Summer at Forsaken Lake

by Michael D. Beil

  “I have to see what’s going on out there,” she said aloud, half to herself and half to the cows. “I’ll be back.”

  Her foul-weather gear zipped, tied, and Velcro-ed in every conceivable way, Charlie bolted out the barn door for the lake. She followed the shoreline, stumbling on rocks and tripping over pieces of driftwood in the blackness, until she reached the point of land that marked the start of the cove where Goblin was anchored. With the thick layer of low-flying clouds, the rain, and the power outage working against her, visibility was almost zero. Only the now-distant lightning provided her an occasional glimpse into the void.

  Charlie stood perfectly still, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, and waited for the next opportunity. Finally, the sky before her flickered on and off like a dying fluorescent bulb. She saw the yellow house, a dock with a pontoon boat tied alongside, and an overturned dinghy on the shore.

  She waited for the next three flashes to confirm her suspicions: Goblin simply wasn’t there.

  * * *

  On the first rescue attempt, Goblin never got close enough for the stranded sailor to jump aboard, even with Nicholas standing on the deck—one hand on the shroud, the other reaching out to help.

  “That’s okay, Hayley,” he said. “Take her around one more time, just like that. You’re doing great. Don’t be afraid to get close; I have all the bumpers out. The second he’s on board, pull like mad on the tiller to get us away.”

  Hayley, growing more confident by the minute, brought Goblin around for her second run, and this time, she did her job perfectly, pointing the bow right at the stern of the floundering boat. Nicholas was ready to shout that they were too close when she turned just enough to slide by, Goblin passing within two feet of the other craft’s hull. The sailor stepped aboard, taking Nicholas’s hand and then glancing backward at his own boat, which sagged lower and lower in the water.

  “Thank you. Would have been a long swim. She’s going down fast. I’m Teddy, by the way.”

  “I’m Nicholas. And those two are Hayley and Hetty. And I guess you already know Pistol.”

  “Very nice job of handling this yacht, young lady,” said Teddy.

  “Thank you,” Hayley said. “I just did what Nicholas told me.”

  “Well, I owe you kids.”

  Nicholas took one last look at Teddy’s boat as they took a seat in the cockpit. “Are you sure you don’t want to try to tow it in?”

  “No—it’s too dangerous. I don’t want you taking any more chances with your own boat.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I have to be the first person in history to sink two boats on this silly lake. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, what in the world are you kids doing out on a night like this?”

  As they circled the sinking Maguffin, Nicholas explained the sequence of events that had occurred since leaving Nick and Charlie at the Kuerners’ farm.

  “Well, I’ll be. So Nick’s your uncle. Everybody on Godforsaken Lake knows Nick Mettleson.”

  “What were you doing out there?” Hayley asked. “How do we know you’re not a pirate or something?”

  Teddy’s head tilted back as he roared with laughter. “Fair enough, since you answered my question. I’m not a pirate, although I’ve been told I bear a certain resemblance to Blackbeard. No, it’s nothing sinister, I promise. I was trying to make it up to the cove on the north side of Onion Island. It’s pretty well protected. Figured I’d ride out the storm there.”

  “Look,” cried Hetty, pointing at Maguffin II. “It’s almost gone—kind of like the Titanic.”

  Once Maguffin’s decks were completely awash, the end came quickly. Her bow and stern lights continued to glow as the hull slipped beneath the angry waves. The stump of the mast tilted toward them, then away, and then was gone.

  No one said anything for a long time.

  Finally, Hayley turned to Hetty. “That was so sad—like watching somebody die. It seems like we ought to say a prayer or something.”

  Goblin dug her nose into wave after wave as the wind grew stronger by the minute. Hetty was taking a turn at the tiller, but the conditions were just too much for the twins. It was well past their bedtime, so Nicholas suggested that they go below and crawl into their sleeping bags.

  “But do it fast,” he warned. “Otherwise, you’ll probably get seasick down there. Just get into bed and keep your eyes closed. And take Pistol with you. He’ll be safer—and happier—down there.”

