A Morning Spent in Escanaba

Will Donnelson took a swig of Bud Lite and turned up the radio. Creedence Clearwater Revival exploded from the car’s speakers. He imagined his mother, pressing her hands to her ears and crying “It’s so loud!” before insisting he switch over to NPR or one of those stations that play the same three bubblegum pop songs over and over again. For the first time in his life, he got to listen to the songs he wanted to listen to. The taste of freedom was almost as good as that of the beer, one of many beverages filched from the mini-fridge in the garage before he drove off into the night. The fact he was five years off from twenty-one made its flavor all the more sweet and seductive.

Emptying the can, crushing it, and tossing it in the backseat, Will sang along to the final chorus of “Fortunate Son” before launching into the opening lyrics of the Metallica song now blaring from every corner of the vehicle. He only stopped singing when a knock came at the passenger seat window, accompanied by a voice.

“‘Scuse me, sir?”

His face flushing pink with embarrassment, Will hastily muted the radio and rolled down the window. A short man in a black apron and cap stood there, smiling as he poked his head into the vehicle.

“Yes?” Will said. “Something wrong?”

“Uh, yessir, you gotta move your car.”

His accent was so thick that Will thought he was speaking a different language for a moment. He hadn’t realized he was so deep into Yooper country already.

A sharply frigid breeze--the hellish offspring of the winter weather and the lakeside climate--drifted into the vehicle from the open window, sending a shiver up Will’s spine. Behind the man was the place of presumed employment, a Pizza Hut, with a half dozen squawking seagulls perched on its huge, red roof. Two of the birds had broken off from the pack and were locked in mortal combat over a half-eaten breadstick lying abandoned on the pavement, their epic battle unfolding but a few feet from Will’s car.

“This is an employee parkin’ spot and we’re ‘bouta open soon, so you gotta move your car, sir.”

Will frowned. He thought he’d have this place to himself for a couple hours longer. Who wanted pizza at nine in the morning? He had come off the highway, spotted the empty parking lot, and thought it was a good, solitary location to enjoy the first beer of his short life as a way of celebrating this first day of his newly-attained freedom. He supposed he’d just have to go find some country road on the edge of town if he truly wanted to drink without disruption.

“Alright, I’ll be going.” Will said, grabbing his key from the dashboard and sliding it into the ignition, causing the pearl-colored Chevy Equinox to roar to life.

“Thanks, sir. Have a nice day.”

“Yeah, you too. Hey, actually, I’ve got a question before you go.”

“Yessir?”

“What town am I in?”

“Oh, uh, Escanaba.

“Escanaba, hm?” Will said, thinking the name sounded familiar. “Well, thanks.”

“Welcome! Take care, sir!”

Will had just pulled out of the Pizza Hut parking lot when the phone in his pocket began to buzz and vibrate. He didn’t need to check to see who was trying to call him. He knew it was his mom. She had woken up, found the note he left on the kitchen table, and rushed to call him before she even got done reading the thing. Soon enough, she’d be phoning the local police station and posting photos of him on Facebook, offering thousands of dollars to whoever could find him, like he was some lost kitten. She would do all that and more, but it wouldn’t work. He’d be in Wisconsin by the afternoon and planned to stay the night at whatever cheap motel he could find in South Dakota. After that, he’d pick some Western state to settle down in. Maybe Montana, maybe Utah, he might even head all the way to Cali. He might have to spend the first few nights on the streets, but he’d find work, probably lie about his age to get a job at some factory in some small town somewhere. It might be meager living for a while, but he didn’t mind. He’d gladly trade a roof over his head and a square meal for freedom any day.

As the car moved to the outskirts of Escanaba, the paved streets and the buildings giving way to a dirt path lined with snow-covered pines, Will’s phone did not stop ringing. It sat there in his pocket, its constant vibration tingling his left leg, its incessant buzzing pushing Will to the precipice of a headache. After her twelfth attempt to contact him, the phone grew silent and still for several, precious seconds, but this flicker of hope was quickly extinguished when, but half a minute later, she again tried to call him.

“Goddammit!” Will said as he removed the phone from his pocket, declined the call, and navigated to his contacts list to block her.

He didn’t notice the herd of deers that had jumped out in front of his car until he struck one of them.

When Will woke up, his face was pressed up against something big, white, and fluffy. An airbag, he soon realized. He lifted his head up, but quickly wished he hadn’t.

The first sensation that struck him was the pain. His face stung with what seemed like a thousand tiny cuts. He did not realize it at the time, but tiny shards of glass were lodged in his face. The first thing he saw after waking up was the blood on the airbag. It was a chilling sight, but it was nothing compared to the bloodstain on the car’s hood and the carcass on the ground next to the vehicle.

“Oh my God, oh my God!” Will said. It was all he could manage to say, waking up to the sight of the white-spotted body of a doe ripped open, its rib cage exposed, bodily fluids still oozing and gushing out of the corpse. 

