Skinny-Dipping at Monster Lake

by Bill Wallace

  I jumped between them and tried to stop Daniel. He took a swing at me, but I ducked. Then Pepper was there, holding him. Chet jumped in to help Pepper.

  “I’ll get both of you,” Daniel threatened as they walked him to the bank. “I’ll tear both of you to shreds.”

  Jordan ignored him and started talking to Ted about how they could home in on the sound. I pretended to ignore Daniel, too. He was popular at school and a good athlete, but there was still something kind of sneaky about him. Especially when he was mad. I felt like I needed to keep an eye on him.

  Daniel paced up and down the bank, glaring out into the lake at Jordan and me. After a while he even climbed up on the trunk of the fallen tree and stomped around. It was like he was trying to get closer to us. Sort of reminded me of a cat waiting for the opportunity to pounce on a mouse.

  “Kent?”

  The sound of my name turned my attention back to Jordan. “What?”

  “I’ll need your mask and snorkel,” Jordan said. “We also need something metal, like a couple of wrenches or something so I can communicate with this guy. Try to find out where he is and . . .”

  Suddenly an ear-piercing scream shattered the night air. It made us jump. Sent the chills racing all over me.

  For an instant I thought it was Mrs. Baum. She must have finally spotted us, really close to her front yard, and was yelling at us to get off her property.

  I froze in my tracks.

  “The MONSTER!” The scream came again. “It’s here! It’s right here!”

  Frantic eyes darted about. I finally spotted Daniel, out on the fallen cottonwood tree. He jumped up and down a couple of times, pointing at the water. Then he spun to race back up the trunk toward shore.

  Only he turned too quick. His foot slipped.

  Arms flailing—spinning round and round like the blades of a helicopter—he swayed one way, then the other. Finally he toppled over. Crashed through the branches and splashed into the lake.

  Out of sight for an instant, he finally fought his way to the surface. He yelled again:

  “It’s the monster! It’s got my leg! Help!”

  18

  Panic does funny things to a person. Here Daniel was—in trouble—screaming and flopping around in the lake. He needed help.

  The rest of us took off. We were a good twenty yards up the hill before we stopped. I don’t even remember running. I was just there, panting for air and looking over my shoulder. All seven of us were clumped together like a covey of quail. Trembling and shaking, we reached to our sides and behind us, searching for someone to cling to.

  And just as quickly as the unexpected scream had sent me running for the hill, I spun and raced back.

  Panic is the most dangerous thing in the world when someone is in the water. I’d been to enough water-safety courses with Dad to know that. Most times—even being trapped underwater and running out of air in a scuba tank—a person could survive. He could get free, save his life, just as long as he kept his cool. Just as long as he stayed calm.

  Daniel was not calm!

  As I ran toward him, all I could see were his face and hands. Fingernails dug at the bark of the cottonwood as he tried to pull himself up. Face barely above the surface, he kept yanking and tugging. Fighting for his life.

  I leaped to the trunk of the tree. It was wide and so heavy in the water, there was no spring or bounce. I ran along the length, squeezed past one huge branch, and hopped around a smaller one. Finally I was right over him.

  I’d never seen such a pitiful, terrified, helpless look on anyone’s face in my life. Daniel was always the leader—the take-charge guy. But not now. Eyes wide and filled with tears, he reached up to me.

  “It’s got my leg! It’s trying to pull me under. Help me! Please . . . please . . .”

  I dropped to one knee and reached out an arm.

  But before Daniel could grab for me, I yanked my hand back and scrambled to my feet.

  “When you’re in the water, never let someone in a panic get hold of you. They’ll take you under with them and you’ll both drown.” Dad’s words echoed in my ears as if he were standing right beside me.

  I looked around for a long stick or broken branch. Something I could hold out for him to grab. Daniel slipped under the surface once more. He came up sputtering and coughing.

  “The monster . . . Help me, Kent!” he begged. Fingertips clawing at the tree bark, he pulled up, then let go with one hand and reached out to me.