  Surprisingly, they didn’t argue with him; Hetty handed him the tiller and followed Hayley into the cabin.

  “Thanks again, girls. Great job,” Teddy said before turning to Nicholas. “You want me to take her for a spell? You look like you could use a break yourself.”

  Nicholas gladly turned the tiller over to him and stood in the cockpit, his eyes scanning the distance for anything recognizable. There was nothing to see but more darkness, no matter what direction he turned. The power remained out all around the lake, and the lightning had passed them by, its distant flickering no longer helpful.

  “What do you think we should do?” Nicholas asked. “I mean, with the wind blowing like this, and no lights onshore, I doubt if we could even find the house where we were anchored.”

  “Safest thing to do right now is stay out here in the middle, away from shore. We’ll be able to see car headlights if anybody’s crossing the causeway—that’ll help us keep our bearings. The good news is, we can just reach back and forth until the wind dies down, or the power comes on, or the sun rises—whichever comes first. You wouldn’t happen to have any coffee in the galley, would you?”

  “Yeah, Uncle Nick had some this morning. It’s funny, that seems like a long time ago. It’s instant coffee—is that all right?” He knew his parents would rather have old motor oil than the instant stuff, but in the current circumstances, it was the best he could do.

  Teddy nodded. “Good man. If it’s hot and strong, I’ll take it. And I’ll keep Goblin here straight and true. Even I couldn’t sink two boats in one night.” He smiled, adding, “Maybe I shouldn’t say that. Might be tempting fate a little too much.”

  Nicholas slid down the stairs to the galley, where he filled the kettle with water and lit the stove, bracing himself between the stairs and a bulkhead as Goblin rocked and rolled under his feet. Hayley and Hetty had wedged themselves into the port-side pilot berth, and were, to his surprise, actually sleeping. Pistol raised his head, his tail thumping against the floorboards in greeting. But as Nicholas waited in the bouncing, stuffy cabin for the water to boil, something unexpected occurred: he began to feel a little queasy. He had never been seasick before, and seemed to be suffering in equal proportions from nausea and shame. He was certain that real sailors didn’t get seasick, especially in front of their ten-year-old twin sisters, who, he was equally certain, would never let him forget it. Climbing back up the companionway stairs, he stuck his head up out of the cabin, suddenly desperate for some fresh air.

  “Duck!” cried Teddy as Goblin slammed into a wave, sending spray over the entire deck.

  Nicholas had time only to spin his head around; rather than a full bucket of water hitting his face, a good half bucket ran down the back of his neck.

  “Hooooo! That’s cold!” he said, hopping up and down in an attempt to make the water run faster. The good news? The symptoms that had driven him out of the cabin in the first place had disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

  He wiped the water from his face with his sleeve and turned toward Goblin’s bow, happy that the queasiness was gone. Leaving his hood down, he leaned forward, watching the bow dive into wave after wave, and listening to the wind howling through the rigging above. Suddenly, he stiffened and turned his head; there was sound coming from somewhere other than Goblin, a sound that didn’t quite belong. The source of the noise seemed to be off the starboard bow, but his vision in that direction was completely blocked by the staysail, which they had raised to make steering easier. When the bow rose on an especially large wave,
he got a quick glimpse under the sail, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Everything okay?” Teddy asked, noticing that Nicholas was looking around anxiously.

  “Uh, yeah. I thought I heard something, but it must be the wind.”

  Teddy checked his bearings to port and then to starboard, making certain that Goblin was still basically in the middle of the lake.

  “We’re a good mile, mile and a half offshore,” he said.

  Nicholas, reassured, nodded at Teddy. “I’m sure it was the wind and the waves hitting the hull.”

  As he turned to face forward again, he gasped.

  “Look out!” he screamed at Teddy as the sleek, pointy bow of another sailboat, slicing silently through the waves, suddenly appeared from behind the staysail.

  As Teddy threw the tiller over, Nicholas braced himself against the side of the companionway, waiting for the inevitable collision, and immediately wondered how he was going to explain this to Uncle Nick.

  But the collision never happened; the other boat glided past Goblin’s bow with only inches to spare.

