Spider Lake (31 page)

They could hear girls off in the distance calling out their names, and it comforted them to know that a search was on. They knew that there would be no possible way that either one of them could be heard until their voices healed, so they needed to get the searchers’ attention by being seen. Matt’s rib and shoulder was bruised so badly that it even hurt him to whisper: “How in the world can we get seen?”

Ben had been looking out of the door jamb. Now that it was day, he could see that no matter where he looked out the crack, all he could see was downed trees and fallen branches. The only thing he could think to do was employ a branch as a make-shift flag pole, and wave it back and forth when the voices sounded near. Ben whispered back, “We need a flag. That way, when they get near us, they will see us.”

Matt didn’t give his own opinion. He was too sore to talk. Ben crouched down and pulled the laces off his shoes. He put a slip-knot on one end and tied the other end to a twig. He would need a slightly larger branch to take the weight of a flag. Matt laid on the cellar floor with his back against the wall. Ben kept trying to lasso the only available branch that could serve, and finally he had the stick inside.

The two of them decided to forgo their embarrassment, and use a pair of underwear rather than give up a shirt or a pair of shorts for the flag. Ben could only thread the flag through in one place, and he had no real idea if the branch cleared the deadfall high enough to be seen. Each time he heard voices calling for them, he would move the flag back and forth with his wrist. He had to switch arms several times from fatigue, but it was no use.

Matt was in shock from the trauma and he had been falling asleep more frequently as the day wore on. Ben knew that Matt’s injury was making him sleepy and that it was more serious than they once thought. Ben tried twice to summon up a voice when the rescuers sounded nearest, but his voice would not come. Finally, the searchers stopped calling, and the dim light of evening gave way again to the pitch black. Ben laid next to his friend to help keep him warm, and fell into a deep sleep.

en walked back to his cabin to take another look at the painting. He pulled it off the wall and turned it around. The hand-written note from Sam on the brown-paper backing was faded, but still there. He turned the painting back around and carefully re-hung it in its place. He studied the piece closely and he noticed something that he had never noticed as a boy. A tiny Morris was hanging from the tower in the shadow of the tank in a parody of the Barrel-of-Monkeys game he had as a kid. He looked out of the cabin window, and it was pitch black outside. It was in fact, a new moon.

He stepped back from the painting looking to see if it was hung straight or crooked; and being straight, he wasted no time and walked back out the cabin door. He had thought about walking to the old Rule estate by way of the road, but decided instead to take the boat that was assigned to his cabin. As he was walking down the embankment he noticed a small silver telescoping ladder leaning against the wall of the bait house. He assumed Carly had left it there for him to see. Sure. Why not. Load a ladder into the fishing boat. He would have a hard time explaining it away if anyone was night fishing, but the lake was deserted.

The electric trolling motor was fully charged. He set the control to the high position and silently made his way out towards the main lake. The surface of the lake was smooth and black like highly polished onyx. The clear night sky full of stars reflected on the water. Way off in the distance, he heard a faint rumbling of thunder. He thought about what he was going to do, and the sound of thunder made him want to turn back around. He had been on this lake once before during a storm. He didn’t want to be again. Somehow though, he knew it would be this way. He knew there would be a storm.

He kept the trolling motor on high and the lake cooperated with him, offering no resistance in the way of waves or wind, and he was soon pulling up to the dilapidated boat house at the western edge of the old Rule estate. It was so dark outside, that he could only make out the water-tower tank by the silhouette it made in the starry sky. Another rumble came. It was the rumble of a storm that knew he was there. It said, “Sure Ben, I am coming to see how you do in your climb. Maybe I can help you down.”

He hurried his pace and looked for a place to use the ladder. He looked at the old boat house. Maybe he could start from the roof. He remembered a time when a friend from school climbed the Rhinelander water tower. He slipped and fell and broke nearly every bone in his body. It was a year before he could come back to school and even then, he needed a cane.

Ben used his flashlight sparingly until he found a place to set the ladder and start. He didn’t want to attract any attention with a light, but it was impossible to work totally in the dark. He climbed up the ladder to the roof of the boat house and then pulled the ladder up, replacing it atop the roof of the small building. This way, he could reach the built-in ladder on the tower that started a story and a half above the ground.

Ben tested the placement of the ladder on the boathouse roof several times, trying to make it fail when he was only a foot above the roof, but the ladder held.

“Here we go Ben. Time to climb.”

He was only a few rungs high on the ladder when the old tower groaned its first complaint. Ben wished he would have been able to examine the rusty structure in the daylight before trying to climb it, but he knew in his heart that the climb had to happen this way. He had to take a leap of faith that the old tower would bear his weight. If he had known the dilapidated state of the tower he might not ever climb it. He was starting to give more and more credence to the concept of fate. He continued up the ladder to the tower. He had his eyes shut half of the time. It really made no difference in the pitch black. Each time he closed his eyes, he prayed, “Please God, don’t let me fall.”

Once Ben was on the structure’s ladder, the water-tower groaned with each new movement. The ladder sounded as if it would break free on a couple of rungs, and in one place Ben could feel that the welds had already been broken. He would stop and hang on for dear life and collect himself before slowly ascending again. Off to the west he could see flashes of light from the approaching storm. Above him, the stars were beginning to dim.

