He rolled over with a groan and promptly fell back to sleep.
A short time later the old man was back. “Goddamn it, Randy. Let’s go now, boy.”
Randall looked up at his father’s backlit form standing in the bedroom doorway. His heart sank when he saw the yellow rain slicker and knee-high rubber boots. He carried a lantern in one hand, a lunch pail in the other. This wasn’t the nightmare Randall had hoped for. It was worse.
He quickly dressed and went downstairs to find the warmth in the kitchen. A stack of pancakes sat on a plate under a warm dishtowel on the kitchen table. Before he could sit down, however, his father tromped into the room in his extra large rubber boots. “You’ll have to bring it along. You slept through breakfast again.” He grabbed a paper sack from a drawer and sloughed it on the table. “We got to go. Barometer’s been dropping all night. We got about enough time to get out and back before it sets up good to blow.”
Randall grabbed the top pancake, folded it in half, and bit into it like a sandwich. Still warm, it emanated a comforting glow as it slid down his throat. Rosie’s pancakes had achieved legendary status in Black Otter Bay. Some folks claimed they didn’t even need butter or syrup, that’s how light and moist they were. He dropped the remainder of the pile into the bag and followed his father out the back door. In the mudroom entryway he grabbed his raincoat and shoved the bag of pancakes in an oversized pocket. Unlike his father’s yellow rubber boots, his were black with red soles, and so big they came up to the tops of his knees, making sitting down, or even walking, a hazardous undertaking.
Through the open door he heard his mother’s laughter coming from the bait shop. A pickup truck with a boat and trailer was parked out back. A couple men wearing insulated coveralls stood in the driveway, the yard light illuminating them, hands in pockets, caps tilted up and back, a yellow lab sniffing around their feet. Rose was giving directions to some inland fishing lake. Why would anyone do this? Randall asked himself. Icy snow granules lit up as they shot past the flood lamp. It was the middle of the night. Why would anyone want to be out in this weather to catch a slimy old fish?
His father nodded at the fishermen and set his lantern on a table just inside the bait shop door. When he began pumping up the lamp’s gas chamber, Randall seized the moment to grab another pancake from the sack. He stood out of the wind in the entryway. This was the way his Saturday mornings had begun since before he could remember. From early spring until late in the fall, while his classmates were sleeping in and planning football or basketball games, he was traipsing around half asleep in the cold and dark. As long as the shoreline remained free of ice, he helped his father with his commercial fishing nets.
He looked out at his mother chatting with the customers. She’d thrown on a woolen sweater over her housedress and apron, but it was easy to see she was getting cold as she lightly rocked on the balls of her feet, arms folded tightly under her breasts. She looked at him and smiled, but he wasn’t about to leave this last bastion of warmth even one second before he had to.
The fishermen turned to leave, and Rose joined her husband in the bait shop. The lantern was lit now. Randall grabbed things off a shelf: a woolen stocking cap, a pair of light gloves he stashed in his pockets, and a heavier pair of lined leather choppers. The pancakes had settled warm and heavy in his stomach, returning his thoughts to the comforts of bed and sleep. Then his father called, and he stabbed around in the darker corners of the entryway to find his flashlight.
His mother met him halfway across the driveway. She took him by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. Embarrassed, he looked to the side to see his father’s lantern heading toward the path around the bait shop.
“You be careful now, Randall,” his mother was saying. “Don’t stand up in the boat like your father does. You hear me?”
“I don’t want to go, Mom.”
She patted his coat pocket. “You have your pancakes?” They’d done this before.
“He doesn’t need me, Mom. Please don’t make me go.”
Rose pulled her son closer. “But he does need you. And even more, I need you to be there to keep an eye on him.” She reached out to pull his cap down snug over his forehead, and then zipped up his heavy raincoat. She said, “You understand what I’m saying?”
He nodded.
Rose placed her hands back on his shoulders and patted him one last time. “You do a good job now, Randall. That big boat will keep you safe. You make your father proud.” And then she scooted around him to disappear into the warmth of the house.
