Hank rose early. Outside it was still dark, but he could see snow swirling around the globe of a streetlight and hear the wind in the trees and naked branches drumming on the roof overhead.

            Hank was tall and athletic, and he bounded up the attic stairs three at a time. At the top, he pushed open a door and stood on the threshold for a moment before reaching over and shaking the body asleep in the bed. “It’s time,” he said. When there was no response, he pulled on a chain hanging from the ceiling.

            “Let’s go, Cal,” Hank said, loudly clapping his hands together. “Up and at ‘em.”

            “Goddamnit, Hank, turn that light off. I ain’t goin,’” Cal said, and burrowed deeper into the feather tick. “I changed my mind.”

            “Too late.”

            “Go without me. You’re always braggin’ how good you are.”

            “It’s a two-man job. I can’t cover the new territory all by myself. I told you that.”

            “What time is it?”

            “Time to get your lard ass movin’,” Hank said and whipped the blankets off the bed.

            “Sonofabitch.”

            “Stop whining. We need to hustle if we’re gonna make the rounds and get to first period on time. We miss ’ol man Potter’s class once more, we won’t be graduating.”

            “What’s the weather like out there?” Cal asked and cracked one eye open.

            “Beautiful. Perfect conditions.”

            “Liar. I can hear the wind howling in here.” Cal started to shiver and made a grab for the bedding, but Hank was too quick and snatched it back.

            “It’ll die down. Eventually. Here, put these on,” Hank said and tossed a set of gray flannel long johns on the bed.

            “C’mon downstairs when you’re dressed,” Hank said. “Coffee’s on and I’ll fix you some breakfast.”

            Cal shambled into the small kitchen, the untied laces of his boots dragging across the linoleum floor. His thick red hair was wet and slicked back. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

            Hank had lit a fire in the oil furnace in the corner, and a blue flame licked at the glass panel on the stove’s door, but it didn’t do much good. The sky was just beginning to brighten, and Cal could see drifting snow out the window. A transistor radio atop the refrigerator broadcast soybean futures. The announcer said 1974 could be another down year for Michigan farmers.

            “Beautiful day, my ass,” Cal yawned. He poured himself a cup of coffee and bit into a slice of toast. “Think you could make toast just once without burning it?”

            “Toaster’s finicky,” Hank said. “Howdaya like your eggs?”

            “Not burnt.”

            “You sleep all right?” Hank asked.

            “You need to haul that mattress to the dump,” Cal said between bites. “Bed of nails would’a been softer.”

            Hank slid two greasy eggs and a slab of ham onto Cal’s plate and dropped the sizzling pan into a sink of soapy water. “I’ll load the truck while you finish eating,” he said. “We should’ve been on the road fifteen minutes ago. The reason you bunked here was so we could get an early jump, remember?”

            Cal shoveled a forkful of eggs into this mouth. “You fix that heater in your truck? ’Bout froze last time.”

            “Yup,” Hank said. “Works like a champ now.”

            “Don’t bullshit me.”

            “The cab gets hot enough to melt glass,” Hank said, pulled on an old hunting coat, and started for the door.

            “If I’m not there in five minutes, feel free to leave without me,” Cal said, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

            Hank chipped snow and ice off the pickup’s windshield and thought about Bobbi. He had called her three times the night before, but she hadn’t answered. He wanted to ask if she had changed her mind. He knew she was tired of his questions, but he couldn’t help himself. She was always so certain and knew exactly what she wanted. That puzzled Hank and more than a little intimidated him.

            Hank’s thoughts were interrupted when Cal emerged from the house, a Thermos tucked under one arm, and started down the stairs. “Wouldn’t kill you to throw a little salt on these steps before someone falls and breaks their neck,” Cal said. “Think of your mother.”

            “She called. She won’t be back until the end of the month, maybe longer, depending on my aunt’s health,” Hank said. He yanked open the driver’s door, climbed behind the wheel, and cranked the engine. “Get in.”

            “Where to first?” Cal asked as he slid around the front of the truck, one hand on the hood to keep upright.

            “Elm Creek, I think,” Hank said. “It’s the closest. We’ll start there and then work our way out to the shore.”

            The pair had been mismatched friends since grade school: Cal, a beefy, round, rash, and carefree redhead; Hank, a lanky athlete, dependable, studious, and cautious. In the fall, they would go their separate ways, Hank to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan and Cal to Flint and a job on General Motor’s assembly line where his father, older brother and uncle worked.

