It wasn’t entirely unexpected when the first couple old folks bought it. It happens. Ice breaks hips, and broken hips can be the proverbial camel-crushing straw. There was also the usual increase in cardiac arrests for the sixty and over crowd, likely brought on by attempts to shovel three and a half cubic yards of icy slush out of their driveways. That’s what they get for not buying a snow blower.
      So the first twelve or so that kicked off were no real surprise; it was just a bad year. That’s what we all said: "a bad year." As if we were talking sports. That was a bad year for the Detroit Lions too, but at least they all survived. So twelve geezers died in the month of November, not a great advertisement for Beaver Island as a safe place to retire, but not totally crazy. When you live on an island thirty-two miles from the mainland, you come to accept certain hardships. The medical center has limited facilities, and though Beaver Island is nominally part of Charlevoix County, the ambulance from Charlevoix Hospital is little more than a roomy taxi that picks Islanders up at the airport and takes them to the emergency room. So losing a dozen retirees in one month was tough, but not unheard of. When the flu struck and more old folks and even a few kids started dying, however, it was a shocker.
      Sure they were mostly invalids and sickly kids to begin with, but still, in a community of three hundred and forty-eight, seventeen deaths due to flu is a lot. The planes were still flying at that point, so they were running constantly, hauling bodies and mourners across the miles of milky, congealing ice to the mainland for funerals.
      They still had the school open when the Really Big Snow came. In fact, it was during a high school basketball father-son scrimmage that the gym roof collapsed under the snow load. The whole basketball team and most of their dads were wiped out, except Riley Himebauch, an eleventh grade bench-warmer who was in the john with the runs when he heard the screams. A handful of fans bit it there too, along with three cheerleaders – three-quarters of the rag-tag squad. It was the biggest disaster in Beaver Island history, that is, until the Emerald Isle took eighty-one passengers down in an early-season ice push, but that came two months later.
      Lots of us directly attributed the pile-up at Four Corners to the school tragedy. The funeral procession for Jake Boyle and his dad Chuck was driving a little too fast along King’s Highway on its way to the Holy Cross cemetery. As it was the twelfth such procession in three days, and the weather had not improved much since the Really Big Snow, the solemnity of the occasion was understandably hurried. Roger Danning, who was coming the other way down the road in his three-ton Charlevoix County Road Commission plow truck, was also speeding. Later some Islanders hypothesized that Roger had been drowning his sorrows in the fifth of Jameson’s he had clutched between his legs when the Deputy hauled him, miraculously unharmed, from his flaming rig. Others thought that he might have been driven mad with grief over his daughter’s death (she was a cheerleader) and blinded by tears as he came over the hill toward the hurrying line of junkers with their red flags flapping.
      Roger caught the procession head-on with his blade down. At a combined speed of one hundred and thirty miles an hour (estimated by the deputy, shaking his head at the smoking wrecks), the plow truck went through the line of cars like it was a rusty snow drift, starting with the hearse. The cars were lifted, crumpled, and rolled aside into the ditch. The truck destroyed sixteen vehicles before colliding with the county’s other big-rig plow truck, driven by Dave Resnick, which had been scraping the road behind the procession. Though by the time they hit, Danning’s truck had slowed to a modest forty miles an hour and Resnick’s was skidding with the breaks locked, their combined speed was still nearly seventy miles an hour, and they met with a screaming whump, their giant plows welding together on impact.
      The pile-up sent forty-one Islanders to the cemetery that they were heading for anyway, except they all had to be stored until spring due to the storm. It also effectively ended county snow-plowing for the season. Roger was held at the Deputy’s office/home until it exploded from a malfunctioning burner on the gas range. Dave was taken to the medical center, treated and sent home, where he promptly died from a deadly combination of influenza and pneumonia.
      Christmas was an understandably subdued event that year. Father Gardener, the mainland priest, couldn’t make it over due to the storm, so the deacon had to lead the Christmas-eve service at Holy Cross. Inexperienced with the temperamental incense burner, he set his vestments on fire, and ran screaming down the isle before the altar boys or anyone else could help him. In three separate incidents, Christmas trees caught fire, each taking a load of presents, a house, and a family with it. Two people froze to death after falling from horses while trying to reach town over the unplowed roads. The last shipment of food from the mainland finished off a full forty-three folks, with E. coli in the chicken, and a bizarre and deadly mould in the Wonder Bread.
