The Run to Gitche Gumee

by Robert F. Jones

  “Daddy, you remember Florinda Wakerobin, don’t you?”

  He looked Flo up and down. His eyes were bulbous and watery, a delicate blue, like Cora’s, but with a faint trace of yellow in the whites. Thinner, fainter cousins of the wireworms on his nose laced his eyeballs. Still, they were shrewd eyes, I realized, chilly, giving away nothing, but quick to read weakness. A gun-fighter’s eyes, or a poker player’s.

  “Ah, yes,” he drawled in a tony back-east accent, “the Shawnee shamanette. Or should I say the Winnebago witchdoctor? I never can remember all those tribal names. But I don’t suppose it makes much difference. All you redskins look alike anyway. What are you peddling today, my dear? Eye of newt spritzers or essence of eagle’s urine?” He smiled at his own wit, then turned to Harry and me. “And what have we here, your halfbreed sons? They’re certainly dark enough, I’d say.”

  Harry laughed. “We’ve been on the river,” he said, smiling and putting out his hand. “I’m Harry Taggart from Heldendorf, and this is my friend Ben Slater. He’s on leave from the Marine Corps. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stoat. My father, Jake Taggart, owns Heldendorf Lumber. He’s a c-customer of yours.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A good one.” Stoat shook Harry’s hand with reluctance but pretended mine wasn’t there.

  Harry gave him the sob story about losing our supplies in the whitewater and asked if we could maybe buy some replacements from his larder. Stoat frowned, coughed, and seemed about to speak, but then we heard a screen door slam. A thin, pale woman with marcelled blue hair, wearing a florid sunsuit and wedgies, teetered her way down the lawn to join us. She was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Florinda!” she ululated. “You’re back!”

  Stoat muttered something under his breath, but I could see we were home free.

  6

  A LOON HUNT

  Inside the screened porch, as Harry and I passed it on the way to the back door, I could see the glint of tines on the big-racked deer heads mounted there. A full-length muskellunge, four feet long at least, hung over the door leading into the parlor, glass eye glaring fire and its mouth wide open. “I want one just like that, daddy-o,” Harry said.

  Stoat, under his wife’s gaze, had told us to go around to the kitchen and take what we needed by way of supplies. No need to pay for them, but in return we could help him with a chore he had waiting out on the lake. Before launching into a recitation of her current physical woes, Mrs. Stoat had insisted that Flo and “the boys” spend the day at Twodoggone, and the night as well—“We have oodles of room.”

  In the kitchen, a stout black cook named Evangeline escorted us to the cool, cavernous, well-stocked pantry, indicated a stack of empty cardboard boxes in one corner, and said, “Help yourselves. He got ’bout everthang in here, and more on call by radio if we run short.” Harry took her at her word and started loading up. I didn’t want to watch. It would only lead to petty arguments, me on the side of less, he wanting more-more-more. Once again, when we got back down to the Firesteel, the canoe would be wallowing gunwhale deep in unnecessary goodies.

  What sort of “chore” did Stoat have in mind? It wouldn’t be pleasant, that’s for sure. The Stoats of this world give nothing away for free.

  He was waiting for us in front of the porch when we staggered back with two heavy cartons of canned goods. He smiled grimly. He had a pair of shotguns with him, one tucked under each arm. “Put the boxes inside for now,” he said, then led us down to the dock. The Gar Wood bobbed there in the sunlight. I looked down into the speedboat. Red leather seats, gleaming brightwork, rich, clear-lacquered mahogany strakes. The mooring lines were coiled to perfection fore and aft. Out on the lake a loon was sounding off.

  Ha-oooo. Ha-ooo-oo-oo . . .

  “Damn those birds,” Stoat said. “They keep me up all night when the moon is out, and when it isn’t, they wake me at the crack of dawn with that dratted laughter of theirs.” He said it more like “drotted loffter.” He handed us each a shotgun. They were Belgian Browning A-5s, top grade, with ventilated ribs.

  “I’m not a man to be loffed at, day or night. I’ll drive, you boys ride up on the forward deck with the shotguns.” He stepped into the cockpit, popped a locker beside the wheel, reached in and handed us a box of 12-gauge Federals, no. 4s.

  “What are we supposed to be shooting at?” Harry asked.

