Keller’s Konvenience was near the end of town, where Main Street sloped toward Lake Superior and stopped at the shipyard. The wood-frame building looked the worse for having survived blizzards, two fires, and a flood over the years. But even with dry rot and a sagging roof line, it wasn’t the shabbiest building on the street. Jeannie Keller was hoping to get through another winter before having to make any more repairs.
Half an hour before closing, she walked through the narrow aisles of the store, lining up bottles of shampoo and moisturizer, sorting plastic toys in the fifty-cent and dollar bins. She spied a smear of chocolate on the handle of the rear exit door—the Pekkala kids had been giggling in that corner before she herded them out.
Jeannie was planning to visit her father after work. For six dollars she could eat dinner with him at Lakeview Manor. Since it was Saturday, there’d be a grainy piece of Salisbury steak, potatoes mashed into gray peaks, a roll, and a bowl of iceberg lettuce with a hard circle of tomato on top. Not very appealing, but it was better than cooking for herself. And she felt comforted sharing a meal with her father, even though he did not often acknowledge her presence.
She heard the jangle of the bell over the door and looked toward the front. A man was standing at the cash register.
Jeannie walked toward him. “Can I help you?”
He turned and seemed to startle, as if he’d mistaken her for someone. Jeannie could tell he wasn’t a local. Guys around here favored windbreakers, faded denim, and baseball hats. The stranger wore black jeans, a white shirt, a soft leather jacket, and mud-stained boots the color of butter. A black wool scarf was looped around his neck. Through the storefront window she could see a silver sports car parked at the curb.
“Got any Band-Aids?” he asked. His voice was pleasant, with a downstate accent.
“I’ll get them for you. Family assortment or one-size?”
“One-size is fine. I’ve got blisters on my feet like you wouldn’t believe.”
She plucked a white metal box from a shelf in Aisle Three and went back to the counter. He seemed friendly so she ventured a comment. “New boots?”
“No, but I shouldn’t have gone hiking in them.”
He was built big, with dark eyes and a broad, open face. His hair was gray with some brown in it, cut short in a style that looked expensive. He might be younger than she was, or he might wear the same years more lightly. She couldn’t tell.
He paid for the bandages. “Anything to see around here that doesn’t involve a lot of walking?”
Jeannie thought about what might appeal to a man like him. “Do you like fall color?”
“Fall color? Sure.” He sounded amused.
Her face reddened. “I know it’s everywhere right now, but we have a nice overlook about ten miles west of town, right on the lake. It’s a beautiful view, especially now with the leaves turning on the hills and the water so blue down below. Out-of-town people seem to like it.”
“And I’m from out of town, so that sounds just right.” He put the white box in his jacket pocket. “Want to come along?” His tone was casual, like they were old friends.
Jeannie was unprepared. “Oh, I can’t,” she blurted out. “My father’s expecting me for dinner and, I mean, the store’s still open. I’m the only one here.” As if that weren’t obvious.
“That’s too bad. Well, have a good evening.” The bell jingled again as he went out the door.
Jeannie stood another moment at the cash register, bereft, aware of the silent, empty aisles around her.
Why had he invited her? She didn’t believe he could have found her attractive, not with her washed-out features and thick middle. This decade of her life had been marked by betrayals, and the one she still faced every day was that of her body resculpting itself, robbing her face of its girlish fullness while packing her lean frame with extra layers. She reminded herself of an old sailing ship sunk in the shallows, its naked masts jutting above the waves as the hull wedged itself deeper in the sand.
There was nothing to arouse the interest of a stranger, unless pity had moved him. That was it—he had seen a mousy woman in a small town and thought he could brighten her day. To take advantage of her? Probably not. No one like him would look to someone like her for excitement. Or comfort.
At five o’clock Jeannie locked up and went out the back exit to her car. She pulled a rag from the trunk and wiped away the day’s accumulation of gritty dust, blown over from the coal pile heaped outside the pulp mill.
As she drove down Main Street, late afternoon sunlight slanted across the buildings, bleaching out their colors. Banners hanging from lamp posts showed a silhouette of the pulp-mill smokestack and the shipyard building, huddled together under the curl of a blue wave. The slogan at the bottom, “One Hundred Years of Progress,” was meant to celebrate the town’s economic perseverance, but the pulp mill was down to thirty people and in April, the shipyard had gone bust. From one day to the next the building had been boarded up, the yard fenced off, and the workers sent home with an extra week’s pay.
On an impulse, Jeannie went past Lakeview Manor and took the next right instead, onto the highway running west along the lake. She wouldn’t go to the overlook. But she could drive out that way. All summer she’d meant to hike some of the nearby trails, the ones that had felt like her backyard when she was a child. She could take a short walk and still visit with Dad before he went to bed.
The sun angled into her eyes. She flipped down the visor and focused on the road curving between swaths of red-brown ferns and yellowed grasses. Trees loomed behind the setbacks, flame-colored leaves amid the evergreens. Power lines glittered like long jeweled strands. On the right, the vast blue lake appeared in flashes wherever the foliage thinned out.
It was too bad she’d been so flustered. When was the last time a man had invited her anywhere? In her teen years, having a date meant you drove deep into the woods with a six-pack and cigarettes so you could make out in the front seat of someone’s pickup with a Moody Blues cassette playing off the truck battery. She’d dated Roy like that before they got married. Three years of heavy breathing and him begging her to touch him down there, it wasn’t healthy for a man to get all excited and have no relief, with “Nights in White Satin” in the background.
