Boobytrap

6

Tom Zaleski’s boat, like Tom Zaleski’s summer tenant, had seen better days. It was a twelve-foot aluminum skiff, dented on the starboard side and on the prow; but it didn’t seem to have any holes in its bottom, and when I floated it out alongside the dock and then stepped down gingerly into the stern, it wobbled and sank a few inches but stayed afloat. The ten-horsepower Johnson affixed to it was at least twenty years old; Zaleski seemed to have taken reasonably good care of it, though, and had thought to wrap it with plastic sheeting for the winter. A pair of emergency oars tucked under the seats looked as if they had been hand-carved in the days of King Arthur and then made the principal weapons in a series of violent jousting matches. I hoped I would not have occasion to use them.

I gassed the outboard, primed it, and yanked the starter rope. An emphysemic cough was all the response I got. I sat there in the hot midday sun and primed the thing twice more and yanked on the rope maybe fifteen times before it finally came alive in a chattering rumble, only to croak again four or five seconds later. Three more pulls resurrected it, and this time it clung precariously to life, hacking and wheezing all the while. I held its tiller for a minute or so, trying to decide if I really wanted to risk taking the old fart out onto all that bright blue water and having it expire on me once and for all somewhere in the middle. Well, what the hell. A little adventure is good for the soul, right?

I pushed away from the dock, eased the throttle up to crawling speed. The Johnson kept right on muttering and stuttering. So I throttled up a little more and worked the tiller and pretty soon we were scooting right along, the engine seeming to gather strength and vigor from the exercise. At least it no longer complained as loudly as it had at the dock.

Out on the lake the air was cooler and the breeze felt good on my face. By the time I’d veered over toward the west shore I was a fine old hand at the helm, Captain Somebody-or-other. There were only two other boats out, both on the east end near Judson’s; I had this section all to myself. I skimmed along a hundred yards offshore, checking out the summer homes down that way. A couple were large; one had a terracelike dock that jutted forty feet into the water. Some people were having their lunch out there; they waved and I waved back. Ahab in his longboat, saluting the crew. More waves came from an elderly couple sitting on the deck of the last cottage at that end: Nils Ostergaard and his wife, Callie. Ostergaard had a pair of binoculars looped around his neck and I’d have given odds that he’d been watching me during most if not all of my launching difficulties. He didn’t miss much, especially with other forms of entertainment at a premium up here.

I swung around and turned in close to the north shore. Forest primeval along there, so thickly grown that you couldn’t see more than a few yards into the jungly green shadows. Some of the pines overhung the water; the shoreline and a series of narrow inlets where the watershed creeks emptied into the lake were matted with ferns, weeds, snarled roots, collections of dead brush and decaying vegetable matter. The fishing would probably be pretty good in the deeper inlets. So would the kind of beer-for-breakfast, sin-contemplating morning Hal Cantrell had had for himself. Maybe I’d try some of that lazy-man’s style of angling myself later in the week.

I was about halfway to Judson’s, more or less directly opposite the Dixon and Zaleski cabins, putt-putting along at a couple of knots, when the Johnson quit on me.

No warning; it was running well enough, if a little wheezy, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t running at all and the skiff was adrift on the current. I yanked the starter rope. Nothing but a noise that sounded like a death rattle. Fine, dandy. I jerked the rope again, and again, and kept on pulling it until my arm got tired. Then I sat there wasting my breath on a string of not very original oaths, as if the thing were alive and had ancestors. Then I just sat there, sweating in the hot sun, looking at the battered old oars in the bottom. Assuming they didn’t fall apart in my hands when I picked them up, I’d have a third of a mile of rowing while the sun broiled my sixty-year-old flesh like a chunk of tough flank steak. It was exertion like that that finished off men my age. Heart attack, stroke, brain aneurysm. Struggling along one second, belly-up the next. Just like the goddamn outboard.

Ahab, hell. Helmsman on the Titanic was more like it.

The sun had begun to burn my neck. The skiff was still adrift, moving slowly now, and in so near the overgrown shore that I could almost reach out and touch some of the drooping branches. That gave me an idea. Another inlet was just ahead, part of it in deep shade. I hoisted up the oars — they weren’t in quite as bad shape as they looked — and sculled into the inlet and the cool tree shadows. The skeletal arm of a rotting log jutted up from the shore mud; I tied the skiffs painter to it. Then, muttering, I tilted the Johnson out of the water to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.

Fat chance. My mechanical knowledge is skimpy at best. I lowered it again, made sure the propeller was free of entanglements, and jerked the starter rope. Nothing. Not even a whimper this time. The son of a bitch seemed to have passed beyond the limits of resuscitation and resurrection.