  A sudden smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. Each time Daniel kicked and struggled, a little clump of leaves, about three yards behind him, sloshed and splashed the water.

  “Daniel, you’re hung on a tree limb. It’s not the monster. Just relax.”

  His eyes were wide and frantic. “It’s got my leg! It’s trying to drag me away. Help—please!”

  “It’s a tree limb, Daniel!”

  He didn’t hear a word I said. I looked around. Behind me the others had worked their way, cautious and slow, to the base of the fallen tree.

  “Kent . . . don’t let it eat me,” he whimpered. “I don’t want to die.”

  Once more he lunged and jerked. Loosing his grip on the tree, he went under. Bark ripped beneath his fingers as he violently clawed his way back to the surface. The leaves behind him splashed and bobbed.

  I dropped to my stomach on the log. Quick as a cat—so he wouldn’t have a chance to grab my arm—I reached out and bopped him on the head. He didn’t even notice. So . . . I hit him again. Harder this time.

  Daniel’s eyes flashed. He blinked a couple of times and looked up at me.

  “It’s a tree limb.” I spoke softly. “Quit yanking.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “Be still. You’re tangled up in a branch. I’ll get you out, but quit crying and jumping around. Just hold on a second.”

  Once calm, I had Daniel hold on to my arm. Then I told him to feel around with his other foot to see if he could tell how he was stuck.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “There’s a V or a fork over the front of my right foot.”

  “Can you slide your foot back?”

  Daniel shook his head. “No. There’s another branch behind it. It’s really stuck.”

  I felt his fingers tighten around my wrist.

  “Okay. Calm down. Slide your left foot behind your ankle. See if you can wedge your toes in there and shove the branch off. If not, try to push it far enough so you can wiggle your heel out.”

  His grip tightened even more. I grabbed his wrist with both hands. Suddenly Daniel’s eyes flashed wide. Without a word of warning, he grabbed my elbow with his free hand. Then my shoulder, and finally a fistful of my hair as he climbed his way up me to get out of the water.

  I felt like I’d been in a fight with a bobcat or something. I was scratched and clawed and probably bleeding.

  Never stopping to say so much as thank you, Daniel climbed over me. Staying on all fours, he crawled down the log and hopped onto the shore. By the time I got back to them, they had already asked Daniel about seeing the monster.

  “Bubbles?” Chet’s head tilted to one side and he let out a little laugh. “All that over some bubbles? That’s as bad as Kent’s wild catfish attack.”

  Everyone started laughing. Only instead of laughing with them, like I did when the catfish scared me, Daniel got mad. No longer crying, he puffed his chest out and pushed his shoulders back.

  “Not just bubbles,” he snapped, trying to take charge again. “I’ve seen bubbles from turtles or little pockets of air oozing up from the mud. These bubbles were huge. It was like . . . like somebody had flushed a giant toilet. Just a big baloosh!”

  “Like air coming from a scuba tank?” Pepper frowned.

  Daniel shook his head. “No. Bigger. Lots bigger.”

  Jordan left us and walked out on the log. He stood, staring down at the water, then raced back. “It’s right there!” he yelped. “Right under the tree. I could hear it, even without
putting my head under the water.” He turned to me. “I need your mask and snorkel.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t see down there. Not after the rain and at night.”

  “Don’t need to see,” Jordan said. “Just have to keep my head under long enough to communicate.” He turned to Ted. “Go up to Mrs. Baum’s and see if she’ll give you a couple of wrenches or something. I need two pieces of metal I can clank together so I can send Morse code.”

  I sprinted for home.

  Ted and I got back about the same time. I handed Jordan the snorkel and mask. Ted handed him two large rusty wrenches.

  “Mrs. Baum wasn’t home. That’s why it took me so long,” he explained. “But Dad and I helped clean her barn out last summer. I remembered seeing these, so I just went and got them.”

  Jordan put the mask and snorkel on. Holding the wrenches, he walked out on the log, found a big limb that was lying in the water, and draped himself over it. It looked kind of weird. His legs dangled down on one side and his head and arms dangled down on the other. All we could see was his rear end sticking up in the air.

