Snapper (10 page)

And Owen was the kind of man who played whatever hand life dealt him. He saw no point in bemoaning what fate had taken away. He simply set himself to the task at hand.

Now, Owen was at work on a new set of drawings.

Each night after Wilhelmina and Isaac went to bed, he sat for hours at the kitchen table – sketching, erasing and revising. He obsessed over his drawings like an engineer or an inventor. In the morning, his wife and son found no signs of how he had spent the late night hours. The plans he was drawing were out of sight, rolled up in a tube, leaning against the back wall of a closet.

The loss of his right hand did cause one particular inconvenience. Owen could no longer work the car’s gearshift. So he taught Isaac how to drive.

That Isaac was only eleven didn’t trouble him. The boy’s legs were long enough to reach the pedals and he was tall enough to see out the windshield. Nor did Owen worry about the police. Cops were few and far between once they got out of Paterson. And once they were up in the mountains, they were even rarer.

“So now what?” snapped Wilhelmina.

She was beyond exasperation.

“First you lose your hand, and now you’ve lost your mind!” she said, practically screaming at her husband. “Letting Isaac drive is against the law. And it’s not just your life you’re risking now, you’re risking his, too.”

Owen hardly heard a word of what Wilhelmina was saying. In matters where he knew they would never see eye to eye, he had learned to tune her out. All Owen heard, as his wife chastised him, was the driving rain lashing against the window.

For Isaac it was different. Isaac had no choice but to go along with his dad. His mother might think that he was taking sides, but he wasn’t. His parents’ battles were not his. He was merely a recruit, a foot soldier, impressed into service.

“Don’t worry,” Isaac told his mom when his father was at work. “Driving’s easy. There’s nothing to it.”

Wilhelmina could hardly believe there could be “nothing” to something that she herself had never learned how to do.

In the end, Wilhelmina’s objections were simply ignored. One Friday afternoon, when Isaac arrived home from school, he saw his father waiting for him by the car in the driveway.

“Ready to roll, Isaac?” said Owen.

“I’m ready,” said Isaac.

And off they went, with Isaac at the wheel and Owen calling out lefts and rights as needed.

The last few miles they drove in the dark, on bumpy dirt roads that tunneled under overarching branches of leaf-laden limbs. Finally, Isaac pulled around one last bend and their headlights illuminated the clearing where the foundation of their cabin stood. They got out, gathered wood, made a fire, and ate. After eating, Owen pulled out the large sheet of paper that was curled up inside the cardboard tube he’d been carrying pinned between his ribcage and what was left of his right arm. He tried spreading the sheet flat on the ground, but it kept rolling back up into a tube.

“Isaac,” he said. “We’ll need four good size rocks to weigh down the corners. Do you think you could find some?”

Isaac knew exactly where to find rocks: down along the shoreline by the lake.

“Sure, Dad,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Isaac walked down toward the lake. During the ride up, his father had tried to allay his son’s fears.

“Don’t worry about that turtle,” he’d said. “Turtleback Lake is a big body of water. The odds of that snapper showing up in the same spot twice are next to none.”

Still, Isaac was nervous. He tried to calm himself by breathing deeply and focusing on his task: finding four good-size rocks.

Isaac was cradling three large rocks in his arms and bending down to pick up a fourth when suddenly the rock he was reaching for moved! Isaac’s heart skipped a beat. He dropped the three rocks in his arms and was spinning around to run away when he abruptly stopped and started to laugh. What an idiot he was being! The “rock” that had moved was a turtle – a harmless box turtle. Isaac had brought dozens of them back home to Paterson where he’d given them to friends or let them roam free in the confines of their fenced-in backyard.

Isaac picked up the rocks he’d dropped, found a fourth, and headed back to the clearing.

“Put one on each corner,” said his Dad.

The woods around them were pitch black. The only light in the forest came from their campfire. Its flames hissed, snapped, and popped while casting a flickering light on the large sheet now spread out flat on the ground. The sheet was the size of an architect’s blueprint and was filled with elaborate, precisely rendered diagrams and notations. They reminded Isaac of sketches he had seen by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo in books at the Paterson Public Library.

Isaac looked at his father in the flickering light. He wasn’t just a line supervisor in a Coca-Cola bottling plant. There was more to him.

“What is it?” asked Isaac, his eyes widening as he looked at the drawings.

“A trap,” said Owen. “A trap for our little friend in the lake.”

Chapter 14

TURTLEBACK LAKE JUNE 2006

When Deena told Judd that there would be “no more yesterdays,” he came crashing back to earth like Icarus. Deena hadn’t just dumped him – she had destroyed him. When she had hung up the phone, Judd wanted to call her right back, but he couldn’t. She’d never answer. Yet as badly as their conversation had gone, Judd was desperate to talk to her again, to fix whatever it was that had so suddenly and inexplicably gone so terribly wrong. The thought of having to wait until their paths crossed by chance was unbearable.

For twenty-four hours, Judd agonized over what to do. The plan he finally came up with bordered on the insane, but Judd wasn’t in his right mind. He was a man spurned; he was capable of doing practically anything.

Judd walked back and forth on his deck. He’d been pacing out there for almost an hour. His fingers were crossed, like a kid making a wish. Earlier, he had actually knelt down and prayed to God that Deena would stick to her routine. At 1:25, his wishes and prayers were answered. Across the lake, a tiny figure walked down to the water. Judd raised his binoculars and adjusted the focus.

When Deena reached the edge of the lake, she stopped. The white terry cloth robe she was wearing slipped from her shoulders and fell to the ground. For a moment she just stood there, sleek and statuesque in her black one-piece. Judd’s heart raced. He waited until she was in the lake, face down in the water, swimming out toward the dock. Then he raced down the wooden steps that zigzagged from his deck to his dock. He took the steps two at a time. His bathing suit was already on. As he raced the length of the long dock, Judd kicked off his topsiders and tossed aside the pink polo shirt he’d been wearing. Then, without breaking his stride, he plunged off the end of the dock into the lake.

