Spider Lake (25 page)

He walked along the boardwalk which led to the dock and the lake-side entrance to the tavern. The old fiberglass tri-hull was parked in the same place as the night before. Looking down into the boat, Ben noticed that the jeep-man did not keep the vessel ship-shape. It looked more like a garbage-scow than a ski boat to him, and he wondered how the jeep-man ever got women to board the sorry thing. Last night the two women were definitely half in the bag. That must have been the jeep-man’s magic ingredient to achieve such an impossible task. No self-respecting woman would ever climb into such a boat unless they were impaired in some way or another. The muffled tune which was emanating from the jukebox had just switched from a muted Waylon and Willie’s Luckenbach Texas to a muted Headknocker by Foreigner. Ben climbed the two landings of steps to the lake-side entrance of the bar.

Opening the tavern door, Ben was not at all surprised to see the jeep-man entourage playing at the table. Jeep-man himself was taking the shot, with his cue pointing directly at Ben. “Hey, how’s it goin Ninja Man? Back for more of this fun? WahHa-ha-ha-ha.”

Ben felt uneasy with the Jeep-man’s instant recognition of him. The Jeep-man was obviously already three sheets to the wind as was his entourage, and he really didn’t want to be any more familiar to the guy than he already was. He thought about answering the Jeep-man with a phrase including the correct manufacturer of his motorcycle, but thought it best to just offer a friendly smile. If he had already had a glass in his hand, he would have raised it, so he mocked the gesture and headed for the bar. He took the same seat as he had the previous night and ordered a draft.

The same feeling that he had the night before washed over him again. There was something about his new friend that made him feel uneasy. Not just the obvious drunkenness or the apparent loose recklessness that the man projected, but something deeper. He kept his back to the two couples, and sipped his beer slowly. He wasn’t hungry, but he asked the bartender for a menu and a glass of ice-water anyway. He ordered an appetizer of buffalo wings and took a large drink of his ice-water. He listened with half an ear to the bull-in-the-china-shop musings of the Jeep-man behind him, and once or twice his unfortunate new friend could be heard spewing sentences which included the word Ninja.

Ben turned his bar-stool around and faced the pool table. It seemed as soon as he turned around, that the Jeep-man was fixed directly on him, and then quickly turning his gaze back to the pool table. Ben tried to dismiss it as a figment of his imagination. Why would the Jeep-man be looking at him anyway?
 
He was probably just scanning the room with no purpose as people do, occasionally making unintended eye contact. The game came to an end.

Jeep-man tried to rustle up someone for a new game, but could find no takers, most likely because of the level of his belligerent behavior. His eyes met Ben’s once again. “How about you Ninja Dude? What-ta-ya-say? Just for fun, no bets, just a friendly game. How about it?”

Ben did not want to play the man. There was something off about the guy; something which raised Ben’s hackles, warning him to stay away. This was the kind of person you had to play just right, like an unwanted neighbor who might change at the drop of a hat. He answered the Jeep-man, and feigned another insincere smile. “No thanks man. I have an appetizer coming, and I am pretty parched.” Ben raised the beer glass in his hand like an experienced veteran of the bar scene.

“Come on man, just one game. I owe you one!”

Being owed anything by the Jeep-man was a distinction Ben didn’t want to encourage. He thought about what he could say to the guy to make him go away. Ben thought, “Maybe later he will be so pickled that he will forget.”
 

“Maybe later. Right now I just want to sit here and have an appetizer and a cold one. No offense.”

The jeep man would not give in so easily. He had stopped mining the bar for other possible players and was fixed on Ben alone. Sensing the discomfort of the moment, the Jeep-man’s side-kick of the previous night tried to intervene and call his friend off. “Come on man, the guy doesn’t want to play. Leave him alone. I’ll play another one with you.”

The prompting of his friend had defused the bomb for the moment, causing a slight expression change on Jeep-man’s face which signaled the all clear. Come on out of the bomb shelters everyone. The blitz is over. Ben wanted to get right up and leave but that would be obvious, and somehow he felt it might be more dangerous to do so. He had seen his share of boisterous drunks in his lifetime, and leaving the relative safety of the indoors was not always the prudent thing to do. He would stay put and pretend the whole thing was more casual than it really was.

The bartender walked up with a basket of Buffalo wings and another beer. He could see the puzzled look on Ben’s face. Then he said, “This one is on the gentleman playing pool.”

Ben wanted to crawl into a hole. Now the guy was buying him a beer. He spun half-way around on his stool and hoisted the new beer, gesturing thanks to the boorish Jeep-man. What was it about this guy that gave Ben the willies? The Jeep-man half-smiled back at him with the droopy eyes of a Saint Bernard. “How about it Ninja, you gonna give me the chance to wipe the floor with ya? Or are ya chicken?” Jeep-man mocked the sound of a chicken.

Ben answered back; “I’ll play you a game after I get something to eat. I have low blood-sugar.”

Ben thought he sounded like a total idiot making such a dumb excuse. “Blood sugar?” What was he thinking. He hoped nobody else heard his lame reason for not playing. He also hoped that Jeep-man would soon pass out so he wouldn’t have to interact any more with the guy. Ben ordered a cheeseburger and fries from the bartender, not because he was hungry, but as a delaying tactic. He also ordered another round, one for the Jeep-man and one for himself. Maybe he could help send the guy to the land of pink elephants.

Ben turned around and feigned an interest in the view outside the bar window. The Jeep-man had raised the volume of his voice another notch to be heard more easily above the jukebox. Each new sentence from the J-man was embellished with all sorts of expletives culminating in the J-man’s signature
 
WahHa-ha-ha-ha. Apparently there were no takers for a new game and Ben was perplexed at the fact that the J-man was actually keeping the table, much less seeing it. Ben had passed his own quota of alcoholic beverages quite a while ago, and he thought he would sneak out after the cheeseburger.

