Spider Lake

by Gregg Hangebrauck

  His father turned his gaze to the direction of the lake, facing into the wind. Ben noticed his hair was dark brown. The mild breeze rustled the brown locks of his father’s hair and riffled his plaid shirt. He looked like he was in his mid thirties. Ben wanted very badly to get up and hug him. His father looked back down and said, “Wait for four Ben. Do you understand?”

  Ben wanted to answer, but he still felt paralyzed. When he tried to speak, his words were garbled. He shut his eyes.

  Then he opened them and looked around. The tent fabric was moving slightly in the gentle morning breeze. It was light out, and he could hear voices. He smelled bacon frying. The sound that knobby tires make on gravel went by from his right to his left. He could hear children. His phone was chiming, informing him that he had messages waiting. He sat up rubbing his eyes. He looked at the smart-screen of his phone which was propped up, half out of his shoe. It read nine-twenty-three. He realized he had been dreaming.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Covert Ops ( 1968 )

  att woke up that early morning with a beautiful idea rattling around in his adolescent head. He could barely contain his excitement. He got up quickly, put on a striped pair of shorts and a tee shirt and flew down the stairs to the kitchen. His mother left him a note as she always did, detailing what he should do that day in the way of chores, what he should eat, and most importantly, what he should keep his grubby mitts off under penalty of death.

  Matt’s father had bolted when he was still very young, and his mother had to pick up the slack, working two jobs just to make ends meet. Since his father left home, Matt could count on one hand how many times he had seen the guy, and there was no real affection whatsoever between the two. Matt read the note, and followed his mother’s orders to a tee. He didn’t want to contribute in any way to her already difficult life, so he always did what she asked of him. He ate a couple of frosted pop tarts, washed the previous night’s dishes, and straightened his room.

  He didn’t linger at the house after finishing his mother’s list. He was too exited to waste any time. Once aboard his gold sting-ray, he would ride as fast as he could the mile and a half to Ben’s place. His friend would no-doubt love his idea. Ben always took his ideas and made them bigger. Ben was kind of like the brains of the outfit, having the extra imagination to make simple ideas into works of art. Matt was sure that Ben would be gung-ho on this one, and Matt could hardly wait to spring it on him.

  He rolled past the Spot-Lite waving to Mister Nerroth who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of his store. Nerroth acknowledged Matt by waving back, and then continued gesturing with the same hand for Matt to stop and buy something with a “Come here.” gesture. Matt kept on rolling past the cigar-mouthed Nerroth though, and when the old man realized that Matt was not stopping, he sent the third and final signal that indicated “Alright, you’re not stopping, who cares!” Matt thought about the old guy communicating three things with one hand without ever having to say a word. The old guy was sure expressive.

  Matt could still smell the cigar as he skidded into the left turn onto Spider Lake road. He fancied himself as a north-woods version of Charlton Heston in the chariot race in the movie Ben Hur. There wouldn’t be much that could slow him down this morning. The draw of the Spot-Lite was very strong and he knew if he could resist that strong force, he could resist pretty much anything. He stood up on his bike, applying as much energy as he could to his pop-tart fueled legs. He might make it in record time this time.

  Ben was just finishing up tending to his customers when Matt rolled up. Matt always braked neatly with his fancy hand brakes and stick-shift on his three-speed lime-green stingray, being careful to put the kickstand down before he climbed off his bike. This time Matt did a kind of Audie Murphy move, and jumped off the shiny machine while it was still rolling. The stingray continued on about ten feet or so before the centrifugal force gave way to gravity, crashing the bike in spectacular fashion. It was funny to Ben when kids dismounted that way, and he couldn’t help imagining that the bikes were alive and wounded, falling dead from some unseen arrow or bullet. Only the kids with old bikes dismounted that way, and Ben guessed correctly that Matt was excited.

  “Ben, I’ve got an idea!”

  “I guess you do. You’re in luck. The bike hit the grass and not the gravel.”