Judd had never in his life swum as far as he was about to. But he was a man in love, and there was no stopping him.

*

Deena sat bolt upright.

She’d been in the middle of a dream when suddenly the dock beneath her began to rock. Deena looked around frantically.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Judd Clayton’s head popped up, dripping wet. He hauled himself halfway out of the water and rested with his forearms at the edge of the dock.

“Jesus Christ, Judd!” cried Deena. “You just scared the daylights out of me!”

Judd tried to answer, but he couldn’t. He was gasping for air.

Deena looked at him with a mixture of agitation and amazement.

“You couldn’t have possibly swum here all the way from the other side?”

Judd still couldn’t speak. But he could nod.
Yes, yes
, he nodded,
yes he had
.

“Well, after the other day, I guess I should’ve known you were in pretty good shape,” said Deena. “That’s some swim.”

Judd was encouraged. He had had no idea what kind of reception he was going to get.

Deena’s first impulse was to stay angry at Judd. But for some reason, she couldn’t. Swimming across the lake struck her as chivalrous – like a lovestruck knight trying to win a reluctant maiden’s heart. It was crazy, but it was charming.

“I just had to see you,” said Judd, finally catching his breath. “And not from across the lake.”

As he rested on the edge of the dock, Judd’s long white legs dangled in the water. Ten minutes earlier, Grundel had sensed something strange and unusual: someone was swimming out in the middle of the lake. Grundel had left his lair and risen to the surface to investigate. He patiently tracked the swimmer’s progress. He followed him all the way here – to a dock floating forty or fifty yards from the lake’s western shore. And now, there the man was, clinging to the dock, with his long white legs dangling languidly like khaki trousers hanging on a clothesline.

“Time to bring in the laundry,” thought Grundel.

He banked in the water and went in for the attack. But suddenly, the languidly dangling legs were gone.

*

“Can I come up?” Judd had asked.

Deena had hesitated.

Was letting Judd up on the dock any different from letting him into her cabin? She sighed. What was she thinking? The dock was out in the middle of the lake. What had happened inside the cabin could never happen out here – in the middle of the lake in broad daylight.

“Sure, why not?” said Deena. “Come on up.”

Judd pushed down with his arms and lifted himself straight out of the water. He was barely erect when something thudded against the side of the dock. The dock lurched and Judd’s feet went sliding out from beneath him. He fell backwards into the lake with his arms flailing.

Deena peered over the edge of the dock. Judd had vanished.

“Judd?” she called. “Where are you? Judd!”

Suddenly Judd popped back up to the surface, grabbed the edge of the dock, and scrambled back up. He had no idea how close he had come to losing a leg. Grundel’s second pass, like his first, was a split second too late.

As Judd and Deena stared at the water, they heard a harsh scraping sound coming from beneath the dock. The dock rocked. Deena reached for Judd. He wrapped her in his arms.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Judd. “But don’t worry. You’re safe. I’m here.”

They waited, watching the water, but nothing else happened. Whatever had rammed the dock seemed to have gone. But Deena was still unnerved. She made no effort to remove Judd’s arms. She let her head rest against his chest. She could hear and feel his heart. It was beating fast. Pressed closely against him, Deena could feel where some of that blood was rushing.

“I’ve got something I want to tell you,” said Judd.

“Tell me later,” said Deena.

For the moment, she didn’t want to talk. For the moment, she just wanted to feel safe and protected, with the arms of a man wrapped around her.

Chapter 15

TURTLEBACK LAKE OCTOBER 2006

“Take a knee everybody,” said Coach Lupo.

It was the middle of practice, but Bill knew he had to address the Ian Copeland issue. What had happened to Ian had to be turned into something positive. It had to be turned into a rallying cry for the team, something to bind the Snappers even closer together.

Standing in the long slanting rays of the late afternoon sun, Coach Lupo flashed back to an old black-and-white movie. He heard the voice of Knute Rockne – or was it Vince Lombardi? – addressing his team. Coach Lupo tried to channel that voice.

“Men,” he began. “What happened to Ian Copeland didn’t just happen to him. There are eighty of us out here on this field. But in football, eighty doesn’t count. In football, eighty equals one. We are all one. And when any one of us gets hurt, we all feel it.”

Coach Lupo paused to let the gravity of his words sink in.

“When we go out on the field this Saturday,” he continued, “Ian Copeland is going out there with us. He’ll be here,” – Coach Lupo pounded his fist against his chest – “and he’ll be here.”

Coach Lupo tapped the side of his head with his index finger.

“George!” he called.

“Yes, Bill,” said Coach Jenkins, straightening himself up from a slouch.

“Hand these out.”

Coach Lupo gave Coach Jenkins a handful of decals. A local print shop had run them off for him. They were the crack-and-peel kind.

JJ looked at the sticker. It was a foot with speed lines swooshing from the heel as if the foot was swinging forward like a kicker’s. There was a number on the foot. Number 13. Ian had always laughed when JJ suggested that thirteen was unlucky, and after all his game-winning kicks, JJ had come to agree with him. Now he wasn’t so sure.

The players peeled off the backs of the decals and stuck the stickers on the sides of their helmets. JJ slapped his right in front.

“Now remember, boys,” said Coach Lupo, hoping for a strong finish. “Whenever you make a tackle, or catch a pass, or block a kick, you’re not doing it alone. Ian Copeland is there – doing it with you!”

Just as he had hoped, the players sensed his speech was over. They stood and roared, while squeezing their heads back into their helmets.