by Rob Brunet
“Danny, the world doesn’t end if you go back. You could call your lawyer.”
He snorted.
“What’s the deal for skipping out on day parole? It’s not like you actually broke out of prison. You could go back. Finish up your sentence. Start over when you get out.”
“You don’t get it,” he said, his voice cracking. “The money’s gone. They know I had it and now they know it’s gone. There’s nothing to keep the Libidos from killing me—in or out of prison. I’m done.” Danny leaned back and let the tears flow. He felt Judy brush them from his cheeks with her finger tip. He pushed her hand away, embarrassed. Next thing he felt was her lips on his wet cheek and this time he didn’t resist. He popped one eye open and got a blurry look at her nose. He shut it quickly before she noticed and willed his tears to continue even though his mind was rushing in a totally different direction. He could practically feel the blood pump from his head and accompany the adrenaline rush to elsewhere.
He tilted his head back just a touch to bring his lips into contact with hers and felt her tongue slide to meet his own. He gulped and a shudder ran through his chest and arms as he wrapped her and pulled her close.
Judy straddled him and helped him pull her fleece over her head, dropping her bra to the ground before he even started to fumble with it. She tugged at his shirt and their hands tangled together on each other’s belts. Together, they tumbled to the floor. After a minute or two, Judy suggested, “I think the room in back is more comfortable.”
Danny followed her to the bed. He forgot everything he ever knew about prison, about running, and about boneheaded plans for life ever after on a desert isle with his mom.
For five minutes.
Lying on his back, with Judy’s head lolling on his sweaty chest, Danny breathed deep and stared out at the twilit sky. Judy smelled wonderful head to toe, hairy armpits and all. He struggled to maintain the bliss, but it was swiftly crowded out by more mundane thoughts. Like how he was going to survive. And whether he’d get to have sex with Judy again before he got caught.
“I’ve got a friend I’ve got to find,” he said.
Without stirring, Judy murmured, “Who’s that?”
“Friend of my mom’s. Bit of a wacko, lives in the bush and stuff, but he’s pretty smart. Maybe I could go off the grid with him for a while. Figure things out.”
“Hmmm...” She used her finger to trace lines back and forth around his belly button. “You’re an outie,” she said. Danny felt the blood head back to his groin, not entirely surprised Judy could bring him to attention so quickly.
“I just don’t know where to find him,” Danny said. “It was always the other way around. He’d find me. Or us. He showed up a lot when we went camping. And he told me Ernie could always get hold of him, if I needed it, but now...”
Judy had started nibbling Danny’s nipple. She paused to say, “It’s not like Ernie had a lot of friends. What’s his name?” She gave him a playful bite.
“Skeritt.”
“Hunh?” Judy lifted her head and looked straight at him.
“Skeritt. That’s his name. I don’t know if it’s his last name or—”
“‘Skeritt’, like S-K-E-R-I-T-T?”
“How the hell do I know how he spells it? It’s a weird name is all.”
Judy looked confused. “Danny, I think, I mean I don’t know what it means, but, there’s this table Ernie had.” She drew herself up on one elbow. “I took it so I’d have something to remember him by. It’s in my living room now.”
“Yeah, so?” Danny liked the way the sheet had fallen away from Judy’s shoulder when she propped herself up. His mind began to wander.
“Well, it had that name carved into the top of it,” Judy said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s this big old round table. Rough looking, like it was built from a tree trunk. It has your friend’s name carved into the top.”
Danny smiled. How typical of the old man. “They were close, them two. Skeritt saved Ernie’s life. From a fire of all things. Weird he should end up dying in one.”
Judy thought about that for a moment. “Who’s Bif?” she asked.
“Bif?”
“Yeah. Bif. Right next to ‘Skeritt,’ someone carved the name Bif into the table. It’s new, rougher than ‘Skeritt,’ like whoever carved it was in a hurry.”
