Black Otter Bay (2 page)

Listening to his sister's explanation did little to calm Ben's fears. She was always so confident, so smart and sure of herself. Ever since their parents had divorced, he'd counted on Abby, looked up to her like another adult. He knew that other folks in town regarded her the same way. It was terrible to think of their mother living in Duluth with that creepy guy named Randall. Ben frowned at the thought of the long-haired owner of an art gallery in the East End of Duluth.

“Are you okay?” Abby asked.

Ben found his sister looking at him. “Yeah, sure. I was just thinking about Mom.”

“Well, you better eat your sandwich.” Abby turned her gaze back out to the water. “Mom's just a little bit crazy right now. Maybe someday she'll get better and come home, but for now, don't worry about her. Remember what Dad said? We just have to take care of ourselves right now.” She looked at Ben and smiled. “Besides, you have me, don't you? And Dad will never leave us.”

“Even when he finds out we skipped school?”

Abby smiled. “Listen, Ben. We just spent nine months cooped up in school. There are only a couple weeks left, so we're not even doing anything in class. How could we pass up a day like this?” She reached out to tousle her gloomy brother's hair.

Ben leaned back to get out of her range. He wasn't ready yet to feel good about their little escapade, much less to be coddled by his sister.

“Look out there at that water, Ben,” she said, smiling and nodding wistfully over the mostly frozen lake. “No cabins or cars anywhere,” she continued, “and not a cloud in the sky. Nobody around for miles.” When she looked at her brother again, she was glad to see him taking in the panorama of virgin shoreline and deep, blue water. His expression softened slightly with her words. “Now tell me, little brother, would you rather be sitting in a a crowded, hot classroom, or out here in the fresh air and wilderness?”

Ben had to smile despite his lingering reservations.

“So enjoy it while you can,” Abby concluded. “And if you say anything to Dad about this, you won't have to worry about him killing you, because I'll kill you first.”

They sat in peaceful silence for several minutes, Abby pointing out a formation of northbound geese flying over, and a pair of loons fishing together out near the island. “It's uninhabited,” she told Ben, “so it's a perfect place for them to nest.”

So distracted were they by the new season of natural wonders, neither of them noticed a car idling into view on the access road. When Abby finally spotted it, she grabbed Ben's shoulder and shoved him down hard on the ground.

“What?” he stammered. “What's going on?”

“Be quiet! There's a car over there.”

The children lay still, listening. Abby strained to hear anything over the soft lapping of waves at the shore and a breeze rustling the brush around them. Because they'd been sitting in the tall grass, she doubted the driver had spotted them, but it was disconcerting to think that a car sat just thirty feet away, and she hadn't heard a sound.

“Who do you think it is?” Ben asked.

Abby held a finger to her lips.

Closing her eyes to listen harder, she picked out a chiming noise. She knew the driver's door must be open, with the key in the ignition. Abby bit her lip, thinking. Maybe they had been seen after all, she worried, and their hiding spot was about to be revealed.

Motioning for Ben to stay down, Abby slowly raised herself to a kneeling position in the grass. It was easy to spot the vehicle: a big, shiny, black luxury car. The driver's door was indeed open, as was the trunk, while the driver stood near the hood looking out over the lake. A big man, she noted, with a clean-shaven dark complexion, wearing black trousers and shirt. His hair was cut close at the sides, but jutted straight up on top, like an overgrown crew-cut. Wrap-around sunglasses fit snug across his face.

To Ben, Abby whispered, “I think it's just somebody out for a drive. I've never seen the car before.”

Ben started to sit up, but Abby stopped him. The man walked around to the back of the car. When he stopped at the trunk, he paused to look up and down the shoreline, and Abby dropped flat next to Ben.

“He's looking around,” she whispered so quietly Ben could barely hear. “Don't move.”

“We're going to get caught,” Ben whined.

“Shhh!”

The fear on his face surprised her. She could feel her own heart beating fast, but it was more out of excitement than fear. They were only playing hooky, for goodness' sake! What was the worst that could happen? She reached out to place a reassuring hand on Ben's cheek. When he turned to look at her, she grinned and winked, but he only scrunched his eyes shut, cramming himself tighter against the ground.