  “The loons, of course.”

  Long silence as Harry digested the notion.

  “B-but aren’t they protected?” he asked. “I think it’s illegal to shoot them.”

  “Cripes O’Grady,” Stoat said, shaking his head. “They’re ruining my sleep, I tell you, annoying me day and night. They’re pests.”

  “It’s s-s-still illegal.”

  “You ingrateful little weasel, what’re you going to do? Turn me in to the game warden? I own him. Just as I own this whole damn lake, this lodge, this priceless one-of-a-kind speedboat. I own that plane, and a whole lot more. I own half the county and then some. Now are you going to fulfill your end of the bargain, or just waste my time with more of your pitiful palaver?” He stared iced steel at Harry, then composed himself. “Don’t disgrace your father, m’lad.”

  “Get in the boat,” I told Harry. He looked at me, aghast. I winked and gave him a little nod. I had a plan.

  Stoat lit off the engine and cast the mooring lines free. We hunkered on the cambered deck, up on the broad bow with the shotguns propped between our sneakers. “He said we had to shoot at the loons,” I said under the purr of the motor. “That doesn’t mean we have to hit ’em.”

  We started loading the Brownings. They were unplugged, illegal for waterfowl, and took ten rounds apiece, plus an extra shell in the chambers.

  There were two families of loons working the lake, I saw, one flock of five, another of four. The young were already in adult plumage, iridescent dark green heads, long, sharp-tipped black bills, black-and-white checkerboard collars, but their markings looked brighter than those of the parents, and they seemed—well—livelier, more prone to what looked like play, racing at one another and splashing a lot with flurrying wings. Avian teenagers teasing each other.

  Stoat two-blocked the throttle and the Gar Wood bounced up on the step, heading for the larger group at flank speed. The birds had been circling in midwater, diving now and then, but now they gathered together as we approached and swam faster, away from us, toward the false protection of a weedbed. The boat bounced and splatted, throwing a long bow wave. “The guns are full choked,” Stoat shouted as we came within eighty yards. He backed off on the throttle and the Gar Wood settled down. “Commence firing!”

  I stood, raised the Browning to my shoulder, and shot—ten yards behind the closest loon. Beside me Harry fired twice. I saw the shot patterns slash the water, long and ragged and white, and the dark green heads disappeared. Stoat spun the wheel and hit the throttle again. The Gar Wood jumped from a burble to a roar, heading to where the shot hit. We circled the spot, staring down into the water. Stoat’s voice came loud and querulous, “You missed the bahstahds!”

  “We were t-t-too far away,” Harry said. “You t-told us to shoot too soon. Maybe you can get us in c-closer next time?”

  Stoat’s face went redder than ever.

  Two hundred yards away, to port and starboard, loon heads and necks began popping from the water like so many checkered corks. They were beyond the weedbed now. We started to circle it. They dove again.

  Stoat looked for the other family. They were rafted a quarter mile away, watching the boat. He began idling in their direction, quartering as we went, never heading straight at them. “Don’t look at them,” he told us. “They’re clever little fuckahs. I’m going to try and circle them, get between them and that drotted weedbed.”

  It took a good ten minutes, but he did. This time Stoat idled in on the birds slow and easy, zigzagging all the way. The loons seemed to have lost their caution. He brought us in closer, closer. When they were only forty yards off, ab
eam of the Gar Wood, he whispered, “Kill the bahstahds!”

  “Watch this,” I hissed to Harry. As I swung around to aim at the flock, I pretended to trip on a bow cleat and lurched like a drunk, the shotgun swinging one handed in a wild arc toward the stern of the boat. Stoat’s eyes popped wide and he ducked behind the console. I dropped the muzzle and hit the trigger, squeezing twice, three times, fast. Three random holes the size of a baby’s fist appeared in the mahogany hull of the Gar Wood, just below the waterline. The lake bubbled in.

  “Oops!” I said. “I think we have a problem here.”

  The boat started to settle, fast. Already the water was ankle deep. “Plug those holes!” Stoat yelled. “Start bailing!”

  “With what?”

