Stranger

Eleven

Days slipped by in that breathless heat. In the cool of early morning I hooked driftwood from the lake. Sometimes I’d find human corpses in the shallows. Most were so far gone that you couldn’t tell if they were male or female. Young or old. Bread bandit or Yankee. They were mushy things resembling old leather satchels with ragged holes where the fish had picked away the soft tissues. They always went for the eyes, too. Fish must find eye meat the sweetest. Every so often Lake Coben would offer up a fresh specimen that proved to me that there were still people out there in the forests and hills beyond Sullivan. For reasons unknown to me they sometimes wound up dead in the lake. Maybe bread bandits hunted them down like wild dogs out there, beat them to death, then tossed them into a stream that fed the lake where they eventually floated here.

As the days passed there were no more outsiders showing up either. What’s more, I didn’t see any more of that light in the ruins of Lewis, so the urge to take a boat across there sort of went off the boil.

The rest of my workday was taken up with cutting the wood and delivering it in the pickup. With electricity rationed to those six hours in the evening, anyone wanting a hot drink or a cooked meal used wood stoves, which were nothing grander than barbecues out in their backyards.

Every night I fitted more stones to the tomb and made it that much larger.

Hey, it wasn’t all work. We went to the cinema to see a movie that we might have seen a dozen times before. After all, with the world in pieces there’d be no new features coming to town. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded. There was something magical about seeing the world as it once was, before the crash. Most nights the cinema was a good half full. Then there were the bars, the pool hall, bowling, or maybe just a tub full of beers swimming in a gallon of water and ice. A few of us would gather on a porch to sip beer while chewing the fat beneath starry skies.

To say the whole world had gone shit-faced sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? I remember the beach barbecue when we must have eaten a whole hog, grunt and all. There weren’t a lot of young people in Sullivan, but we made a real party of it at night. We emptied a few cases of wine while the empty beer bottles rose in a glittering pyramid on the sand. A kid with a Jeep that boasted the mother and father of all sound systems drove it down to the shore. The music boomed across the lake. If the 50,000 ghosts that must surely haunt Lewis had ears they’d have had a feast of music that night.

But there I go, remembering the good times. A kind of golden six weeks after the arrival of the pregnant woman and her family. There was no trouble. Unless you can count the underpants bunting that some drunken kids strung across the town hall. Or the Caucus complaining that certain work quotas weren’t being met. Like who cares that ten thousand tins of baked beans in warehouse A should have been moved two hundred yards to warehouse B? Or that some of the residents grumbled that the music was getting too loud? Or-horror of horrors-those young people were actually enjoying themselves and laughing in the streets at night? If you ask me, I say to hell with the whiny complaints. Those young people were taking a vacation from the cold, brutal reality surrounding us.

And yeah, you’ve guessed right. It was too good to last.

One Sunday in July a storm came down on the town like a landslide. Thunder. Lighting. Torrential rain. The lake turned to cream. Surf broke over the jetties. One of the fishing boats tore loose and went rolling away through the waves, never to be seen again.

The Gerletz family were the boat experts. They raced through the storm tying extra lines to the lake cruisers and fishing craft to stop them being carried away. They had their hands more than full taking care of all the island’s boats as well as their own fleet. Soon they called in more help. I found myself with Ben and one of the Gerletzs’ daughters, a big-boned twenty-one-year-old, along with half a dozen townspeople. We hauled small boats out of the water high up onto the beach, away from the pounding surf. Everyone was soaking wet. The temperature plummeted so much our bodies steamed as we worked our way along the shore, tying more lines to the big lake cruisers in the hope they wouldn’t be torn out into the lake where they’d be lost for sure.

And all the time we stumbled through lightning flashes, deafened by thunder that threatened to bring the entire sky crashing down.

That was the afternoon the whole world turned rotten again. It happened fast.

This is how fast.

We moved away from the main harbor area to a stretch of coast where free-floating cruisers were moored. These were simply roped to concrete anchors in the shallows or to three or four rickety jetties that clearly weren’t going to withstand this storm-force punishment.

Ben and a couple of middle-aged guys waded into the water to haul at a rowboat that had water sloshing ’round up to the seat planks.

“Leave that one,” Gerletz called over the thunder. “Get the big lake cruisers secure first. This wind’s going to rip them from the moorings.”

Quitting the rowboat, they waded to where a big white cruiser bounced on the surf. Miss Gerletz must have had muscles in her spit. She plunged into the water, reached up and grabbed the big boat by the guardrail post and dragged its prow to face the beach. “Tie that line to the cleat, then run it up to the concrete block on the beach.”

This we did, but the boat bucked crazy-horse style. Even with three of us holding onto the rope it buzzed through our fingers, dealing out friction burns right, left and center.

The boat was a real millionaire’s toy. I could see white leather upholstery in the cabin and gin and whiskey decanters rattling in their holders. You might wonder why we worked so hard to save these vessels. The truth of the matter is, they made useful workboats now. More than one millionaire’s cruiser was used to ship gasoline barrels ’round the island to the part of Lime Bay that was inaccessible by truck. Even so I couldn’t resist a grim smile. The boat I wrestled to save that gleamed as white as a cheerleader’s grin had the name Crowther painted on the stern in gold. No doubt Crowther junior would thank me for saving his family’s boat.

Yeah, right: some time never!

There wasn’t time to dwell on it. The Gerletz girl finished tying off the mooring to the concrete slab firmly anchored into the beach. “Next,” she panted, then hurried to another boat.