Several quiet moments passed, until Abby finally sat up to take another look. The man stood near the trunk, awkwardly pulling on hip waders. A feeling of despair descended on Abby.

“Ben,” she whispered. Her brother burrowed deeper in the grass. “Ben, I think the guy is a fisherman. We'll never get out of here now.”

Ben finally looked up at his sister. “A fisherman?” he asked. “You mean he isn't trying to catch us skipping school?”

“Of course not,” she whispered. “But he's an adult, and he knows we're supposed to be in school, so we can't let him see us.”

“But what if he fishes all afternoon? We have to be home soon.”

“I'll think of something,” she said, patting her brother's shoulder while she rose to her knees for another look.

With his hip waders on, the man now leaned over the opening of the trunk. “He's taking out his fishing gear,” she reported. But then the man bent even further, and with a lurching
yank, pulled out a heavy bundle. Over his shoulder it went, and with her mouth hanging open in disbelief, Abby sat back hard on her butt.

“Holy . . .” she muttered.

Ben sat up beside her. “What?”

Abby studied the big man and his heavy load, trying to make it out to be something other than what she guessed it to be. Maybe it was a roll of carpeting, a rug, even a heavy blanket. The man strode directly into the water at the weedline, and when a hand, and then a forearm, slipped into view from the back of the bundle, Abby knew her worst suspicions were true.

Ben saw it at the same time, and Abby had just enough time to slap a hand over his mouth before he cried out. She pulled him down beside her.

“Ben, Ben!” she whispered harshly into his face. “You have to keep quiet.” She held a hand over his mouth while imploring him to silence. His eyes were wide, wild, and his tears warmed her fingers. “It's okay, Ben. We just have to stay quiet. Please. We'll get out of here, you'll see. But you can't make a sound. Okay?”

They lay together in the tall grass, Abby's hand near Ben's face, ready to clamp down should he begin to cry out again. She worked her thoughts over the situation, trying to make some sense of what they'd seen. There could be no denying those images though, the flopping hand and lifeless arm. She had no idea who the man in the waders might be, much less the person hanging over his shoulder, but Abby was determined to find out.

When Ben finally relaxed against her, she moved her fingers away from his face and he emitted a whimpering sigh. Up to her knees she rose again, slowly lifting her face to the waving tips of grass. The man was well out in the water, still struggling with the weight on his shoulder.

“Ben,” she said softly after lying down next to her brother again.

He interrupted. “Did you see what I saw, Abby?”

She nodded. “It's okay, Ben. He doesn't know we're here. If you stay quiet, he'll go away, and we can go home.”

“That's all I want, Abby. I just want to go home.” His voice rose again. “It's all because we skipped school.”

Abby put her finger over his lips. “Quiet, Ben. It's not because of anything we did.” She bit her lip and took another quick glance at the man in the water. “You stay here. I'm going to get a closer look at the car and the license plate.”

Ben grabbed at her. “Oh, no, Abby!”

“Shhh! It's okay. He can't see you here, and he's way out in the water. I'll be right back. I'm just going to get his license plate number. He'll never know.”

“Abby, please.” Tears rolled down Ben's face.

“I'll be right back. Just stay quiet, and then we'll go home, okay?”

Ben answered by shutting his eyes and clasping his hands together in prayer. Abby smiled when his lips began moving in silent entreaties. She reached out to stroke his shoulder, and then turned to crawl through the brush toward the car.

Rocks poked at her hands and knees, but the car was even closer than it had appeared through the tall grass and in short order she was at the driver's door, the chiming ignition tolling like a funeral dirge. She rose up to look inside and saw plush leather seats, a folded road map, and a black sport coat on the passenger's side. Stretching higher, she peered over the dash and through the windshield at the man. From this range he looked even larger than before, his spiked hairstyle adding three inches to his height. Up to his thighs in water, his broad back arched up and outward from the close-fitting hip waders. They seemed too small for him, Abby thought, like they didn't belong to him, especially considering the fancy trousers and black linen shirt he wore. His right hand grabbed at the nylon rope attached to Rose Bengston's marker buoys, while his left arm still clutched the bundle draped over his shoulder.