“I dunno. Never heard of anyone called that. Must be another friend of Ernie’s. There was a gang of ’em worked together.” He sighed and pushed a strand of Judy’s hair out of her eyes. She smiled, kissed him lightly on the lips and went back to stroking his chest and stomach.
She hadn’t asked how the hell he intended to find Skeritt. Good thing because he had no idea. They were adrift in the middle of Lower Buckhorn Lake. Heading north overland would be the right direction, but as to northeast or northwest? Who knew which forests the old man chose to roam?
Before he could wrap his head around the question, Judy stepped up the pace of her nibbling and shifted against him. That’s when it struck him. Bif wasn’t Bif. It was BFI.
Danny struggled to sit up but Judy elbowed him firmly back onto the bed. He looked down her back to where the curve of her hips pulled the sheet taut and decided they had time to spare.
Terry had pretty much abandoned hope this was just some intense outlaw initiation ritual. The bikers had bungee-corded him to the Sea Ray’s foredeck and they were running the boat across the water at fifty miles an hour. Perko had returned barely ten minutes before and informed Terry they would take him up on the offer of George Meade’s cabin cruiser.
Still soaking wet from his dunk in the locks, he tried to remember his winter water rescue training. Something about how all snowmobilers who went through the ice would appear stone drunk, but some weren’t—they just needed a little thawing out. For Terry though, the nasty cold autumn air failed to induce peaceful hypothermic sleep. He tried to conjure up an image of sailing away with Cindy and wound up in a feverish prayer for survival.
The skinny one named Hawk was driving the boat. He throttled back and pushed the window open, calling out to Terry, “That where the cabin is? On that shore over there?”
Terry nodded and twisted his head around so he was facing the bikers. He said, “That’s it. That’s where your money was. That’s where old Ernie was burned to a crisp! How about you untie me now, bring me inside?”
Both bikers were drinking brandy-spiked coffee from Styrofoam cups. They looked past Terry and down the lake.
“Think they’ll still be up that way? I don’t see nuthin’,” Hawk said to the nasty guy named Perko.
“They’re in a canoe. There’s only so far they could get in twenty-five minutes.”
“Let’s just hope we find him before the cops do,” Hawk said.
Before Perko could reply, a red canoe drifted into view from behind a small island. There were two people on the canoe, one of whom started waving her arms.
Perko grinned and wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. Hawk revved the engine. It took less than a minute for them to plough across the lake.
Terry wondered how Danny would react to seeing him again. But as they got closer, he could see the man in the canoe had blond hair. And he was wearing some kind of purple fleece jacket that was color-coordinated with the lady’s.
“Not them,” Perko groaned.
“What?” Hawk said, clearly exasperated.
“That’s not Danny Grant. It’s a red canoe, alright, but that’s not the shithead.”
“There’s no one else on the lake,” Hawk said. “These two had must’ve seen them, at least.”
When they got close enough to shout, Hawk cut the engine and called over. “You all see another couple people in a canoe?”
“Help! We’ve been kidnapped!” the woman yelled. “And...and...they stole our houseboat.”
“I CAN’T SWIM,” said the man.
Perko raised an eyebrow at Hawk then asked, “Which way did they
take your boat?”
The man in the purple fleece pointed up the next branch of the lake. Then his eyes grew wide as he noticed the massive bow wave from the cabin cruiser headed his way. He dropped his paddle and grabbed both sides of the canoe. The woman shrieked.
“Hang on, tight! It’ll pass,” Hawk called out. The canoe bobbed up and down a couple of times before the water leveled out. Only then did Hawk fire the engine and head in the direction the man had pointed. “Houseboat,” he said. “We’ll catch that in no time.”
Terry wheezed. He didn’t know what to hope for anymore. For ten altruistic seconds, he worried about Danny and what they’d do to him. Then he went back to freezing to death.
“Max, you’ve got to believe me,” Linette said. “I did not kill Ernie McCann.”
They sat in the cruiser, parked in front of Officer Ainsley’s house on the water.
“You know me better than that,” she said. “It was a horrifying experience, him dead like that. As much as I hated the man, it was a terrible, terrible thing.”