Well?

It was either row and risk the big whopper, or sit here and wait for somebody to rescue me. I didn’t care for the second alternative much more than the first. I could chafe my butt for hours on this hard seat before anybody—

Rising noise behind me to the west, engine noise. I looked, and from over that way a bright red skiff was powering in my direction. Nils Ostergaard’s skiff. Good old binocular-spying, trouble-sniffing Nils Ostergaard.

He approached at a fast clip, slewed around broadside and cut power just before he reached me — creating a series of wavelets that rocked my boat and made me grab on to the gunwales with both hands. The thought occurred to me that he’d done it on purpose, a gesture of disdain for urbanites who got themselves lost, stranded, or otherwise inconvenienced mountain dwellers like him. I didn’t mind. I figured I deserved his scorn, even though this particular predicament wasn’t really my fault.

He called out as he maneuvered alongside, “She just quit on you? Won’t start again?”

“Dead as a doornail.”

“Nope,” he said.

“Nope?”

“Ain’t dead. Just up to her old tricks. I’ll have her up on her feet again in a couple of minutes.”

His skiff bumped gently against Zaleski’s, prow to stern. He told me to hold us steady, and when I obeyed he took a screwdriver from one of his vest pockets, then leaned over and tilted the Johnson out of the water.

“Watch what I do,” he said.

I watched while he removed a section of housing, poked around inside — a process that took just about two minutes. When he tilted the engine back into the water and pulled the rope, the thing coughed once and rebirthed into its old wheezing self.

“Now you know what to do next time it happens.”

“Next time?” I said.

“Crotchety bugger, that Johnson. I told Tom Zaleski he ought to get himself a new outboard, but he’s too cheap. Rich shyster like him and he won’t even spend a hundred fifty bucks for a rebuilt motor. Lawyers,” Ostergaard said, and shook his head.

“You mean you’ve had to fix this thing before?”

“First time it happened to Zaleski. He took care of it himself after that.”

“So it happens all the time. Just quits on you.”

“Not every time you take her out, maybe. But often enough.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that yesterday?”

He gave me a look. “Didn’t know you had permission to take her out.”

“Well, thanks for the help, Nils. And the lesson.”

“Couldn’t just leave you stranded over here,” he said gruffly. “And if you’d tried to row across in this hot sun, hell, you might’ve had a heart attack or something. Overweight fellow like you.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You going to finish exploring the lake now?”

“Uh-uh. Back to the cabin.”

“Take this screwdriver anyway, just in case. You can give it back to me later. Zaleski’s got one around there somewhere you can stick in the boat.”

“Thanks. You won’t need to rescue me again.”

“Better not. First time’s free, second time costs you dear.”

He paused, as if debating something with himself. Then he said, “Be around tonight, will you? At the cabin?”

“Until seven. Then I’m invited to dinner at the Dixons’. Why?”

“Might stop by for a few minutes before or after. Have a beer or two.”

“Sure thing. Something on your mind, Nils?”

“Something. Not sure yet what it means.”

“What what means?”

“Don’t want to say until I check around some.”

“I don’t follow that.”

He paused again. “I think maybe one of the other first-timers ain’t what he seems to be.”

“What makes you think that?”

“My eyes, for one. Gut feeling, for another.”

“What is he, then, if not a fisherman?”

“Not sure about that, either.”

“Well, which one is it?”

“Better not say until I check around. Then could be we’ll have something to discuss.” He shoved his skiff away from mine. “Don’t forget about that screwdriver. Mine or Zaleski’s.”

“I won’t.”

He waggled a hand, used a short paddle to get himself pointed lakeward, fired up his engine, and went roaring off in the general direction of his cabin. I set off at a much more sedate clip, heading home sadder and wiser and wondering just what Ostergaard had meant by “one of the first-timers ain’t what he seems to be.”

Midafternoon, just past five Texas time, I tried the Houston Center Marriott again and this time I caught Kerry in her room. She’d tried me twice, she said, and it was a good thing I’d called when I had because she and Jim Carpenter had been invited back to Milo Fisher’s ranch for an intimate dinner and they were being picked up by Milo’s limo driver at five-thirty.

“A limo, no less. My, my. What does ‘intimate dinner’ mean, exactly?”

“Don’t be jealous, you. All it means is Milo and his wife, Jim and me, and one or two other couples.”

“Couples. Uh-huh.”

“You are jealous. And after you swore up and down—”

“I’m pulling your leg. Yesterday was the big barbecue, right?”

“Yes, and it was fun. There were at least sixty people — friends, neighbors, business associates — and enough food and liquor for a hundred more.”

“Sounds like you’re winning Fisher over to the Bates and Carpenter team.”