He watched her leave, standing still in the driveway as the back door closed. Sometimes he hated her. Why couldn’t she stand up to the old man? She ran the household with a military-style precision and kept the bait shop profitable all by herself. Everyone in town thought the world of Rose Bengston, but Randall knew she’d never challenge the actions of her husband. They were only a generation away from the hand to mouth, sustenance existence of the early settlers, a world where husbands were never questioned, even when it meant championing the safety or wellbeing of an only son.
When the yard lamp over the bait shop door turned off, he hastily grabbed for his flashlight. The backyard and driveway suddenly fell into a terrifying black darkness. Clouds filled the sky, covering up and blotting out any light emitted from the stars or moon. The combination of absolute darkness and shivering cold scared him, like one of the vampires in his comic books, threatening to suck the breath out of him. It frightened him in the same way that the dark depths of the big body of water out there scared him.
Far off through the woods he spotted his father’s lantern bobbing between the trees toward the shore. Following the meager glow of his flashlight, Randall made his way around the bait shop and picked up the pathway to the boathouse. He’d hardly started out, however, before he stopped at a sound coming up through the woods. It took a moment to identify, and even after he did he couldn’t believe his ears. A dull, intermittent roar rolled over the land, like a giant sea monster coming ashore. It was the surf pounding the black sand beach, pulverizing it with rhythmic violence. He couldn’t remember ever hearing the waves so loud up here, so far away from the shore. He scrunched his head down to avoid overhanging branches and stumbled along as quickly as he could.
The only entrance to the boathouse faced the lake. Carefully edging his way around the building, the glow from Randall’s flashlight reflected off wet logs on the front wall. “But it’s not raining,” he thought out loud, just as the spray from another wave crashed against their homemade breakwater, splashing over him and landing high up against the wall. The roar of waves pouncing on the beach sent a shudder through him, and fear prodded his boots over the boat rails and into the dim lighting and relative safety of the boathouse.
His father was in the boat arranging equipment and lashing down loose items like oars and his wooden box of tools. The boat itself was huge, eighteen feet long and made of thick slabs of white cedar over solid oak ribs. Hand-crafted by the Aasen Brothers Boatwrights in town, it boasted an extremely deep V-hull and a long-handled wooden tiller attached to the outboard motor. Randall’s father bragged to anyone who’d listen that it was the most seaworthy boat afloat.
“It’s a storm out there,” Randall said, but his voice blew away in the roar of the surf.
“Hand me up my bucket,” his father called, pointing to his lunch pail on the floor.
Randall lifted it over the transom, where Henry Bengston was tying down his seat cushion near the twenty-year-old outboard. With the boat resting atop the rail cart, the gunwales were as high as Randall’s head.
Louder this time, he said, “Dad, it’s storming out there.”
His father reached over the transom to give him a hand up. “Hell, this ain’t no storm, son. It’s just loosening up. Give it a day or two and you’ll see it blow.”
Pulling on his father’s arm, Randall climbed atop the rails and scaled the vessel’s transom. The wide-open middle section of the boat
was lined with narrow wooden planks running the length of the keel, used as a walkway and platform for nets and gear. The only seats were two wide boards spanning the width of the boat, one in back for the person running the motor and a smaller one up front. Using the long-handled tiller, a fellow could work his nets from the middle of the boat and still control the direction of travel.
Randall stepped out on the planking, but his father held him back. He draped a coil of rope over his head and cinched it up tight under Randall’s arms. On the other end of the rope was a heavy snap ring. “Clip this on the eye of that cleat up there,” his father said, nodding at the bow of the boat.
“But, Dad . . .”
“It’s just a precaution,” he said. “I promised your mother.”
“But it’s really bad out there, Dad. I’ve never heard it so loud before.”
Henry Bengston knelt on one knee and made a show of going over Randall’s work clothes, tugging on the raincoat’s zipper and pulling his collar up tight around his neck. “It’s not even raining yet, son. And this boat will take any wave that lake throws at her.” He chuckled. “It’s not like the old days when we went out in them shallow fourteen-foot skiffs. No, sir.” He stood up and nodded toward the bow. “Go ahead now and get your seat.”
