For the moment, that stump in the distance was my bearing.
When we were out a ways, we overturned the minnow bucket into the lake and let all our guys go. Leonard said, “Swim, little fishes. Go, make your way in this big wet world. Make us proud.”
The stump showed up and then the orange buoys. We followed those until they played out, but we couldn’t see a strip of land. Not yet. It was a big lake. All we could see was water, and the sky had darkened and it had started to rain, and we didn’t so much as have an umbrella.
The rain grew thick, and then I got nervous because the boat was holding water. Leonard took the minnow bucket and started bailing. I kept hold of the motor throttle and thought maybe I might regain some religion, because the water was jumping now and the rain had gotten so wild I could hardly see my hand in front of my face, let alone a distant strip of land sporting pine trees.
I decided keeping my hand on the throttle and using my wits would probably do me better than religion, and I kept at it. The rain kept at it too. We bounced up and down, and at one point the boat listed to port and water splashed in heavily, and Leonard was really working that bucket.
“That damn rain is cold,” he said.
“What, you think I haven’t noticed?”
We went on like that for a while, and I feared we had gone off point and were traveling in the wrong direction, maybe even boating in circles. But then the rain slacked and I saw a strip of land and some pines rising up. I glanced at my watch, putting it close to my face. We had been at it for an hour and a half.
The wind was really whistling now and the boat was struggling. Leonard was bailing like a maniac.
“Almost there,” I said.
The engine sputtered and died. We were out of gas.
“Now,” Leonard said, “if a goddamn whale will swallow us, it will be a perfect day.”
38
The gas can was under one of the seats, and I pulled it out and went about trying to pour some of it in the outboard tank. Way the water made the boat hump up and down it was hard work, and some of the gas went into the lake.
I finally finished with the can, but by that time we had drifted a considerable distance. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me right then if we got to where we were going or if we just made land, any land, and because of that, when I saw a glimpse of shoreline, I took the boat in that direction. I hoped we wouldn’t bring the boat up against a stump, ’cause at the speed we were going if we hit one, we’d be flung into the cold deep churning water, and that wouldn’t be good. Still, I couldn’t seem to slow the throttle down. The rain was slamming us and it was cold and I wanted off the lake.
Something went wrong, and we went into the water, the grateful minnows we had released would save us. Like Aquaman, we would call to them and they would come and lift us out of the water on their shiny backs and carry us ashore.
But I wasn’t counting on it.
Most likely, we’d drown like rats.
I saw it just before we hit it. I thought it was a log, but it was an alligator, and when we struck it the boat jumped and I went out of it as if shot from a catapult. I caught a glimpse of Leonard, still clinging to the handle of the minnow bucket, go up and over and make a nice little flip into the water and disappear under the waves.
I swam and my arm hit the gator and I screamed like a little girl. The rest of the gator sailed on past me and I could smell a rotten odor, realized the big bastard was dead, and had been awhile. He might have died up in the reeds along the bank and the storm had stirred him loose. He sailed past and the waves rolled over him and took him under and then I went under. When I came up the minnow bucket was floating past me. I grabbed at it like it was a life raft.
Holding on to it, I kicked toward shore, but shore had moved away. Or so it seemed. The water had carried me out farther and quicker than I could imagine. The lake was so cold I could hardly get a breath. I looked around for Leonard and didn’t see him. I looked around for the boat, didn’t see it either. Annie was going to be pissed.
I kicked toward what looked like shore and hoped a live alligator didn’t find me, hoped in this weather they would be somewhere cozy. Then again, I wasn’t sure if alligators liked it cozy. Maybe they liked the rain.
I called out for Leonard, but the wind took my voice and carried it away and all I got out of my yelling was a hoarse throat.
And then my feet were touching ground. Not well, but they were touching. I pushed on toward some reeds, and after what seemed like enough time for the Big Bang to have happened and all the species on the planet to have developed and moved on out to the stars, I made it to some waving grass and reeds and stumbled into that, went down a few times, came up with a mouthful of muddy water. As I tromped through, barely able to stand, hardly able to see, I came across a long four-foot-wide fragment of our boat. On his back in the water, hanging on to the fragment, was a big black guy.
“Leonard,” I said.
He let go of the board and sat up in the water and said, “Well, Ahab, that boat trip was sure a good idea.”
I checked for my .38. I still had it.
Leonard checked for his automatic. Still there. Well, at least we had that going for us. We were in a position to add to the worst nature of man and the final downfall of the world. By God, we had our guns.
Leonard stood up slowly and looked around. The minnow bucket had floated up into the tall grass and was hung there. He focused on it, said, “I guess the cookies and the Dr Pepper didn’t make it.”
“Missing in action,” I said.
“Now that’s a blow,” Leonard said.
Slogging along the shoreline through the rain, we saw a boathouse and made our way over there. It was wide open and we went inside. There was a boat floating in a stall and there was fishing tackle in the boat, and on one wall were some croaker sacks for hunting and some nasty-looking towels that were probably used to wipe the boat down after fishing. There were four rain slickers on nails. A fairly large dead fish floated belly-up near the boat and the waves washed at it until it went under the flooring, out of sight.
We used the towels to dry off and to dry our weapons, hoping they’d still shoot. The towels made us dry enough, but they left us smelling like fish. We sat on the edge of the boathouse dock with the heavy damp towels over our shoulders and looked out at the boat that was docked there. There were paddles in the bottom of the boat and no motor. The boat was bouncing up and down and we could see the lake from where we sat, and the rain was furious. Everything was gray. It was as if the sky and the lake had joined together.
I pulled my cell phone out of my pants pocket, shook the water out of it. It was still working, but there wasn’t any signal, like Jim Bob had said. I put it away.
“I saw a dead alligator,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I think I saw him too,” Leonard said.
“Was he big and dark?”
“Yep.”
“That was him, all right.”
“Say he was dead?”
“Very.”
“Thank goodness for small favors.”
We waited for the downpour to slack off, but it didn’t. Freezing, we toweled off again and took a couple of slickers off the wall and put them on and went to where we had come in and stood in the open doorway and looked out at the rain.
“I don’t want to,” Leonard said.
“Me neither,” I said.
“But, alas …” Leonard said, and we went out into the rain.
39
I had no idea where we had ended up, but my guess was near where we wanted to be. But that didn’t change the fact that near was not the same as being there, and every tree looked pretty much like the other, and I didn’t see any trails. We wandered around in the rain, damp inside our slickers but better off now with the hoods pulled up and the cold rain not coming right down on us.