I crawled into my sleeping bag, zipped up the zipper, pulled the nice warm blankets close around my chin, because the nights were always cold up there, and pretty soon I was a goner, which means I was asleep. I didn’t know anything—although, of course, when a boy is asleep and doesn’t know anything, he doesn’t know it.
Right away, it seemed, I was awake again. Something feeling like a kitten’s feet was jumping up and down on my stomach. I was terribly sleepy and didn’t want to wake all the way up, but I supposed it was Poetry or Dragonfly, so I made myself open my eyes.
It wasn’t even daylight yet inside the tent, although I could see out through a little crack where the tent flap was open toward the east. I could hear two people breathing, one on each side of me, so I knew Poetry and Dragonfly were still asleep. Yet something was bouncing around on my stomach, something that had little feet and was using all of them.
You can guess I woke up in a hurry. I sneaked my hand under my pillow for my flashlight, turned it on, and stared at what I saw.
It was a wild animal! An actual wild animal. A wild cat!
No, not a wildcat, but a wild polecat, which is a skunk! I could smell him; and anybody who knows what a skunk smells like doesn’t like it. That little black-and-white skunk stopped bouncing on my stomach when I flashed the light on him and just stared at the light, with his two green eyes looking like two tiny flashlights shining right in my face.
Before I knew it, I’d hissed, “Scat!”
That woke Poetry, and he jumped as if somebody had punched him in the ribs. He threw back his blankets and sat straight up, grabbing his nose quick with one hand.
Well, that scared the skunk, and he whirled around like a flash with his big, bushy black-and-white tail straight up in the air, which meant he was angry, or scared, or excited and was going to spray his ridiculous perfume all over the tent. I’d seen skunks do that back along Sugar Creek when one of Circus’s dad’s dogs was about to catch it.
“Duck!” I whispered fiercely to Poetry, which he did, and which I did even quicker.
Mr. Skunk, however, must have had good home training or else he wasn’t excited enough, for he ran like a kitten straight for the tent flap and went out, leaving enough of his unnecessary perfume behind him to make us want to get out too.
Dragonfly, as you already know, was always sleepy in the morning, but all of a sudden he woke up, grabbed his nose, and said, “What on earth!”
Poetry shushed him, saying in a hoarse whisper, “We’ve just had company.”
“Wh-what time is it?” Dragonfly asked.
I looked at my luminous-dialed watch, and it was 4:30. I stuck my head out through the tent flap and looked toward the northeast, where the sun was supposed to rise. The sky was already a sort of pearlish pink. It was time to get up to go to catch that twenty-pound northern pike.
We dressed, whispering. Then we crept out quietly so as not to awaken the gang in the other tent and in the trailer, picked up the outboard motor and our fishing tackle, and hurried up the lakeshore toward Eagle Eye’s rowboat.
At the edge of the woods we stopped to take stock: fishing tackle; live minnows for bait, which we’d kept in the live box at the end of the dock and now had in a minnow pail; the little fourteen-pound motor, which Dragonfly was carrying by the rubber grip on its steering handle; and a can of gasoline, because the motor ran out of gas about every hour. Yes, we had everything we needed. Our life preservers were already tied on good and tight.
Pretty soon we were there. I climbed into the boat first, taking the motor with me. I went back to the stern and sat down and began to attach it. While I was tightening the thumb screw button, Poetry unlocked the boat. Dragonfly arranged the tackle box and the minnows so we could each reach for an extra minnow without having to stretch too far.
In a jiffy we were ready. We shoved off and floated out until we were out far enough for the motor to run without its propeller getting tangled up with the sandy bottom.
I felt proud to think I could start the motor all by myself. I was glad there wasn’t anybody older there to tell me how to do it, when I already knew how. When a boy knows how to do something, he almost gets mad inside when somebody older than he is starts to explain things and to tell him just exactly how to do it—although you can’t expect all the parents in the world to know that.
