Wind In The Willows

WIND IN THE WILLOWS

Let me tell you about Willow City. It’s neither. 

Oh, there were more trees once. Along with ten churches, eight bars and the VFW. Now scarred and scraped bare after the mines closed, there’s little left but bleak black coal hills and ghosts of gone businesses. Except for the “Outsider Inn” out on the lake— our only place left to get a beer, get lucky, and lately, get shot at.

Or so the conspiracy goes if you listened to Lester LaClair that night he slid in, motor still running, snowsuit half-zipped, slurring “somebody just fired both barrels at my Arctic Cat! While I was still on it!” Most didn’t believe him. Les was a less-than-honest man and usually shitfaced. Plus, the ice was too thin out there to be riding a snowmobile anyway, people said. “What was he doing by his truck in the middle of a half-froze lake?” Some swore he was trying to cheat, chopping chunks around his old Chevy so it’d fall in sooner. Others were sure he was loading it with bricks. No one bought his dodging bullets story.

Yet everyone still thanked him for donating such a fine vehicle to this year’s Thaw: A 1962 Suburban, original leather seats! Almost a shame. Yet there it sat, a half-mile out on the frozen Willow, waiting its turn for sacrificial fame. Every winter one lucky local gets to donate their rusty wreck, or better yet, a fancier one. Folks then bet five bucks apiece when it’ll sink, picking the exact date and time it goes under. Winner takes half the pot, sometimes in the thousands. Whoever gave up their clunker keeps the rest. This was Lester’s year, so he’d been bragging since January: “Les is gonna be more!” Some guys wished he was nevermore.

 I tend bar there about the same time our regulars stumble in for Happy Hour. (That would be from noon til last call on most days.) But it’s not always happy with whiners like Les going on (and on) how “Willow City is weeping. The lake has secrets.” We ignore his bullshit. Neighbors brew rumors about neighbors over brews. The geezers gossip telling fish tales of dreams that got away. Then talk always comes around to who’s buying next round; last one to holler “Bottoms Up” has to ante up.

That might have something to do with the rooms upstairs too. Russ, who runs the place, rents out a few for those who’ve had a few too many. But they’re really for “bottoms up visits” available by the hour, no questions asked. Wink wink. Two rooms go to our flophouse dropouts, Eddie and Hank, forking over their monthly government checks for beds and a bar tab. The rest are for those poor bastards from NYC whose peoples got themselves locked up at Dannemora. A half-hour from here but miles from hope, there’s no tougher prison or more remote hell than “Little Siberia” — way the hell up here in upstate New York. (We’re almost Canadian, eh?) But we got no trains from Manhattan, no buses nearby, no hotels or motels, no easy way to visit their worth-nothing man. Most got to rent a car, drive 8 hours then turn around same day. Or stay with us. 

The thing is, no one like that ever comes here willingly. We’re a last resort. If you can call this a resort. It’s covered in antlers. And deer heads. And mounted trout. And just about every dead thing most city folk have never seen, including a real bear rug in every room. Russ likes to hunt and fish, that’s the whole idea why we’re called the “Outside Inn.” The fact that we let “outsiders” into the place doesn’t always sit well though.  Broken families, single moms, guys who did time coming to see their buddies behind bars. We get all kinds. But they’re not our kind.

A couple of times, some of them left in the middle of the night, strangely leaving their rental cars behind. Russ figured we must have made them feel so unwelcome, “they took the Harlem Shuffle back home.” No one from Hertz ever claimed those cars, so guess what, Russ used them for the Thaw a few years in a row. Everyone bought extra tickets to see almost-new Toyotas take a kamikaze nose-dive. Another time, we sunk a Subaru left behind by “two queens from Queens.” Folks joked those boys might have gone down with it, “probably while going down on each other.” Some whispered it wasn’t a joke. Then we had a State Trooper snooping around, wanting to know more about an abandoned black Camry up to its axles in slush out there. Anyone seen the owner? Ever happen before? We all played dumb. (That’s not too hard for us.)

What’s not so easy is figuring out who set a steel-clawed bear trap staked to Lester’s truck. We’d all been suspicious he was trying to stack the deck, sneaking out at night, throwing cinderblocks in the trunk. Anything to make his rig heavier. And he’d already placed his bets for the entire month of March, buying up just about every daylight hour, giving him the edge in case of an early Thaw. Foolish bets, some warned, spring doesn’t really get here til May. But if that two-ton hunk of junk out there develops a “weight problem” over winter, clocking in at 3 tons before April 1^st on inch-thick ice? Who’s the fool now?

So, someone must have booby-trapped his truck, maybe trying to keep Les from cheating more than he already tried.  Except they caught a black bear instead. You could see it suffering, blood on the snow, limping on hind legs, falling again and again. A squall was coming, wind whipping bitterly, willows lashing rock, whiteouts blinding the whole lake. We squinted from the bar window, a few wives crying, Eddie from upstairs shouting “someone put that beast out of its misery.” Then, with all its thrashing and wailing, cold steel digging deep into flesh, desperately struggling — the bear tore off its own bloody foot. Right before Lester’s truck shifted, an icy puddle rising around it. “Damn thing’s gonna drown first,” I thought. 

That’s when a Remington 47 rang out like an assassin’s shot, its steel-cased, hollow-point bullet shattering the bear’s head. Brain matter splattered truck doors. It was almost as if the poor thing was trying to get in, taking cover. Stunned, and maybe a little relieved, we all sat motionless. Russ showed no emotion. Just shouldered his rifle and came inside. 

Two days later, Lester’s beloved Chevy drove our long-standing tradition home, swallowed whole by Willow Lake, the bear’s corpse still reaching for a door. Lester disappeared from sight too, never claiming his prize money yet. To be “fair for Mr. LaClair,” we kept all proceeds in a special account until he returns. 

Since then, Willow City still isn’t. Nothing’s growing back much, you can’t see our forest for the lack of trees. Our only funeral parlor closed up; no one’s dying to be here. Even the Outside Inn got robbed. One of those bear rugs went missing, but Russ didn’t seem to mind. We still remember how proud he was after bagging that bear, his biggest ever.

` “You could fit a full-grown man inside that hide,” he bragged.