Snapper

by Felicia Zekauskas

  Owen said nothing.

  “Come on, Owen,” Wilhelmina prompted. “I want to hear you say it: ‘I’m going to sell the land.’”

  “I’ll say no such thing,” said Owen. “We’re keeping the land. I’m going to finish the cabin and I’m going to get that beast.”

  “You! The man with one hand! You’re going to chop down trees, split logs, drive nails, and slay a monster?”

  “No, Billy, not me, the man with one hand,” answered Owen. “Me, the man with three hands.”

  “So now what?” sneered Wilhelmina. “Can you no longer even count – or are you planning to grow back extra hands?”

  “I’m growing back nothing,” said Owen, looking his wife squarely in the eye. “And what I’m counting on is Isaac. His two hands and my one make three.”

  Up in his bedroom above the kitchen, Isaac knitted together the fingers of his two hands. He was praying that his parents would please stop arguing. Even with his door closed, he could still hear every word they said – or at least every word his mother said.

  Isaac turned his head to the side. That way his mattress could muffle one ear while his pillow could muffle the other. He gazed out the window. The Andersens’ house was set on a rise on the east side of town. From his bedroom, Isaac could see the moonlight gleaming on the domes and spires of Paterson. Just beyond loomed the dark black mass of Garrett Mountain, the first rise in a range of mountains that rippled and swelled from the Passaic River to the Pennsylvania border and beyond.

  Somewhere out there, in one of those moonlit valleys, was Turtleback Lake. In the woods on its western shore was the foundation of an unbuilt log cabin while in the lake itself an angry turtle patrolled the depths, swimming from side to side and end to end with the handle of an ax jutting out of its back.

  Chapter 12

  TURTLEBACK LAKE JUNE 2006

  When the phone didn’t stop ringing, Deena was sure it was Judd. When she picked up the receiver, she was ready to tear his head off.

  But then the voice she heard wasn’t Judd’s.

  It was someone else – somebody she’d spoken to once before, but only once.

  It was, she knew, before he could even tell her, August Andersen.

  She had heard his voice only that one time on the phone – when she had made the arrangements to rent his cabin for the summer.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “Well, whoever that someone else is,” said August, “I wouldn’t want to be them.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, really,” said Deena. “I just let myself get a little too worked up over nothing. But tell me, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” said August. “And I hope what I’m about to ask won’t upset you. If it does, please just say no and I’ll completely understand. But what I was hoping to do was to stop by the cabin for a couple of hours to address a few maintenance issues.”

  There was something about August’s voice that Deena found instantly soothing and calming. Moments before she had been practically throttling the receiver. Now she relaxed her grip. Then she switched the receiver to her left ear because her right ear was still a little sensitive. Judd’s nibbles the afternoon before had gotten a little rough.

  “I hope it’s not anything that I need be concerned about?” said Deena.

  “No, not at all,” said August. “Just minor maintenance. But since I’m going to be in the area, I thought I should carpe diem.”

  Carpe diem, thought Deena. Clearly she was dealing with a learned man.

  “When were you thinking of coming?” asked Deena.

  “This weekend, actually. I’m going to be in New York for a conference and I was hoping to shoot out there for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon.”

  “That’d be fine,” said Deena.

  “Well, great,” said August. “So figure I’ll just show up, probably around one or two.”

  “Sure,” said Deena. But she didn’t want the conversation to end so quickly. She wanted to keep it going.

  “I remember the last time we spoke you mentioned you were a teacher,” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking, what do you teach?”

  “I started out in marine biology,” said August. “But now I specialize in the study of fresh water bodies.”

  “Sounds interesting,” said Deena.

  “Not everybody thinks so,” laughed August.

  “Well, I do.”

  “Well, maybe then we can trade notes on Saturday,” said August. “Didn’t you tell me you were renting the cabin so you could work on your dissertation?”

  “You’ve got a good memory,” said Deena. “Maybe if you’ve got a few extra minutes you could even give it a quick look!”

