Spider Lake (32 page)

What had she said about having too much? She had warned him that having too much causes a person to lose their way. Too much money creates a whole new set of problems. But he had more than enough here to pay the bank. He would be able to pay them and get a car and take the twins to Disney. They always wanted to go to Disney.

Ben turned to head back to the boat, and just as he turned around, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Ruben the Jeep-man and the skinny guy with the custom pool cue. He wondered why they were here at the water tower and not shooting pool at the campground; then the skinny guy with the pool cue swung it hitting Ben on the left shoulder and neck. Ben was confused. Why would Carly allow this to happen? Didn’t she have authority with her connections to—

Something heavy hit Ben in the head. Ruben had something heavy— and then he remembered no more.

ohn Fisher sat on the screen-porch steps wondering how he could ever go on with his life without his boy. Sixty hours had gone by since he last saw his child and he was beginning to lose hope. His head felt thick from the grief, and it was hard for him to think clearly. The guests in cabin one and five had already been by to inform him that they were leaving for home. They each said something to the effect of too much sadness, or terrible tragedy, but John did not really hear them.

The early morning light bathed the clearing in golden light and John watched the flying insects as they fluttered around the family in five as they loaded their station wagon. The morning light striking the flies illuminated them converted them to sparkles of pure light. The mother and father were doing their best to quiet the disappointed children, trying in vain to explain why they were cutting their vacation short and going back home.

Ben could easily hear the family’s entire conversation, and he could not be moved any deeper into his own grief by the child saying, “Just because a couple of kids are missing—”

The mother stopped the sentence cold holding the boy’s arm with one hand, and spanking the wriggling child with her free one. John didn’t blame the boy. Kids say what they think. John looked down at his feet on the steps. He did so to give small comfort to the mother in five. She would be less hard on the boy if she thought John didn’t hear.

The guests in five finished packing and John kept looking down. He was spitting in-between his feet on the wooden step each time he had a good shot at a black ant. He listened as the station wagon backed over the gravel. He didn’t look back up till the vehicle was gone. He didn’t want to awkwardly wave goodbye.

He thought about walking down to the runabout but after two days of searching, he thought he would do more good at home, trying helplessly to comfort his grieving wife. Allie had been sleeping for twelve hours already, having taken a heavy sedative prescribed by the family doctor. He thought about the last time he had seen the doctor. It was when his son left the hospital after pneumonia. How long ago was that? A month and a half? It seemed like yesterday.

A wave of fresh grief made John’s sinuses fill and he couldn’t stop the tears from falling; the wet bombs dropping on the already beleaguered ants. He wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve and watched another family in the nearest cabin as they began to pack also. He was far too close to act like he couldn’t hear, so he spared them and walked back inside. He stayed in the kitchen pouring a fresh cup of coffee, listening for the car engine to start and when it finally did, he went back to his place on the porch.

He just sat there watching and waiting. He didn’t focus on any one thing, he just watched and waited for a thought, or a break, or just for his wife to wake up. The monkey was running on all fours across the cabin roofs jumping as he always did from cabin to tree to cabin; then leaping onto the wire which led from cabin six to the light pole, hand-over-handing on the wire until he reached the pole. Ben wondered what the creature had been eating the last couple of days. He guessed that the monkey had been eating insects or frogs. He didn’t care really. Ben was gone.

The monkey crossed the wire which led from the light pole to the main house, and disappeared behind him. John wondered where the thing went when he left the resort. In the last couple days when he had been on the water in his runabout searching, he had seen Morris as far as the western edge of the Rule estate. The animal seemed to have a routine. John guessed that the monkey had favorite places to forage for food.

John could hear the sound of outboard engines out on the lake. The search was continuing for his son. Another wave of grief came over him. Would he always feel this way? A door shut inside the house. Allie was awake. John almost wished she would keep on sleeping. He was having trouble managing his own grief and he did an abysmal job at comforting her. He never knew what to say.

The outside-door to the screen porch opened. She was coming out. He slid over on the steps so Allie could open the screen door and get by him on the steps. She sat down next to John and greeted him with a kiss on his cheek. She had a cup of hot tea in her hand, and she dipped the tea bag up and down on its string.

John couldn’t believe how good she looked. Yesterday evening before she finally fell asleep, she was a wreck. All the crying from her grief and having eaten nothing had left her depleted. Her eyes were red and black, and in two places her hair had even turned gray. John was not sure if she could survive having Ben— but now she looked better. Then she said, “I had a dream last night that was so real. I was sitting on the rock where you found the boat and I was crying.”

John didn’t interrupt her. He just sat, looking down at the ants.

“A beautiful woman walked up to me and said: “Don’t worry Allie. Your boy is alive. He will grow up and marry and give you two twin grandsons.” I asked her in the dream how she knew this, but she didn’t answer. John, she said you would be the one to find Ben.”

John was not in the best place mentally to listen to some bizarre dream as a source of comfort, but he was thankful that his wife had stopped crying. She took a drink of her tea and continued: “You should have seen her John. She was radiant. I asked her who she was and she said her name wasn’t important. She just kept smiling and telling me it is going to be okay. I felt so happy being next to her. Then she told me to tell you something.”

John stopped watching the ants just long enough to look at Allie’s tea cup. He was reluctant to look any higher and see the lunatic smile on his wife’s face. He was not surprised that she had blown a fuse. How could he possibly expect her to bear up under the weight of her heavy grief. He looked in her eyes, and although she was smiling, she didn’t look mad. He humored her and said: “What did she say Allie?”