“Linette, I spent the last twenty-four hours screwing my brains out with a woman cold-blooded enough to step over a corpse after ransacking his house. I know you didn’t kill him, but, man, that’s cold.”
Linette pouted. “Okay, so I’m a little ambivalent about the bastard. But he had no right to that money. What are you going to do? Arrest me?” She batted her eyelashes.
Max stared down at the water before answering. Linette followed his gaze. The lake was grey and choppy.
“That Grant kid made a fool of me once before. I’m not going to let it happen again,” he said. “He’s in a canoe. The sun’s setting and it’s going to get damn cold. He’ll be looking for shelter, somewhere quiet, where there’s mostly cottages. Something he can break into easily, no alarms, not draw attention. It would take days to run up and down all the fire lanes around these lakes. Nope. If we have any chance of finding him, it’ll be from the water.”
“We? You mean ‘us?’ Shouldn’t you be calling this in to headquarters or something?”
“I’ll bring him in myself. My collar. Solo.” Stepping out of the car, he added, “We’ll take my boat.”
Drifting in the dark in a flat bottom canoe sounded romantic when Rick Stevens read about it in Cottage Life, but Stephanie was clearly unimpressed. The two of them had gone from arguing to crying to stone cold silence as they realized they were bobbing in the middle of a lake with only one paddle and neither of them particularly adept at using it. Stephanie huddled in a fetal position in the hull and hadn’t moved for the past twenty minutes. It seemed no matter how hard he paddled, the wind and waves kept pushing them further from shore. He spent most of the time trying to point the damn canoe in the right direction.
Out of nowhere, the roar of an outboard motor gave him hope. A few minutes later, he was staring into a floodlight. An authoritative voice barked over some kind of megaphone: “This is the police. Hold your hands above your head.”
Rick did as he was told and didn’t even mind when he dropped the second paddle and watched it drift away from the canoe.
“Danny Grant, you are under arrest.” The voice waited for some kind of an answer, but Rick didn’t know what to say. “Again,” the voice added.
Rick was relieved to see Stephanie start to sit up but she collapsed again to the bottom of the canoe as a gunshot blasted over their heads.
“LINETTE, put that thing down,” said the voice.
“What kind of cops are you?” shouted Rick. “I don’t know who you’re after but it isn’t me. My name is Rick Stevens. We need your help.”
The speaker amplified an otherwise hushed conversation between a man and a woman on the boat. From what he heard, Rick surmised the cops were after the hoodlum who’d stolen their rented houseboat. He told them as much and pointed in the same direction he’d sent the cabin cruiser.
“Now can you rescue us, please?” he called out.
“We’re on official business here, sir. I strongly recommend you head for shore. And put on a life jacket while you’re at it. It’s dangerous out here at night with no lights. Not to mention the cold. You should know better.”
With that, the boat roared off, splashing more than a little water into the canoe.
“‘Let’s spend a weekend in the country, pumpkin,’” Stephanie mocked from the bottom of the canoe. She went on, her voice’s pitch rising, “‘The people are nice there, dearest. And it’s safe, SWEETIE-PIE.’”
She rolled onto her knees and turned to face him, her sudden movement rocking the canoe back and forth violently. With no paddle to slap at the water, Rick grabbed the gunwales with frozen white fingers and sucked air deep into his lungs. Before he could scream at Stephanie to calm down, something cold and wet grabbed his right wrist and tugged hard. He pulled back, yelling, “Mother of GAWD.” Whatever had grabbed him let go and his momentum carried him over the opposite side of the canoe and into the lake.
He landed in the water upside down, arms and legs kicking in every direction as his mouth and nose filled with frigid water. With no light in the sky, he had no idea which way was up. Finally, his knee connected with the canoe, orienting him toward the surface and he flopped his arms in a desperate attempt to push his head out of the water. As soon as he did, he felt a hand grab him by the hair and pull his face clear.