First, I opened the air vent screw and the gasoline shutoff valve, then coiled the starter rope around the starting disc, moved the mixture lever over to number four on the dial, and did what I was supposed to do to the carburetor float pin.
There was already plenty of gasoline in the tank, so I was ready. Quick as a flash I pulled the starter rope, and just as quick the motor started, and we were off, puttity-sizzle out onto the lake. I made a few adjustments, which I’d learned how to make, and throttled the motor down to what is called trolling speed, which is very slow, with the motor barely running and the boat barely creeping over the water. Maybe Old Northern is on this side of the neck today, I thought. The water was very quiet on this side.
I sat there with my left hand on the rubber grip on the steering handle, feeling important, feeling happy, and feeling as if something was going to happen.
Poetry had his line in the water, letting it trail along about fifty feet behind the boat and with a sinker heavy enough to keep the bait just as close to the bottom of the lake as possible without catching the weeds that grew down there. I didn’t even put my line in the water, because I wanted to run the boat.
Dragonfly sat in the prow and kept his line out too.
All of us felt fine. The weather was just a little chilly, as it is in the early morning up there. I steered along the shoreline, following the long neck of land down toward its point, staying about twenty or thirty feet out from the bulrushes growing near the shore.
The water was very quiet, and every now and then we could see a splash at the edge of the weeds where a bass was probably getting his breakfast. In the east, the big, round sun stuck its face out from under the earth, where it had been buried all night, wiggled its head through a couple of reddish-pink clouds, and started off on its day’s work.
“Look!” Dragonfly said all of a sudden.
Poetry and I looked just in time to see a great blue heron, with wings as long as a boy, start flying from the shore out across the lake.
I tell you, I felt good. I also felt sorry for all the people in the world who ought to take a vacation and couldn’t afford it, and I thought that all those people in the world who could afford a rest like the one we were having, and didn’t take it, were just plumb crazy.
Santa says that even Jesus told His disciples to “come away … and rest a while,” and He Himself would go out into the mountains or somewhere where He could be alone with the heavenly Father and get His soul rested.
I made up my mind that when I grew up I’d take my boys—or let them go alone—to some camp where there was real Bible training. And I’d teach them to love the great big out-of-doors, which God made for us to enjoy.
I didn’t have time to think long though—not much longer than it took that big, blue, awkward bird to gallop across the corner of the sky to another shore. For suddenly Dragonfly got what is called a strike, which means that a fish somewhere down in the lake was hungry and had made a headfirst dive straight toward his hook and got caught.
Right away Dragonfly’s eyes were wider open than ever, and he was pulling in a fish.
It wasn’t much of a fish, though. Just about fifteen inches long, a walleyed pike. He put it on the stringer without my even stopping the motor, and we put-putted along with Poetry looking kind of sober.
“What do you bet I get my big northern?” he asked.
“You won’t,” I said.
And just then his pole went down against the side of the boat with a whack, his reel started to sing fiercely, and Poetry’s eyes looked the way Dragonfly’s had. Something had grabbed his line. “I—I’ve g-got him!” he stammered, and it loo
ked as if he had.
Away back behind the boat there was a fierce boiling of the water, and up through the surface lunged a big snout with a body fastened to it as long as Poetry’s leg—almost. It actually looked as big as Little Jim.
The fight was on. All week, Poetry had not only been watching Barry and others catch big fish, but he had been reading up on what to do in case he got one on his line. Any fisherman knows that if you try to pull a big fish straight into the boat when you have just a little pole and the line tests only about twenty-five pounds, the fish’ll break your line as if it was a spider-web and maybe break your pole too. You have to let the fish get tired out first.
So every time that big, fierce fish started to run down toward the bottom of the lake, or in some other direction, Poetry let his reel run with it. Then, just the very second he got a chance, he’d start winding up the line again.
“Let him go! Let him go!” Dragonfly yelled, as excited as Poetry was.
Zing! Out went Poetry’s line with the reel spinning like an automobile wheel in a race.
