Snapper

by Felicia Zekauskas

  “You never know when you’ll need one,” he had told August. “I’ve seen them come in handy myself.”

  *

  Like a raging beast calmed by a powerful tranquilizer, the storm abruptly died down. Everything became strangely calm. Within minutes, the surface of the lake became eerily still and flat. From up in the sky, the moon looked down into the valley like a government official called in to assess the extent of the damage.

  When the rain stopped, JJ and Dr. Goode stepped outside the cabin. They walked down to the edge of the lake. The low rumble of a motor began to drown out the sound of water lapping against the shore. Soon a bright beam shone across the surface.

  “It’s Chief Rudolph!” JJ said to Dr. Goode.

  They waited till the boat was within shouting distance.

  “Did you find my dad?” JJ cried out.

  Chief Rudolph was slow to answer. Saying ‘no’ wasn’t always so easy.

  “Not yet, JJ,” he called back. “But now that the storm’s subsided, maybe we’ll have better luck.”

  JJ felt sick to his stomach.

  Dr. Goode put an arm around his shoulders.

  “There’s still hope, JJ,” she said.

  Then, suddenly, a curved shell began to break the surface. Deena saw it first. “Look out, Chief!” she cried.

  Chief Rudolph spun and reached for his rifle. He quickly shouldered it and was taking aim when JJ shouted, “Stop! Don’t shoot – it’s the sub!”

  The sub had popped up like a fisherman’s bobber, its curved metal surface glinting in the moonlight. Its one remaining headlamp threw a weak path of light across the water.

  On land and on the lake, nobody spoke. They waited in silence for the hatch to open. Twenty, thirty seconds passed. JJ couldn’t bear it.

  “Something’s wrong!” he cried. “Do something, Chief!”

  Chief Rudolph piloted his boat closer to the pulverized vessel. The bobbing sub looked like an oversized beer can that Jack Sully might have crushed in his fist before tossing overboard. Deputy Rhodes aimed a flashlight through the sub’s windshield.

  “They’re both in there!” he cried.

  “Both?” said Chief Rudolph.

  “Andersen and Clayton,” said Rhodes. “But they look in pretty bad shape.”

  Chief Rudolph positioned the police boat right alongside the sub. Deputy Rhodes climbed down and straddled the sub’s curved top. He rapped on the windshield. The two men inside didn’t respond.

  “Release the latch!” shouted Rhodes, hammering on the glass panel with his fist.

  August looked up, dazed. Just raising his arms required strength he wasn’t sure he had. He fumbled with the latch above his head. Suddenly, the hatch cracked open. Deputy Rhodes reached down and swung it wide. He looked at the two men crammed in the space below.

  “Jeezus, Andersen – what happened?”

  August was sitting in a pool of red that sloshed up past his ankles. If it had all been blood, August would’ve been dead. But it wasn’t. It was a mix – of blood, lake, and rain.

  “Chief!” said deputy Rhodes. “We’re going to need an ambulance!”

  Deputy Rhodes looked at August again. The expression on his face had changed. Suddenly, August looked completely alert – and alarmed.

  “He’s coming!” he said.

  “Who’s coming?” asked Rhodes.

  “The snapper,” said August.

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel it,” said August. “In my gut.”

  “Just calm down now, August. You’re probably just in shock.”

  “I’m not in shock!” cried August. “I’m telling you, it’s coming – fast. For God’s sake, Rhodes, we’ve got to –”

  *

  Grundel had followed the strange metal tube with the spinning pinwheel on its tail. He had felt the vibrations it made as it bore through the water. Grundel had lagged well behind, lurking in the wake of bubbles that trailed behind the thing. Grundel did not want to be seen by the thing’s one shining eye.

  The thing was not small, and on either side it had long barbed prongs that looked formidable. Grundel would be patient. Inside the thing were men whose arms and legs were meant for him.

  Grundel watched the thing rise to the surface. Now it was bobbing above him, as oblivious as a duck. Another boat, making even louder vibrations, pulled alongside the tube. He heard the voices of men. The moon had called him out for something special after all. He was going to have a field day.