  We waited. And waited. Finally Jordan came back and stood on the base of the log, looking down at us.

  “Okay. We need help. There’s some guy trapped in a submarine. I think the tree fell on him or something. He’s running out of air and can’t get out.”

  There was total silence. I guess everybody else was thinking the same thing I was.

  Submarine?

  In Cedar Lake?

  We stared at Jordan. No one breathed. No one blinked. We just stared.

  The silence grew and grew. No waves lapped the shore. No crickets chirped in the grass.

  Just silence.

  19

  Daniel’s laugh finally broke the silence. It wasn’t a fun laugh. It was one of those dirty, ugly laughs that irritated the night stillness like a pesky mosquito humming in your ear.

  “Submarine in Cedar Lake. Ha! That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. What are you trying to pull?”

  Daniel made a complete turnaround from the scared little kid with tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t even act like the same guy that I had saved only moments earlier. Arms folded and eyes narrowed, he got right in Jordan’s face.

  Jordan sighed and raised his finger to the bridge of his nose so he could push his glasses up. Then he remembered he didn’t have any glasses on, so he sighed again.

  “Okay. I tapped out two short, two long, and two short. That’s Morse code for question. You know, a question mark . . .”

  “And?” Daniel snipped, still not believing a word Jordan said.

  “And . . . they tapped back three short—the letter s, two shorts and one long—the letter u, followed by a long and three shorts—the letter b. In other words—sub. Then I tapped—”

  “Wait a minute, Jordan,” I said, cutting him off. “We don’t have time to learn that code stuff right now. Just tell us what they said.”

  “Oh.” He shrugged. “Okay. They said, ‘Sub. Trapped. Need air.’ ”

  All we could do was stand there. The silence swept in again. We stared at Jordan. Stared at the lake, then stared back at Jordan again.

  “There’s no way someone could get a submarine in Cedar Lake,” Pepper scoffed. “Those things are huge.”

  Chet shook his head. “Not necessarily. Some submersibles are quite small. Why, even back in World War II, the Japanese were using two-man subs to spy on Honolulu and—”

  “And . . .” Jordan cut in, “I was doing some research the other day on the Cayman Islands. They have these two- or three-man submersibles that can dive to over three thousand feet. They’re really heavy, but they’re relatively small, compared to what we normally think of as a submarine.

  Foster waved his hands. “Okay, so there are small submarines. But . . . but why in Cedar Lake?”

  No one—not even Jordan—had an answer to that one.

  Ted turned and started up the hill. “Look, it doesn’t matter. Someone is trapped down there, in something. They’re trapped, running out of air, and we have to help them. Come on, Kent.”

  I headed up the hill—but Ted went left and I went right. “Where you going?” he called.

  “Mrs. Baum’s. It’s closer.”

  “She’s not home.”

  I frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “When I went after the wrenches for Jordan, I pounded on both doors until my hand hurt. She’s not home.”

  We jogged to my house to call. I didn’t have the nerve to tell the dispatcher that there was a submarine in Cedar Lake. I simply said there was someone trapped underwater and we needed the Emergency Rescue Unit. The man on the phone could tell I was a kid, and he started questioning me. When I told him who I was, he knew Dad, he knew he was at a wedding shower at the church, and he said he’d notify him, too.

  “Be sure and tell him that I’m fine. And none of us kids is hurt or in trouble. Otherwise, he’ll flip out.”

  The dispatcher promised he would.

  The summer after we first moved here, Mom and Dad had a big picnic and invited a whole bunch of the firefighters who Dad worked with. Since most of the guys knew where we lived, our driveway is where we decided to wait.

  I saw the lights before I ever heard the siren.

  Blue, yellow, and red flashed and streaked across the dam so fast that the EMS truck was almost to the middle before the sound reached me. At the corner of the dam, I lost sight of them for a moment. Then they were on our road, headed straight for me.

  The EMS truck slowed. Then I guess when they saw me waving in their headlights, they sped up and slid to a stop right beside where Ted and I stood.

  “Hey, squirt,” a familiar voice greeted. “How’s my old fishin’ buddy?”