I shoved the steering handle over to the left so the boat would go around in a circle, just the way I’d seen Barry do it. But all of a sudden Old Northern decided he didn’t like the water along the shore, and he started out into deeper water. Poetry’s line was unwinding faster all the time, which meant that as soon as it had all unwound, the fish would snap the line and be gone.
Without taking time to think, I opened the throttle, and our boat leaped into the race, with Poetry acting like an expert fisherman. He wound up his reel as fast as he could, while sweat ran down his face and his breath acted as if he was in a fierce footrace.
Then, away ahead of us, the water broke open, and up shot Old Northern, his ugly snout about as long as a big dog’s head. He stayed out of the water only as long as it took him to get back in again, but we got to see all of him. While he was up in the air he shook his vicious old head savagely like a dog shaking a rat, trying to shake the hook out of his mouth, but he couldn’t. Then he disappeared, and Poetry’s line went tight.
“He’s gone to the bottom!” Poetry puffed.
I steered in the direction of the fish, and it looked as if Poetry was right. The monster had dived straight to the bottom of the lake and maybe had buried itself in the weeds.
Poetry tugged on the line, but it was just like pulling on a line when the hook is fastened to a log.
“M-maybe he th-threw the hook out!” Dragonfly said, his teeth chattering. He wasn’t cold, though—only excited and scared.
Poetry grunted in disgust and kept on winding in his line while I steered in a circle, getting closer and closer to the place where the line must have been fastened to the bottom of the lake.
I was beginning to notice now that the waves were a lot higher than they had been. In fact, they were rocking our boat too much for comfort. I looked up and saw we were just even with the end of the point of land where the waves were blowing past. And before we could do anything about it, we were out in them.
It had been quiet on our side of the point, because that side had been protected from the wind, but out here the wind came across in a big sweep, and the waves were rolling twice as high as our boat.
But there we were! I opened the throttle full force for a minute, but that little motor couldn’t any more battle against those waves than a baby could battle a windstorm. Yes, there we were! A big northern pike on Poetry’s line, and a fierce wind that we couldn’t buck!
Then like a sudden thunderclap scaring a boy, Old Northern came to life down there in the lake bottom and started running wild again, just as the boat began to toss around in almost every direction at once.
“Can’t you guide the thing?” Poetry yelled at me. “Steer over there toward the sheltered place behind the point!”
“Steer nothing!” I yelled. “This baby can’t make it! It’s too little!”
I caught a glimpse of Dragonfly in the prow, holding onto both sides with his knuckles white.
But Poetry didn’t seem to have any sense for anything but the northern. He didn’t know we were getting into rough water, or, if he did, he was just thinking about how hard it was to catch the fish.
Waves tossed us around as though our boat was a matchstick and the motor wasn’t any more than an electric fan.
Still, in a little while Poetry had Old Northern up close to the boat, and that big fellow with his savage-looking eyes and teeth was acting tired. At the same time, I discovered how to keep the boat headed against the waves and not let it run in what is called the “trough.”
We were actually making headway back toward the point of land and quiet water when Poetry leaned over too far and overbalanced the boat. It shipped water—a whole half boatful in one big gulp, as though it was thirsty and wanted to take in the whole lake.
Dragonfly screamed, and so did I. Poetry lunged back to the other side of the boat, just as Dragonfly and I did the same thing.
The boat capsized, and all of us were out in the water.
13
In the water! With a hard wind blowing and beginning to blow harder, the way it often does in the morning just after sunrise! And as the waves got higher, the farther out we drifted!
Barry had taught us all what to do in case a boat ever tipped over or filled up with water and we didn’t happen to have on our life preservers.
“Stay with the boat!” he had ordered in a loud voice, driving it into our heads like a carpenter hitting a nail hard to drive it into a piece of wood. “Stay with the boat! Don’t try to swim to shore with your clothes on! Keep your body all the way under except for your head and get to the boat and hold on! Even if it is filled with water, it won’t sink unless you try to get in. Stay down low, and hold onto the boat, and let the wind blow you to some shore!”