      Nineteen-ninety-nine dawned with a brutal ice storm that trapped everyone indoors. Some who attempted travel were crushed by falling trees. The power went down, of course, and thirty-eight people froze in their beds before they could be reached. The bar was up and running as soon as the power came back on and half of the remaining Islanders were there the night of the brawl. Tensions were already high, and when Ritchie Styne accused Billy Harn, the only EMT still alive, of drinking when he should have been saving people, the smoky air in The Shamrock seemed to spark. Food and silverware went everywhere when Harn, lunging for Styne, knocked over his table. They went down together and somehow, Styne managed to stab Harn in the lung with a fork. There was a moment of silence before everyone got into it. By the end, only twenty-eight were still standing. Since the deputy, the P.A., and the nurse practitioner had already died, there was no one to help the injured, or to stop the victors from looting the bar and burning it to the ground. After that, the rest of January was pretty quiet, except for a few snowmobile accidents and a couple ice fishermen who were sucked down by a sudden air pressure change when the Shuttle Explorer broke the sound barrier two miles above the Island.

       When February rolled around, and the storm continued, the hundred or so residents still alive started hoarding food. Rather than fight the mob, Tim Stevenson, the Swede who owned the grocery store, simply stopped locking up, or even going to work at all. People came and went, taking what they wanted or needed. There were three alcohol-poisoning deaths that week, and eight people wandered into the snow drunk and froze.
      While the storm raged on, a shift in the wind and a sudden clearing of ice beyond the harbour got people’s hopes up. Russell Green, a retired boat company captain, fired up the Emerald Isle, the larger of the two car-ferries, and people piled on for an escape attempt. The boat pounded its way clear of the harbour ice, jarring those aboard, but steaming on regardless. Just beyond the lighthouse, the passengers were horrified to see the big-water ice flow sliding toward them in a jagged white wall. Running the gauntlet, Captain Green tried to make a break for the open water to the east, but even with both three-hundred horsepower Cummins diesels at full throttle, the green and white boat got pinched between the massive flow from the north, and the solidified wall of an ice shove to the south. The pressure popped the ferry up onto the ice like a tiddly-wink, and she fell over on her starboard side. Some folks jumped clear before the flow broke up and the cold water swallowed the boat. Those who had escaped were found later that spring, frozen in place on a little island of ice like a wax-museum diorama of Shackleton and Scott in the arctic.
      The eight of us remaining on the Island saw the ferry go down through Tim’s telescope. We had all balked at the idea of taking the boat in February, but decided unanimously to watch from Whiskey Point until the ferry was out of sight. After it went down, we wandered through the snow back to the store. Remembering Captain Cook’s discovery about preventing rickets, I went straight to the canned fruit isle, mostly empty now, and grabbed the last couple of cans of mandarin oranges. I walked along the silent emptiness of Main Street, browsing for a new residence. Finally choosing Dan Gillespie’s harbour-view home, I moved in, and was pleased as hell to find his liquor closet intact.
      When I went out looking for firewood for the night, I found Gail Moore bleeding in the snow. She had a hatchet stuck in her back, and she didn’t seem to be breathing, so I took the hatchet and continued on. Ron Gallagher’s woodpile was closest, so I helped myself to several armloads of split birch. Back inside, I got the fire going, and settled into my new home.
      I sat by the fireplace, sipping a homemade cappuccino, and listening to "Spring," from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played by Itzhak Perlman and the New York Philharmonic. The sun set behind the trees, and I locked the doors.
      A knock woke me the next morning, just after the sun cleared the trees behind the lighthouse. I went down to the door in my boxers and saw that it was Kimberly Harlan, alone. She was, or had been, the manager of Dalwhinnie’s Deli. I let her in. She said that she knew who killed Gail. I said Cool, who? She said it was Mr. Granskog, the school janitor, getting revenge on ex-students for years of careless disregard for school property. I said, Bummer, huh?
      We had Irish coffee with Bailey’s, then some sex, and then a bath in the big hot tub upstairs. I wanted to listen to the news, but she went off about how the radio would destroy the pristine isolation of winter. I said Okay. She said Isn’t it quiet. I said Yeah, and turned on the news. She shook her head and climbed out of the tub, asking if I wanted more coffee. Luckily I had found the gun cabinet in the basement, and had the .38 in my robe, so that when she came back upstairs and attacked me with the cleaver, I got her in the forehead. I had to drag her outside before she messed up the floor too badly. Wearing only my slippers and robe, with the heavy revolver back in my right pocket, I hauled her across the yard to the edge of the trees behind the house, hoping that the coyotes would take care of her before it warmed up too much.
