“Thank you, sir.” Jack properly acknowledged the leader’s help.
Jack and Billy Joe were thinking that they could forget their fishing hopes.
The week’s activities continued and became routine as the boys settled in. Jack and Billy Joe even separated on some of the activities. Jack liked volleyball but Billy Joe preferred horseshoes. They did stay together on the water events though. They had shared those their whole life and were pretty much agreed on them.
On Sunday morning, Jack and Billy Joe went to breakfast early as they usually did, filled their trays with food and were eating, planning their day after Sunday school.
Jack said he was a little tired and might lie on his cot and read and even sleep a little. Billy Joe, of course, thought that would be a complete waste of his time and was planning something to do with swimming or the boats. They settled into silence, each planning his day.
“This is Director Harris,” the PA system blared much too loudly. “The director of the girls’ camp has called me to say that two of her girls are missing. They left the camp paddling a canoe and haven’t been seen since. We are all asked to be on the lookout for these young ladies. If you see anything out of the ordinary on or near the lake or come by any information as to the girls’ whereabouts, let me know and I will relay the information to Ms. Crowder, the girls’ director. The leaders and the counselors will be taking out boats to assist in the search. Thank you.”
“Wonder if they’d let us help in the search,” Billy Joe thought out loud.
“Prob’ly not but we can ask,” Jack said.
They finished their breakfast in a hurry and went out the door. Jack insisted on stopping at the office building and looking at the map of the lake and the various camps on its shore.
“Right there,” Jack said, stabbing the map with his finger, “is where I bet those girls are.”
“Why would you think they are in those stumps?” Billy Joe asked. “Seems like to me, girls would think that was too spooky.”
“Well, yesterday afternoon it was real bright and sunny so nothing would look spooky,” Jack pointed out. “Second, how could they get lost if they could see the camp? The only place they couldn’t see their camp from is inside that bunch of stumps. If they got in there and got all turned around, they would first go to the bank. From the bank, they couldn’t see any more than from the water. As the night came on, anything could have happened. They got more and more lost and could even have turned the canoe over if they weren’t careful. That means they are on the bank somewhere cryin’.”
“Why cryin’?” Billy Joe asked.
“’Cause that’s what girls do. They cry about everything,” Jack explained.
“Okay,” Billy Joe conceded. “That’s as good an idea as any. Let’s go to the docks.”
They walked down to the dock area, where they found the leaders and the counselors in a group talking.
They walked up to Coach Jackson, who said, “What’s up, boys?”
“Coach Jackson,” Jack started, “Billy Joe and me, we boat all the time and we know the water. We’d like to take one of the canoes out to help look for the girls.”
“I don’t know, boys.” The coach hesitated. “We wouldn’t want to lose you too.”
“No, sir,” Jack said. “You won’t lose us. We fish all up and down Leaf River, all the creeks in Billy Joe’s flat-bottomed boat and even Lake Bogue Homa.” He exaggerated a little counting the trip with Uncle Red as experience.
“Well, you do seem to be pretty capable kids. Let’s see what the others say about it.”
Coach Jackson turned to the others and said, “These boys want to assist in the search. They have a lot of experience boating in all kind of waters in Jones County, and I vouch for their capabilities and good judgment. Is there any objection to letting them take one of the canoes? We have more than we can fill anyway.”
All the men looked at each other but none had any objections.
“Okay, boys,” the coach said, “we were just selecting the areas each of us will search. Do you have any preference?”
The men were surprised when Jack said, “Yes, sir. Can I show you on the map?”
“Sure,” another man who was holding the map said. “Which one do you like?”
Jack put his finger on a spot.
“You boated on this lake before, boy?” another man asked.
“No, sir,” Jack explained. “I just looked at the map on the bulletin board at the office building and asked myself, where would girls from the girls’ camp get lost and that’s the place I think it’s most likely.”
“You don’t think you could get lost in there too?” the coach asked.
“No, sir,” he assured. “That’s just like the place we fish for shellcrackers on Bogue Homa Lake back home. You couldn’t lose us in there.”
“Okay then, would the men who had selected that area pick another?” the coach asked.
