The Run to Gitche Gumee

by Robert F. Jones

  When my head broke the surface, I saw Cora and Wanda staring down at me from the railing of the float boat, their eyes as wide as those of the bluegills. Treading water, I handed them the shotguns. “Don’t touch the triggers,” I warned. “One of them at least is still ready to fire and there’s a round in the chamber.” Captain Dobbs came forward and took the Brownings.

  “How does it look?” Stoat asked.

  “We can do it,” I told him. “I think we’d better raise her on the level, though, not from the bow—otherwise, that big engine might tear out the transom as she comes up. We’ll secure the air mattresses at intervals along the coamings and inflate ‘em for added buoyancy. Then we can rig a cradle of heavy line under the hull, tying it off amidships, and attach the winch hook to it.”

  “Go to it,” he said. “Just remember, though, if there’s any further damage to my boat I’m charging you for it.”

  It took us a dozen round-trips to the bottom, with Cora and Wanda tending the dive line, before we had the cradle rigged, the winch hook secured, and the stern mattresses lashed in place. Another dozen dives to fill them from the compressor. We saved time by sipping air from the hose whenever we ran short, but still it was exacting work. You had to be careful with the air hose. Suck on it incautiously and it would blow you up like an overcooked sausage. The water was cold—seventy degrees or so at the surface but much colder on the spring-fed bottom—and we were shivering as we neared completion. Harry’s lips looked dark purple and my arms were covered in goosebumps. It felt like my balls had shriveled to the size of peas.

  On our last dive we noticed that the panfish, which up to now had been observing our every move with great interest, as if they were taking lessons in knot tying, had suddenly winked out of sight. We looked around for them. Then Harry poked me in the ribs, pointing off into the deeper darkness.

  Circling out there, about thirty feet away, was the biggest fish I’d ever seen. It looked as long as a shark, with ruddy brown fins and spike-lined jaws like a barracuda’s. Its long, thick, pale green body was covered with wavy vertical stripes, dark ones, in contrast to the pale lozenges that mark a northern pike. This was the fish the Chippewas called mas kinonge—the ugly fish. Muskellunge. The Tiger of the North. And a keeper if ever I saw one.

  7

  COLLEGE GIRLS

  Cora and Wanda were sitting at the edge of the float boat’s deck, gabbing and dandling their feet in the water while they waited. Harry spotted the flicker of their red-painted toenails as we ascended from the final dive. He looked over at me, winked through the mask, and peeled off from the dive line. He swam up out of their line of sight. I paused on the line to watch. Hiding in the shadow of the hull, he reached out and tickled one of the girls’ chubby feet, then quickly grabbed the other by the ankle. We could hear the high-pitched screams underwater.

  When we pulled ourselves out of the water, laughing, the girls were waiting for us with furled, wet towels. “Take that, you brute,” Wanda said, snapping hers at my butt.

  “Hey,” I yelled, “it wasn’t me! There’s your Monster of the Deep.” I pointed at Harry. They immediately turned on him and drove him, dancing, yelping, and spinning, up against the bow rail.

  “Enough of that nonsense,” Stoat bellowed. “You’re acting like kindergartners. Cora, I’m ashamed of you. You too, Miss Nachtisch. You’re supposed to be learning proper, ladylike deportment at college. I’m not spending a small fortune just to see my daughter carrying on like a silly, lower-class guttersnipe, and I’m sure Dr. Nachtisch feels the same.” Captain Dobbs stood beside him, scowling with military rectitude.

  “Oh, Morison,” Mrs. Stoat said. “Don’t be such a party pooper. You were young too once, if you can remember that far back.”

  “But never downright silly, my dear,” Stoat said.

  “The cradle’s rigged and ready, sir,” I said. “I think we can try to lift her now.”

  We all gathered at the forward rail, staring down through the water, as Sailor McMahon worked the winch controls. The falls tautened as he engaged the electric motor, the shivs turned in the blocks, squealing, and I saw the Gar Wood shudder down there. The buried drive shaft pulled free from the muck, and I caught the gleam of the brass prop as it came clear. The boat rose slowly but even keeled from the bottom. The cradle was holding.

  Mrs. Stoat clapped, and the girls joined her.