Then Barry had told us to do the same thing if we were in a canoe and it turned over. “People who stay with the canoe and hold onto it never drown!” Barry said. “It’s only those people who leave it and try to swim to shore who drown. Remember that! Canoes never sink! They do get overbalanced easily unless you keep your weight low in them, but they never sink!”
Well, we knew all those rules, but already we were a long way from the boat, which was right side up again but was, of course, full of water. Besides, we had on our life preservers.
I looked over to my right, and there was Dragonfly struggling around, gulping and gasping, but his head was above the water. I knew he couldn’t drown unless he stuck his head under the water himself, because his life preserver was holding him up. He was riding up and down, up and down with the high waves, which had whitecaps on them and looked like a lot of live, mad snowdrifts.
Just that minute I had to think about myself, because a big wave picked me up and threw me over into the center of a low place, so that there were high waves on each side of me. About all I could see was the sky above and high water on each side.
I don’t know how I happened to think of it then, but I did. I thought of the Bible story that tells about God’s people hurrying down to the Red Sea over in Egypt. The angry Egyptians were behind them with war chariots and spears, ready to kill them. Then Moses lifted up the rod he had in his hand and stretched it out over the sea, and the water stood straight up on each side, so the people could walk right across the sea as if they were walking through a long hall.
My dad says that God did that for a special purpose and that He does the same thing for us today, only in a different way. When people have to wade through a lot of trouble, He makes the trouble stand up on each side so they can go through safely and their souls will come out all right on the other side.
Old Man Paddler, I thought, had gone through a lot of trouble like that, and he hadn’t ever drowned yet.
Well, I’d had rides on what is called the Tilt-a-Whirl at a county fair, and they had been lots of fun. I knew that if I could quit feeling scared, I’d have one of the longest, happiest, Tilt-a-Whirl rides a boy could ever have, becaus
e, remember, we couldn’t drown as long as our heads were above water, which they were all the time.
I heard Poetry holler just then. Looking behind me, I saw that he still had hold of that fishing pole, and the fish was still on the other end of the line.
The only thing was, if Old Northern would decide he wanted to take a trip down to the bottom of the lake, and if the bottom happened to be farther down than the length of Poetry’s line, Poetry’d either have to let go, or else be pulled under, or else his line would break.
It’s a crazy feeling, being about a mile out in a lake, in the water from your shoulders down and riding the waves, especially when the water feels cold. I was glad there weren’t any sharks there to eat us up.
Just then I heard a splash behind me, and it was Dragonfly swimming toward me with a grin on his face. “It’s what I kind of hoped would happen,” he said, his teeth chattering again, “but I wish I wasn’t so s-scared.”
He reached out to grab hold of me, but I yelled for him not to, because it would be safer for each one of us to be by himself.
“I want something to hold onto!” he yelled back.
We’d have worked our way over to the boat, but it was drifting faster than we were, so there was nothing for us to do but what we were doing, which was nothing—except that Poetry still held onto his fishing pole.
“I’ve still got him!” he puffed and grinned at me as though he was having the time of his life. “What are you looking so scared ab—” Poetry stopped as a big wave tossed him around and splashed up into his face. But he was grinning again in a minute. “No use to be scared,” he said. “See the island over there! We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes, and then I’ll land my fish.”
Just the same, I was glad we weren’t adrift in any ocean or on a big lake that didn’t have an island.
When a boy is badly scared, he can’t get over it right away either. I kept on feeling funny around my heart and thinking a lot of tangled-up thoughts, such as it was a good thing Little Jim and I had had our strange ride on the hog house in Sugar Creek that spring, or our parents wouldn’t have made us wear life preservers when we went out in the boat up here. I also thought that even if a lake was awfully deep, it wouldn’t take a drowning boy long to get to the bottom.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6 Page 31
