Dead Lock Read Online Free Page A
Author: B. David Warner
articles on the gas ration stamp counterfeiters and the punk holding the gun to my head in the doorway of my home, and ended with Wells Mayburn’s polite request to get the hell out of town.
“So you see, G. P.,” I concluded, “I don’t have much choice.”
This time the pause stretched so long I thought the line had gone dead. A deep sigh from G.P. finally broke the silence. “Oh, all right. Come ahead. I’ll find something for you.”
As I hung the phone back on the hook and walked to my car I saw the ferry approaching the pier. The wind blew stronger now and the clouds had turned black. But they weren’t the only darkness on the horizon. All the way across the strait I couldn’t help thinking that a lack of space wasn’t the real reason my uncle didn’t want me in Sault Sainte Marie.
9
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan lies at the source of the St. Marys River, where waters from Lake Superior flow through Whitefish Bay and then into the River on their journey to the lower Great Lakes. Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the American Soo’s sister city, is just across the water. People traveling from one town to the other use a car ferry to negotiate the river.
There, between the two towns, the water level of the St. Marys drops 21 feet, creating a once insurmountable barrier for shipping. The first lock, built in the middle of the nineteenth century changed all that.
Hours after driving off the ferry, I crested a hill on Highway 2 and started down into the St. Marys River Basin and Sault Ste. Marie. Founded by French missionaries in 1668, the “Soo” is Michigan’s oldest city, and the country’s third oldest town west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The sun had poked out again and the scene below reminded me of Detroit’s annual J. L. Hudson Thanksgiving Day Parade. There were a myriad of giant gray balloons floating a thousand feet or so above the town. The closer I got, the larger the balloons became. Like those in the Detroit department store’s holiday parade, they were some thirty feet long; but instead of bright fairy tale figures, they appeared drab in color and oval in form, like dirigibles.
We drove into town, car windows down, Mick with his head stuck out in the wind, taking in the sights.
On a day when the stifling heat forces you to drive with the windows down, it’s hard to imagine these streets bordered on either side by snow drifts ten feet high. But U.P. weather is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Each November Mr. Hyde comes riding in over Whitefish Bay on dark, black-bottomed clouds that drop flakes of snow the size of quarters. The quarters pile up on streets and sidewalks and make travel by foot or automobile not only difficult, but treacherous. There’s so much snow that there is no place to put it and merchants pay men with carts to haul it away and dump piles of white slush beyond the city limits.
But today it was difficult to fathom anyone making a living hauling snow.
I drove down Ashmun Street and through Sault Ste. Marie, barely noticing the shops, restaurants and taverns. My focus remained on the balloons ahead. I had to lean forward and look straight up to see them at the very top of my windshield.
As her car slid through town, Kate Brennan couldn’t have noticed Claus Krueger as she passed where he stood on the sidewalk outside Cowan’s Department Store. He, too, found the giant balloons interesting, but for a far different reason.
Born in Germany, Claus Krueger had admired the United States even as a young boy. Shortly after he began to talk in his native tongue, his father had coached him in speaking Americanized English. The family planned to move to America and his father wanted him to fit in immediately. But his father’s death when Claus was twelve changed those plans. That was 1924, and like many Germans, young Claus was drawn to the charismatic personality of the man known as Adolph Hitler. Hitler had been sentenced to five years in the Landsberg
“So you see, G. P.,” I concluded, “I don’t have much choice.”
This time the pause stretched so long I thought the line had gone dead. A deep sigh from G.P. finally broke the silence. “Oh, all right. Come ahead. I’ll find something for you.”
As I hung the phone back on the hook and walked to my car I saw the ferry approaching the pier. The wind blew stronger now and the clouds had turned black. But they weren’t the only darkness on the horizon. All the way across the strait I couldn’t help thinking that a lack of space wasn’t the real reason my uncle didn’t want me in Sault Sainte Marie.
9
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan lies at the source of the St. Marys River, where waters from Lake Superior flow through Whitefish Bay and then into the River on their journey to the lower Great Lakes. Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the American Soo’s sister city, is just across the water. People traveling from one town to the other use a car ferry to negotiate the river.
There, between the two towns, the water level of the St. Marys drops 21 feet, creating a once insurmountable barrier for shipping. The first lock, built in the middle of the nineteenth century changed all that.
Hours after driving off the ferry, I crested a hill on Highway 2 and started down into the St. Marys River Basin and Sault Ste. Marie. Founded by French missionaries in 1668, the “Soo” is Michigan’s oldest city, and the country’s third oldest town west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The sun had poked out again and the scene below reminded me of Detroit’s annual J. L. Hudson Thanksgiving Day Parade. There were a myriad of giant gray balloons floating a thousand feet or so above the town. The closer I got, the larger the balloons became. Like those in the Detroit department store’s holiday parade, they were some thirty feet long; but instead of bright fairy tale figures, they appeared drab in color and oval in form, like dirigibles.
We drove into town, car windows down, Mick with his head stuck out in the wind, taking in the sights.
On a day when the stifling heat forces you to drive with the windows down, it’s hard to imagine these streets bordered on either side by snow drifts ten feet high. But U.P. weather is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Each November Mr. Hyde comes riding in over Whitefish Bay on dark, black-bottomed clouds that drop flakes of snow the size of quarters. The quarters pile up on streets and sidewalks and make travel by foot or automobile not only difficult, but treacherous. There’s so much snow that there is no place to put it and merchants pay men with carts to haul it away and dump piles of white slush beyond the city limits.
But today it was difficult to fathom anyone making a living hauling snow.
I drove down Ashmun Street and through Sault Ste. Marie, barely noticing the shops, restaurants and taverns. My focus remained on the balloons ahead. I had to lean forward and look straight up to see them at the very top of my windshield.
As her car slid through town, Kate Brennan couldn’t have noticed Claus Krueger as she passed where he stood on the sidewalk outside Cowan’s Department Store. He, too, found the giant balloons interesting, but for a far different reason.
Born in Germany, Claus Krueger had admired the United States even as a young boy. Shortly after he began to talk in his native tongue, his father had coached him in speaking Americanized English. The family planned to move to America and his father wanted him to fit in immediately. But his father’s death when Claus was twelve changed those plans. That was 1924, and like many Germans, young Claus was drawn to the charismatic personality of the man known as Adolph Hitler. Hitler had been sentenced to five years in the Landsberg
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