  Grundel poked his head above the surface. There were too many shining lights – they bothered his sensitive yellow eyes. He moved back into the shadows of the floating tube. He looked up. A man in a uniform was straddling the tube.

  Grundel looked around. He saw two handles he could reach. He paddled in closer and then, with his right claw, he reached up and grabbed one handle. Then with his left claw, he grabbed the other. Then Grundel did a pull up. The whole metal cylinder rolled toward him. For a brief instant, the eyes of the man straddling the tube looked into Grundel’s. Then he slipped from his mount and fell into the water with a muffled cry.

  The frigid water was a shock. For a second or two, deputy Rhodes was too stunned to do anything. In the water below, Grundel circled languidly. He wanted to strike at just the right angle. How you came in was key.

  Deputy Rhodes had to make a quick decision. Try to climb back up onto the sub – or swim to shore.

  When he was a teenager, Donnie Rhodes had been on the Turtleback Lake swim team. But that had been twenty-five years ago. Without time to think, Donnie unconsciously assumed that he could still swim now as he had then. He started swimming. It was only forty yards to shore. Back in his prime he could do that in – what – twenty, twenty-five seconds? But Donnie wasn’t in his prime and he wasn’t in a Speedo. He was out-of-shape and he was weighed down with wet clothes and boots.

  Still, wet clothes and all, he was now more than halfway to shore. Just another fifteen, twenty yards. But this wasn’t a race Deputy Rhodes was going to win – even if he’d still been in his prime. Deputy Rhodes was racing Grundel. And Grundel was going to win.

  Dr. Goode screamed, “Hurry – he’s right behind you!”

  Chief Rudolph raised his rifle, a .30-30 Winchester, to his shoulder. He aimed at the water just behind his partner. He waited, patiently tracking Rhodes’s progress. Grundel was right behind him, just beneath the lake’s surface.

  Seeing land so close, Deputy Rhodes gave in to another misguided instinct. He stopped swimming and reached for the bottom of the lake with his feet. From here, he thought, it would be faster to run. It was another mistake. Donny’s first step slipped on the lake’s slippery bottom. Rhodes floundered. Now he was all Grundel’s. The great snapper opened his jaw wide. He would take the man’s leg just below the thigh. He tilted his body for a better angle. As the edge of his shell broke the surface, Chief Rudolph squeezed the trigger. The echo of the blast, caroming through the valley, made the one shot sound like five or six.

  Grundel’s jaw snapped shut like a trap as the bullet bore through his shell. His armor slowed the bullet, but it couldn’t stop it. Fired from such close range, the bullet penetrated deep into Grundel’s body. Grundel banked sharply to the left, seeking the refuge of deeper water. Chief Rudolph saw him clearly. He took aim and fired again. More blasts resounded through the valley.

  Chief Rudolph thought his second shot hit the snapper squarely in the back, but he was wrong. The second bullet merely grazed Grundel’s shell. Then, after skimming across the lake’s dark surface, it started to sink to the bottom. As it sank, the bullet was swallowed in a single gulp by a ravenous pickerel attracted by the allure of its shiny surface.

  Deputy Rhodes scrambled onto shore, dripping, gasping and shivering. JJ and Dr. Goode helped him to his feet as an ambulance screeched to a halt in the clearing by the cabin.

  Paramedics ran down the slope toward deputy Rhodes.

  “I’m OK,” said Deputy Rhodes, a
s they wrapped a blanket around him. “It’s the guys in the sub who need help!”

  The beams from the ambulance’s headlights lit up the whole scene: Chief Rudolph lowering the Winchester from his shoulder, the sub bobbing alongside the police boat, and the blood red waters that Grundel had left in his wake.

  Chief Rudolph looped a line onto the deck of the sub. He flung the other end to JJ and the paramedics on shore. In just minutes, the sub was out of the water and up on land. The paramedics lifted the two men out and quickly laid them on stretchers.

