Snapper (14 page)

An hour later, the food was mostly eaten and the bottle of wine was empty. When August excused himself to use the facilities, Deena quickly uncorked a second bottle. She knew what she was doing, but she couldn’t resist. She didn’t want August to go yet.

When August returned to the table, his glass had been refilled.

“Tell me,” said Deena, as August sat down and reached for the new glass of wine. “What first got you interested in marine biology?”

“It was when I was a kid,” said August. “I spent every summer here at the lake. One summer, when I was about twelve, I took up skin diving. It changed my whole world.”

“Really,” said Deena. “How so?”

“It was the sixties,” said August. “Space exploration was just beginning. And for some reason, skin diving made me feel like an astronaut – floating around weightless in a strange and alien environment. After being underwater, life on dry land seemed a little dull in comparison.”

“So – ” said Deena. “In all your dives, what was the most interesting thing you ever found?”

“Here at the lake?” asked August.

Deena nodded.

August gazed out the window. It was dusk now. In the eastern sky, the moon was starting to rise while in the houses on the far shore lights were just beginning to come on. Deena ignored the fact that one of them was probably Judd’s.

Deena noticed that August’s eyes seemed glazed and faraway.

“The most interesting thing I ever found?” he said, repeating Deena’s question. “It was something my father and grandfather had built long before I was even born.”

“What was it?” asked Deena. “And what was it doing in the lake?”

“It was a trap – a kind of cage, really,” said August. “My father and grandfather built it to catch a giant snapper. Then they sunk it to the bottom of the lake.”

“And you found it?” prompted Deena.

“I did,” said August. “But it wasn’t quite what I expected.”

“What do you mean?” asked Deena.

“What I was really looking for were the remains of the snapper – its shell and skeleton. But I didn’t find them. The cage was empty. The only thing in it was an ax.”

“An ax?” said Deena.

“Yes,” said August, glancing over toward the fireplace. “That ax, in fact.”

Deena looked at the ax that hung on two hooks above the mantelpiece.

“I have to say,” said Deena with a laugh. “It did strike me as a rather odd piece of decor. I mean I could imagine someone hanging up a musket or maybe even a hockey stick – but an ax?”

“I didn’t hang it for decoration,” said August.

August got up and walked over to the fireplace. He reached up and ran his thumb along the edge of the blade.

“Ouch!” he said, pulling his hand away suddenly. “That was dumb! I cut myself.”

“What were you doing?” asked Deena.

“Seeing if it was sharp enough,” said August.

“Sharp enough for what?” asked Deena.

“You never know,” said August. “For whatever comes up.”

Chapter 23

TURTLEBACK LAKE OCTOBER 2006

Judd Clayton and Chief Rudolph were both shocked to find August Andersen standing behind them at Bonds’.

For years, August had been a phantom presence in Turtleback Lake. Over the last decade, the Andersen cabin had gone largely unused, even in summertime. A few years back, Judd had run into August in the local hardware store. Though he barely knew him, Judd tried to strike up a conversation, hoping to find out if August might be interested in selling his cabin.

“Not interested,” said August. “It’s been in the family a long time.”

“Really?” said Judd. “How long?”

“Since the twenties,” said August. “My father helped build it when he was a kid – with my grandfather.”

“Well,” said Judd. “If you’re not interested in selling, what about renting? You rarely ever use the cabin. You could make good money with some summer rentals. I’d handle everything – tenants, payments, cleaning people.”

“Thanks,” said August. “But no thanks. I’m just not interested.”

And that had been that – until this past summer.

August must have changed his mind because he rented the cabin on his own – without a broker. Judd kept an eye on the classified sections of all North Jersey papers and he remembered spotting an ad when he was flipping through The Bergen Record. Even in tiny seven-point type, the headline had popped out:
PIECE OF PARADISE.

Of course the person who ended up renting the cabin turned out to be Deena Goode, the woman who had now thoroughly screwed up Judd’s head and heart.

Judd had told himself a thousand times that he should just let go. But he couldn’t. For him it hadn’t been a fling. He had really liked Deena. And she had gotten under his skin – way under. The whole thing had been gnawing away at him for months.

And now the man who Judd suspected of screwing up everything was standing before him, telling Chief Rudolph that he thought he could guess how old the snapper in the lake might be.

“Well,” said Chief Rudolph. “What’s your estimate?”

“I’d say close to a hundred,” said August. “Maybe more.”

“Jeez, August!” burst out Chief Rudolph. “You’re telling me you think this thing’s been in the lake since – what? – before the First World War! That’s a bit of a stretch. How do you figure?”

August looked Chief Rudolph in the eye.

“I think it’s the same snapper who bit off my grandfather’s arm and leg eighty years ago.”

“What are you talking about?” said Chief Rudolph.

Chief Rudolph could remember August’s grandfather from when he’d been a kid. He could still picture him. It was hard to forget a man who was missing both a hand and a leg.

“I always figured your Granddaddy lost his limbs working in a plant or fighting in the war. Now you’re telling me a snapper did it – right here in this lake?”

“It was something my Grandfather never told anybody – except me,” said August. “My grandmother told him to keep his mouth shut or they’d be stuck with a worthless piece of property. Besides –”

“Besides what?” asked Chief Rudolph.

“My grandfather thought he’d taken care of the problem.”

“Taken care of it? How?”

“Mind if I sit down?” asked August.

Chief Rudolph nodded at the empty stool to the left of him.

“Seat’s free,” he said.

August sat down. The waitress brought over a cup of coffee and poured fresh refills for Judd and the Chief.