  Matt looked over at his fallen bike for just a second before continuing.

  “I have a plan that would fix the monkey.”

  There was an imaginary kick-start in Ben’s brain and it just started the auxiliary engine. His internal wheels were beginning to turn. “Hold on Matt. I just have to put a couple of things away. You can tell me about it in a minute.”

  Ben was wondering what his friend had thought of. It was a good idea, getting even with the hairy little fur ball. No doubt it was about time to get some revenge. He had been trying himself to figure a way to get back at the nasty creature. He just wanted to stall Matt a minute, buy enough time so he could think of something of his own. He wouldn’t grab the glory, or take any credit for the idea. He would just nudge it along and give Matt the kudos. He couldn’t hold his friend off any longer. He stopped what he was doing and gave his friend his full attention.

  “Okay Matt. I love the idea. Whatcha got in mind?”

  “Hot sauce.”

  “You mean you rolled your bike all this way to tell me you want to give the monkey hot sauce?”

  Ben could see that he had just offended his friend, so he backed off on his last comment. He touched his jaw pretending he was deep in thought. Jack Benny always touched his jaw on TV when he was thinking. “Now that I think of it Matt, it sounds like a pretty good idea. Let me think about it a minute.”

  Matt was very interested in what his friend was cooking up. He liked the way Ben thought. He was a natural for upping the ante when they were planning something. The two of them had a lot of fun when they put their heads together. Ben finally snapped his fingers, signaling that an idea had come. He actually had the idea several minutes before, when Matt suggested getting back at the monkey, but he kept it to himself to stretch out the dramatic effect. It was no use wasting the suspense, just to save a few minutes of time.

  ”I say we fix the monkey and raid the girl scout camp at the same time.”

  The delay had the effect Ben was looking for. Matt was beaming at the thought of fixing the monkey and the girl scouts in one stroke. Matt might have thought of it himself, given enough time, but ideas kind of take on a life of their own, coming out when they are good and ready. The time was right for the two boys to go on the offensive, all that needed to be done was some careful planning.

  “How do you plan on doing it?”

  “I’m not sure. Morris is pretty smart. I say we try to introduce Morris to the girl scouts.”

  “How in the world do we do that Ben?”

  “We have to break it all down into parts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we know we have to bring Morris to the camp right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s one part. We also know we have to quiet down the monkey. He will be shrieking his fool head off if we have him trapped.”

  The two of them slowed down considerably now that they were sorting the impossible thing in their heads. They both sat and thought about the various aspects of the master plan. They broke it down into parts, just as Ben suggested they should. They thought of the many ways they could make the thing happen, making frequent trips to the Rhinelander library to learn all they could about White-headed Capuchins and over the counter sleeping aids.

  Ben talked his mother into buying him a modest supply of camouflage-colored face paint from the army surplus store in Rhinelander. He convinced her that the paint was needed because every self-respecting boy had camouflage. How could you play at army without the stuff? She finally acquiesced and submitted to the purchase.

  The toughest part of their plan was the invasion of the girl scout perimet
er. How could they keep that monkey quiet enough to put the plan in place before a camp counselor came out? In the end they came up with a plan to give Morris tasty treats for a few days to throw him off his game. Once the monkey let his guard down, they would slip him a mickey, just like in the movies.

  Another problem was how to get to the edge of the girl scout camp without being noticed. The best and most obvious way was by boat, but the only good place to beach it was right at the camp. They couldn’t park the boat there because the camp was off-limits to boys, and the place was crawling with activity until all hours of the night. On some nights when the wind was right, you could hear all those brownies singing Kum Ba Yah as if they were sitting on your own front lawn.

  There was one good thing from the girl scout camp that was working in the boys favor. They were making nightly raids of their own to the edge of the mansion grounds on the south side of the camp. They had all sorts of fire-light stories going about the rabid dog in the woods, and the big girls were bringing the younger ones out just to scare the daylights out of them. If they could implement their plan while the girl scouts were on a Hound-hike as they had begun to call it, the boys could get their dirty business done, but they had to be fast.