“I think we are. I think he’ll actually sign with us before we leave Houston. Keep your fingers crossed.”

“You betcha.”

She asked about Deep Mountain Lake and my vacation so far. I provided a quick report, deemphasizing both the fish episode this morning and my difficulties with Zaleski’s cranky outboard this afternoon. After which I steered the conversation back to Milo Fisher, for no reason other than it struck me as a more interesting topic.

“Tell me about this ranch of his,” I said. “How big is it?”

“A little less than two thousand acres.”

“Two thousand?”

“That’s not so big by Texas standards. It’s quite a showplace. If I ever have to fly back here, I’d like you to come along. You’d love it.”

“That’s debatable.”

“No, you really would. Milo, too.”

“I could never love anybody named Milo.”

“Like him, I mean. He’s a character.”

“How so?”

“Oh, you know, stereotypical Texas bombast in the way he dresses and talks. Ten-gallon hats and fancy boots, the whole bit.

But it’s all a put-on. He’s smart and shrewd, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”

“Funny, huh?”

“One joke after another, more one-liners than a stand-up comic. He had everybody in stitches yesterday.”

“Dirty jokes, no doubt.”

“Not really. His funniest are so clean he could tell them on the Disney Channel.”

“For example?”

“There were so many I can remember only a couple. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Tell me one now. I can use a good laugh.”

“Well… my favorite, then.” She chuckled in anticipation, stopped herself, and said, “All right. A married man goes out into the forest, into the deepest part, and while he’s there a tree falls. He hears it loud and clear. But he’s completely alone — no wife, no other woman within a hundred miles. Is he still wrong?”

I waited.

Silence from her end, so I said, “Go ahead.”

“Go ahead?”

“With the rest of the story. I’m listening.”

“You don’t get it,” she said.

“Get it? Get what?”

“The joke.”

“I haven’t heard the rest of it yet.”

“There isn’t any more. That’s it, that’s the joke.”

“You mean ‘Is he still wrong?’ is the punch line?”

“Of course it’s the punch line. You really don’t get it?”

“No, I really don’t. What’s the point?”

“The point,” she said in that tone she uses when her patience is being tried, “is that it’s funny. Women think it’s hysterical. Most men find it funny, too.”

“What’s funny about ‘Is he still wrong?’ “

“The man hears the tree fall, but since there’s no woman around… Oh, never mind. Forget it. Forget the whole thing.”

“I don’t want to forget it. I want to know what it means.”

“It’s a take-off on the old argument about a tree falling in the woods and does it make a sound if there’s nobody around to hear it—”

“I got that part,” I said, “the take-off part. But you said the man’s there in the forest and he hears it fall. Right?”

She said something that sounded like “Gnrrr.”

“But his wife’s not there, no woman’s around, so is he still wrong. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s the part I don’t get.”

“For God’s sake!” she said. “It’s a joke about men and women… about marriage and the differences between the sexes. All right, it’s stereotypical but that’s what makes it so funny, don’t you see that? The male-female, husband-wife stereotypes? Like Milo being a Texas stereotype?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

Silence. A long silence.

“Kerry?”

“You are the most literal, exasperating man I’ve ever known,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like strangling you.”

“Because I don’t understand some damn stupid joke that doesn’t make any sense? A joke is supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to have a punch line that makes you laugh.”

“We haven’t been married long enough,” she said. Through her teeth, the way it sounded. “Maybe that’s the problem here.”

“We haven’t been married long enough for what?”

“You’ll find out. And when you do, you’ll be just like that man in the forest, you’ll still be wrong!”

I sat there for five minutes after we rang off, and I still didn’t get the damn joke.

Wrong about what?

Pan-barbecued trout was not quite as good as the pan-fried-in-butter variety, in my opinion, but that didn’t stop me from eating two of the large fillets Marian prepared. Chuck had had a profitable morning at his secret fishing hole: a pair of rainbows weighing a total of three and a half pounds. He ate two fillets himself, and we managed to consume most of the salad and potatoes and biscuits that went with them. Personal tastes aside, it was a fine meal served on the Dixons’ deck under a sunset sky streaked with burnt orange.

I stayed until nine-thirty, at which point sleepiness and Chuck’s insistence that we leave for our outing at the crack of dawn prodded me back to the Zaleski cabin. It wasn’t until I was in bed a while later that I remembered my conversation with Nils Ostergaard on the lake.

He hadn’t stopped by before dinner and there’d been no sign of him during or after. And even if I’d still been up with the lights on, it was too late now to come calling. Changed his mind about confiding in me, I thought, or put it off until later. His “checking around” must not have produced any results after all.