“Breathe,” a man’s voice told him. “Here. Grab onto the canoe and DON’T LET GO.” He felt the owner of the voice propel him toward the boat. Then the man disappeared under the water, only to reappear on the other side of the upturned canoe and reach across to grab one of Rick’s arms.
It was only then that Rick saw Stephanie’s head bob up next to him. The man yelled the same instruction at her and grabbed her arm with his free hand. Even in the dark, Rick could see the man’s face was a blackened smear.
“You’re going to be alright,” he told them both. “Canoes don’t sink. We can kick our way to shore. It’s not far.”
Stephanie started to blubber and Rick said, “What the hell are you doing out here? Why did you throw us in the water?”
“Technically, you’re the one who tipped the canoe,” said the man. “I guess I frightened you.”
“Frightened me?” Rick spat. “You popped up out of nowhere in the middle of a lake and grabbed my freaking arm.”
“Sorry about that. I was reaching for the canoe.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Buzz,” the man said. “Consider yourselves rescued.”
Thirty
Overhanging trees shrouded the womblike cove. Detecting a break in the forest from a distance was impossible. Along the rocky shore, a stand of massive pines intermingled with squat cedars which dipped their boughs to the water’s surface. Once the houseboat rounded the corner, it was completely concealed from anywhere on the lake. Danny felt the tension drain from his shoulders.
Not officially part of the Great Horned Owl Reserve, the island stood as a kind of no-man’s land. The Indians claimed it as an ancient burial ground and the province pretty much left them alone with what was officially Crown Land. It only seemed fair. After all, much of the surrounding Ojibwa territory had been flooded to create the waterway well over a hundred years ago.
“I’ve camped here since I was a kid,” Danny told Judy. “Always thought of it as my secret place. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
The sun had set without much of a show, the night cloudy, inky black, without a moon to light the sky. He threw a rope from the houseboat around a pine tree and gave Judy a hand stepping onto the rock ledge. He led her up a well-worn path through dense cedar. After a three minute climb, the orange glow of fire appeared ahead of them.
“Someone’s there,” Judy whispered. Wort snuffled beside her.
“I know,” he said. “Don’t worry. Pretty sure I know who it is.”
Moments later, they stepped into a clearing where two men sat around a campfire. The nearer one had his back turned to
them and looked about as big as a moose. The one across from him had a long matted beard and a craggy weathered face.
“It’s about time,” said Skeritt.
“Welcome,” said the Big Fucking Indian from the Casino. “Skeritt said you’d come. Good to see you again. Pull up a chair.” He gestured toward a couple of sixteen-inch logs which Danny rolled over for Judy and himself.
“Judy, this here is Skeritt,” said Danny.
Judy shook his hand and turned to the other man. “And, I take it you’re Bif?”
The big man chortled. “I think that spells Big Indian Fucker. True enough. Call me what you like.”
Skeritt lobbed a piece of driftwood onto the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. “Want some rabbit?” He ladled a reddish mess onto paper plates. “Bif here was kind enough to bring along a quart of Swiss Chalet barbeque sauce. Delicious.”
Bif stood off to the side and sliced green cedar boughs from trees encroaching on the fire circle. He tossed them onto a pile that was already quite large.
“Why don’t you put those straight on the fire?” Judy asked.
“Too smoky,” Bif answered. “It’s cedar. Makes a nice bright flame, but it’ll choke us out. We use it for celebrations and stuff. Watch this.” He threw a clutch of branches onto the bonfire. After a bit of fizzling and a dense white puff, bright orange flames leapt up, carrying greasy black smoke with them. In a flash, the crackling inferno died down to nothing. Bif grinned ear to ear.
“You know, I might not have made the connection,” Danny said, watching the Indian do his thing with the cedar, “but whenever we camped here, Skeritt drilled it in to be respectful ’cause this was Indian burial ground. Made sure I kept my fire in the pit.”
“There’s something cleansing about a fire,” Skeritt said, poking at the glowing red coals in the pit until the log he had just added broke into flame. “Birth and destruction all mixed up into one.”