  Digger did call the campground office once to try and put an end to the Hound-hikes, but he was immediately shot down by the camp’s head master, Mrs. Mitchell. She informed McCann that not only did the camp own all the wooded property right up to the Rule estate fence, but also the girls were allowed the run of it. She added; “And if your guard dog harms one tiny little hair on one tiny little head, I will bring the full weight of the Girl Scouts of America down on you like a ton of bricks!” Mrs. Mitchell had a way with words.

  The boys decided that the operation could only be mounted by land. Any amphibious assault would be totally out of the question. They would walk to the camp on foot via the north side of the lake where their secret fort was located. They would not want to be seen by anyone walking on the path, so they would duck into the weeds if they heard someone coming, and once they were near the perimeter of the camp, they would have to army-crawl.

  They spent quite a lot of time trying to name the operation. To their way of thinking, you really couldn’t run a good operation without a name. All legitimate operations had names. They tried obvious ones such as Monk-Girl, Mor-Camp, or Girl-Bane and not so obvious ones such as Prime-Rib, or Show-Monk, but they finally arrived at Chimps-Ahoy because they liked the sound of it.

  The first night of operation Chimps-Ahoy went off without a hitch. The boys had a riot army-crawling their way up to the edge of the camp on the north side. The girls were making their usual girlish racket, screaming every now and then at some dopey ghost story and the boys had to listen to all sorts of ridiculous songs. Then the girls were Kum Ba Yah-ing again. They laid flat and watched through their field glasses for any sign of a pattern. They were mainly watching the older counselors, keeping track of their comings and goings and entering the data into a log book. Luckily, the counselors were creatures of habit, making the rounds at regular intervals just like the Nazi guards in all he World War Two concentration camp movies. Why is it that the enemy was always so ridiculously predictable?

  The same scenario was carried on for the next two nights, each phase of operation Chimps-Ahoy being completed as planned and on time. Fortune was smiling once again on the boys, although they didn’t know it. The night they brought the plan to its fruition, some of the older counselors took a field trip to the theatre in Rhinelander to see a dopey Doris Day film leaving only a skeleton crew to hold down the fort.

  “Did you get it Matt?”

  “Yeah, I have it here.”

  Matt pulled a pill out of his front shirt pocket. It was one of his mother’s and the boys had done quite a bit of reading about it in the public library. It was what Matt’s mom used sometimes to help her go to sleep. She had bouts with insomnia every now and then especially since Matt’s father ran off. They knew that they had to be precise with the dose they gave to Morris. If they gave him too much, he would be going for his last Labrador ride. They calculated the animal’s weight and what Matt’s mother weighed, and estimated the fractions scientifically and mathmatically.

  They had also found out the favorite food of their little monkey friend, and were armed with a juicy mango ready and waiting to be loaded. Ben and Matt had been throwing the vile creature chunks of tasty fruit for the last few days causing the fur-ball to let down its guard. Ben even had his mom pay for the exotic mango, telling her that it is the monkey’s favorite food. Tonight Morris would get his beloved mango with an added extra little bonus. They broke a tiny chunk off the pill and loaded the mango with it. Operation Chimps-Ahoy was in its final phase.

  Matt was in rare form. He really relished putting a good plan into action. Ben was more cautious, even paranoid of getting caught. When the boys were throwing the monkey the loaded mango, Matt was doing his best impression of the TV commercial.

  “Take Sominex tonight and sleeeep. Safe and restful sleeeep, sleeeep, sleeeep.”

  “Matt, can you hold it down? What if my mom or dad hear you?”

  “Oh come on pal, what are they going to do? Yell at me for singing a jingle? Come on Ben, have fun with it.”