Randall slowly made his way along the narrow floorboards, feeling like a pirate walking the plank. Behind him his father shouted instructions. “We’ll not be wasting time sorting fish today. Everything comes in. It’s time to mend nets, so in a day or two when this weather has blown over, I’ll put them back out.”
Randall took his seat in the bow facing the stern and his father. He pulled in ten feet of the rope tied around his torso and, taking hold of the slip ring, clipped it to one of the bow cleats. He hadn’t done this since he was five years old, since that first season on the lake when his mother insisted that he be clipped to the boat. But he wasn’t a kid anymore, and it would have been embarrassing if he weren’t already scared to death.
Henry Bengston worked quickly now. Pulling an overhead cord disengaged the rail cart, and the heavy boat slowly trundled down the rails into the water. By the time it floated free, he’d started the outboard motor. The boathouse quickly filled with smoke as the two-cycle engine coughed to life. Backing out, Randall watched as his father reached up to hang the lantern from an ancient wrought-iron hook over the doorway. It was meant to aid in pinpointing their destination upon their return, but the boy knew it was just a throwback to the old days when fishermen used oars to row out to the nets and back to shore. The nets were smaller and often placed just a few hundred yards out back then. The men usually returned shortly after dawn, and the lantern could help in a fog or low light. In truly bad weather, family members built bonfires on the beach to aid in navigation. But Henry continued to hang the lantern every time he went out, perhaps out of habit, or as Randall suspected, as a nod of respect to the old ways.
The short breakwater of boulders gave them just enough time to get turned around and pointed into the swells before the first breaker crashed against the bow, spraying ice-cold water over Randall. He cringed, ducking low while tugging at his collar to better protect his neck. In the stern, his father burst out laughing. “Bet you’re awake now,” he shouted over the din of the storm.
Randall ignored him, instead twisting around to look out to sea. Everything was shrouded in darkness. Even the water itself was black and invisible. When the boat suddenly heaved up over the crest of another wave, a pale streak of daylight glimmered far off on the eastern horizon. Then they plunged into the trough of the next swell, and all was dark again. Meanwhile, Randall’s stomach rose and fell with the motion of the sea. He looked back at his father, who yelled, “I ever tell you about the time we went out after your great-uncle Harold?”
Having heard the rescue tale dozens of times, Randall looked down at the floor of the boat and groaned. His stomach was going to be a problem. Henry started in on his story. “Storms back then were much worse than nowadays. Hell, I can’t even remember the last honest-to-goodness November gale. I wasn’t much older than you at the time.”
Randall’s stomach rose again. This time he tasted pancakes. Thankfully, most of his father’s words blew away on the wind. “Harold went out by himself. He was like that, you know, preferred to work alone. We didn’t miss him until after your grandpa and I returned. I tell you what, Randy, we gave them oars a workout that day. Nobody up here had motors back then.”
The next wave lifted Randall right off his seat. As they dropped into the following trough, he slipped off the edge of the short bench seat and crumpled in a heap on the wet floor. With no time to spare, he reached up for the gunwale and pulled himself up to vomit over the side. Windswept spray splashed over him as he hung over the edge. His father roared with laughter, a demonic-sounding cackle, leaving Randall to pray that all this was just another aspect of his horrible nightmare.
A quick glance eastward again showed daylight dawning somewhere, but all around them the sky and water swirled in a maelstrom of madness. Henry’s voice pierced the storm. “When we finally found him, Harold had tied his skiff to his net to keep from being driven out to sea. He’d busted an oar, and the fool hadn’t bothered to stow a spare. He was taking on a lot of water, and another fifteen minutes would have put him under.”
Randall vomited again, and then slumped like a wet rag on the cold, narrow floor. His stomach continued rolling as he panted for breath. He lay curled in a fetal position, clutching his stomach like a gut-shot soldier. He closed his eyes and let himself be tossed around by the waves.