            Cal stepped up into the cab and settled onto the bench seat, tugged on his cap, and rubbed his hands together. His breath hung in the air like a small rain cloud, and he glanced at Hank. “I don’t get this obsession of yours with money all of a sudden. You’ve got two scholarships in the bag, a summer job lined up at the lumberyard, and you’ll rake in a small fortune from your relatives at graduation.”

            Hank worked the gearshift on the steering column and put it reverse, slowly letting out the clutch to keep the wheels from spinning on the snow. “Yeah,” he said, “but that’s a way off. Doesn’t help me now.”

            “What are you saving up for, a brain transplant?”

            “Howja guess?”         

            Cal shrugged. “Hell, everybody knows you got shit for brains.”

            Hank grinned and shifted the truck into first gear and headed out of town in the gloom, the pickup’s rear end fishtailing on the snow-packed street.

~

​

            They drove six miles to Elm Creek in sleepy silence. When they reached the turnout, Hank wheeled off the road and parked. He stepped from the cab and grabbed a couple of large buckets from the bed of the pickup while Cal slung two sturdy clubs over his shoulder. They climbed across a rusty barbwire fence, the strands twanging like a plucked banjo string in the cold air and quietly trudged through shin-deep snow along the banks of the creek.

            “The first one is over there,” Hank said, pointing a gloved hand at a bend in the stream. “See the stake with the red top?” Cal squinted into the darkness and waited for his eyes to adjust then nodded and started walking toward the marker.

            “Careful the ice,” Hank said.

            It was Hank’s habit to set his trapline beneath the undercut of riverbanks, play out a little line, and drive a stake into the ground to secure the equipment.

            Mostly he harvested muskrat, and the occasional mink. When he got the carcasses home, he’d comb out the fur, skin them, wash the pelts and then pull the hides over wire frames to cure.

            Hank ran his trapline in the predawn hours before high school at least once a week. He knew he should check the traps more frequently, but with classes, basketball practice, and homework, he was too exhausted to make multiple runs. As a result, he lost a number of muskrats when they chewed off their snared legs to escape. He also suspected other trappers of poaching his line, though he could never catch anyone at it.

            Cal bent over and hauled up a trap from the icy creek. A plump muskrat dangled from the end by one leg. Cal swung his club and cracked the animal on the skull. The muskrat let out a puff of air and went limp.

            “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this shit,” Cal said. “Can’t we just wait until they drown and then fish them out?”

            “Tell you what,” Hank said. “How ’bout I clear the traps instead and you come in behind me and rebait them. You’ll get the hang of it after the first couple. It’ll go a lot faster that way.”

            “Fine by me,” Cal said.

            Hank and Cal worked quickly. They pulled, repaired, and reset a half-dozen traps in less than twenty minutes. They loaded their catch in the back of Hank’s pickup and moved on to the next location. By sunup, with a bed full of muskrat, they only had one spot left to check, White Rock River, a deep, broad stretch of water with a swift current at its mouth that spilled into Lake Huron.

            The wind had kicked up and blew steady streams of snow across the road on the short drive to White Rock. Cal turned on the radio but picked up only static and switched it off. “How come you don’t get a normal job like everyone else,” Cal said. “Bag groceries, pump gas, shovel walks for the old ladies around town. Pete said they’re looking for help at the ice rink.”

            Hank kept his eyes pinned on the road. “This ain’t about earning beer money.”

            Cal said, “What it’s about then?”

            Hank shook his head. “It’s private.”

            “Suit yourself but I ain’t settin’ another foot out of this truck unless I know. It’s fuckin’ miserable out there,” Cal said, and reached behind him and pushed the knob to lock his door.

            Hank leaned forward in concentration, his chin hovering above the steering wheel, and stared out the windshield. “It’s Bobbi,” he said finally. “She needs a procedure.”

            “Oh, shit,” Cal said. “I didn’t know.”

            “How could you?” Hank said. “Anyway, it was her decision. You know Bobbi.”

            “You don’t agree?”

            Hank paused and said, “We could make a go of it. Others have. I told her I’d support her, but she wouldn’t hear it. Said she’s been taking care of herself since her parents passed and she’d manage now.”

            Cal cranked down his window and spit. “Ask me, she’s doing you a favor. You’d be giving up college, scholarships, a future. Hell, half of the guys in our class would trade places with you in a heartbeat. Most of us dumb fucks will work the line the rest of our lives,” Cal said, “or get drafted while you’re going to Michigan football games on Saturdays and dating coeds.”