But the worst sight was the still surviving deers. Three fawns clustered at the fallen doe’s side, sniffing at her head and ears, probing for any sign of life.

They fled into the forest when a black Dodge Journey suddenly appeared and parked behind the Equinox.

Will did not notice the Dodge or the man who got out of it and rushed over to him. He had already passed out again.

Will awoke to the smell of coffee and Campbell’s soup.

He thought, for a brief moment, that he was at his grandmother’s house. The paisley-patterned quilted throw blanket he found himself ensconced in looked remarkably like something from her home. And the oatmeal-colored sectional he found himself lying upon would certainly not have been out of place in her living room. What told him this was a stranger’s house were the photos on the wall, all of people he didn’t know. And there were the great green eyes of a Persian cat, stalking him from atop a recliner on the other end of the room, despite his grandmother being dangerously allergic to felines of all varieties.

Dim memories of the accident came to Will just as the man entered the room, carrying a red ceramic bowl with a white plastic spoon sticking out of it in one hand and a tall glass of cool, bubbly ginger ale in the other

“You're awake!” He said. “Oh, thank the Lord!”

“Where am I?” Will said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Chuck. I live ‘round here. You're at my house.”

Chuck set the warm bowl on Will’s lap and placed the glass of ginger ale in his hand. He was a giant man. His expansive, curly red beard stood in stark contrast to the thinning, graying hair upon his head. The rolled-up sleeves of a red and green apple-patterned sweater revealed great big biceps, decorated with a pair of jet black tattooed eagles.

“Eat up! You need food.”

“Oh, um, thanks.” Will said, loading the small plastic spoon up with as many noodles and as much broth as it could carry before shoveling it all in his mouth. The taste was slightly tinny to be sure, but that did not distract from the sudden sensation of warmth and comfort that spread up and down Will’s entire body.

“You like it?” Chuck said, moving over to the recliner to pet his Persian cat, whose green gaze was still fixed upon Will.

“Yes.” Will said, quickly lifting another spoonful to his mouth. “Thank you so much!”

“You're welcome.” Chuck said, stroking the cat’s head. “Winnie and I are happy to help you out! I hope the band-aids are OK.”

“What?”

“I said, I hope the band-aids are OK. All I had were little band-aids and not, like, big, full-on bandages, so I hope it all feels OK.”

Will suddenly raised a hand to his face. And indeed, he found band-aids covering his cheeks, his chin, his forehead, and the bridge of his nose. How had he forgotten all about the cuts?

“It’s fine.” Will said after a moment of stunned silence. And it really was fine. He wasn’t bleeding out anymore. His face hurt, sure, but not as much as it had been during his brief flicker of consciousness while still inside the vehicle. “The band-aids are working. Thank you so much, sir.”

“Oh, don’t mention it! You just sit back and relax, OK? I’m gonna go back into the kitchen and get myself some coffee. I just made a pot. You want some?”

“No, that’s OK.”

“Alright.”

Chuck wasn’t gone long. He returned with a Wolverines-branded coffee mug, chipped in various places. When he sat down on the recliner, Winnie jumped into his lap.

There was a serene quiet for a minute, then the thought struck Will.

“The car.” He said, seized suddenly by profound fear. “Oh my God, the car! Where is it?”

“I think it’s probably with the police. They said they were gonna have it towed, I think.”

“Did you see how badly it was damaged?”

“The front window shattered and the hood got pretty banged up--a head-on collision with a deer’ll do that to a vehicle. But it wasn’t too bad overall. It could probably be fixed, I think.”

“Oh, thank God! My mom would’ve killed me if--”

Will’s voice trailed off. He suddenly remembered that he was on the run, that he had chosen the vagabond lifestyle, that he had been fed up with how stifling his life at home had felt and so packed his bags, stole the family car, and booked it out of town, planning a swift westward relocation. A few hours prior, all he could think of was how grateful he was to be free of his mother’s yoke. But now, all of it seemed so distant and irrelevant. Now, he realized--sitting here in this stranger’s living room, his face covered in band-aids as he ate chicken noodle soup and drank Canada Dry--that the only thing he wanted in the whole world was for his mother to walk through the front door, wrap her arms around him, and tell him everything would be OK.

He needed to call her, but his phone, Will quickly realized after digging through his pockets to find them empty, had been a casualty of the car accident.

“Do you have a phone I could use?” Will said to Chuck.

“Sure.” Chuck said, pulling out an old-fashioned flip phone and tossing it to Will. “Feel free to call whoever.”

Will quickly dialed his mother’s number. He then pressed the phone to his ear and, after three long, agonizing rings, she picked up.

“Hello?”

“Mom.” Will said, breaking into tears at the sound of his mother’s voice. “It’s me, Will.”