      I decided to try some isolation of my own after that. Setting up a fortress in my new home, I placed loaded rifles and pistols all over the house and only went outside for firewood after dark. The news barely held my attention. Winter still ravaged the Midwest, more severe than was normal. An expert talked about La Nina and the slow sloshing of cold water in the Southern Pacific basin. No one seemed to be wondering about the Island or any of its deceased.
      I heard the gunfight before I could see anyone. Then they came running down the main street, between me and the frozen harbour. I slid the window open and, through the scope of a deer rifle, I watched old Mr. Granskog running after Felicity Jones, an eccentric artsy type. She fired a revolver over her shoulder, but he ran on, undeterred. Someone else mowed them both down before they reached the corner.
      Following the muzzle flash to the upstairs window of the McDonough house down the street, I fired twice through the screen. Someone slumped out of the broken window. That left three of us, if my tally was correct. It was down to Lisle Carr, Riley Himebauch and me.
      They came to the door unarmed later that day, as I was finishing my lunch of a turkey club with bacon and sprouts, and watching Independence Day in Dolby surround sound on the huge entertainment system. They left their coats outside, and I invited them in, patted them down, and offered them each a Bell’s Oberon Pale Ale from the fridge.
      We sat silent on the cream-colored sectional, the movie frozen mid-explosion, and I imagined one of those population signs with the numbers crossed off and corrected a hundred times from 348 to 3. We sipped our beers, and I picked at a piece of bacon stuck between my right bicuspid and molar.
      So how do we keep things civil now? Riley asked.
      Steve’s got the guns, let’s make him the sheriff, said Lisle, All in favour, say aye.
      So I was sheriff. I broke out some brie and water crackers and fetched another round of beers. We sat there and came up with some basic rules for our special situation: no drinking alone, no gambling, no fraternization. Our priority was to minimize situations where violence might erupt. Then we went out to gather some more food.
      Well, when spring finally rolled around, it was only Lisle and I. Riley had wasted away in less than a month. We weren’t sure what got him, but I suspected it was severe heartbreak. The fraternization rule hadn’t lasted, and in less than a week after my election as sheriff, Lisle had moved in with me. Though he never said anything, I think Riley was more than a little hurt not to be picked. What did he expect? Sure I was kind of dorky, but I had been away to college. Why would Lisle pick the only high-schooler left on the Island over a college guy? Anyway, Riley died alone, and Lisle and I made the best of our new life together. Soon she had started to show, and we supposed that we were doing our duty.
      One morning, after noticing that the crocuses were finally poking through the melting snow, I hurried inside to tell Lisle the news. I found her rocking naked in the empty bathtub, cradling her stomach. I took her into my arms. She was cold, so I pulled a towel from the rack to wrap around her. She continued the rocking motion as I carried her downstairs. We sat by the fireplace, and I waited.
      It’s over, she finally said.
      What is, I asked, trying to seem attentive, though something distracted me. A droning engine cut through my concentration like a mosquito in the dark. The first plane was coming.
      Everything is, she said, it’s all over.
      Spring is here, I said.
      Do you hear the plane, I said, pointing absurdly up the stairs as if the plane were up there somewhere.
      She said nothing, rocking slightly.
      As the sheriff, I should meet them, I said.
      She rocked.
      So . . . I’ll just go, I said, and meet them. Okay?
      Still she didn’t speak, but only sat there rocking and sobbing.
      I didn’t meet the plane. With an odd prescience, I understood that it could never land. It only buzzed by, like an early season mosquito, a carrier of whatever West Nile-malariaral-prion-from-the-foot-and-mouth-of-the-bovine tubercular-bird-flue-youth-in-Asia-we’re-all-waiting-for. The plane circled the harbour twice, and then continued on west toward Wisconsin, the sonorous drone fading, leaving to us the clean-swept blue of sky and lake. Stepping out onto the porch and into the fragrant sunlight, I listened to the engine’s slow decrescendo into silence, wondering what I should make for lunch.