They started up the inlet between the walls, of trees. I cranked the motor and followed, with no intention of sticking with them all the way up. I liked to fish alone, aside from the fact it was discourteous from a sporting standpoint to freeload where somebody else was picking up the tab for the guide.
Javier was not a single large lake in the accepted sense of the word; it was rather a lake system. The only open body of water of any size was at the lower end, an expanse of fairly shallow water perhaps a little less than a mile wide and only slightly longer. Beyond that it was a vast network of sloughs, channels, and swampy areas in heavy timber, all connected by waterways passable to outboard craft. Some of the sloughs and channels were quite extensive, running up to a quarter mile in width. I wasn’t afraid of becoming lost: years of hunting and fishing had made me at home in this kind of terrain, and in my tackle box I carried a large-scale county map that showed it all in detail. We came out of the inlet into open water, keeping close to the weed beds and old snags of trees along the eastern side. The sun was not up yet, and the air was cool and fresh. Once I saw a flash of white in the edge of the timber as we startled a deer drinking in the shallows. The swirls of feeding bass could be seen now and then among the pads.
Nunn veered off to the left and entered a channel in the upper end. I continued straight ahead. In a few minutes I cut the motor and let the boat drift as I began setting up the fly-rod. I was near the north end of the open water myself, but to the eastward of the channel in which Nunn and his passenger had disappeared. Directly ahead another winding and timber-walled channel came in, bearing off to the north and east. The boat came to rest and I shipped the oars, kicking it ahead now and then between casts into pockets among the pads off to my left. After five minutes nothing had struck the silvery streamer fly I was using, so I removed it from the leader and fastened on a green, cork-bodied popping bug. I dropped it in a small opening thirty feet away, twitched the line to make it gurgle, and a bass smashed it, erupting from the water with a head-shaking leap as I set the hook. I worked him away from the pads, wore him down, and slipped the net under him to work the hook out of his mouth. I lost the next two, and then landed another which I also released. For a half hour I gave myself up wholly to the sheer joy of fishing, and the baffling riddle of those twenty dollar bills was gone from my mind. The sun came up and it began to be hot. There was no breeze at all and the surface of the lake was like glass.
As abruptly as it had started, the fishing went dead. I changed lures a half-dozen times with no success. I stopped casting, and just as I was lighting a cigarette I heard an outboard motor somewhere to the northward of me. Nunn, I thought. Apparently he wasn’t finding the fishing any better and was moving around. Then I became aware the sound was coming from the channel directly ahead of me. I looked around over my shoulder and saw the boat as it came into view around the first bend. It was a skiff with a small outboard. There was one man in it. He came on out into the open lake, changed course slightly, and passed about seventy-five yards away, headed toward the inlet at the lower end where the camp was located. I waved, and he lifted a hand momentarily in greeting, a small man in overalls and a big, floppy straw hat. It wasn’t a rental boat; all of Nunn’s were green. Probably a local, I thought; he apparently had no fishing gear with him. A few people lived up there in the swamps, mostly muskrat trappers and perhaps a moonshiner or two.
I took up the rod again and went on fishing, but I was only going through the motions now, while my mind returned to the same old questions. The sun grew brassy, and was reflected with an eye-searing glare off the surface of the lake. After a while I saw the man in the big straw hat come out of the inlet in his boat, headed back up lake. He went past some fifty yards off, lifted his hand in a brief greeting, and entered the channel from which he had come in the first place. He had what appeared to be a carton in the forward end of the skiff. Shopping, I thought, remembering the small stock of groceries they kept at the camp.
The morning dragged on. I had a few desultory strikes from panfish, but the bass had apparently gone to sleep for the day. I began to be thirsty. This was a waste of time; the whole thing was stupid, anyway. Just what I expected to find? And how? The absurdity of it caught up with me and I cranked the motor with a feeling of disgust. Go on back to town and forget it.
I headed down lake and looked at my watch as I entered the mouth of the narrow inlet. It was after eleven. Returning to town now after reserving the cabin and boat for two days was going to look a little odd, but I’d just say I didn’t feel well. What difference did it make, anyway? I cut the motor and began gliding up the float in the shade of the trees along the bank, and in the sudden silence I thought I heard a car somewhere out in the timber beyond the clearing. It sounded as if it were going away, and then it faded out and I wasn’t even sure I’d actually heard it. I made the skiff fast to the float and started to loosen the clamps to remove the motor from the transom. Never mind, I thought; it could wait. Right now I was too parched and dehydrated to think of loading the station wagon before I’d had something to drink.
The somnolent hush of midday lay over the clearing. I crossed to the large building and entered. Jewel Nunn was sweeping the floor of the lunch-room. She turned, with something tense and apprehensive about her face, but it was gone instantly when she saw who I was. “Oh,” she said.
I wondered what she had been afraid of. And why had she kept her back to the door, if she were afraid? She certainly must have heard me stepping up on the porch.
“You have anything cold to drink?” I asked.
“Just cokes,” she said.
“I’ll have one. And a glass of water, if I might.”
She went around behind the counter and opened the icebox. I tried again to think of some way of broaching the subject of those twenty-dollar bills without causing her to wonder why I’d ask about an odd thing like that. There didn’t seem to be any. Maybe I was slowing up.
She uncapped the bottle and poured me a glass of water from a jar in the icebox. I took a long drink of the water and then began on the coke. She started to return to her sweeping. I took out my wallet and extracted a ten-dollar bill, intending to settle up for the cabin and boat.
She glanced at it, and reached under the counter for the cigar box. Setting it on top, she opened it and glanced inside. “Haven’t you got anything smaller?” she asked.
She thought I merely wanted to pay for the drink. I started to explain I was leaving, but then it occurred to me I ought to take one more look into that box before committing myself. That was what I’d come out here for, wasn’t it? I moved a casual step nearer and glanced down.
There was no twenty in it, new or old. Besides the silver it contained only some ones, a couple of fives, and a ten. Well, I asked myself disgustedly, are you satisfied? Ready to go home now?
“I wanted—” I began, and then stopped suddenly, my eyes riveted on the ten-dollar bill. It was on top, in plain sight. And along one end of it was a narrow, reddish-brown stain.
Five
Maybe it had been there all the time. The only thing I’d been watching for was a twenty, so I could have overlooked it. No. I thought swiftly. Last night there had been nothing in that box except ones and fives. This morning the other fisherman had paid for his breakfast with another single, while I’d given them a five.
Somebody had come in here and paid for something with that ten, receiving one of the fives in change. And it had been this morning. I could feel the hair prickle along the back of my neck.