Stealing a quick glance behind her, Abby gasped when she spotted Ben running for the safety of the woods. But another peek over the dash showed the man still in the water, his back to them. When Ben made the treeline, Abby relaxed in the knowledge that her little brother could find his way home through the woods as easily as a city kid following street signs.

She dropped to her knees to crawl to the back of the car. Completely hidden from view here, she turned sideways to look behind her down the neglected road. Weeds and rocks jutted up between the wheel ruts. That's why the car had appeared so suddenly, she realized. Like magic. The big sedan would have been barely moving over this rough terrain.

A flash of light reflecting through the trees interrupted her thoughts. A moment later, another flash, this one closer. Then she heard the rumble of a failing exhaust system and caught a glimpse of an old pickup truck approaching. Now Abby experienced her own heart-stopping panic as she realized she was about to be trapped between the man in the waders and the oncoming truck.

She grabbed the bumper of the car and lifted herself up to read the license plate. With the trunk still open, however, she discovered the license plate was over her head on the back of the trunk lid. Out of time now and acting on instinct, she stood up to get a better look, and came eye to eye with the man in the waders.

Returning to shore over the slippery, rocky lake bottom, he'd been watching the approaching truck when he spotted Abby as she stood up behind his car. The dark sunglasses obscured his expression, but his quiet, cautious steps became lunging splashes as he quickened his pace. Abby grabbed the trunk lid to look at the license plate, but all that registered was the fact that it was from Illinois. Then she was running, first down the road to put some distance between them, then into the woods just before the pickup truck rounded a veil of balsam trees and lurched into view.

Charging through the tall grass, Abby hit the treeline at a dead run. She heard the man yell, calling for her to stop, but panic had temporarily taken over, and she dashed through the woods like a rabbit before the hounds.

Running had always been a good tonic for Abby. She remembered family outings when, as a child, she'd raced her father through the woods, darting along winding forest pathways, the fresh air pounding through her lungs. And now, the harder she ran, the more her spirits lightened and her thinking cleared. She knew the man would never catch up to her in those waders. A grin spread across her face when she realized that if he stopped to take them off, well, he'd simply never see her again.

Leaping boulders, skipping over exposed roots, she flew through the woods like a breeze through the treetops. She thought the pickup truck looked familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. She'd be willing to bet it belonged to a local, though. Abby smirked with glee at the notion of someone from town asking the man from Illinois why he was wearing waders but not carrying a fishing pole.

Soon she spotted Ben up ahead. She knew they'd dodged a dangerous situation and successfully made their escape. Feeling just a little smug, she ran hard to catch up to her little brother, to let him know they were both safe. It would be a while yet before she remembered their backpacks lying near the shore of Big Island Lake, just a dozen or so steps from the big, shiny Cadillac.

Marcy Soderstrom

“I
can tell you right now why summer finally got here,” Red Tollefson stated from his seat at the counter in the Black Otter Bay Café. Red was a retired highway department foreman. He still carried his large frame with a confident, rolling swagger, even if he wasn't as solid as he'd been in his working days. Thick waves of graying red hair covered his head, and he still boasted the barrel chest and gnarled, workingman's hands common throughout the north country.

Turning sideways on his stool, Red shuffled a deck of cards while glancing outside, as if to confirm that summer had indeed finally arrived. Owen Porter reset the cribbage pegs, patiently awaiting Red's explanation. It was that quiet time of early afternoon when the lunch crowd had left but the regulars from the day shift at the taconite plant, in search of a cup of coffee and a card game, hadn't arrived yet.

Red squinted up at Owen, an extremely tall, lanky man perched uncomfortably atop his stool at the counter. Hunched over, Owen resembled a prehistoric insect, with his gangly limbs jutting out at odd angles. He was currently working afternoon shifts at the plant, so he'd be leaving soon for work.