Up North! Into the vastness, the wilderness, the unknown. By the time Warlock reached the Straits of Mackinac, and the bridge that separates the Upper Peninsula from lower Michigan, his adrenals were pumping fire and his heart soared. Perhaps his whole life had been a preparation for this summer when life, which had so apparently abandoned him, now lifted him up, took him to herself, renewed and ready for action. He felt himself totally salvaged by the baptism of his dream the month before. He had grasped the future like a chalice, pursued it as a knight setting off for Jerusalem through the dank forests of Europe, and down through Turkey to the burning sands of the Middle East, where he no doubt swapped his cumbersome horse for a camel. The immense Mackinac Bridge itself, which ordinarily made him slouch down in the seat with vertigo, now gleamed like a path over some sort of holy Rubicon. He did not know that the bridge of dreams is the bridge downward, and that in entering this terrain of sleep he had ruffled the ghastly feathers of the strange gods.

At the tollbooth on the far side of the bridge Hudley lunged and snapped at the toll taker when he handed back the change. When Warlock leaned far over to slug the dog in the back seat his .38 dropped out of the shoulder holster. Luckily the toll taker hadn’t noticed. He had a sport license for the pistol, rather than a concealed weapons permit, and Michigan authorities were harsh on such details. But it had been pleasant in the morning strapping the pistol on over a lightweight wool shirt and looking at himself in the mirror with his legs slightly splayed in the manner of Marines. Chinos, boots, an Abercrombie & Fitch cotton safari jacket completed the costume. There had been a brief tingle of the ludicrous driving down through Leelanau County thusly armed. The whole area was virtually free of any crimes of violence and had always been so. “A murder every ten years,” was a local quip.