That was Roy, always coming up with some argument about what was good for him. Even when he told her he was leaving after twenty-seven years because little Karen Sanders was pregnant with his baby, he made it sound like a side effect of his health regimen. “Jeannie, you know I need a lot of activity.” She wondered if two toddlers and a new wife with a credit card habit were keeping him busy enough.
She went past ranch homes and cabins on wide green lots carved out of the forest, past the mailboxes and signposts she knew by heart. Some of the driveways had For Sale signs posted, the result of rising lake levels and few job prospects.
Jeannie had always meant to leave. For years she thought she and Roy would eventually look for jobs elsewhere like a lot of their friends. Many still came back every summer, driving new SUVs and wearing fleece vests with North Face logos. But Jeannie’s mom had needed help as she succumbed to breast cancer, and Roy kept surviving every change in ownership at the pulp mill. There was never a good time to go. Then her dad was diagnosed with early dementia and Jeannie had to run the store.
She’d also meant to have children. The lack of them wasn’t Roy’s fault, as he would yell in their arguments at the end. She felt like she’d missed something important, though motherhood had always been an abstract goal for her. Like studying ballet. Of course, she didn’t have to deal with ballerinas on a daily basis, and Jeannie was tired of women in the checkout line telling her how much more she’d know about life if she’d had kids.
Jeannie knew plenty about life, at least life here. The man in the silver car—he knew about other places. Some big city had polished him, smoothed away any roughness. Maybe she should have gone with him. It could have been awkward. But the silver car would have been a treat. Riding in it up to the overlook, talking to the stranger about the fall color.
She was thinking so hard about the silver car that it didn’t surprise her, at first, to see it up ahead, tilting into the ditch by old Billy Green’s driveway. Billy was standing next to it in his overalls and Packers cap. Just as she took in the skid marks on the highway, an ambulance pulled out of the driveway and headed toward town, siren wailing.
Jeannie slammed on the brakes and swerved to the side of the road, then jumped out and ran toward the stranger’s car. The front end was a mass of brown and red, colors that didn’t have anything to do with the smooth silver metal that was supposed to be there. She didn’t understand what she was seeing until she saw a skinny brown leg, ending in a hoof, jutting upward from the hood like a radio antenna. A deer had smashed through the windshield on the passenger side.
“What happened to the driver? Is he okay?” She was shouting.
“He’ll be fine.” Billy ran a hand over the gleaming finish of the car’s undamaged side. “The deer busting in messed up his shoulder, but he was conscious and talking. They’re taking him to Marquette in case he needs surgery. Good thing no one was in the passenger seat.”
“Oh, God.”
“Do you know him?” Billy was looking curiously at Jeannie.
“No, but he came in the store and I told him he should drive up to the overlook. I feel terrible.” She started to cry.
Billy put his arm around her, cleared his throat a few times. “It wasn’t your fault,” he finally said.
It wasn’t why she was crying. Jeannie fished a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. “I’d better go see Dad before it gets too late.”
“Atta girl. Tell him hi from me.” Billy looked at her car. “What brought you out this way?”
“Oh, I was going to hike one of the trails.” Her voice was shaky. “I’m not in the mood anymore.”
Billy patted her arm. “You take care, Jeannie.” He waited as she got into her car and turned it around. Then he walked down his driveway.
The sun was behind her now. She drove past a stand of Queen Anne’s lace, tall stalks with white flower heads closed into cups. Jeannie usually found solace in knowing every curve of this highway, the bridges spanning narrow creeks, the side roads leading to hidden waterfalls and old cemeteries. But today she felt pinned to the landscape like a chloroformed moth.
The silver car was a bloody, crumpled mess. The stranger was on his way to the hospital in Marquette, two hours away. Her dad was sitting at Lakeview Manor, not waiting for her, chewing his Salisbury steak and keeping his eyes on the TV. Her body was a traitor. Roy and Karen would keep having babies who would one day come into the store and smear chocolate on the door handle. Something that was supposed to happen to her had never happened and she’d grown old waiting for it.
And if she had tried something new, just this once, by taking a ride in that silver car, she’d be badly injured or even dead. It must be a cosmic warning: stay where you are.
She wondered about the car. Someone would tow it back to town, but the stranger probably couldn’t get it repaired locally. It would take forever just to get the parts. He’d have a lot to figure out once his shoulder was fixed.
A red pickup passed Jeannie’s car in a noisy rush. As she trailed in its wake, a startling thought came to her. What if the accident was a different kind of sign? Not a warning. A release.
Her mind darted around, parsing it out. If she’d gone with the stranger, maybe she’d have seen the deer and warned him in time. Or maybe the accident meant the worst had already happened. It worked out for her either way.
Jeannie felt fizzy, like her body might float up from the vinyl seat. The turn for Lakeview Manor approached but she kept her foot on the gas.
She’d get to Marquette before dark. She’d have plenty of time to figure out what to say to the stranger. She wasn’t driving there to find love or meet an obligation—though she’d help him if she could. She was going because he had asked her a question, a simple question, and it had changed her. She wanted to hold onto that change, do something without being able to predict what would happen next.
They would talk at the hospital, two strangers. And she could be home by eleven, if that’s what she wanted.
Mary Hawley is a fiction writer, poet, translator, and volunteer interpreter for the National Immigrant Justice Center. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and one of her stories received a 2019 Illinois Literary Award. She is the author of a poetry collection, Double Tongues, and co-translator of the bilingual anthology Shards of Light/Astillas de luz, both published by Tia Chucha Press. She lives in Evanston, Illinois, but spends a lot of time on Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where her story “Talking About the Fall Color” is set.
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