  They watched the monkey as close as the nasty creature would allow them, and finally the little bugger did fall off to sleep, just as planned. They looked around to see if anyone was watching, and when the coast was clear, they grabbed him and stuffed him into a laundry bag.

  If they would have known the camp was deserted by all but a skeleton crew, they might have walked right up the path, across the beach, and right up to where they would place the monkey-bomb, all the time whistling a happy tune. They army-crawled however, stopping only every now and then to check the monkey’s vital signs. Neither of them really wanted to dispatch the animal. They wanted Morris to take care of their dirty business for them. Pay-backs were on the menu tonight. The girl scouts had been their arch-enemy since the beginning of time, and even more so since the anchor incident.

  The Hell-hound really barked way too much to be any real use as a guard dog. In his weeks of service at the mansion, he had been taken less and less seriously as time wore on. His best night of service was his first night, when he properly warned his masters of two intruders in the nearby woods. After that, it had been all downhill for him. The previous guard-dog had better senses, barking only when someone was actually close by. By the time the boys crawled up for the finale of operation Chimps-Ahoy, the Hell-hound was already in very poor standing with his owners.

  The boys waited with their bag of tricks until the girl scouts motivated a hound-hike. The monkey in the bag was still dozing soundly, and the Hell-hound was beginning to signal his disapproval of the skirted-menace; so the boys looked at the time and planned their window of opportunity. There was one last coup de grâce that needed to be done. It had to happen fast. They tied one end of a tiny piece of string to the monkey’s tail. Then, taking the other end, they attached a string of tin-cans.

  With the girls out on a hike, and the counselors inside, they ran as fast as they could to the girl’s shower room. They hesitated just for a minute at the door with their backs to the wall, listening for any sign of life inside. The coast was clear. The planting of the monkey bomb was at hand. The two of them hesitated again having never entered a girl’s washroom before, and hearing all sorts of awful stories, but they finally got up the courage to go in. They pulled the monkey out of the bag and laid the sleeping creature on his side.

  Matt, being the obvious risk-taker of the two looked down and said, “Awww, doesn’t he look precious sleeping like that? Ben, come here and have a look. Isn’t he just so very special?”

  Ben was ready to flip his lid at his friend for using his real name. No self-respecting outlaw would ever use a real name during a heist. He wanted only to get back to the relative safety of the woods and watch for the fireworks to begin. He did take one qui
ck look down, and he nearly burst at the comedy of it all. Matt had placed Morris’ thumb in his mouth so he looked like some kind of hairy baby lying in its crib. Ben bit his lower lip to keep from laughing at the sight of it.

  The wait took some of the shine off the whole operation. The boys had hoped to get a reaction sooner than they did. There was no hurry to go home, having cleared the way with the parents to be camping at their fort, but still, there is nothing more boring than a long wait for something, whatever it is. They twice thought about hastening the waking of Morris by throwing rocks at the shower room, but eventually they decided to let things play out naturally.

  Finally, the thing came to a head, and though it didn’t end quite the way they expected, it was well worth the price of admission. The boys were trying to stay awake, and were hashing out whether or not they should abort the mission. The tiny amount of string tied to Morris’ tail would very likely go unnoticed by Ben’s parents. Animals were always getting caught up in string and things of that nature. But if a camp counselor came out and seen Morris still sleeping with the cans tied to him, that was another thing entirely. They would easily pinpoint the source of the conspiracy just by knowing where the monkey came from.

  They were still thinking about aborting the mission when a couple of girl scouts left the fire-side sing along to take care of their necessary business. Each boy watched open-eyed as the thing played out before them. Their collective excitement was at levels they had never experienced, and they thought they would burst as their excitement increased with each step the two girls made on their way to the washroom. They were now standing, beaming with huge smiles, and it was a miracle nobody seen them. They could only imagine the two girls’ conversation as they were chatting on their fateful late-night walk to the girl’s rest room, but the Kum Ba Yahing was drowning out their words.