A man nodded and the coach nodded back.
“The mess hall has made up sacks of sandwiches and bottles of water to take in every boat. These girls have got to be thirsty and hungry since it is known that they didn’t have any food or water onboard when they left,” Mr. Akins, the assistant director, announced. “The health and fitness counselor says it should be okay to wear your bathing trunks but he suggests you wear a shirt to protect you from the sun. A long-sleeved shirt if you have one. Everybody go to your hut, get yourself ready and get back down here as soon as possible to pick your boat and go.”
They all started up the hill to the huts with Jack and Billy Joe in the lead.
The boys were the first ones back down the hill ready to go.
They selected an aluminum canoe. It would be easy to handle in the tight turns around the stumps on the other side of the lake. They put the sack of sandwiches and the bottles of water under the center seat to keep them out of the sun as much as possible.
Each boy untied his end of the canoe from the dock and they paddled off with a sense of urgency derived from the thought of saving two lives.
They were halfway across the lake by the time the men arrived at the docks.
The men laughed and one of them said, “I don’t know what they need us for when they’ve got those two boys. They’ll find those girls and have them back in their camp before we push away from the dock.”
As Jack and Billy Joe approached the area of the stumps, they picked out some tall landmarks—a tall scraggly looking pine tree back toward the girls’ camp, a very full magnolia tree about the same distance in the other direction. With those points along the shoreline and the two other points—inland and toward the open lake—they should easily find their way out.
“You got a plan for doin’ this?” Billy Joe asked.
“Sorta,” Jack replied. “I thought we would go into the stumps pretty close to the shoreline and close to the girls’ camp. Then we can just follow the bank of the lake away from the girls’ camp. If we stay about a hundred to a hundred fifty feet from the bank we should be able to hear them and maybe see them. Every twenty-five to thirty yards, we’ll holler out for them. What’s their names?”
“Mr. Akins said they were Gail Taylor and Lois Rutledge from Bay Springs,” Billy Joe remembered.
“Okay, we’ll take turns yelling out their names,” Jack decided.
They entered the area of the stumps and picked out an open area they could paddle through that was, they reckoned, about a hundred and twenty-five feet from the bank.
After they were in about a hundred yards, Jack yelled at the top of his voice, “Gail!—Lois! Yell out if you can hear me!”
The boys continued to paddle, moving the canoe along smartly. After another one hundred yards, approximately, Billy Joe yelled, “Gail!—Lois! Can you hear me?” No answer.
They continued this for about an hour. Both boys were getting discouraged.
“Do you think they could have gotten this far?” Billy Joe asked. “They’re just girls, you know.”
“I don’t know but we can’t quit,” Jack responded.
“Gail!—Lois! Yell out if you can hear me!” Jack yelled in desperation.
They waited for a reply.
“There,” Billy Joe said.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Jack said. “Which way did it come from?”
“The bank, I think.”
Jack—sitting in the front—started to guide the canoe toward the bank.
After a few yards, Jack yelled again, “Gail! Lois! Keep yelling so we can find you.”
“Over here! This way!” Jack distinctly heard from a point toward the bank and a little to his left.
He corrected his course in that direction and now the girls were yelling full time. From the sound of their voices, they seemed to be okay.
The boys kept expecting to see the girls any minute but the stumps were still too thick. Jack weaved around the stumps in the direction of the voices until, finally, they spotted the two girls yelling, waving and, as Jack had said, crying.
They pulled the boat up on the shore next to the girls and stepped ashore themselves. Billy Joe was carrying the bottles of water and Jack had the sack of sandwiches.
“Y’all hungry or thirsty?” Jack asked, handing them the brown paper bag of sandwiches while Billy Joe gave each a bottle of water.
The girls ate and drank and laughed and cried and giggled and the boys just sat back and let them unwind.
“Where’s your canoe?” Jack asked.
Gail, the dark-haired girl, pointed to the lake just behind the boy’s boat and said, “On the bottom right there.”
“How deep’s the water?” Billy Joe asked.
“I don’t know,” Gail replied. “We didn’t get in it except when we swam out.”
“You swam out?” Jack asked. “What happened?”