  “Anything—your shirts, that minnow bucket!” Harry and I stripped off our shirts and stuffed them into the shot holes, but the water immediately forced the cloth out again. I squatted down and tried to hold it in place. Harry dumped the pail of shiners over the side and started bailing. Then the hull strakes split where the shots had holed them. No way to stop the water now.

  “We’d better abandon ship,” I said.

  Stoat was white lipped, his bloodshot eyes wide open and bulging like a marmoset’s. It was at least four hundred yards to the nearest shore. He opened the locker where he kept the shells and pawed around frantically inside. “Where are those drotted life jackets?”

  Nowhere to be found, apparently.

  “I think I saw Miss Nachtisch putting them in the boathouse,” I said.

  “But I can’t swim.”

  “D-d-don’t worry, Mr. Stoat,” Harry said. “We’re both lifeguards, licensed and d-duly certified by the Red C-C-Cross. We’ll g-g-et you ashore safe and sound.”

  The Gar Wood was settling by the stern now, pulled down by the weight of the Liberty engine. Harry and I dove over the side, then surfaced facing Stoat. “Jump,” I yelled. “We’ll grab you the moment you hit the water.”

  He splashed down, rigid as a post. Before he could sink I grasped his wrist and spun him around with his back toward me, then clamped on a firm cross-chest carry with my other arm. I set out for the near shore in a strong, easy sidestroke. He writhed like a panic-stricken python. “Relax,” I said. “Don’t struggle. The more you fight, the harder you make it for both of us.” But he couldn’t loosen his rigid muscles. “Look up at the sky,” I told him. “Take deep breaths, pretend you’re lying down for a nap, composing yourself for a nice rest, counting your money.”

  That caught his attention. I could feel Stoat will himself limp.

  Behind me I watched the Gar Wood take her final plunge, stern first, the blue and white admiral’s flag flapping a last farewell from the short mast on her bow. Big glassy bubbles seethed to the surface as she sank, then died away. She was down there now, full fathom five, along with the bones of the Frenchman’s mastiffs.

  Harry and I had to trade off twice on the swim to shore. A crowd was gathered on the narrow, rocky beach when we reached the shallows, housemaids, the cook, and the boatman, along with a tall moke in a leather jacket, a Smilin’ Jack crush cap, and a cookie-duster mustache, clearly the Beaver’s pilot. Cora and Wanda stood at the front of the group with Flo, comforting Mrs. Stoat. As we touched bottom at last and struggled to our feet, she broke away from Flo and dashed into the water. Stoat shook me off and stood upright, sodden but furious.

  “Morison, are you all right?”

  “Yes, Eunice, quite. But I’ll be even better when I see these young vandals behind bars. Dobbs,” he yelled up to the pilot, “get on the plane radio and contact the sheriff’s office. I want to report a felony. Piracy. Have them send a squad car right away.”

  “Right on it, Mr. Stoat.” The pilot grinned at us nastily and legged it for the dock.

  “Daddy!” Cora gasped. “You can’t! They saved your life.” Wanda too looked horrified. Mrs. Stoat bobbed her head in agreement with her daughter.

  “These boys are heroes, Morison,” she said. “You can’t swim a stroke, and they carried you halfway across the lake.”

  “Only after they sank my boat,” he answered. “They purposely shot holes in the hull and foundered her. A sixty thousand dollar treasure! Irreplaceable!”

  “That was an accident,” I said. “I tripped on a cleat and the gun went off in my hand.”

  “Balderdash,” Stoat said. “We’ll see what my good friend the sheriff says.”

  He waded ashore and set off for the lodge, dripping but dignified.

  The boatman was waiting for us to climb the bank. He was a big guy with tattoos on his forearms and a flattened nose, scar tissue over his eyes. He looked like an ex-pug. “You guys come with me now. I’m gonna lock you punks in the storeroom till the law gets here.”

  “We could turn around and swim for it,” I muttered to Harry.

  “No good,” he said. “Stoat knows my dad. Remember?”

  We marched back to the lodge.

  “I hope they at least give us lunch,” Harry said.

  An hour later, Dobbs fetched us from the storeroom, where Harry had made serious inroads on a box of marshmallow cookies. The pilot marched us into the dining room. Stoat, seated at the table with a plate of soup and a club sandwich before him, had changed to another outfit: a navy blue blazer over a Harry Truman Hawaiian shirt, and ice-cream trousers. The sheriff, it seemed, was away from his office on other business. He wouldn’t be back until Monday. This was Saturday.