“She said to follow him.”

Allie took another sip of her tea. In the golden light, and with the euphoric smile on her face, she reminded John of an actress in a tea commercial. He didn’t want to talk anymore with her. She seemed to be okay because of a drug-induced dream so he didn’t have the burden of comforting her; but he was still firmly planted into reality and he had some grief of his own to deal with. He patted his smiling wife on the hand, kissed her on the cheek, and headed for his boat.

Ben and Matt were just laying down on the floor of the cellar. How long had they been there? They couldn’t tell. Neither one had said much in the last couple of days. They agreed that they should not talk with the hopes of gaining back their voices. On two occasions they had waved the underwear flag when voices seemed near enough to see it, but it didn’t help.

Matt’s injury was causing him to go in and out of shock, and he slept about twice as many hours as Ben. The last time they heard calling it seemed to them that the rescuers were wearing out, not calling their names with the same enthusiasm. When they had last been heard, Ben tried calling out, but although he was gaining back his speaking voice, when he tried to shout, his voice would still crack and then go silent.

Both boys individually thought that they might not survive, and after so much time without food or water, they were losing hope. The light in the cellar which bled through the four-inch gap in the jamb was at its brightest at ten in the morning, and it helped to lift the spirits of the boys. They guessed they were in the third day, and they knew they would need to be found soon.

When the light was brightest they talked about their parents, and about old memories to keep their spirits up. They were thirsty. Ben had put one of his shoes outside the cellar door with the hopes of it filling with rain water, but no rain came. There was nothing to do but wait and listen for any voices to call.

When it was light out, Ben would stand on the cellar steps and look out the crack, even though all he could see was the deadfalls. Every now and then they would hear animals walking and scratching above them on the cellar roof, and they tried to guess what kind of animal it might be by the sounds it made.

They could speak softly now. They no longer whispered really, and they played games of tick-tack-toe in the cellar’s dirt floor. They told stories to one another to pass the time. Each time Matt fell back to sleep, Ben would go to the cellar door again and look out at the deadfalls, hoping for some kind of rescue.

Ben was standing and looking out the crack when the animal came back, and he was startled by the face of Morris peering in at him on the opposite side of the jamb. Ben nearly fell on top of his injured friend at the sight of the monkey so close to his face, and he cajoled the animal to go get help. He knew the awful creature would have no clue of what he was being told, but he tried anyway.

Then the wicked little thing reached in and grabbed the underwear flag; the only signal they had to get the attention of somebody who might be searching near by. The vile creature had stolen from them their last hopes of being found, and both boys fell into a deep melancholy. They tried not to lose hope, and encouraged one another saying that they would be able to yell pretty soon, but they really didn’t believe it. Sleep was the only thing they could do to help with their despair. When they were asleep they could forget where they were.

John thought he would run his boat over to the mansion property and talk to the fire marshal. He kept the runabout at an idle as he rounded the southern point entering the main lake. He had been given a quiet lecture the day before about running full throttle. He had forgotten about the men in the wet suits swimming below the surface, and had they caught anyone but he roaring around, they would have used much sterner voices and way more colorful language.

As he rounded the point, he could see that the Rule estate was still active, although the numbers of rescuers were about half the size of the previous day. Many people had given up hope that the boys would be found on shore and alive and most if not all of the search was now concentrated on the lake. He looked off to his right where the fire department boat was, and now he could see buoys moving this way and that, obviously tethered to the divers below them.

He avoided the area where they were searching and steered a wide berth towards the eastern side of the property by the rock and the shattered yellow boat. He was watching the firemen that were milling around under the tent and talking when the monkey ran across the estate from the western side to the east. The animal was running with what looked like a white flag. The sight of the flag-carrying monkey didn’t make any sense to John. He shelved his thoughts about it and drove the runabout into the shore.

He climbed out of the boat and headed for the tent. He was still half-watching the monkey running along the southern shore with the flag, when the fire Marshal walked up to meet John. “Good morning mister Fisher. I hope you slept last night.”

“Hi Paul. Anything new?”

“No sir. We have covered all the ground around the lake. We are concentrating on the water now. Can I get you a coffee?”

“No thanks— Did you just see that?”

“What’s that Mister Fisher?”

“The monkey— Morris. Did you see him just now?”

“Yeah, he runs by back and forth all day long.”

“No, did you see him this time? He was carrying a white flag.”

“Yeah, the damn thing was carrying a flag all right. It was underwear.”

The sentence fell on the two men like a ton of bricks. Both of them looked at each other with total comprehension. Paul Everett the fire marshal ran back to the tent and gave strict orders for all his men and any remaining volunteers to search the woods from the western edge of the property to the girl scout camp and from the road at the south to the lake shore at the north. He then ran down to meet John at the runabout. They quickly moved to where the dive boat was, and gave the men in the boat separate orders to stop diving and concentrate on land to the east of the mansion grounds at the southern point all the way to the resort.

“And I want a couple of you men to get over to the girl scout camp pronto! If that flag turns out to be boy’s underwear, they might have used it to get our attention! I can’t understand why they didn’t hear us or call out, but there must be some logical explanation. When you muster them up, have them search again along the north side of the lake. I want one of you to run over and tell Mrs. Anderson at the county hospital. We will notify Mister Fisher’s wife. This may be very good news. Now get moving!”