“We got close to the bank so I stood up to reach for a tree limb to pull us ashore and the dumb canoe just tipped over,” Lois, the pretty blonde, explained.
“Oh—you stood up, huh,” Billy Joe said, thinking how dumb that was. “What kind of canoe was it?”
“What do you mean, what kind?” Lois asked.
“Was it wood or metal?” Jack asked.
“Metal, I think,” Gail said. “It was shiny.”
“Did it have short ropes tied on the back and the front?” Jack questioned.
“Yeah, they were used to tie it to the dock,” Lois answered.
“Good,” Billy Joe said. “We can get it out then.”
“You wanna go get it or you want me to?” Jack asked.
“I’ll do it,” Billy Joe volunteered. “It looks like a clean bottom about four or five feet down and I am a better swimmer than you.”
“Huh,” Jack said, “I don’t know about that.”
Billy Joe stripped off his shirt and eased into the water. Within a couple of minutes he had found the pointy bow of the canoe with the “eye” sticking out with the little rope tied to it. He ran the rope through his hand to find the end and swam back to the bank.
Pulling a canoe full of water required a great deal of effort for both boys but they were able to manage it, pouring more and more water out the stern as they pulled it onto the bank. Finally, they turned it upside down to let all the water drain out.
“I don’t guess you’ve seen the paddles, have you?” Jack asked the girls.
They both shook their heads no.
“Well, if that’s all that is lost, I guess they won’t cry too much over that,” Billy Joe figured.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed.
“The next question is,” Billy Joe pointed out, “how do we get out of here?”
“I’ve been thinkin’ about that,” Jack said. “We got two canoes, two paddles, two boys and two girls. Now, we could all ride in one canoe and tow the other one. The problem with that is, we would have to have one boy in the front and one boy in the back, both paddling, with the girls sitting on the wide seat in the middle. That’s too much weight for one canoe and if one of the girls happens to stand up again, the canoe will tip over. The best way, I think, is for us to have one boy and one girl in each canoe with the boys in the back paddling and the girls sitting in the front.”
“And what direction do we go, just like we came in or do you think another way is better?” Billy Joe asked.
“I think what we should do is go straight out toward the open lake ’til we get out of these stumps, then follow them back around to the girls’ camp.”
“Yeah,” Billy Joe agreed. “That’s what I was thinking. Let’s do it then.”
They turned the girls’ canoe upright and slid it into the water. Gail got in the front seat of the canoe with Jack in the back and Lois sat in the front seat of the one paddled by Billy Joe, and the boys pushed the canoes off.
Jack led, weaving through the stumps, trying to take the shortest route out.
Within thirty minutes they had cleared the stumps and had turned left toward the girls’ camp. With smooth sailing on the lake, they made it to the camp within forty-five minutes.
As they pulled the canoes up to the first dock they came to, women and girls came running out the dock yelling, laughing and crying.
Jack and Billy Joe helped the girls onto the dock and started to leave in their canoe. The women would have none of that. They pulled the boys from the canoes, hugged them and kissed them on the face. Both boys were as red as beets with embarrassment.
“Ma’am, we gotta get back to our camp,” Billy Joe protested and tried to pull away but both boys were surrounded and, they felt, totally captured.
“Just come on up to our mess hall and have some milk and cake. We want to properly thank you for saving these girls.”
“Nah, ma’am,” Jack protested. “That’s not necessary. We enjoyed it. Y’all don’t need to do all that. We really need to get back to our camp.”
“No, you don’t,” a voice said from behind Jack and Billy Joe.
They turned to see Coach Jackson and Assistant Director Akins getting out of a boat at the end of the dock.
“You can stay over here as long as you need to so these ladies can thank you,” Coach Jackson said with a big smile, clearly enjoying Jack and Billy Joe’s misery.
The boys did enjoy the milk and cake and the women finally stopped hugging and kissing them.
After about an hour, Coach Jackson told the ladies that he did need to get the boys started paddling across the lake so they could all be back by supper time.
Mrs. Crowder, the girls’ camp director, told Mr. Akins that he should find out what the boys’ number one desire was and try to see that they got it.