I pushed away from the dock, eased the throttle up to crawling speed. The Johnson kept right on muttering and stuttering. So I throttled up a little more and worked the tiller and pretty soon we were scooting right along, the engine seeming to gather strength and vigor from the exercise. At least it no longer complained as loudly as it had at the dock.
Out on the lake the air was cooler and the breeze felt good on my face. By the time I’d veered over toward the west shore I was a fine old hand at the helm, Captain Somebody-or-other. There were only two other boats out, both on the east end near Judson’s; I had this section all to myself. I skimmed along a hundred yards offshore, checking out the summer homes down that way. A couple were large; one had a terracelike dock that jutted forty feet into the water. Some people were having their lunch out there; they waved and I waved back. Ahab in his longboat, saluting the crew. More waves came from an elderly couple sitting on the deck of the last cottage at that end: Nils Ostergaard and his wife, Callie. Ostergaard had a pair of binoculars looped around his neck and I’d have given odds that he’d been watching me during most if not all of my launching difficulties. He didn’t miss much, especially with other forms of entertainment at a premium up here.
I swung around and turned in close to the north shore. Forest primeval along there, so thickly grown that you couldn’t see more than a few yards into the jungly green shadows. Some of the pines overhung the water; the shoreline and a series of narrow inlets where the watershed creeks emptied into the lake were matted with ferns, weeds, snarled roots, collections of dead brush and decaying vegetable matter. The fishing would probably be pretty good in the deeper inlets. So would the kind of beer-for-breakfast, sin-contemplating morning Hal Cantrell had had for himself. Maybe I’d try some of that lazy-man’s style of angling myself later in the week.
I was about halfway to Judson’s, more or less directly opposite the Dixon and Zaleski cabins, putt-putting along at a couple of knots, when the Johnson quit on me.
No warning; it was running well enough, if a little wheezy, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t running at all and the skiff was adrift on the current. I yanked the starter rope. Nothing but a noise that sounded like a death rattle. Fine, dandy. I jerked the rope again, and again, and kept on pulling it until my arm got tired. Then I sat there wasting my breath on a string of not very original oaths, as if the thing were alive and had ancestors. Then I just sat there, sweating in the hot sun, looking at the battered old oars in the bottom. Assuming they didn’t fall apart in my hands when I picked them up, I’d have a third of a mile of rowing while the sun broiled my sixty-year-old flesh like a chunk of tough flank steak. It was exertion like that that finished off men my age. Heart attack, stroke, brain aneurysm. Struggling along one second, belly-up the next. Just like the goddamn outboard.
Ahab, hell. Helmsman on the Titanic was more like it.
The sun had begun to burn my neck. The skiff was still adrift, moving slowly now, and in so near the overgrown shore that I could almost reach out and touch some of the drooping branches. That gave me an idea. Another inlet was just ahead, part of it in deep shade. I hoisted up the oars — they weren’t in quite as bad shape as they looked — and sculled into the inlet and the cool tree shadows. The skeletal arm of a rotting log jutted up from the shore mud; I tied the skiffs painter to it. Then, muttering, I tilted the Johnson out of the water to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.
Fat chance. My mechanical knowledge is skimpy at best. I lowered it again, made sure the propeller was free of entanglements, and jerked the starter rope. Nothing. Not even a whimper this time. The son of a bitch seemed to have passed beyond the limits of resuscitation and resurrection.
Well?
It was either row and risk the big whopper, or sit here and wait for somebody to rescue me. I didn’t care for the second alternative much more than the first. I could chafe my butt for hours on this hard seat before anybody—
Rising noise behind me to the west, engine noise. I looked, and from over that way a bright red skiff was powering in my direction. Nils Ostergaard’s skiff. Good old binocular-spying, trouble-sniffing Nils Ostergaard.
He approached at a fast clip, slewed around broadside and cut power just before he reached me — creating a series of wavelets that rocked my boat and made me grab on to the gunwales with both hands. The thought occurred to me that he’d done it on purpose, a gesture of disdain for urbanites who got themselves lost, stranded, or otherwise inconvenienced mountain dwellers like him. I didn’t mind. I figured I deserved his scorn, even though this particular predicament wasn’t really my fault.
He called out as he maneuvered alongside, “She just quit on you? Won’t start again?”
“Dead as a doornail.”
“Nope,” he said.
“Nope?”
“Ain’t dead. Just up to her old tricks. I’ll have her up on her feet again in a couple of minutes.”
His skiff bumped gently against Zaleski’s, prow to stern. He told me to hold us steady, and when I obeyed he took a screwdriver from one of his vest pockets, then leaned over and tilted the Johnson out of the water.
“Watch what I do,” he said.
I watched while he removed a section of housing, poked around inside — a process that took just about two minutes. When he tilted the engine back into the water and pulled the rope, the thing coughed once and rebirthed into its old wheezing self.
“Now you know what to do next time it happens.”
“Next time?” I said.
“Crotchety bugger, that Johnson. I told Tom Zaleski he ought to get himself a new outboard, but he’s too cheap. Rich shyster like him and he won’t even spend a hundred fifty bucks for a rebuilt motor. Lawyers,” Ostergaard said, and shook his head.
“You mean you’ve had to fix this thing before?”
“First time it happened to Zaleski. He took care of it himself after that.”
“So it happens all the time. Just quits on you.”
“Not every time you take her out, maybe. But often enough.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that yesterday?”
He gave me a look. “Didn’t know you had permission to take her out.”
“Well, thanks for the help, Nils. And the lesson.”
“Couldn’t just leave you stranded over here,” he said gruffly. “And if you’d tried to row across in this hot sun, hell, you might’ve had a heart attack or something. Overweight fellow like you.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You going to finish exploring the lake now?”
“Uh-uh. Back to the cabin.”
“Take this screwdriver anyway, just in case. You can give it back to me later. Zaleski’s got one around there somewhere you can stick in the boat.”
“Thanks. You won’t need to rescue me again.”
“Better not. First time’s free, second time costs you dear.”
He paused, as if debating something with himself. Then he said, “Be around tonight, will you? At the cabin?”
“Until seven. Then I’m invited to dinner at the Dixons’. Why?”
“Might stop by for a few minutes before or after. Have a beer or two.”
“Sure thing. Something on your mind, Nils?”
“Something. Not sure yet what it means.”
“What what means?”
“Don’t want to say until I check around some.”
“I don’t follow that.”
He paused again. “I think maybe one of the other first-timers ain’t what he seems to be.”
“What makes you think that?”
“My eyes, for one. Gut feeling, for another.”
“What is he, then, if not a fisherman?”