  Sailor brought the speedboat close to the surface, then set the brake on the motor. “We don’t want to lift her clear of the water,” he told Stoat. “Once her full weight came to bear, the brake or the motor bushings might burn out. Let’s let the water support her some until we get into the shallows. Then it should be easy to back the boat trailer into the water and crank her up on the skids.”

  “Very well,” Stoat said. “You’re the old salt, after all.”

  We had to motor back to the lodge quite slowly, of course, and the sun was well down in the west by the time we got the Gar Wood out of the water. Stoat had some leftover teak in his workshop—he’d had the porch planked in it—so Harry and I turned to with the circular saw and the lathe, shaping a length to replace the mahogany strake perforated by my shotgun blasts. While Harry fine-tuned the teak, I field-stripped the Brownings, swabbed out their tubes with solvent and gun oil, and lubricated all the moving parts. Then I put them back together again. By sundown, we had the speedboat’s hull repaired and caulked, damn near as good as new. Sailor had drained the gas lines and dried out the electrics on the Liberty engine, replaced the wet plugs as well. We refueled and launched the speedboat. When we lit off the engine, it coughed, sputtered, then roared back to life, none the worse for its four-hour immersion. Sailor took us out for a quick spin, and as we pulled back in to the pier, Stoat came down from the lodge, drink in hand as usual.

  I jumped up on the dock and snapped to attention, threw him my most squared-away Parris Island salute. “All repairs effected, sir,” I said. “Ship shape and Bristol fashion.”

  He nodded and almost smiled. “Well, Mr. Slater, I must say I’m impressed. I think you and Mr. Taggart have won yourselves a reprieve from the long arm of the law.”

  “As we say in the Crot . . . er, the Corps, sir, ‘Can Do.’ We did.”

  Sailor McMahon, flemishing the mooring lines, looked up and blew a muted raspberry. There’s no love lost between jarheads and swabbies.

  “I think you’ve earned yourselves a bite of supper,” Stoat said. “Come on up to the lodge. Evangeline has a barbeque waiting. Baby backribs and sweet corn, I believe.”

  The barbeque pit was behind the lodge, and Evangeline stood before the dancing flames in a crisp white apron and chef’s toque, turning huge slabs of meat that sizzled with gleaming red sauce. Flo, now clad in a maid’s uniform, was helping her. A massive black kettle seethed on one side of the grill. Cora and Wanda stood beside it, shucking cobs of fresh-picked corn. Captain Dobbs was with them, flyboy hat cocked back to show his curly hair, drink in hand, chatting the girls up. With his free hand he was demonstrating intricate aerial maneuvers. He frowned as we walked up. “What are you punks doing here?” he said.

  “Now, now, Francis,” Mrs. Stoat said, walking over from a redwood picnic table laden with bowls of German-style potato salad and cole slaw. “Let’s have none of that. These boys have redeemed their reputations.” She was sipping from a highball glass filled with one of Flo’s concoctions. It was redolent of gin. Weeds bobbed on the surface. Some were stuck to her teeth.

  Stoat was recharging his dry-fly glass with scotch and ice cubes. “That’s right, Captain Dobbs,” he said. “Please confine your dogfights to the sky from now on. These chaps are here at my invitation.” He turned to us. “Help yourselves to drinks, boys. There’s lemonade in that pitcher and plenty of Cokes in the cooler.”

  Harry went over to the drinks cart and poured us each a tall glass of Coca-Cola. After glancing around to ensure that no one but me was looking, he topped them up with two hefty slugs of Jack Daniels, then
added ice from the silver bucket. But Cora must have seen him. She sauntered over, swallowing a smile, and murmured sotto voce, “Naughty naughty. Scandaleuxe. Très méchant, mon cher. Now pour me one just like yours. And another for Wanda.”

  Wild college girls, I thought. They’re living up to the locker-room legend. Maybe, if we played it cool, a little “free love” awaited us. She was friendly enough, as was the wickedly wonderful Wanda. And after all, as every thoughtful high school boy knew, there’s only a single letter’s difference between “genial” and “genital.”

  The ribs were already off the grill. Evangeline retrieved the last steaming ears of corn from the kettle, piled them on a plate, and announced, “Ladies and gents, dinner is served.”

  Flo went around the table with heaped platters, serving us like a well-trained menial. “What is this?” I whispered to her as she came around to me. “Have you signed on with the plutocracy?”