Ben’s plan to leave was not to be. Just as he was being delivered the cheeseburger and fries, the Jeep-man came and sat beside him at the bar. The man acted as if Ben was his best friend, even asking for a fry or two from Ben’s plate. It seemed to Ben that the whole act was some kind of pissing contest, and he wondered why the total stranger was so interested in him. Ben took a fleeting glance over his shoulder to the table which once occupied the J-man’s entourage but they were nowhere to be seen.

The J-man was now freely helping himself to Ben’s fries, and ordering another round, this time upping the ante to shots of Jagermeister, a kind of schnapps liquor. Ben initially refused the drink, but the J-man would not have it. Ben felt like a mouse in a trap, and was wondering how he could get away from his new-found friend. He capitulated, ordering a round of his own in a flawed strategy to out-drink the J-man into submission.

Even with his head swimming Ben could still feel there was something nagging at the fringes of his memory; something strange or— familiar about the J-man. The gnawing feeling would not leave him and as much as he tried to deny it or rationalize it away, he could not make it go away. The inebriated J-man ordered another round.

“Hey barkeep! Another round for me and my buddy Ben Fisher!”

Ben’s eyes widened. Had he ever told this man his name? Was there some casual greeting he had forgotten? The fact that the man knew him sobered his mind considerably. Had the Jeep-man riffled through his campsite in the morning while he was absent? Who was this guy? Ben asked, “Have we met before? If we have, I don’t remember. Who are you?”

The jeep man’s drunken appearance transformed to one of a much more sober man. He put a friendly arm around Ben’s neck and said, “Why Ben, Don’t you recognize me? No, I guess you wouldn’t. How could you. We’ve never met. I thought maybe you might have sorted it out by now. After all, the general consensus is that I am the spitting image of my father.
 
The name’s Ruben. Ruben McCann. You knew my father Butch— or do you remember him as Digger?

ohn was fortunate that he had no time to buckle his seat belt when he raced out of the resort. The defensive move he made to get to the other side of the bench seat probably saved him from being pinned in after the crash. The entire driver side of the wagon where John once sat was pushed in a foot and a half from its original position. John’s left leg was caught in-between the smashed dashboard and the car seat, and he was unsure if he was badly injured or not.

He raised himself with his arms, trying to purchase enough of a hand hold to leverage himself out from where his leg was stuck; but there was nothing solid enough to grab onto and he didn’t have the right angle. He smelled for any sign of gasoline fumes which would have hastened his effort, but there were none. He reached for the passenger-side window handle and began rolling it down. He grabbed the top of the door at the open window with both hands and pulled his pinned leg from the wreckage. Once free, he felt for any obvious trauma; and finding his lower leg intact, he opened the passenger door.

He climbed out into the pouring rain and when he put his full weight on his injured leg, he winced in pain. Still, he was able to walk on it, and with each new step he was able to shake off the injury. Good. Nothing broken; nothing sprained. He did notice looking down that his white sock was now red with blood, and he hoped the wound was superficial. He would get a closer look at it later. Right now he had to see if there were any injuries in the other vehicle. He kind of hopped-skipped his way to the driver side of the wrecked Ford. Looking through the rain-washed window he could see there was one passenger laying on the front seat.

The man, who was laying down on his side was doing some inventory of his own, feeling as John did for any signs of injury. John opened the driver-side door and asked in a loud voice: “Are you alright? Is anyone else in there?”

The man turned around and John recognized him instantly. It was the caretaker McCann. The man answered him in a very unfriendly tone of voice: “Yeah, I’m okay! What in the hell were you doing roaring up the street in a storm like this? You want to kill someone?”

John didn’t hesitate to give it right back to the caretaker: “My boy is out there on the water, and the last time I seen him, he was near your place!”

McCann was climbing up to a sitting position, ready to give John a real piece of his mind, when his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an orange glow reflecting on the Ford’s windshield. John noticed the reflection at the same time as McCann, and looking to his left he was shocked at the queer sight of a dismembered cupola sitting smack-dab in the middle of the road. Any other time he would have gaped at such an absurd sight, but he didn’t linger on it long. Beyond it there was a large fire burning, and a few of the flames were already visible above the tree line. The mansion was on fire.

McCann clambered out of the car as quickly as his battered body would allow, brushing himself off absentmindedly in the pouring rain. He looked at the fire, he looked again at the spinning copper moose on the cupola, and then he looked at John. His brain had just been traumatized in the accident, bouncing off his thick skull like a gymnasium speed-bag, slowing him down. It finally dawned on him that the mansion was on fire and he began to walk around the deadfall.

The two men climbed over the tree and started to run towards the flames. John had forgotten his leg injury and was soon overtaking the older caretaker as he ran up the road. Both men had to hurdle several more trees and small branches as they ran up the road to the entrance of the estate. John hesitated only for a minute at the gate to let McCann catch up with him. The property was strictly off limits to anyone but the owner and his staff, but John wasn’t interested in any of that. He wanted to know where the dog was.

Butch caught up with him and breathed heavily resting one arm on the brick post which held the gate. He had to catch his breath. John yelled at him: “Where’s the dog?”

McCann looked up at John, and pointed his free hand in the direction of the dog on the east side of the burning mansion.

John yelled. “Is anybody in there McCann? I am going to look for my boy! You need to see who is in there! Now!”

John ran down the west side of the property towards the left side of the burning building. He was frantically looking for any sign of mansion staff safely outside, but found none. The wrecked building looked oddly like it had a fiery bite taken out of it where the cupola once stood. The flames were on each side, leaving the center of the building still dark and seemingly intact; but east would meet west very soon from what John could see.