  What a difference a voice made! Yesterday, she was a lioness ready to decapitate Judd just for asking to take a peek. Today, she was a lamb, ready to open her books to a total stranger.

  While Deena was keeping August on the line, Judd paced back and forth in front of his window. He had tried to call Deena – he’d found the phone number of the Andersen cabin in the Turtleback Lake directory – but the line had been busy – both times he called. Who could she possibly be talking to for so long? So much for all of Deena’s talk about wanting to remain reclusive and ‘incommunicado.’

  As Judd stewed, Deena was feeling a strange exhilaration from the conversation she had just concluded. Though she was usually drawn to a certain physical type, she had always had a hankering for something completely different: a tweedy, Volvo-driving, Ivy League-ish intellectual with patches on the elbows of his herringbone jacket and tortoise shell glasses framing probing, intelligent eyes.

  Deena’s imagination had already turned August’s voice into the embodiment of just such a man. Maybe tomorrow this elusive intellectual would finally walk into her life. But she was getting ahead of herself. She had to hold her horses. She had to remember what she was here for. Not for a man – even if he was Mr. Right. She was here for a doctor – a Dr. in front of her name.

  Deena was reminding herself of her priorities when the phone started ringing again. Instead of dispelling the last bits of her reverie, it stirred them up again. It was probably Professor Andersen calling back with something he’d forgotten to tell her. She reached for the receiver.

  “Hello,” she cooed.

  “Well you’re a hard one to contact.”

  At the sound of Judd’s voice, anger flooded back into Deena.

  “And so?”

  “So nothing,” said Judd, wondering why Deena was so quick to anger. “It’s just that I’ve just been trying to call you and the phone’s been busy – for quite a while.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” said Judd. “I was just a little surprised after what you said about wanting solitude and seclusion.”

  This was absolutely too much! Deena did not know Judd’s little broker trick for calming down by counting backwards from ten to zero.

  “Look, Judd – I don’t think I have to explain to you or anyone what I’m doing on the telephone.”

  “Whoa!” said Judd. “I didn’t mean anything. I just called because after yesterday I was just kind of hoping that maybe we could do something today – maybe go out to dinner or something.”

  Deena had made up her mind even before Judd was finished. Yesterday clearly had been a mistake. She wasn’t going to repeat it – at least not with Judd.

  “Look, Judd, I’m sorry, but yesterday was yesterday. Starting today, there’ll be no more yesterdays. I’ve got to get back to what I came here for. I’m sorry, but that’s it. Goodbye.”

  Then she hung up the phone.

  Chapter 13

  PATERSON 1928

  The only thing positive to be said about Owen Andersen losing his hand was this: it was his right hand.

  For most people, this would have been bad news. But not in Owen’s case. Owen was that one in ten: he was a lefty.

  And Owen was the kind of man who pla
yed whatever hand life dealt him. He saw no point in bemoaning what fate had taken away. He simply set himself to the task at hand.

  Now, Owen was at work on a new set of drawings.

  Each night after Wilhelmina and Isaac went to bed, he sat for hours at the kitchen table – sketching, erasing and revising. He obsessed over his drawings like an engineer or an inventor. In the morning, his wife and son found no signs of how he had spent the late night hours. The plans he was drawing were out of sight, rolled up in a tube, leaning against the back wall of a closet.

  The loss of his right hand did cause one particular inconvenience. Owen could no longer work the car’s gearshift. So he taught Isaac how to drive.

  That Isaac was only eleven didn’t trouble him. The boy’s legs were long enough to reach the pedals and he was tall enough to see out the windshield. Nor did Owen worry about the police. Cops were few and far between once they got out of Paterson. And once they were up in the mountains, they were even rarer.

  “So now what?” snapped Wilhelmina.

  She was beyond exasperation.

  “First you lose your hand, and now you’ve lost your mind!” she said, practically screaming at her husband. “Letting Isaac drive is against the law. And it’s not just your life you’re risking now, you’re risking his, too.”