  “Hey!” Teddy shouted at the other boat. “Who’s there? Get some lights on!”

  No response.

  A break in the clouds let slip a sliver of moonlight, allowing Nicholas and Teddy—their hearts still pounding—to watch the other boat charge off into the distance, under full sail and still without running lights.

  “Who was that?” Nicholas asked, finally able to breathe normally.

  “No idea. Never seen the boat before. And I know every boat on the lake. Or thought I did.”

  “They were flying. What kind of boat was that, anyway?”

  “Long and lean. Musta been thirty feet, maybe a little more. Narrow beam. And you’re right—fast.”

  “You know, I only saw it for a second, and it’s dark and everything, but I, uh …”

  “Didn’t see any people?” Teddy said. “I know. Very strange. I suppose it’s possible that whoever it was just tied off the tiller for a minute so they could take care of something else, but you’d think they’d’a stuck their head up when I yelled. Well, what do you say we take down that stays’l so we have a little better visibility. One good thing about all that: I’m wide-awake now! But hot coffee still sounds good.”

  “The water should be boiling. I’ll go make it.”

  After lowering and tying off the staysail on the bouncing foredeck, Nicholas went below and poured the hot water into two mugs, stirring two heaping spoonfuls of instant coffee into each.

  His mind drifted back to that mysterious boat he’d seen from the tower room—the one that seemed to disappear into thin air. He was certain the boat that had nearly cut Goblin in two was the same boat. “That’s twice,” he said aloud.

  “What’s twice?” Hayley asked, poking her head out from under the covers.

  “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  Climbing the stairs with two mugs of steaming coffee while being tossed this way and that by waves was no picnic, but he did it somehow—without spilling a drop.

  Teddy took a mug, thanking him again for the rescue and the hospitality. “Hoo-boy!” he shouted into the wind after his first sip. “That’ll put hair on your chest!”

  “Did I make it too strong?” Nicholas asked.

  “No such thing. It’s perfect.”

  Between waves, Nicholas managed to bring his mug to his lips and take a big drink. He almost gagged. “Ugh. How can you drink this stuff?”

  “Ah, you get used to it. Usually starts in college—all-night study sessions.”

  “The only time I ever drank it was at my grandmother’s. She put in lots of milk and sugar, I think. It wasn’t anything like this.” If he hadn’t been shivering from the cold, he would have tossed the rest of it overboard. Instead, he wrapped both hands around the mug, soaking up the warmth.

  “Temperature’s still dropping,” Teddy noted, pulling his cap down over his ears. “And the wind’s showing no sign of letting up. Nights like this always remind me of a salty old guy I used to sail with up on Lake Erie. The colder and wetter, the better he liked it. We’d be heading for Port Stanley, over on the Canadian side, slogging through a nor’easter, and he’d look me right in the eyes and say, in this gravelly voice of his, ‘Teddy, my boy, it must be plain hell ashore on a night like this.’ Used to crack me up.”

  Suddenly, the pieces of Teddy’s story came together in Nicholas’s mind like a jigsaw puzzle, and out of the blue, Nicholas asked him, “Are you Teddy Bradford, by any chance?”

  Teddy tilted his head in surprise. “The one and only. How’d you guess?”

  “Something you said—about that being the second boat you’d sunk. And you knew whose boat this was. Uncle Nick told us about … well, what happened down by the marina.”

  The howling of the wind drowned out Teddy’s chuckle. “That was a long time ago. Back in my drinking days.” He stared at Nicholas, struggling to make out details in the dim glow of the stern light. “Wait a second—I’ll bet you’re Will Mettleson’s kids, aren’t you? Well, this is just … a little too strange.”

  When Nicholas later told Charlie about that moment, he admitted that—for just a moment—he was afraid. His mind ran riot with images of Teddy Bradford taking his revenge by deliberately sailing poor old Goblin onto the nearest rocks.

  That microsecond of panic passed quickly, though, when he realized that Teddy was laughing hysterically.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing,” he said. “But you have to admit, it’s quite a coincidence. You—of all the people in the world—saving my sorry butt from a sinking boat.”