            Hank gave a disinterested shrug, downshifted where the road jogged, and gently steered the truck through a skid to avoid the ditch.

~

​

            White Rock River was wild and untamed and a much bigger stretch of water than Hank normally worked. Near the bank, where the water was shallow and sluggish, the river froze over, but a little further out, where the current was swift, it remained free flowing.

            Hank was kneeling on the ice pulling up a heavy trap hand-over-hand when he turned his head and called out to Cal. “I figure from what I’ve already banked and what we’ll harvest today I’ll have enough to cover most of it,” he said.

            When Hank turned back around, he was staring into the jaws of a snarling, full-grown adult mink. The animal was a ball of fury, writhing at the end of the chain. It caught Hank flush on the cheek with a claw that was as sharp as a fishhook, opening a deep gash.

            Hank screamed, sent the trap flying, fell backward and scooted away. The ice groaned under his weight as a crack raced along the surface.

            Cal grabbed his club and ran toward Hank but didn’t see the tree limb buried under the snow and tripped and fell face first.

            The mink was on Cal’s back in an instant, sinking its needle-like teeth through his hat and into his scalp. Cal yelped and reached for the trap’s chain and ripped the animal from his back. He scrambled to his feet. The mink thrashed wildly at the end of the leg hold and Cal hammered it with his club until the animal was lifeless and the snow stained crimson. He dropped to his knees, pulled off his gloves, and ran his hands through his hair, probing for wounds.

            “Motherfucker,” he exhaled.

            Cal lifted his head to look for Hank and spotted him, twenty-five yards down river, clinging to the root of a tree on the side of the bank.

            He plunged through the snow and reached Hank just as his grip slipped from the root. Cal seized Hank’s arm and held it tight, imploring his friend to kick his legs. Hank slowly crawled out of the freezing water, his clothes soddened and swollen.

            “We gotta move,” Cal said, struggling to hoist Hank to his feet. By the time they reached the truck, Hank’s lips had turned deep purple and his hands were balled up into frozen fists. Syrupy blood seeped from the wound on his cheek, and he didn’t have any feeling in his feet or toes.

            Cal stripped off Hank’s clothes and wrapped him in his coat and an old quilt he found behind the truck’s seat. He turned the pickup’s heater on high. Hank was right. The inside of the cab got as hot as a blast furnace.

            Cal settled behind the wheel, levered the gearshift, popped the clutch, and punched the accelerator. The truck jumped from the shoulder with a jerk. Cal overcorrected and the vehicle spun sideways, sending Hank bouncing off the passenger door. Cal righted the truck and raced down the road. Still, when they reached the small rural clinic, Hank was barely conscious, fighting hypothermia and in shock.

~

 

            Cal picked Bobbi up in the school parking lot Friday afternoon at the end of seventh period and drove into the night. Twenty minutes from their destination, they turned into a roadside motel and booked a room under false identities.

            “Bobbi, I’m sorry,” he said the next morning when they pulled into the clinic. The building was wedged between a packaged liquor store and a department of motor vehicles office in a dingy, low-slung strip shopping center.

            Bobbi closed her eyes and shook her head. “This was not how it was supposed to happen,” she said.

            “I don’t want to be here anymore than you do,” he said.

            “Stop it,” said Bobbi, and gave him a cold stare. She had braided her brown hair into a pigtail and had a striped stocking hat pulled low over her head. She looked childlike, sitting there in the passenger’s seat, swallowed up inside Hank’s oversized green and white varsity jacket, sports medals and medallions pinned to the letter sewn on the coat.

            “We were drunk,” he said.

            “I just wanted a ride home, Cal. That’s all.”

            “And that’s what I was doing,” Cal said. “If the car hadn’t slid into that snowbank….”

            Bobbi cut him off, saying, “we been over all this before,”

            “All I’m sayin’ is it’s not entirely my fault, and you’re not even sure it’s mine. Hank said --”

            “Shut the fuck up, Cal,” she said. “I’m not saddling Hank with a baby that might not be his. What if the baby is red headed, like you? What then?”

            Cal stammered.

            “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Bobbi said.

            Another car, this one a shiny new Lincoln, coasted to a stop in front of the clinic. A middle-aged man with a pork pie hat and a camel-hair overcoat got out and entered the building.

            “You want me to come in with you?” Cal asked and gently laid a hand on Bobbi’s arm.