  Owen hardly heard a word of what Wilhelmina was saying. In matters where he knew they would never see eye to eye, he had learned to tune her out. All Owen heard, as his wife chastised him, was the driving rain lashing against the window.

  For Isaac it was different. Isaac had no choice but to go along with his dad. His mother might think that he was taking sides, but he wasn’t. His parents’ battles were not his. He was merely a recruit, a foot soldier, impressed into service.

  “Don’t worry,” Isaac told his mom when his father was at work. “Driving’s easy. There’s nothing to it.”

  Wilhelmina could hardly believe there could be “nothing” to something that she herself had never learned how to do.

  In the end, Wilhelmina’s objections were simply ignored. One Friday afternoon, when Isaac arrived home from school, he saw his father waiting for him by the car in the driveway.

  “Ready to roll, Isaac?” said Owen.

  “I’m ready,” said Isaac.

  And off they went, with Isaac at the wheel and Owen calling out lefts and rights as needed.

  The last few miles they drove in the dark, on bumpy dirt roads that tunneled under overarching branches of leaf-laden limbs. Finally, Isaac pulled around one last bend and their headlights illuminated the clearing where the foundation of their cabin stood. They got out, gathered wood, made a fire, and ate. After eating, Owen pulled out the large sheet of paper that was curled up inside the cardboard tube he’d been carrying pinned between his ribcage and what was left of his right arm. He tried spreading the sheet flat on the ground, but it kept rolling back up into a tube.

  “Isaac,” he said. “We’ll need four good size rocks to weigh down the corners. Do you think you could find some?”

  Isaac knew exactly where to find rocks: down along the shoreline by the lake.

  “Sure, Dad,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Isaac walked down toward the lake. During the ride up, his father had tried to allay his son’s fears.

  “Don’t worry about that turtle,” he’d said. “Turtleback Lake is a big body of water. The odds of that snapper showing up in the same spot twice are next to none.”

  Still, Isaac was nervous. He tried to calm himself by breathing deeply and focusing on his task: finding four good-size rocks.

  Isaac was cradling three large rocks in his arms and bending down to pick up a fourth when suddenly the rock he was reaching for moved! Isaac’s heart skipped a beat. He dropped the three rocks in his arms and was spinning around to run away when he abruptly stopped and started to laugh. What an idiot he was being! The “rock” that had moved was a turtle – a harmless box turtle. Isaac had brought dozens of them back home to Paterson where he’d given them to friends or let them roam free in the confines of their fenced-in backyard.

  Isaac picked up the rocks he’d dropped, found a fourth, and headed back to the clearing.

  “Put one on each corner,” said his Dad.

  The woods around them were pitch black. The only light in the forest came from their campfire. Its flames hissed, snapped, and popped while casting a flickering light on the large sheet now spread out flat on the ground. The sheet was the size of an architect’s blueprint and was filled with elaborate, precisely rendered diagrams and notations. They reminded Isaac of sketches he had seen by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo in books at the Paterson Public Library.

  Isaac looked at his father in the flickering light. He wasn’t just a line supervisor in a Coca-Cola bottling plant. There was more to him.

  “What is it?” asked Isaac, his eyes widening as he looked at the drawings.

  “A trap,” said Owen. “A trap for our little friend in the lake.”

  Chapter 14

  TURTLEBACK LAKE JUNE 2006

  When Deena told Judd that there would be “no more yesterdays,” he came crashing back to earth like Icarus. Deena hadn’t just dumped him – she had destroyed him. When she had hung up the phone, Judd wanted to call her right back, but he couldn’t. She’d never answer. Yet as badly as their conversation had gone, Judd was desperate to talk to her again, to fix whatever it was that had so suddenly and inexplicably gone so terribly wrong. The thought of having to wait until their paths crossed by chance was unbearable.

  For twenty-four hours, Judd agonized over what to do. The plan he finally came up with bordered on the insane, but Judd wasn’t in his right mind. He was a man spurned; he was capable of doing practically anything.