  JJ walked alongside the stretcher as the paramedics carried his father to the ambulance.

  “Dad!” he cried again and again. “Can you hear me? Dad – it’s me – JJ!”

  Just as they were sliding him into the back of the ambulance, Judd’s eyes opened briefly. He reached out for JJ’s hand and squeezed it weakly.

  “I love you, JJ,” he said in a faint voice. “Please – forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Dad,” said JJ. “And I love you, too.”

  Chief Rudolph stuck his head into the back of the ambulance.

  August’s head was raised slightly, propped up on a small pillow.

  “Did you get him, Chief?” he asked.

  Chief Rudolph looked into Andersen’s eyes.

  “I did, August. I hit him twice – square in the back. He swam off, but there’s no way he can survive.”

  August was silent.

  “I know how you feel, August,” said the Chief. “But it was either the snapper or Donnie. What would you have done?”

  “Exactly what you did,” said August.

  Paul Murphy, one of the paramedics on duty that night, interrupted their conversation.

  “You can talk to them, later, Chief,” he said. “But right now, we got to get them to the emergency room.”

  Paul closed the ambulance’s double doors and the vehicle pulled away.

  * * * *

  The storm kept Marc up well past midnight. His apartment had a leaky roof. The rain dripped into a small bucket that Marc had to empty every twenty minutes. When the garage doors of the Turtleback Lake Rescue Squad opened suddenly just before 2 a.m., Marc was standing at his window. He watched the ambulance speed out into the night. Throwing a coat over his pajamas, Marc dashed outside and hopped into his own champagne colored Suburu. He tailed the ambulance all the way to the northwest corner of the lake where it stopped in front of August Andersen’s cabin. Marc smelled a story in the making – and he got it.

  CHIEF BLASTS SNAPPER!

  By Marc Bozian

  The residents of Turtleback Lake can heave a collective sigh of relief. The scourge that has terrorized the town has ended.

  On Thursday night, at approximately 2 a.m., Police Chief Rudolph fired a bullet that pierced the shell of a giant snapper that was about to add deputy Donald Rhodes to its list of victims. Donald Rhodes, 42, had fallen into the lake in the midst of a rescue attempt.

  According to eyewitnesses, including Dr. Deena Goode, Principal of Turtleback High School, and Judd Clayton, Jr., a freshman at Turtleback High, the turtle was on the verge of attacking deputy Rhodes when a bullet fired by Police Chief Rudolph struck and splintered the monstrous snapper’s shell. The two eyewitnesses concurred that the wounded turtle then fled, billowing great plumes of blood. A second round, fired as the wounded reptile sought the refuge of the deep, added the final nail to the great beast’s coffin.

  Rudolph and Rhodes were out on the lake, along with August Andersen, in an attempt to rescue Mr. Judd Clayton, the prominent local real estate broker. Mr. Clayton was apparently attempting to cross the lake in a kayak during the raging storm that battered the region that night.

  The heroic efforts of Mr. Andersen in particular can be credited for saving Mr. Clayton’s life.

  Operating a two-man submersible vessel that he helped to design and build, Mr. Andersen rescued Mr. Clayton from Turtleback Rock, where the broker had been stranded when violent waves crashed his kayak against the rock.

  What induced Mr. Clayton to risk life and limb on such a reckless, ill-considered crossing has not yet been made clear. Mr. Clayton has been only semi-conscious since the accident, though doctors, who say his condition remains guarded, believe he will make a full recovery from the various injuries he sustained.

  “Some story, Marc,” said Michael Schneiderman as the two colleagues were having coffee in a booth at Bond’s.

  “Thanks, Mike. All in a day’s work.”

  “You know, you’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this snapper,” said Michael. “What are we gonna do now – now that the turtle’s gone?”

  Secretly, Michael was concerned that his new star reporter might be thinking about jumping ship. A few days earlier, when Michael was walking past Bond’s, he had glanced through the window and seen Marc talking with some guy who looked a lot like Stephen Borg, the publisher of The Record.

  “Actually,” said Bozian. “I’ve been approached about a possible book deal.”