“It all started back in the twenties,” said August. “Back when my grandfather first bought some land up here…”

At first, Judd could hardly focus on what August was saying. He kept thinking back to the summer. It was August’s brief appearance back in July that had somehow put the kibosh on everything between him and Deena. Judd thought back with shame and anger to the night when he had looked through his telescope and spied on the two of them talking and drinking wine in Andersen’s cabin. At one point, Deena had gone to the windows and lowered the blinds.

After that, Deena was never the same. She was standoffish and aloof. And by then, he had already put in a good word for her with the school board. His recommendation had definitely given her the inside track on getting the principal job at Turtleback High. And she’d gotten it. And what had he gotten in return? A big fat heartache.

At some point Judd snapped out of his funk and began listening. In spite of himself, he was riveted by August’s tale. To think that a snapper who had ripped off a man’s hand and leg in the 1920s could still be in the lake. It was absolutely mind-boggling.

Suddenly the door to Bonds’ swung open. A lanky man in uniform, chief deputy Donald Rhodes, burst into the room.

“Hey, Chief!” he called. “You better come check out what’s going on.”

“What is it, Donnie? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“A bunch of guys are down at the boat basin,” said the deputy. “They’re going out onto the lake with gaffs and clubs and spear guns.”

“What the hell do they think they’re doing?” said Chief Rudolph.

“They say they’re going to get the snapper themselves,” said Deputy Rhodes. “They said you ain’t doing –”, Deputy Rhodes paused and looked around the room. There were families with children present.

Chief Rudolph rose from his stool with a groan.

“I get the message, Donny,” he said. Then he turned back to Judd and August.

“You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen. But I better get down there before things get out of hand.”

Chief Rudolph strode away leaving an empty stool between Judd and August.

*

When Chief Rudolph and deputy Rhodes reached the town dock, an armada of rowboats, canoes, and kayaks had already set sail.

“Hey, Sully, what the hell is going on here!” called Chief Rudolph.

Jack Sully was untying the rope that tethered his red canoe to the end of the pier.

“We’re tired of waiting,” answered Sully. “We’re taking matters into our own hands.”

“I’m handling this,” said Chief Rudolph.

“You’re handling this?” said Sully, his voice full of scorn. “It’s been more than a week since that kicker lost his foot, and more than three since my little girl lost her toe – and what have you done? Put up some No Swimming signs! With all due respect, Chief, that’s like putting up No Smoking signs during a five-alarm fire!”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Sully. Going out there in rickety little boats with sticks and stones isn’t going to accomplish anything except maybe get somebody else killed or maimed. What are you going to do if this snapper attacks? Hit him with your paddle?”

“Hell, no, Chief! I’m gonna give him a lot more than a paddling.”

Sully shoved his canoe away from the dock. Then he reached down and lifted up a double-barreled shotgun.

“I’m gonna blow the bloody bastard right out of its shell!”

*

Jack Sully loved his daughter, but his love wasn’t doing her much good. There were too many other emotions dictating his actions: anger, self-pity, righteous indignation, and poor judgment. Jack also drank too much.

In the past, most of Jack’s anger had been directed at his wife. After she left him, it spread to include anyone who Jack felt was doing him an injustice. Now he was angry at the whole damn town for doing nothing about his daughter’s attack.

“If it had been somebody else’s child, you can be sure the lake would’ve been dredged,” he said to anyone who sat on the bar stool next to his. “But not for my little girl.”

If the guy on the stool next to him said, “They didn’t dredge the lake after Ian Copeland’s attack either,” Jack would simply ignore him. His mind had no available space for counter arguments.

Now Jack Sully was out on the lake in a canoe. His daughter was home alone, wondering where he was. Usually at this hour she could find him asleep in an armchair with a beer can clutched in his hand and the TV still on. But tonight her father had never even come home.

The armada that had set out that afternoon had long since returned to port. Now, as midnight approached, Jack’s canoe was the only vessel still out on the lake. Empty beer cans bobbing in the water were his only company.

When Jack had set off hours earlier, he had a full case of beer as ballast in the bottom of his canoe. Most of that ballast was now gone.

Moonlight glinted on the cans he had tossed overboard. Suddenly Jack grabbed onto the gunwales and pulled himself upright. He had to pee. As he unzipped his pants, he looked up at the round white rock glowing in the sky.

Then Jack began to croon at the moon.

“Round and round in the sky the moon went, orbiting ’round from advent till...”

“Till what?” he wondered. “Was it
lent?
” He couldn’t remember.

As Jack pondered, he gazed across the water. His eyes fixed on another white rock -– the one that stood out in the middle of the lake. Only now the rock wasn’t white – it was yellow. Jack squeezed his eyes tightly shut, but when he reopened them, the rock was still yellow. Then he remembered – of course! The other night, somebody had given the rock a nice new coat of paint. Nobody knew who – except Jack. How could he have forgotten?

Jack’s bladder was ready to burst. He looked at the empty cans floating like flotsam around his canoe. He took aim at one of them. His urine rang out against the empty can. Direct hit. One. Jack aimed at another. His urine resounded like rain on a tin roof. Two. This was fun. Maybe he could hit all twenty. That would be something. He’d have to notify Guinness – the record-keeping people, not the brewery people. Jack was now up to seven, eight.

Then, hey! What the hell was that? Something had just popped up! Jack gave it a good long squirt. Maybe he could push the damn thing back under. But he couldn’t. And whatever it was, the thing didn’t resound with a nice metallic ring.

Then it hit Jack.

“Holy cow!”

Jack didn’t even bother to stop peeing. He just bent down to pick up his shotgun.