He willed himself to keep climbing, and he sped his ascent to the top with the threat of the oncoming storm. He finally reached the wooden platform which ringed the tank superstructure, and once, his foot broke through the decayed wood, causing him to gasp in fright. He composed himself with his back to the tank, and was thankful he had not reached for the loose outside railing. He walked to the place where the ladder ran up the tank and he climbed again. The sky was lighting up to the west with cloud-to-cloud lightning, and he was terrified of being struck.

He reached the gaping hole where there had once been an access door, and he looked down into the pitch-black of the tank. The thunder was growing louder and the flashes of diffused lightning were lighting the sky more frequently. Ben put his legs on the interior ladder and climbed into the tank. He could hear an amplified drip-dripping from somewhere, and he could feel the cobwebs wherever his flesh was exposed. He thought about his ordeal in the cellar all those many years ago.

He finally stepped down onto the floor of the tank. There was a foot or so of water at the bottom, and it had the fetid smell of nasty swamp or fen. He turned on his flashlight and scanned the walls all around him. The spider webs were everywhere, and in the light, he noticed several places where the walls of the tank were damaged, preventing the tank from ever holding more than a foot of water. He thought correctly that the damage was intentional. A full tank would be too much weight for the tower to bear. He was pleased to see that the interior of the tank was metal, and that the wood of the outside was more cosmetic than structural. Then he pointed the light downward.

The tea-colored water in the bottom of the tank allowed little of the light to pass through. He could see tadpoles swimming occasionally just below the surface, but nothing more. He walked around inside the tank shining the light, hoping to find a chest, or a bag, or a box of some sort, but there was nothing visible. His feet kept slipping on the slick tank bottom, and one time, he lost his footing and fell. He cussed at the water-tower for being wet and full of foul-smelling water. He put his hand down to get back on his feet, and that is when he felt it.

He stood still in the old water tank holding the gold coin up to his flashlight, turning it over and over close to his face. It was a coin with a woman’s head circled in stars, and when he turned it over, the engraving revealed that it was a United States twenty dollar piece. He turned it over again. He thought it might be Lady Liberty on the front. He absentmindedly put the coin in the front pocket of his jeans. He lowered himself back into the fetid water, swishing his hands back and forth, feeling for more coins. And then he realized that the whole floor was scattered with them.

Outside, the storm was getting closer. Each time the thunder reached the tower, it shook from the sound waves. Outside, rain was beginning to fall, amplifying on the metal tank. Ben continued oblivious of the storm, and decided that he would do better if he started at the perimeter and worked his way towards the center of the tank in concentric circles. This way he would not be covering any ground twice.

The smell of the stagnant water was awful and the unseen ages of sediment created a kind of black muck at the very bottom. He wondered how anything lived in a tank fifty feet above the ground, but several times as he was feeling his way for coins, large slimy salamanders wiggled through his fingers. He hoped that he was not going to catch some foul disease from the awful muck, and he breathed through his mouth whenever he could to help mask the awful smell.

How many coins had he picked up? He guessed at the very least a hundred and fifty, but thought it more likely to be around two hundred. There was no time to count with the onset of the storm. The rain had turned into hail and as each hailstone hit the tank roof, the metal would clang like a bell. The sound the hail made was deafening, and the tank swayed each time it was buffeted by the wind. The swaying made Ben’s stomach turn, reminding him of a time in the Sears Tower while he was up on the observation deck, that a strong wind made the building sway. He was sure of his safety in the skyscraper but the rickety water-tower gave him no such confidence. He knew he had to climb out of the tank into a thunderstorm, but he would have to risk it. The old tower felt like it was going to fall.

When he lifted his head above the top of the tank, he was sure that he would be struck dead by a bolt of lightning or hit in the head by a baseball-sized hailstone. The hail had stopped, and now there was a steady downpour. He tried to climb out the hatch but the backpack on his back containing the coins got snagged at the opening. He climbed back down and turned the backpack around to his front and climbed again to the tank roof, then down the outside tank ladder. The wind blowing against the tower was fierce, and it almost caused him to fall twice; but he held on fast to the hand-holds on the side of the tank.

Lightning was all around him and with each close bolt, the sound-waves shook the tower. It was insane to be up there in a storm such as this, but he had to climb down. He had to ignore the lightning. If he got struck, so be it. He climbed over the side of the gangway and one-by-one he climbed down each rung of the shaky ladder attached to the tower.

When he reached the place where the ladder ended he looked for the one he had brought with him. The flashes of lighting revealed that it had blown down and was laying flat in the grass along side the boat house. He would have to shimmy down the diagonal cables which supported the tower. He wrapped his legs around the first rusty cable and grabbed hold of it with his hands. He almost lost his grip when his body weight and the heavy duffel swung around beneath the wire, but he caught himself. He switched to another cable where they crossed, and he made it down the second cable. Finally, he reached the last cable, and he foolishly slid down it until he could let go and be on solid ground. He stood there under the tower looking at his rust-stained and bloody hands. They were shaking from pain and anxiety and they bled badly from sliding down the rusty and frayed cable. He would need a tetanus shot.

He pulled the backpack off his shoulders and replaced it in the standard way on his back. It was heavy. He wondered how much weight in gold he was carrying. He resisted the urge to open the pack and look inside. He wanted to get off the property. He would go back to the cabin and load his motorcycle and go. He would ride in the rain and he would only stop for gas.

He thought about Carly back at his boyhood home. Should he say goodbye to her? He thought that he had seen the last of her. He didn’t know for sure, but he thought she might already be gone, having served her purpose.