Spider Lake (26 page)

He could feel the heat as he rounded the building. Just then, another lightning strike mercilessly struck the besieged structure starting a fire of its own in the middle of the mansion. John tried to look past the fire-lighted portion of the grounds, but beyond the light the rain kept him from seeing all the way to the water. He ran again down the hill in the direction of the lake, straining to get any glimpse of a yellow boat. The guard-dog was not barking and he half expected the animal to run up behind him and bite him, but no dog came.

Ben was halfway down the grassy slope when he finally saw what remained of the yellow boat. It was upside-down and had smashed to pieces on the huge boulder at the base of the Rule property. He ran as fast as he could to the destroyed boat, frantically looking everywhere for any sign of Ben or Matt, but they were not there. He ran up and down the shoreline calling out his boy’s name, but there was no answer. The storm was drowning out John’s hoarse voice; carrying it eastward, preventing the boys from hearing it, and keeping John from knowing if his son was dead or alive.

Butch lingered at the gate for only a minute. His head was swimming. He had to catch his breath. The short run up the road gave him an accurate report of the state of his fitness. All the digging in the world could not prepare him for the wind-sprint he had just taken. He couldn’t hear his dog and wondered why the fool animal wasn’t barking its head off. He quickly speed-walked down the rest of the distance to the front of the mansion. He had no run left in him.

He looked all around the street-side of the building for any sign of his employer, but he was nowhere to be seen. He hurried around to the east side of the mansion where the dog was chained at the kitchen entrance, thinking that Rule might have released the animal during his own evacuation. The heat from the flames prevented him from standing anywhere near the building, as he searched the area for Rule or the animal. As he scanned the grounds east of the mansion, he saw why the dog was not barking. Thirty feet away, at the end of the heavy chain, was the smoldering remains of the animal.

His eyes stopped at the incredulous scene. He was wondering how in the world the dog had managed to catch fire, but he was quickly brought back to his senses with the sight of John Fisher running up the hill towards him. There were no kids with him, so he assumed they were still lost. As John was approaching within yelling distance, a small explosion from the direction of the basement caused both men to duck. The two of them started hollering back and forth to be heard above the storm.

“Any sign of your Boy?”

“No. The boat is there, but no boys! Your employer or anyone from the staff outside?”

“There is no staff!”

“What?”

“There is no staff!”

“Why?”

“He sends them all away!”

“What?”

John nearly tripped over the smoking carcass of the guard-dog as he skirted around to where McCann was standing. Even though he was close, he had to shout for McCann to hear him. The storm showed no signs of lessening and the lightning was still striking on all sides. John needed to resume the search for his boy, but he had to talk to McCann first.

“Did you say there is no staff? He sends them away? Why would he do that?”

McCann had to wait to answer John. Just then, another explosion rocked the east side of the mansion, lifting it momentarily off its foundation very near to where they were standing. There was a giant groaning sound and the roof on that side gave way, falling into the kitchen area with a huge crash. McCann answered John as the two of them headed towards the front door.

“John, don’t ask any more questions! The old man is the only one on the premises! Sometimes he sends the whole staff away! I don’t have time to tell you why! Go look for your boy! I am going to go in and get the old man! The middle of the place still looks okay!”

“Are you sure he is the only one in there?”

“Yes!”

“No one else? You sure?”

“Yes! Go find your boy! If you can, call the fire department!”

John felt some guilt for leaving McCann, but he had to go look for his son.

“Alright McCann! You be careful! Good luck!”

“You too!”

John did not delay. He ran back down to the lake front to look again for his son. He didn’t look back at the building other than one time, when another huge explosion rocked the structure, shaking the ground beneath his feet.

Butch McCann unbolted the front door and ran into the foyer of the burning building. Looking up the grand stairway leading to the second and third floors, all that was visible to him was heavy white smoke. In one last act of selfless redemption and loyalty, he took off his wet shirt to filter the deadly smoke from his lungs, and ran blindly up the stairs to rescue his already deceased friend Sunny.

He would never make it back out alive.

en tried to hide the anxiety he was feeling when the J-man introduced himself as Ruben McCann. He knew if he showed any fear, the son of Digger would pick up on it. He also didn’t want to let on that he was up here for any reason. He wondered how— Ruben had found out who he was. It was bad luck, plain and simple bad luck. He had to act as nonchalant as possible. This guy’s dad was the nut job who was digging constantly when he was a kid. Ben held out his hand and offered it to Ruben, his new buddy. He didn’t know what else to do.

“Hi Ruben. My father was the last man to see your dad alive. He told me your father was a very brave man, and that not many people would have the guts to walk into a burning building like that.”

Ruben seemed to be uninterested about his father or his fate. The shots of alcohol were finally reaching the man’s bloodstream, and Ben was relieved to see that he was finally slowing down. There had to be a simple explanation for Ruben’s knowledge of his identity, and he would poke around in the morning at the convenience store for the answer. Ruben ordered another round of Jagermeister. This time Ben let Ruben drink them both.

“Thanks my good man.” Ben raised his half-empty beer glass.

Ruben turned his head from the TV to Ben at about the speed of a pregnant loggerhead turtle. He sprayed a question into Ben’s face. “So what brings you up here to our neck of the woods Ninja WahHa-ha-ha-ha? Hey! You want to go for a boat ride? That’s my rig right there on the dock.”

“No, Ruben, there is no way I am getting into a boat with you or anyone else tonight. I am going to nurse very slowly a couple more beers, and then I am going to hit the sack. You aren’t driving anywhere tonight are you?”