  “She’s paying me very well,” Flo said in my ear. “And tomorrow, when they close the lodge for the winter, I’m flying back down to Milwaukee with them. A full-time job, well away from the clutches of Doc and Curly. And anyway,” as she straightened back up with the platter, “it’s none of your business, schoolboy.”

  After dinner, finished off with fresh, hot blueberry pie à la mode and black coffee (surreptitiously spiked with Asbach Uralt brandy), the girls put a stack of records on the phonograph and we danced with them on the screened porch, under the dim light of Japanese lanterns. Harry accompanied the platters on his sax from time to time, blowing Birdlike runs around the melody line. I realized, not for the first time, that music and an armful of warm girl is the best dessert of all. Captain Dobbs walked by outside, carrying a tool kit down to the Beaver for some preflight repairs. I’d heard him telling Stoat at dinner that there was something wrong with the altimeter. He gave us the fish eye as he went past.

  “That stuck-up creep,” Wanda said. “He’s got his eye on Cora. Warm for her form, as they say. And her daddy’s loot, too, I’m sure. All he can talk about is how great he was in the war, flaming Zekes and Zeroes right and left, as if we cared, and making out with army nurses.” She frowned and gruffed her voice a bit. “He ain’t got no savoir faire.”

  I looked over at Harry and Cora, dancing belly to belly to the strains of Frankie Yankovic’s “Blue Skirt Waltz.” You couldn’t have slipped a Gillette Blue Blade between them. His eyes were rolling. “Does Harry have it?” I asked.

  Wanda laughed. “He’s kind of cute, though. I like that little stutter of his, you know, when he isn’t really sure of himself?”

  “Am I too . . . er, cocky?” I asked. “Like Captain Francis Dobbs?”

  She looked down at the bulge in my khakis, then pressed her belly against it. “No,” she giggled. “Cockier!”

  The record ended and the needle skittered in the groove. Harry walked over while Cora went to the phonograph. “S-s-say, C-Cora’s got an idea. I was telling her about that muskie we saw this afternoon, and she suggests we sneak out there in one of the rowboats with our flyrods. The old man’s already in bed, and Flo’s giving Mrs. Stoat a mud bath in the steam room, so there’s no one to stop us.”

  “What about Dobbs and the Sailor?”

  “S-Sailor’s hanging around waiting for Flo to get f-free. Cora thinks he’s s-sweet on her. And as you can see from here, the fly-boy is butt-up in the cockpit of his B-Beaver.”

  “I’m game,” I said.

  Cora blew out two of the lanterns and stacked another pile of platters, classical this time, to play while we were gone. Whoever passed the porch in the next hour or so might figure we were sitting there in the dark, listening to the music. Then we snuck down to the beach through the shadows. We chose the bigger of the Adirondack boats. I rowed while the others sat bow and stern. It was dead calm on the lake. The light cedar hull moved fast through the water, despite the load. From the Beaver came only the sounds of tool clatter and muttered curses. Soon we were clear of the light halo spread from the lodge. The moon was not yet up and the lake glimmered black in the starlight. I aimed for the weedbed nearest to where we’d salvaged the Gar Wood. Harry tied the Cannibal-Killer on his flyrod ahead of a six-inch wire leader. I hoped the light, flexible wire was strong enough to withstand those razor sharp teeth we’d seen in the muskie’s duckbilled mouth.

  “This is the p-place,” Harry said. He stood up in the bow. “How’s about let’s do like we did with that big b-brown. I’ll cast first—say a dozen throws—then you take over.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s dark out here,” Wanda said. “Spooky—and chilly, too.” She shivered.

  “You should have brought a sweater like I did,” Cora said. I took off my OD wool shirt, and draped it over Wanda’s shoulders. Then I moved back and sat beside her on the narrow stern thwart. I wrapped my arm around her.

  “A true gentleman,” Cora said.

  Harry worked out flyline and dropped the Cannibal-Killer just short of the weedbed, which we could see faintly in the starlight.

  “Let it sink about twenty counts,” I said.

  “I know, I know. I was down there too, remember?” He waited, then started stripping in, mixing it up as was our wont with big piscivores. Wanda looked up, at me, tucked warm under my arm, those big wide eyes, and what could I do? I kissed her. Forgive me, Lorraine . . . . She tasted tart and sweet, of lemonade with just a hint of bourbon. I felt her hand on my thigh, then it moved up. The ambient air temperature soared.

