I Cheerfully Refuse

Rainy repairs Flowers as much as he can and docks the boat in the town’s now-defunct marina. Rainy rejoins his band and, while playing his first gig back, sees Werryck in the doorway. Rainy remembers Kellan’s warning, and as Werryck makes his way through the crowd, Rainy changes the tempo of the song. The crowd becomes confused, and as Werryck struggles to get through it, Rainy grabs his guitar and runs out the back. When he reaches home, neighbors stand outside as men, led by the strange man from the party, ransack his house. The strange man sees Rainy and points at him. Rainy flees, makes it to Flowers, and heads into the lake as Werryck watches from shore.

On the water, Flowers begins taking on water from rain and massive waves during a storm. Rainy throws the anchor over, and the wind dies overnight. He tries using a pump to drain the boat in the morning but can’t get it to work. Hungry, he sails toward land. Dropping anchor near land, he notices a woman on the shore. She looks at him but doesn’t acknowledge his calls. She makes some notes in a notepad and recedes into the trees. Rainy notices that she carries a pistol.

Rainy works to bail out water but is interrupted by the woman’s return with a man. The man speaks into a cellphone, and both ignore Rainy’s attempts to hail them. Rainy finally gets the pump to work, and once the cabin is dry, he hoists the anchor and flees, sensing that something is wrong. As he sails away, the woman fires at him, shooting a hole in his sail.

Rainy finds a safe place near the shore beneath two abandoned houses. That night, he thinks of Lark and her many mysteries. When a young conservative drove in from out of town years back and threw a bomb into her shop, Lark advocated leniency in his sentencing. The bomb didn’t explode; the boy’s illiteracy prevented him from building it correctly. While Rainy wanted only the worst for him, Lark wished the boy a good life. Rainy passes the rest of the evening playing guitar, and when he hears a strange sound, he goes out on deck to find Flowers covered in seagulls.

The next morning, Rainy docks in Lightner, a town southwest of Icebridge, looking for a grocery store. As he passes a local church, he meets three children talking about recent Willow deaths. One of them says, “It’s stepping through the door. That’s all it is. They went in search of better” (116). The kids point Rainy toward the gas station, where he buys two canisters of fuel and a small harmonica. As he walks to the grocery store, Rainy meets Apeknuckle, who warns him to leave town immediately and get far from land. He tells Rainy that out-of-state officers are looking for him because of something he stole and will likely kill him. Rainy is unaware of stealing anything. When Rainy asks why Apeknuckle is helping him, Apeknuckle tells him it’s for Tonio, his son, who thinks the world of Rainy. Rainy gives Apeknuckle the harmonica and asks him to tell Tonio to practice. Rainy leaves, skipping the grocery store and taking Flowers out into open water.

Rainy briefly thinks of sailing to Duluth and hiding but knows this will risk others’ lives. He decides instead to sail to the Slates. He sails into Canada, and as he sees Lark in the passing nature, Rainy hopes that he’ll find Lark at the Slates, just as she once believed they saw Molly Thorn. A few miles from Thunder Bay, Rainy anchors for the night and tries to sleep through his hunger. He can’t and begins playing guitar to pass the time. He hears soft thumps and thinks the seagulls have returned. However, he instead finds the risen corpse of a man. Temperatures are rising, and the many drowned bodies in Lake Superior have begun to rise. It’s the fourth he sees in his lifetime, and each haunts him. US law dictates that those who find such corpses re-sink them, but Rainy can’t. He lets the corpse drift away and, in the morning, leaves for Thunder Bay.

Docking in Thunder Bay, Rainy runs to the market, but a vendor refuses him food, explaining that they serve only Canadians. Rainy trades in his amp at a pawn tent and with the money buys a roasted chicken and stocks up on groceries. At a gas station, he sees a bulletin filled with missing-person posters and recognizes one for Kellan. He buys a disposable phone. Back on the water, Rainy sees a storm forming and works up the courage to call Kellan’s family. Rainy finally calls and is shocked to hear Werryck on the other line, realizing that the poster was a trap. Werryck explains that Kellan worked on the production lines in a pharmaceutical factory that accidentally created Willow. Kellan stole 10,000 doses of Willow, and Werryck demands that Rainy tell him where Kellan was heading. Rainy refuses, even as Werryck warns him of the approaching snowstorm. Werryck suggests that Lark would want Rainy to help, which only fuels Rainy’s resistance more, and he skips the phone across the water like a stone.

Rainy avoids the storm, but a microburst cracks the steel reinforcement on his mast, forcing him to dock in the small town of Jolie. At a café, Rainy’s waitress points him to the grocery store and to the local welder when he asks for help. Rainy barters to pay for the welder’s services, agreeing to perform with the band at a charity event for a sick local man.

The local doctor, named Girard, comes into the welder’s shop to pick up his radio. Noticing an infected cut on Rainy’s chin, he invites Rainy to his home to clean it. Rainy stays for dinner afterward and meets Girard’s wife, Evelyn. The two met when Girard took a biking tour of Lake Superior. One night, he met Evelyn, cooking on the side of the road, and they fell in love. She asks Rainy about his story, and he tells them of Lark and how he plans to meet her at the Slates. Girard leaves, and Evelyn explains to Rainy that they lost their daughter to a fever years ago and that after Girard had the same fever and came out of it, he changed.

The next day, Rainy installs the new steel plate on Flowers and prepares for the charity event. On the night of the event, Rainy watches the crowd gather for the sick man, who’s dying of cancer, a once-treatable ailment. After the event, Evelyn gives Rainy nice clothes from her late brother’s wardrobe, and he realizes that she’s dressing him to meet Lark. As he prepares to leave the next morning, Girard shows him a picture of his late daughter, Tinker, before helping him push off.

Though Rainy begins to doubt that Lark will be at the Slates, he continues on and even changes into the suit Evelyn gave him as he nears the islands. As he enters the bay, Rainy sees a hulking watercraft, painted black. He suspects that the boat belongs to Werryck and turns around. Outside the islands’ protection, a storm sweeps up Flowers, and Rainy struggles throughout the night to keep it from sinking or speeding toward the dangerous cliffs off Michigan. He ties objects to the mast and throws them overboard in an attempt to hinder the boat’s progress but is swept overboard by a wave. Catching a rope trailing the ship, he hauls himself back on board and struggles to make it through the night.

The next morning, while cleaning up the cabin, he finds an errant canister of nitrous left by Kellan. The top seems loose, so Rainy opens the canister and finds Kellan’s stash of Willow. He realizes that Werryck will never stop pursuing him. Two days later, the wind from the storm finally dies and Rainy finds himself near a town on the Michigan shore. He drops anchor and watches as a girl on shore uses a trident to fish.