Black Otter Bay (20 page)

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 monsters 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.

“Dad?” An image came to mind of a delirious pirate rolling in a treasure chest of doubloons. “Dad! What are you doing?”

Henry Bengston stared at his son. His mouth opened and closed like the fish around him gasping for breath. His Adam's apple bobbed with a swallow, and his tongue lolled around, but his eyes remained fixed on Randall, unblinking.

Kicking at a snarl of rope, netting, and fish, Randall dug his way out from under the bench seat. On hands and knees he slid over the wet, slimy pile to reach his father. “Dad!” he yelled. Grabbing the old man by the shoulders, he shook him hard. “Dad! What's wrong?”

Henry Bengston didn't move. Behind him, the tiller thrashed about in the waves. Water seemed to be everywhere. It blew sideways in the storm, the tops of waves sliced off by the wind and hurled across the deepening swells. The next wave loomed high over the gunwale before throwing Randall against the opposite side hull. “Dad!” he screamed, but the old man lay twitching in a pool of water and fish.

Pushing and shoving, Randall struggled to maneuver his father back on top of the pile of netting. It was horrible how the old man's jaw and lips hung slack to the side.

The boat suddenly pitched dangerously toward the net, knocking Randall off his knees at his father's side and back into the ice-cold slush on the floor. While using the starboard gunwale to pull himself up, he glimpsed the submerged net dragging them low in the water. Then the next wave washed over him, and panic thrust him back to his feet. “Dad!” he screamed. A thousand images flashed through his mind: the motor running but taking them nowhere, the tiller flailing about in the wind, the toolbox strapped to the hull, and the winch bending under the weight of the full net. Then he was airborne, carried over the portside rail by a fifteen-foot wave.

He found the real shock to being thrown overboard was how much warmer and quieter it was beneath the surface than exposed to the gale-force winds in the open boat. Then the rope around his torso yanked tight, instantly dragging him sideways through the water. The force of raging currents sucked off his oversized boots. Water was jammed up his nose and down his throat. He grabbed at the rope to pull himself upright, and when he finally broke the surface he was once again assaulted by the noise and mayhem of the storm. The boat dipped sideways into another swell, giving him an opportunity to grasp the gunwale, and when they rode up the face of another wave, he clambered back aboard.

Lying in the bottom of the boat, coughing and panting for breath, he was horrified to see how much water they'd taken on. The additional weight of the nets and fish caused the boat to ride even lower, where it listed dangerously to the side toward the submerged net. Randall knew immediately what he had to do. Slipping and scrambling, he crawled over the pile of netting and fish to reach the winch. The strap-metal braces securing it to the hull were bent like a child's erector set. He found the handle jammed against a rib in the hull. The whole
mechanism buckled and creaked under the strain of the fish-laden net. Try as he might, he couldn't budge the handle.

Desperate now, he made for the toolbox in the stern, forgetting about the rope still lashed around his torso. His feet flew in the air when he was thrown backwards to the floor. Cursing and crying at the same time, he worked at the rope with frozen fingers. Wet and caked in ice, the knot felt like rock against his numb hands. The next wave smashed into them, and once again he crashed into the hull. His father's body rolled with him, and Randall watched as sloshing water flowed in and out of his slack-jawed mouth.

Randall crawled over him, fighting his way to the bow, where he unclipped himself. Returning through the swishing quagmire, he pulled his father back up on the pile of nets, and then crawled his way back to the toolbox. His frozen fingers ached opening the latch, but the first item on the top shelf was a heavy hunting knife with a six-inch blade.

Back to the winch now, he perched precariously on the gunwale at the lowest edge of the boat, hacking and slicing and stabbing at ropes and netting. Everything was wet and frozen, causing the knife to slip off-target time and again. Waves and spray battered him, until he wrapped an arm around the winch to support himself, and with the other hand worked the point of the knife deep into the ropes. Digging and wedging, he finally made a cut, allowing room to insert the knife farther. With renewed hope he used both hands again, forcing the knife with all his might, until the next wave rolled high over the gunwale and threw him across the boat, cracking his head against a hull rib.

Eyes closed against the searing pain, for a moment he reveled in the concussion-induced silence. As the sound of the storm slowly returned, however, he vaguely wondered what had happened to the knife. It seemed to be his only chance for survival. Fully conscious again, he decided he had to find it, and opened his eyes to once again look face to face into the unblinking
stare of his father. The old man had come to rest on top of him. Randall couldn't move, splayed out on his back with the weight of Henry Bengston's torso across his chest. He gasped for breath in the swirling slush-pile on the bottom of the boat, his right arm twisted painfully underneath him.

It can't possibly end like this,
he thought. He hadn't even wanted to be here. He'd begged his mother, hadn't he? And now here he was, drowning in this fucking boat, and he couldn't even move. Tears sprang out on his cheeks. “Goddamn boat!” he yelled, kicking at the only thing his legs could reach: the strap-braces holding the winch in place. Pain in his bootless, frozen feet shot up through his legs, further igniting his anger. He kicked the winch again, his frustration welcoming the pain. “Fucking shit-ass lake!” And then he let loose, kicking and cursing with all his might, while his father's blank face stared at him. He cursed his parents and his life in Black Otter Bay. He stomped out his hatred for the lake and the fish that swam there. And then he heard a loud crack, a splintering of wood, and just when he thought the boat was breaking into pieces, he saw the winch catapulted over the gunwale by the weight of the net. The boat immediately rose on the waves as the heavy net unraveled back into the sea. Fish and rope and netting went overboard, yanked out from under him. His father was dragged across the boat and dumped in a heap on the spot where the winch had been.