            She swatted it away. “No. Wait in the car. Where’s the money?” she seethed.

            Cal reached into the back seat and lifted a duffle onto his lap. He withdrew an envelope from the bag and handed it to her. “It’s all there. Four hundred and fifty dollars.”

            Bobbi tucked the envelope into a pocket of the varsity jacket, grabbed the handle, and leaned against the door. “Shouldn’t take long,” she said, slid out and disappeared.

            Cal rested his head back on the seat and dozed. A rap on the driver’s window woke him. It was the old woman he had seen open the clinic. Cal slowly rolled down the window.

            “Yeah?”

            “Are you with the girl?” she asked.

            “Yes” he said, perplexed.

            “You’d better come with me,” the woman said, and rushed off.

            Cal trailed her into the clinic, down a dank hallway and into a small room. He found Bobbi lying on a table, her face pale, her breathing labored. Blood-soaked sheets littered the floor at the foot of the table. Hank’s coat hung from a hook on the wall.

            “What the fuck happened?” Cal shouted.

            “An ambulance is on the way,” the woman said.

            “Where’s the doctor,” Cal said.

            “Doctor? There ain’t no doctor. Just me.”

            “That’s not true. We saw the doctor get out of his car and come in a little while ago. His car’s parked out front.”

            “He ain’t a doctor. He’s a bookie. He rents the back office.”

            Bobbi grabbed Cal’s arm.

            “She told me I could go out dancing tonight,” Bobbi said in a hoarse whisper.

            “Dancing?” Cal said and jerked his head toward the old woman.

            She turned away and lit a cigarette. “That’s what I tell all the girls. It eases their mind.”

            “What sort of sick…” Cal started to say but Bobbi tugged on his sleeve again.

            “Cal.”

            Cal looked down at Bobbi. Tears stained her cheeks.

            “I’m scared.”

            “It’s going to be okay, Bobbi. An ambulance is on its way.”

            “Come closer,” she said.

            Cal bent low and she whispered into his ear.

            He straightened. “Bobbi, I don’t –"

            “Promise me you’ll tell him.”

            “Are you the father?” the old woman asked.

            “What?” Cal said, whipping around.

            “That’s the ambulance now,” the woman said, cocking her ear. “You’re gonna need to go with her. I can’t leave.”

            Cal turned toward Bobbi. Her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. He heard the front door of the clinic open and then footsteps running in the hallway.

            “Here,” the woman called out. “We’re back here.”

~

 

            It was snowing when Cal pulled up in front of Hank’s house and cut the engine. He could see Hank through the big picture window sitting in a wheelchair in the front room. Cal slowly climbed the stairs and let himself in, closing the door behind him. Hank’s feet were heavily bandaged, and his cheek bruised and swollen, and he had lost the feeling in the tips of his fingers to frostbite.

            Cal left his coat on and sat in a chair facing Hank. Hank’s dark hair was matted to his head, and his eyes were puffy and red rimmed.

            “Thanks for going,” Hank said. “I should have been there.”

            “Wouldn’t have mattered,” Cal said. “The old woman who runs that place is a fucking criminal.”

            Hank said, “What did the doctors say?”

            “Not a whole lot. Just that Bobbi lost a lot of blood and when her heart stopped beating for a while, she didn’t get oxygen to her brain.”

            Hank choked back sobs.

            Cal looked at his friend. “There’s a chance she might recover,” he said as hopefully as he could.

            “Did Bobbi say anything,” Hank asked. “I mean, before the coma?”

            Cal paused. He had been anticipating the question and wrestled with who to protect, a dying girl, his best friend or himself. Finally, he said, “Yeah, she did, but how ’bout we talk about that later. It might be a little hard just now with everything else you got goin’ on.”

            “What the fuck could be harder than this?”

            Cal took a deep breath, exhaled and then slid his chair over to Hank and looked him in the eye.

            “She said she loved you, Hank,” Cal said levelly, “but the baby wasn’t yours.”

            “What? Fuck you, Cal,” Hank spit.

            “I’m just the messenger, Hank.”

            “You’re a fuckin’ liar, is what you are.”

            “Believe whatever you want. I’m telling you what Bobbi said.”

            “Whose was it,” Hank demanded.

            Cal shrugged, shook his head, and stared down at the floor.

            “I don’t know shit, Hank,” he said and stepped outside into a swirling snow that had turned the day into a gray, featureless landscape.