  We offered to dive on the boat and try to salvage her. Dobbs and the boatman, whose name it seemed was Sailor McMahon, laughed, but Mrs. Stoat sided with us. “They could use the float boat,” she said. “It has a power winch on it.”

  “And we’ve got that portable air compressor out in the garage,” Cora added. “You know, the one we use to inflate car tires and the beach balls. They could rig deflated air mattresses along the Gar Wood’s rails, fill them with the compressor, and with the help of the winch crank her up to the surface again.”

  “L-l-et us at least give it a shot, Mr. Stoat,” Harry said. “We’re very g-good in the water, either under it or on the t-top.”

  “As you well know, my dear,” said Mrs. Stoat.

  Reluctantly, Stoat agreed.

  “We haven’t eaten since breakfast,” Harry said. “C-can we have m-maybe a sandwich or something before we start?”

  “No,” Stoat snapped. “You’d have to wait an hour before going into the water again, and time’s a-wasting.”

  Cora and Wanda rustled up fins, face masks, and an armload of sagging air mattresses while Harry and I lugged the compressor down to the dock. Sailor McMahon had unmoored the float boat and brought it alongside. We all piled aboard and motored out onto the lake. The only one missing was Flo, who was out in the woods collecting what she called “simples”—weeds, bitter berries, and other shrubbery from which to concoct Mrs. Stoat’s lotions and potions.

  Harry and the girls unplugged the air mattresses and deflated them. Stoat and his wife sat in lawn chairs on the afterdeck, which was carpeted in sisal dyed royal blue. The great man had donned a commodore’s hat, all glittering with gold braid. He had a big green Havana stogie lit, an Upmann corona puro, and was sipping a gin and tonic from one of his dry-fly glasses. Dobbs sat to one side in another chair. Cora had told me he was an ex-captain in the USAAF. He’d flown P-38 Lightnings in the Pacific with Dick Bong, the baby-faced killer from nearby Poplar, Wisconsin, who’d been the top U.S. air ace of World War II with forty kills. Captain Dobbs, she said, had downed a dozen Nips. “He would have got more, he says, but the war ended too soon.” In those days girls were still impressed with martial deeds.

  I had a pretty good fix on where the Gar Wood went down, triangulating the position between the weedbeds and the flagpole at the lodge. The lake water was a clear dark green and you could see the bottom at least twenty feet down. After some slow cruising over the area, I spotted the bow sticking up from the weedgrowth down there, the admiral’s flag hanging
limp from the jackstaff.

  “There she is!” I yelled back to McMahon. “Hold it right here and I’ll drop the hook.” He backed the 125-horse Evinrude, and I uncleated the bow anchor, careful not to let the Danforth Hi-Tensile, which weighed fifty pounds, plummet straight down through the hull of the Gar Wood and cause even more damage.

  “I’ll go down first and see how it looks,” I said. “I’m the one who sank her in the first place.” Harry found a smaller, ten-pound mushroom anchor in the stern and bent it to a coil of light manila, securing the bitter end to another bow cleat. This was an old Polynesian pearl diver’s trick we’d read about and adapted to our spear fishing expeditions in the lakes around home. You grabbed the anchor line with a hand and your toes at the surface, alongside the boat, then your partner released it and the anchor dragged you to the bottom lickety-split, saving the time and energy you’d otherwise waste in swimming down. I went over the side, pulled on mask and fins, and hyperventilated a bit, charging my blood and lungs with oxygen, then gave Harry the high sign. He unbent the line from the cleat and down I went.

  It was twilight on the bottom, a dark green dusk with the waterweeds waving spookily in all directions. Blue gills and rock bass finned out of the murk and goggled at me through the face plate, curious. In the distance I thought I saw a pickerel cruising the edge of the gloom. Looking for lunch, as always. The Gar Wood lay keel down in the weeds, her propellor shaft deep in the muck. The shotguns still lay inside the hull. I picked them up—amazing how light they felt underwater—and kicked my way back to the anchor line. I tucked the guns under one arm, then gave two sharp tugs on the line, our signal that I wanted to be pulled up. Harry hauled away.