  “Cocky?” she whispered. She was wearing a light cotton summer skirt, mid-calf length as was the style that year, and I slipped my hand under it, up over her knee to her thigh. Smooth as warm silk. Then skating higher, the skin even smoother, almost hot now. Humid. She eased her legs apart, inviting me onward. A touch of delicate fur . . . . No skivvies!

  Ah yes, college girls! They come prepared.

  We slipped off the thwart, down into total darkness. One thing led to another. The Fly Trap, Sergeant Stingley called it. Baited with honey.

  High overhead I could hear the wings of night birds passing. But no, it was only Harry’s flyline, false casting again and again.

  To hell with Sergeant Stingley. For that matter, to hell with fishing.

  I don’t know how long Harry kept at it, but when I next raised my head, the only sound I heard from up forward was that of serious smooching. Cora had brought a blanket along, and they were down there beneath it. The moon was just edging over the pines to the east. Wanda sat up, straightening and smoothing her skirt, rehooking her bra, so I tucked myself in and buttoned my trousers.

  We’d drifted a bit during our little time-out, and now the boat lay much closer to the weeds. Kneeling amidships—we were rocking too erratically (or should I say erotically?) to risk standing—I picked up the flyrod and I cast down the length of the weedbed. Pike and muskies like to lie in ambush, hidden by weed or sunken logs, which they closely resemble, then dart out to nail any finny passersby that catch their fancy. I retrieved the Cannibal-Killer at a leisurely pace, trying to see myself through the muskie’s eyes as a fat, naive alderman of the weedbed, out for a midnight stroll in the new risen moonlight—a silvery creek chub, say, or an outsized dace—ambling along with not a care in the world, maybe even burbling a piscine version of the Colonel Bogey March. The nearly full moon, yellow as a round of Wisconsin cheddar, was high enough now to throw slanting beams through the water. As the fly came into the boat, I saw a shadow cruising behind it, ghosting along like an underwater freight train. It moved up close, until its long snout just tickled the trailing edges of the bucktail, then matched its pace to my retrieve. The Cannibal-Killer swam home toward the rod tip.

  Was I imagining this? I slowed the fly when it was still about ten feet out, then stopped stripping altogether. The Cannibal-Killer sank, and the shadow sank with it. I stripped again, fast, a long, hard pull. The shadow rose with the pulsations of the deer hair. Now the fly was right alongside. I held it there in the water
, six inches down, then started working it around from the rod tip in a broad, dodgy figure eight. But the shadow had had enough. It sank slowly, back into the dark.

  “My God, what was that?” Wanda was standing at my shoulder.

  “I think it was him,” I said.

  “The muskie?”

  “What else in this lake could be that big?” I sat down on the thwart, and she eased down beside me. My heart was pounding.

  “Maybe I wasn’t stripping it fast enough,” I said.

  “Will he come again?”

  “Maybe. With these guys you never know till they hook up. Or don’t.”

  Harry’s head poked out of the blanket. “What happened?”

  “I had a follow.”

  “Was it him?”

  I nodded.

  “Get back out there,” he said. “G-goddamit, you have all the luck.” Then Cora’s hand emerged and pulled him back down. “Let me know what happens.” His voice came muffled through Hudson’s Bay wool.

  I waited a few minutes to allow the muskie to get back to his lie. Then, taking great pains to ensure that the oarlocks didn’t squeak, I rowed us out a short distance, to change the angle of my cast and retrieve. Once again the flyline whistled through the air, weaving gleaming white loops in the moonlight, and the C.K. plopped down, far up the weedbed. This time I stripped in much faster, crouching down close to the gunwhale and keeping the rod tip low. Wanda knelt beside me, watching the line snake back in. Then I saw a vee appear on the water, beyond the visible end of the line. A big damned bow wave! He was coming for it, and he meant business. I speeded up my retrieve, almost spastic now, as if the fat alderman had just realized he’d strayed into a bad part of town. Then, whammo!—twenty feet out the muskie took. In my head, a flashing x-ray image of the alderman’s spine shattering like a matchstick. A great boiling swirl at the top of the water, and the impact jarred the rod clear down to its cork handle. I struck without raising the rod tip, yanking straight back with my line hand, once, twice, three times for good measure, trying to bury the hook past its barb. They have hard mouths, muskies.