  Schneiderman shook his head in amazement. It was unbelievable! Did absolutely everything have to be turned into a book?

  “Well, good luck with that,” said Michael. “You’ll sign me a copy when it’s done, okay?”

  “I’ll do better than that,” said Marc. “I’ll work you into the story.”

  “Great,” said Mike. “Maybe I can even play myself in the movie.”

  “I wouldn’t joke, Mike,” said Marc. “There’s been interest.”

  “So what does all this mean for the paper?” asked Michael.

  “It means I’m going to need some time off,” said Marc. “Maybe just a few months to work on the book. Then we can see where we stand.”

  “Well, then,” said Michael, spinning and rising off his stool. “I guess this is good bye and good luck for now.”

  Michael reached out for Marc’s hand. It was odd, but the two men had never shaken hands before. As their hands clasped, Marc felt something he had never noticed before: Michael’s middle finger ended at the knuckle.

  “You know, Mike,” he said. “I was just wondering – did you happen to play football here in town when you were in high school?”

  Chapter 25

  TURTLEBACK LAKE DECEMBER 2006

  After the longest, hottest summer in memory, December turned out to be the polar opposite. An arctic air mass set in and refused to budge. For a week the temperature didn’t rise above single digits. Never had the lake frozen so solid so early.

  August sat in an armchair, gazing out the window at the skaters gliding and falling out on the lake. His injured foot was elevated and resting on a pillow. He was sipping hot chocolate from a mug. Deena stood behind him, wearing a black cashmere cardigan with mother-of-pearl buttons. August leaned his head back against the soft swell of her stomach. For someone so toned, the curve of her belly was a bit of a surprise. But so what if Deena had suddenly put on a few? What did it matter?

  The scene on the lake reminded Deena of a nineteenth-century print that had hung on the wall of her kitchen when she was a little girl.

  “It’s like a scene from Currier and Ives,” she said.

  “Or perhaps a Breughel,” suggested August.

  This was what Deena loved about August. He understood her. And she understood him.

  Deena looked beyond the skaters. In the distance, far across the lake, a solitary figure sat in a folding chair, fishing through a hole in the ice.

  “Does anyone ever catch anything ice-fishing?” she asked.

  “They must,” said August. “Otherwise, why would they do it?”

  Given a choice, Deena thought she’d much rather skate and generate body heat than sit freezing by a hole hoping for a fish to come along.

  Since the night of his injury, Deena had been faithfully nursing August back to health. He had put in for a leave of absence at the university until he was back on his two feet again. Deena couldn’t have been happier. Every day after school, she stopped in at her
bungalow, changed into something comfortable, then walked over to August’s cabin with a bag of groceries. While she prepared dinner, the two of them sipped wine and talked.

  One Friday night, after she had cleared the dishes from the table, Deena was putting her coat on to leave.

  “If you feel like it,” said August, “why don’t you stay?”

  Deena sighed and smiled.

  “You know,” she said. “I was beginning to think you’d never ask.”

  *

  It was a frigid starry night, but at least there was no wind.

  Five people sat around a fire in a clearing down by the lake. Their faces glowed in the light of the flickering flames. The smoke from the fire rose straight up in a column into the star-filled sky above. The people sat on stools that all had been made from the same tree trunk.

  Judd Clayton poured a single-malt whisky into August’s mug. It was poured from a bottle he had kept in his liquor cabinet for more than a decade. He had been saving it for a special occasion, but no occasion special enough had ever cropped up. Earlier in the day, when Deena called to invite him and JJ to ‘join them around the fire,’ August decided the right moment had come.

  “There’s something I’d like to say,” said Judd, lifting his glass toward the others. “It’s not so much a toast as it is a thank-you – and an apology.”

  Everyone – August, Deena, JJ and Mary – waited for him to continue.

  “August, I’d like to thank you for saving my life. I wouldn’t be sitting here today if it weren’t for you.”

  August said nothing, but raised his mug in acknowledgement. The two men’s eyes met.