His father’s story was done, but Randall found himself thinking about his cousins and uncles. Of all the Bengston men who’d made a living off the lake, Henry was the only one left. It was a mystery to Randall why, when outsiders asked about the old days and working the lake, his father never had anything to say. And if he did speak up, he always downplayed the stories. “Oh, sure,” he’d say, “we found Uncle Harold easy enough. Just broke an oar and needed a tow.” Then he’d laugh, like it was nothing at all. But he loved to tell the stories to family and friends, and every time he did, the storms became larger, the catches heavier, and the fish themselves were mighty monsters from the deep.
Randall held himself tighter. Damn them all, he thought. To hell with all the uncles and cousins and every last one of the Bengstons. To hell with the whole damn town.
It wasn’t until he saw his father up and moving about that he realized they were at the first of their two nets. The motor idled, but Randall couldn’t hear it over the storm. Henry hooked the net buoy with a gaff and pulled the trailing rope into the boat. Seconds later he was cranking the winch, hauling in the net, holding himself steady by pulling against the rope. This was usually Randall’s job, but with the weather worsening by the minute and the boy curled up in a ball on the floor, his father had decided to hurry things up by doing it himself. The tiller was wedged against Henry’s thigh, while the weight of the submerged net held them in place.
Randall tried to get up. “Just stay there,” his father yelled without bothering to look at him. Wind-driven waves washed over them, while his father rocked lightly on his toes against the torrent. Yard after yard of net came in with nothing but a few rough fish showing up. The nearby taconite plant, with its warm water tailings discharge, had so contaminated the water near shore that most of the game fish they were after now roamed a mile or two farther out to sea.
Without having to remove the fish or reset the net, it took only minutes for his father to pile the whole rig on the floor. Once again they were on the move. Every swell sent buckets of ice water gushing over the gunwales. From his perch on the floor, Randall opened his eyes to look into the gasping mouth of a two-pound sucker just inches from his face. He gagged and retched, but the pancakes were long since gone. He lay pale and limp on the floor, his head pounding while his stomach rolled. Faint and exhausted, he fell into a delirious sleep, visited by nightmares populated with sea mon
sters and vampires.
It was a rainy, pale gray dawn the next time he looked out. Heavy clouds tumbled overhead while the sea boiled and churned in discontent. His father was hunched over the tiller, the motor roaring full speed into the tempest. Henry’s eyes and face grimaced against the blow. Sprays of water blasted across the bow in all directions. The boat tossed and turned like a carnival ride, while the wind howled a fury above them. Randall recited a prayer in silence, witnessed only by the glassy eyes of the suffocating sucker.
He pressed himself tighter against the bow, using the bench seat above him as a partial rain break. He tried to lessen the nausea by holding himself still, but the violent pitching of the boat offset anything he could do. Shivering almost uncontrollably now, and soaking wet despite his raincoat and boots, he perked up at the sound of his father’s laughter. Henry had the second net in the winch, but needed two arms to crank it in this time. Fish came over the rail like on a conveyor belt in a processing plant. His father stood with legs spread wide apart, boots wedged between boat ribs, heavy thighs bracing him against the hull.
“Dad?” Randall called, weak and sickly. Unheard.
Again the old man laughed as a gusher of trout and ciscoes washed in over the side. Ten– and fifteen-pound lake trout flopped around them in a frenzy of energy. Henry began singing, but the wind was playing tricks with Randall’s ears, or more likely it was that the words were from an old Norwegian folk song, because he couldn’t understand a word of it. Henry looked down at him on the floor. “Must be some kind of a run,” he yelled. “The storm must have them all moving. Haven’t seen anything like this in years. Yi-hah!” He leaned into the winch, and the boat tipped precariously toward the net.
Randall rolled with the boat, closing his eyes against the nausea and headache. Sometime later, when next he looked around, his father was sprawled out across the pile of netting, his eyes as wide open and blind as the fish flopping all around him.
Black Otter Bay Page 15