  Judd walked back and forth on his deck. He’d been pacing out there for almost an hour. His fingers were crossed, like a kid making a wish. Earlier, he had actually knelt down and prayed to God that Deena would stick to her routine. At 1:25, his wishes and prayers were answered. Across the lake, a tiny figure walked down to the water. Judd raised his binoculars and adjusted the focus.

  When Deena reached the edge of the lake, she stopped. The white terry cloth robe she was wearing slipped from her shoulders and fell to the ground. For a moment she just stood there, sleek and statuesque in her black one-piece. Judd’s heart raced. He waited until she was in the lake, face down in the water, swimming out toward the dock. Then he raced down the wooden steps that zigzagged from his deck to his dock. He took the steps two at a time. His bathing suit was already on. As he raced the length of the long dock, Judd kicked off his topsiders and tossed aside the pink polo shirt he’d been wearing. Then, without breaking his stride, he plunged off the end of the dock into the lake.

  Judd had never in his life swum as far as he was about to. But he was a man in love, and there was no stopping him.

  *

  Deena sat bolt upright.

  She’d been in the middle of a dream when suddenly the dock beneath her began to rock. Deena looked around frantically.

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Judd Clayton’s head popped up, dripping wet. He hauled himself halfway out of the water and rested with his forearms at the edge of the dock.

  “Jesus Christ, Judd!” cried Deena. “You just scared the daylights out of me!”

  Judd tried to answer, but he couldn’t. He was gasping for air.

  Deena looked at him with a mixture of agitation and amazement.

  “You couldn’t have possibly swum here all the way from the other side?”

  Judd still couldn’t speak. But he could nod. Yes, yes, he nodded, yes he had.

  “Well, after the other day, I guess I should’ve known you were in pretty good shape,” said Deena. “That’s some swim.”

  Judd was encouraged. He had had no idea what kind of reception he was going to get.

  Deena’s first impulse was to stay angry at Judd. But for some reason, she couldn’t. Swimming across th
e lake struck her as chivalrous – like a lovestruck knight trying to win a reluctant maiden’s heart. It was crazy, but it was charming.

  “I just had to see you,” said Judd, finally catching his breath. “And not from across the lake.”

  As he rested on the edge of the dock, Judd’s long white legs dangled in the water. Ten minutes earlier, Grundel had sensed something strange and unusual: someone was swimming out in the middle of the lake. Grundel had left his lair and risen to the surface to investigate. He patiently tracked the swimmer’s progress. He followed him all the way here – to a dock floating forty or fifty yards from the lake’s western shore. And now, there the man was, clinging to the dock, with his long white legs dangling languidly like khaki trousers hanging on a clothesline.

  “Time to bring in the laundry,” thought Grundel.

  He banked in the water and went in for the attack. But suddenly, the languidly dangling legs were gone.

  *

  “Can I come up?” Judd had asked.

  Deena had hesitated.

  Was letting Judd up on the dock any different from letting him into her cabin? She sighed. What was she thinking? The dock was out in the middle of the lake. What had happened inside the cabin could never happen out here – in the middle of the lake in broad daylight.

  “Sure, why not?” said Deena. “Come on up.”

  Judd pushed down with his arms and lifted himself straight out of the water. He was barely erect when something thudded against the side of the dock. The dock lurched and Judd’s feet went sliding out from beneath him. He fell backwards into the lake with his arms flailing.

  Deena peered over the edge of the dock. Judd had vanished.

  “Judd?” she called. “Where are you? Judd!”

  Suddenly Judd popped back up to the surface, grabbed the edge of the dock, and scrambled back up. He had no idea how close he had come to losing a leg. Grundel’s second pass, like his first, was a split second too late.

  As Judd and Deena stared at the water, they heard a harsh scraping sound coming from beneath the dock. The dock rocked. Deena reached for Judd. He wrapped her in his arms.