Ben was now thinking that his whole previous fear of the man was paranoid and irrational. To think that the harmless sot next to him had before seemed dangerous to him seemed absurd. The J-man was only paying half attention to him now, mostly watching the night baseball game on TV and occasionally smiling mindlessly back over his shoulder at Ben.

Ben politely excused himself from his new acquaintance, and as he walked by the bartender towards the bathroom, he signaled with a hand gesture his intention to purchase another Jagermeister for the J-man. Then he changed his mind and signaled for the bartender to come over to him.

“Hey man, is this guy a regular?” Pointing to Ruben with his thumb.

“Yep. I guess you could call him a regular. You can find him here nearly every night.”

“Does he always get this trashed?

“Most of the time.”

“How does he get home?”

“I generally let him walk, he lives close by, but when he gets this bad, I call his woman and she comes to pick him up. It looks like he has had enough. I will give her a ring.”

Ben walked back over to the J-man and said so long to him. He really didn’t need to. The J-man was in another dimension. Ben waved to the bartender and rambled unsteadily out the door. He was still concerned that the son of the Digger knew he was in town. He wanted to get in and get out with nobody being the wiser to him. Now he had to hide from two residents, the J-man and Ms. Carly Morton. Somehow he felt that Carly would be more of a problem.

He had way too much to drink, and he hoped he would be rested enough to get out of the campground early. He thought as he weaved his way back to his tent, that he would leave a note for the J-man at the convenience store in the morning implying that he was heading back home early; that he was just in town to see the sights of his old hometown. He didn’t want the son of Digger to know that he would be staying at his old resort.

He climbed into the tiny tent and laid there looking up at the fabric. The alcohol was giving him the spins. How many decades had gone by since he last felt the spinning? He guessed two, maybe even three. He was never the one to over-indulge. He didn’t particularly like hard liquor, other than an occasional Margarita with Mexican food. He fell asleep fully clothed, not even taking his shoes off.

He woke the next morning to the high-pitched sound of a mosquito flying near his ear. He wanted to open his eyes, but they seemed to be glued together with some form of body fluid acting as a bonding agent. His eyes reluctantly became unstuck and once they were, they focused on the tent ceiling. Ben’s pounding brain informed him that he had been on the menu the night before. There were dozens of blood-filled mosquitoes digesting their evening meal too full to leave the buffet. There were just as many flying in a holding pattern, waiting for the tower to give them clearance to land. He looked down the length of his reclined body and there, in-between his shoed feet, he saw that the tent-door was wide open.

His mouth felt as if a sick, wounded animal had crawled in and died. His bladder was on stage and singing soprano, and judging by the enormous ache on his left side and the numbness in his left arm, he had slept on that side through most of the night. When Ben actually moved, his head began to give him its own opinion. He pictured his brain with two gray-matter fists pounding away at his skull just behind his eyebrows as if to say; “Oh yes, and by the way Ben, how was that last shot?” All sung in time to the steady cadence of a John Philip Sousa march.

He clambered out of the tent. A woman who was feeding her two small children at the campsite next-door, frowned disapprovingly at him and shook her head. She moved the two little tykes around to the opposite side of the picnic table so that they would have their backs to him. Ben was feeling like public enemy number one all right. He wished he had a grapefruit to smash in somebody’s face. He stumbled over to the Honda and grabbed his shower kit and a towel, and headed achingly to the shower house. The woman gave him one more look for the road as he scurried past her looking like a kicked dog.

The shower and shave helped very much to mask the way Ben felt on the inside, which would resemble the album jacket of Jethro Tull’s aqualung. He threw his dirty clothing on the picnic table and made a bee-line to the convenience store. He made himself a large coffee at the kiosk and because his head was still pounding, he purchased a couple of paper packets of Advil, as well as a box of Alka-Seltzer. The woman that was behind the counter was familiar to Ben. She gave him a knowing smile after a glance at his purchase.

In-between the pounding of his head, Ben managed to connect the dots. She was the Jeep-man’s woman. It was a very small world up in the middle of nowhere, and even with a broken head, Ben was realizing that in a small town such as this everyone probably knows what everyone else was doing. He would have to remind himself of that later, sometime in the afternoon when he was feeling human again.

“Had a good time last night, didn’t we?”

“I guess you could describe it like that.”

“So, you got to meet my man Ruben. Did he give you any sage advice?”

“I think by the time we got around to talking, neither of us had the collective coherency to be giving any advice.”

She rang the purchase up. “That’ll be eleven dollars and thirty-six cents Mister Fisher. The first cup of coffee is free for campers. From here on in you are on your own.”

Ben looked back up and made eye contact with the woman. He could see past the face that time and worry had conspired to age, and guessed that she was probably once the prettiest girl in town. No doubt she was the head cheerleader, and she was likely unanimously voted prom queen. Her eyes communicated a great deal more than her conversation, and Ben felt real pangs of guilt looking into those deep pools. He almost missed the fact that she had just fulfilled the subconscious prophecy about the coffee from his dream of two nights ago. “What do you know?” he mused, “The Our-Lady-of-the-Coffee prophetess is standing right in front of me.”
 
He was batting one thousand in the fulfilled prophecy department.

“Could you do me a favor Mister Fisher?”

“Sure I will, if I can.”

“Please don’t come back here again. Get on that motorcycle of yours and leave town. Don’t look back. I have had to live with that fool’s gold all my adult life. I have done my very best to patch up all the holes in Ruben’s heart. He was the fatherless kid that had to live with all the Digger McCann jokes. Did you know they called him Digger too? No, I guess you wouldn’t. It is no wonder Ruben drinks. He is just trying to kill the pain.”