  Nicholas prepared to defend his father’s actions of that day, his mind replaying the film of the sinking that seemed to show Charlie’s dad—who also happened to be Teddy’s cousin—someplace he shouldn’t have been.

  But Teddy had a surprise for him.

  “You know, it’s about twenty-five years too late, but I owe your dad an apology. Big-time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know how much you know about what happened that day, but your dad kind of … took the fall, I guess, for somebody else. And I let it happen. It wasn’t your dad’s fault. Not even a little bit.”

  It wasn’t your dad’s fault.

  Despite the noise and the spray, those five words hung above Goblin like a hot-air balloon.

  “I know,” said Nicholas. “I, er, we—me and my friends—did some snoop— er, investigating. We found the cut steering cable and backstay. There’s no way my dad did those things. We found the camera they were using that day. You can see stuff on that film that just doesn’t make sense. There was another kid.…”

  “Jimmy Brennan. My cousin.”

  “Right. And while my dad was still up by the mast, you can see Jimmy coming out of the cabin—someplace he had no reason to go.”

  “No good reason, anyway,” said Teddy. “Well, it sounds like you’ve basically got it figured out. You’re missing one important detail, though. What you don’t know is that I was on the boat, too—totally by accident. Like I said, that was back in my drinking days. The night before, I had a few too many up at the Causeway Lounge, and I decided to sleep it off on my boat, which was docked at the marina. Completely forgot about telling your dad and Jimmy that they could use it the next morning. Well, next thing I know, I wake up and the boat’s a-rockin’ and a-rollin’, and it feels like somebody’s jackhammering away inside my head. I had no idea where I was. I look across the boat from where I’m stretched out, and lo and behold, there’s my little cousin, Jimmy, messing around with something under the cockpit. I was wrapped up in a couple of sail bags and he didn’t even see me.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  “I remember trying. My head was pounding, my vision was still blurry—I think I was hoping it was a dream. And then he was gone. Meanwhile, I’m just layin’ there, trying to muster the strength to get up on my feet, when—bam!—we hit something
so hard I bounced off the ceiling.” Teddy raised his mug to Nicholas. “And that was the end of Maguffin—Number One, that is. You just watched Maguffin II go down. You know, maybe it’s time for a different name.”

  “So, what did you do?” Nicholas asked. “Didn’t the people onshore see you?”

  “If they did, nobody ever said anything. My guess is that once that mast fell on that poor girl’s head, that was where everyone was looking. While the boat was bouncing against the rocks and pilings, I tried to push her off, but I wasn’t exactly steady on my feet, and I fell over the side. And that’s when Jimmy found me. Let’s just say he was surprised to see me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He begged me not to say anything. He didn’t want to get into trouble. I told him I’d have to wait and see how things turned out. When I got up on dry land and saw the girl and the sheriff and then the ambulance, I thought, Oh boy, here comes a lawsuit. But next thing I know, everybody is pointing fingers at your dad and his secret plan to blow up my boat, and they’re treating me like I’m just another victim of this horrible crime.” Teddy wiped the rain from his face. “And I let them.”

  “B-but why? I mean, why did Jimmy do it?”

  Teddy shrugged. “Don’t know. He told me he wanted the movie they were making to be more realistic, but I always figured there was more to it than that. To tell you the honest-to-God truth, once I found out I was going to get a brand-new boat out of the deal, I didn’t much care. Not something I’m proud of. It’s easy for me to blame it on the booze, but the fact is, I should have spoken up. I’d like to think I would have if they’d arrested your dad or anything like that. When I heard that he’d gone back to New York, it was like my conscience was let off the hook.”

  “Can I ask you one more question? A few days after it happened, did you go looking for my dad’s camera?”

  A smile came to Teddy’s face. “Mikey Bishop. When you said you’d found the camera, I immediately thought of him. Yep, I did go over there and ask him about it. I saw him talking to your dad. I was afraid of what that film might show—you know, if the police, or my insurance company, got ahold of it. So, was I right? Did Mikey have it all along?”