Arcadia MI, 1998: 5 years dead

As told by Sebastian Barrington, a new character in "The Re-education of Mr. Crane", to be published in Fall 2009:

I will try my best to describe the situation in Arcadia Michigan, the winter of 1998. I am going off of my own experiences and apologize for the way that I may present the scenario.

I find missing persons for a living.

Most are runaways and the mentally ill, forgetting that they belong to family's and lives back wherever they originally came from.

I was under that impression when I received a call from a Mr. James who was told that his son Jacob , (who had died in a barroom fight in 1993) had been recently spotted by a unnamed party. Apparently the witness had worked with Jacob James the summer of 1993 at the Big Apple Bar in Arcadia. No other information was provided to the concerned father, who offered a respectable sum to see if the reports were true.

After exhausting a full weekend in Grand Rapids and several hundred dollars in bribe money, I was no closer to locating the man, so I phoned the client and relayed that there were no leads that his son was still alive.

I was given instructions to wait for his callback, and after 3 hours of bad coffee and even worse conversation with 4PM Bar crowd people I received the call to continue the search. Mr. James didn't have any leads so I was forced to start at square one, Arcadia Michigan.

I found the town after a 3 hour car ride. I stopped to get chains put on my Jeep's tires and filled up the gas tank before the snow that was picking up outside got any worse.

If you've never been to Arcadia, save yourself a trip, its a desolate little shit of a town. In Summer it must have been boring, in winter it was fucking dead. A town so small that they didn't even have a blinking yellow light, let alone a good place to stop and eat on M-22.

I have to be honest, the town's people's homes looked old, and I mean that in the nicest way. Maybe I should say they looked worn, like hard labor and enough dreams crushed had wrinkled them down to their foundations.

I got the obligatory look over the shoulder gaze as I walked into the Bar. It was redneck, budweiser mirrored signs on the walls and two dirty pooltables. Everyone had snowmobile suits on, tied off at the waist with the sleeves. I sat at a table that still had whatever sticky pancake syrup residue from the last patron's meal all over the top.

The waitress took 15 minutes to come over and take my order, chewing gum and working my nerves the wrong way. I asked where the police station was and she laughed, then walked into the kitchen to answer a ringing phone. She never came back to my table. I left, pissed off and hungrier than before, trying to assess my bearings in this little ant fart town. There was a police station but it was boarded up and appeared to not be in use for quite sometime. The post office and firehouse were the only two lit buildings on Lake Street so I continued driving around. I did notice the loudspeakers on high top poles, must have been some old PA system.

I drove around the town, finding many of the houses abandoned for the season, streets lined by tall mounds of snow. I talked to firefighters at the townhall and asked if anyone had seen the client's son, none of them knew the son. I could see it wasn't going to get anywhere so I headed out of town, going north, up to Frankfort and the harbor. Apparently the son had been seen on the Betsie Bay docks the night before his murder and there had been some thought that he might have been witness to an explosion that destroyed a large chunk of the docks. All of this is rumor and unsubstantiated at the time of me writing this.

As I climbed the steep grade of M-22, I looked out my left window and saw Lake Michigan, with white jutting out from the shore at least 3 miles, not a single patch of calm surveyed. I continued onto Frankfort...25 miles an hour, watching the slippery grade and the snake like curves.

Frankfort was a bust too. No one recognized the son and not anyone looked at the picture longer than a split second. I got in my jeep and turned on the radio, sitting in the A&W parking lot, deciding what I needed to do. I tried to call the client but the cell phone reception sucked, the whole damn town is in a shoreside valley and I'd have an easier time finding a virgin in Manton than getting signal in Frankfort.

Then I heard it. A loud pop then a fizzling sound. I stepped out into the cold to find my rear tire had gone flat. I limped the jeep over to the shell station facing the A&W, filling up the air and watching it all come out all over again. I spent 1 hour in the cold and snow changing the tire and by the time I was back in the jeep I was ready to get a couple of shots in me and call it a night.

By the time I arrived at the Frankfort hotel I was chilled down to the bone, shivering as I signed the hotel ledger and gave my 100 dollars over to a high school aged brunette. I ran a hot bath and sat and steamed while I drank my 6 pack of busch. The wind was really whipping up outside and it lulled me to sleep.

I woke up hungry.

I showered and packed again, planning on heading back to Detroit later in the day when I was stopped by the hotel concierge.
"Sir unfortunately there's been some sort of weather event south of here so the State Troopers are closing off the roads until it gets sorted out."
What kind of event? I have to leave today, I said.
"We're not sure, but we'd be happy to give you a discount on tonights stay..."
I'm not staying here, I've already paid you for last night, have a good day. I marched out into the snow and tossed my black duffel in the back. I sat there until the heater kicked in and the windshield was clear enough to see out of. I drove, cautiously, back down M-22 and back toward Arcadia.

In the distance I could faintly see the red flashing light of a MST crusier's cherry and I slowed until I reached the impromptu checkpoint.
A shaven head state trooper put his head in my window and shouted, "You can't go through here, we've had an accident on the highway and the road is too dangerous."
I replied that that was fine and that I could wait on the side of the road until it was clear.
"That's not going to happen anytime soon, turn around and head back to Frankfort, there's other roads that you can take that will be much safer."
But I have business in Arcadia. His expression changed when I said that and it was clear that I wasn't going to be deterred.
"Fine. You asked for it, go ahead, but I never saw you." He stepped back and allowed me to pass, barely fitting between his cruiser and the only safe ground in the shoulder. I drove for a minute until I was surrounded by a mix of mist and smoke. The road disappeared and down the steep grade I went, into what seemed to be a bottomless void that eventually banked to the right and the ice on the road caused me to lose control. I spun into a snow bank, throwing white cloud into the air. I got out, my back a little sore and my pride definitely wounded. I wasn't going to be able to get the jeep out on my own. I began the walk into town, ignoring the burning smell in the air, telling myself it was someone in the area buring chord wood.

What I found in Arcadia, once I rounded the Corner of M-22 and Lake Street, I have spent 11 years of fear and therapy trying to forget...