping in the car, and climbed a hill to the cabins, all of which appeared to be empty. There were no cars in sight, no vehicles of any kind, only a grassy slope of land mostly hidden by darkness, and the moonlit outline of cabins against the sky.
    The land fell off precipitously behind the first cabin, dropping several feet to the water. The buildings were close together in a zigzagging line that proceeded up a hill. He pointed the flashlight at a door, found the number 1 carved into the wood frame, and switched the light off before following a grassy trail from cabin to cabin until he reached the last one,with the number 12 on the door. It was the largest of the group, on the tip of the peninsula, on a rocky promontory a good twenty feet above the water. He searched the interior through several dirty windows, moving the beam of light over the walls and floor, and was surprised to find the place comfortably furnished with rustic chairs and tables. There were two small bedrooms and one