  It was Greg Ratcliff. Greg was one of Dad’s fishing buddies. He was fun and I liked it when he came to the house or when Dad let me go fishing with the two of them. Pete Barsto drove the truck. He leaned around Greg and nodded. Pete was a short, stocky young man with dark skin and brown eyes. He was nice, too, only he wasn’t as much fun as Greg.

  Arms dangling over the passenger-side doorway, Greg reached out and ruffled my hair. “Hear you got a problem. Where we supposed to be?”

  Ted and I hopped on the running boards on either side of the truck. Pete drove slowly, until we got to the gate that opened into the vacant lot. There, I hopped off and pointed toward the lake. “The water’s about sixty yards down that way. The tree’s about twenty yards left of the fence line, here. You’ll see the guys standing around. That’s where it is.”

  “Don’t want to get stuck or lose the light trailer we’re pulling. Any ravines or creeks to fall into?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Greg glanced to the other side, where Ted was hanging on. “Son, why don’t you and I walk in front. We’ll watch for drop-offs, and Kent can wait here for his father.”

  “Dad’s coming?”

  “Not more than five minutes behind us. We’ll go ahead and set up, okay, squirt?”

  “Sure, Greg.”

  I watched them drive down the hill and stop. When I glanced back to the dam, three more sets of headlights were racing across. They weren’t going as fast as the EMS unit had, but almost.

  Greg and Pete already had the light trailer unhooked and set up by the time Dad and the other fathers arrived. I rode down with Dad and Mr. Aikman.

  Snorkel and mask in hand, Pete walked toward the lake. Greg was still trying to get the lights on. There was a long pole on one side of the trailer with a bank of about five enormous floodlights. They had raised the pole and locked it in place, then extended the telescoping part until the lights were about fifteen feet up in the air. Greg pulled on this cord, over and over again, as if starting a lawnmower. Finally the generator coughed and sputtered a couple of times. He pulled again and it settled to a smooth almost quiet hum. Once it was running, he turned the lights on.

  Suddenly it was bright as day.
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br />   After parking their cars out of the way, the other men came pouring out, trying to find their sons. Chet was out on the fallen tree. Foster, Daniel, Ted, Pepper, and Zane stood near the clump of dirt-covered roots at the base. When the lights came on, they flinched and quickly raised a hand to shelter their eyes from the bright glare. The dads, who stood right beside me, kind of surged forward. Necks stretched and standing on their tiptoes, each searched for his son. One at a time they seemed to relax. All but Jordan’s dad.

  “Jordan? Where are you? Jordan?”

  As bright as it was, I already had Jordan spotted. Chet crouched on the tree trunk, right where the branches were under the water. Jordan was lying across one of the bigger limbs. All I could see was his back and the tip of my snorkel. When Chet tapped his leg, he brought his head up and looked around. Then Chet said something to him. Jordan pulled the mask off and got to his knees.

  “I’m down here, Dad. I’m fine. But you need to tell the rescue people to hurry.”

  We headed down to the shore. About the time we got there, Pete Barsto raised his head above water.

  “Greg,” he called. “They’re right. There’s somebody down here. When Simon gets here, have him—”

  “I’m here, Pete!” Dad called.

  “Good, Simon. Let’s get our stuff on. We’ll have to go take a look. Oh . . . need the lights, too.”

  Pete Barsto was quite a bit younger than Dad. He didn’t jog to the truck, he sprinted. We heard the door fly open, and in just a matter of seconds both men were out of their clothes and into their wet suits. Gear in hand, they trotted to the edge of the lake. Then they waded out into the water and then . . .

  They were gone.

  The only thing left was a swirl of water, glistening in the glow of the big floodlights.

  I held my breath, watching. In the daylight I could always find a bubble trail—bubbles coming up whenever someone exhales. In the dark I couldn’t see a thing. I didn’t like Dad being out of my sight. I didn’t like him diving in the dark. Hardly realizing how long I’d been holding my breath, the air made a big poof sound when I let it out and sucked in a new one.