With waterspouts rearing up like goosenecks out in the lake and rain slamming into our faces, we moved forward. Inside forty-five minutes we’d secured extra mooring lines on a dozen lake cruisers. Some of these were hefty twenty-tonners that boasted galleys, cabins and bars. So far we hadn’t lost a single one on our stretch of coast. Some of the rowboats were a different matter. Several had sunk; one had been smashed into two clean halves across a rock. But they weren’t a real concern. There must be a good couple of hundred rowboats on Sullivan; plenty of those were pulled high and dry on the beach.

A real cause for concern was a big cruiser tethered to the jetty at the far end of the beach. This was the farthest from town, the least used, certainly the most poorly maintained. Even from a hundred yards away I could see the whole structure rock under the pressure of the huge cruiser that had broken loose at the stern. The winds caught the boat, swinging it out first into the lake then back and-CRASH!-against the jetty. By the time we’d reached the thing the jetty’s planks had started to pop off the timber frame wiThevery knock of the boat.

“Hurry up, you guys!” the Gerletz girl yelled through the storm. “We’re going to lose this one if we don’t work fast.”

“Someone’s all ready up there,” Ben shouted.

“See who it is.”

I looked at the figure that wrestled with a rope, trying to tie it to the iron ring set in the jetty.

“It’s Charlie Finch,” one of the men said, using his hand to shield his eyes from the stinging rain. “He’s got the front line tied.”

Gerletz moved up the plank. “We need to get the aft line secure, otherwise she’s going to smash the jetty to pieces.” The boat underlined what she’d just said by swinging back into the jetty again wiThenough force to make the whole thing shudder. Ahead another plank popped off the frame. “It’s coming apart at the seams.”

We were halfway along the jetty, all set to help the old cop tie down the boat, when he saw us. Then he did a weird thing.

He waved us back. “It’s OK,” he shouted. “I can handle it.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Finch,” Ben called. “We’ll give you a hand.”

“I’m fine!”

But he didn’t look fine. “I can handle it,” he repeated. “Go see to the other boats.”

“They’re all tied down,” Gerletz said. “This is the last one.”

The last one. But it was the big daddy of them all. This was a multimillionaire’s yacht with what must have been half a dozen cabins and a couple of bathrooms. In the near darkness the thing looked like a big, angry bear that swung from side to side to butt the jetty with those crashing blows.

“Go back,” Finch bellowed. “I’ll have it tied in a minute.”

“You’ll never manage it by yourself.” Gerletz shook her head in disbelief. “I’ll climb onto the boat and throw another line.”

“This is good enough.” The ex-cop looked furious that we were trying to help him. His eyes blazed at us through the spray.

“The line’s not strong enough,” she said. “You need thicker rope.”

“It’s not safe out here,” Finch insisted. “The surf will wash someone into the lake.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it.” With that, Gerletz bounded from the jetty onto the boat. The girl must have been scrambling across boats in all weathers since she could walk. Even though the boat bucked under her, she ran from one end of the deck to the other without touching the guardrail once. In seconds she’d pulled a hefty orange rope from a locker, uncoiled it, tied it to the deck cleat, then hurled it at us. The thing nearly got away from us into the surging water, but Ben got a grip, and soon we were all hauling the rope. It was like trying to pull a house from its foundations. For a while I didn’t think we’d bring the pitching boat under control, but at last it moved. Soon it lay hard against the jetty. It still rose and fell with the waves, but at least it no longer battered the wooden structure like a gigantic hammer.

“It should hold,” Gerletz shouted from the deck. “But I wouldn’t put my shirt on it.”

She returned partway down the deck, but instead of returning to the jetty she opened a cabin door.

Finch shouted at her. “Where are you going?” The alarm in the man’s voice startled her.

She looked back at him. “The boat’s too low in the water. She might have a leak.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Finch cried. “Leave it until the storm’s dropped.”

“But it might-”

“It’s not safe on there. The damn boat might sink with you on it.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, puzzled by his manner. “It won’t sink yet.”

“Get off the boat; you can’t be certain.” Lightning lit up his face. There was something terrible about his expression. Like he’d seen a room full of corpses. “Just get off the damned boat, OK?”

“No.” This time she sounded annoyed. “I’m not leaving it like this. You can wait on the beach, but I’m going to pump out the bilges.”

She’d ducked her head to go into the boat. Thunder crashed across the lake so loud that I saw Ben wince at the sheer volume. I also saw Finch. He was tense and staring at the boat. The man’s reaction to Gerletz entering the boat just didn’t make sense.

Or at least it didn’t make sense then.

Because five seconds later Gerletz came scrambling out of the boat onto the deck like she’d been thrown there. She looked through the dark maw of the cabin door, then called back to us. This time her voice was high, anxious-sounding.

“Greg. Come up here quick.”

With the boat securely tied I had no difficulty in climbing up onto its broad deck. I shot a questioning look at Gerletz.

“You better take a look at what’s in the cabin,” she said.

With the electric storm lighting the boat like a strobe I took a single cautious step through the doorway.

I stopped dead and whispered, “Oh, Christ.”

Outside Finch was groaning, “No, no, no, no…”

There in the gloom, lit only now and then by the flicker of lightning, were a group of faces. As I looked at them, they looked back at me, their eyes seeming to glow in the storm light.

“Valdiva,” called one of the men back on the jetty. “What the hell’s going on?”

I stepped back onto the deck. “There’s a bunch of kids in there.” I took a breath. “They’re outsiders.”