5 Murder at the High School Reunion

by Steve Demaree

  The look on Lou’s face told me he didn’t know whether to panic or laugh. I knew which one. It wasn’t his carcass out in that runaway rowboat. Lou collected himself before I did.

  “Start paddling, Cy!”

  Remembering that I never learned how to swim and that I didn’t want to capsize, I turned slowly to look for the oars. Rowboats are not ocean liners. It didn’t take me long to realize that my rowboat had no paddles, oars, or twigs to help me change directions. I wondered what I’d do when my vessel hit the bank on the other side, the side away from Lou and Lightning.

  I didn’t wonder for long, because my slight movements had changed the boat’s direction and I was slowly being transported downstream.

  “Stick your arms in the water, see if you can steer.”

  I felt like telling my friend where he could stick his arms, and then I realized that he was trying to help. I eased my body down into the boat and managed to do so with the boat still upright. I hadn’t heard anything about alligators in the Thornapple River, so I leaned over and dipped my arms into the water until my lips were almost kissing the rotting wood. Not only couldn’t I touch the bottom of the river, but I couldn’t do anything to change the direction my flimsy vehicle was headed.

  I turned to look at Lou, who was shouting encouragement. I wasn’t sure if he was concerned about my well being or was afraid that I’d locked Lightning and had put the keys in my pocket. At that point, I wasn’t sure if I locked her or not.

  I continued to look at Lou, who was running behind the school, trying his best to keep up with me. I lost sight of him just as he tripped over a tree root and went splat. By the time he’d gotten up, I’d traveled a few more nautical miles and trees blocked my view of the school.

  With Lou no longer in sight, and no GPS on board, I turned to face my dilemma. I wish I’d paid more attention when our teachers taught us about local geography. I had no idea if the Thornapple River went over Cumberland Falls or Niagara Falls, or if I’d soon be shooting the rapids. The best I could remember, it eventually ran into a larger body of water, which wasn’t the outcome I coveted. Briefly, I envisioned running into Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon Tiki somewhere in the south Atlantic. Then I vaguely remembered that Heyerdahl had died, and figured anything I’d run into in the Atlantic would probably be larger than the Kon Tiki. I tried to remain optimistic and thought of how large the Atlantic is and that there is a lot more water than sailing vessels. Then, the thought of all that water made me hope that all of this was a dream and I was merely in my bathtub at home. I pinched myself and realized that that wasn’t the case, and started to look for a way out of my predicament before I reached the Atlantic.

  I looked left and right, looking for someone to come to my aid. I saw no houses, no civilization. Where was a Wal-Mart when you wanted one? There wasn’t even a McDonald’s where I could order something to go. My only hope was that the area was so remote that I would soon run into strange people filming an episode of Survivor. I’d never seen Survivor. I had no idea if they’d filmed in our area already. I had seen Deliverance, and I wanted no part of deranged-looking men accompanied by a couple of guys on banjos.

  At one point it looked like my schooner had drifted a couple of inches closer to land. I had no idea what time it was, but figured it had been at least fifteen minutes since I’d ventured farther than I should have. The only good things were that I hadn’t spotted any bodies sticking out of the water and that that so-called boat of mine hadn’t started leaking. I didn’t see any sharks, either. And there was one other bit of good news. While I could tell that it was getting hotter, the tree branches that hung out over the river kept the sun from beating down upon me. It also kept God from sending me manna to help me keep up my strength, but then I knew if God wanted me to eat He’d find a way to get food to me. I just wasn’t sure if I was ready to try squirrel or some of those other things that go scampering out in the wilderness. I hoped I wasn’t out there long. I didn’t want to start looking like Lou.

  Lou. I hadn’t thought of him in a few minutes. I hoped the fall hadn’t knocked him unconscious. Even if so, I figured he’d find someone or someone would find him before I found Friday. More than likely Friday was still hanging out with Robinson Crusoe, anyway. And there was no possibility of finding Dr. Livingstone until I crossed the Atlantic, because best I could remember, Stanley found him in Africa.

  I’d become so absorbed in thinking about Lou that I’d failed to notice that my luck was changing. No, I wasn’t about to encounter alligators, crocodiles, piranha, the dreaded waterfalls, or Gilligan. The kindling on which I was ensconced had drawn nearer to the shore. If I dove from where I was, I would’ve been able to drown myself a mere two feet from land. Instead, I blew on the outside of the boat and hoped for the best. It worked. A merely thirty minutes later, castaway time, the bottom of my skiff scraped against the top of Mt. Ararat. I had no raven or dove to cast out, but it didn’t matter. I could see that the floodwaters had receded, and since I saw no cannibals or boiling pots, I took one giant step for mankind. Evidently, it wasn’t enough of a giant step. My right foot slid back down the muddy slope and into the water. I lunged for dry land, hit my knee against the boat, and baptized a second foot. I found something to grab on to and pulled myself up onto dry land. It was then that I had a small inkling of what Columbus felt like, those many centuries ago.

  It was at least a couple of minutes until I realized that the dry land on which I stood was on the other side of the river, which incidentally was in the next county, for whatever that was worth. I cupped my hand to my ear. I heard no chants or dueling banjos. I heard no “We’re over here, Cy,” either. My journey was not yet over.

  Chapter Three

  There was no way I wanted to walk barefoot, so I sat down, poured the water out of my shoes, took off my socks and wrung them out the best I could, then put everything back on. Thirty minutes later, I’d managed to lift myself to my feet and scanned the wilderness. Wherever I had landed, it was an uninhabited planet. If I wanted to find some strange little green or red men who could take me to their leader, I’d need to go looking for them. Evidently no one had seen my landing and had come to investigate.

  I sloshed on, hoping to soon find civilization. The next county over was almost as remote as the waterway I’d recently navigated. That meant my chances of finding someone with a still and a gun were good, provided I wondered deep into the trees, which I didn’t plan to do. I took stock of my provisions. I found a large rock and emptied the contents from my pockets onto that rock. I had my keys, enough money to buy food if I found some place that sold it, and eleven Hershey kisses. I had no idea how many months it would be until I was found, so I had no choice but to ration my kisses. I started by eating only two of them. I only had to open the first one to see that I wasn’t the only thing that had melted in the heat. Not wanting to miss a morsel, I scraped my teeth across the foil, and then used my tongue to rescue anything I’d missed.

  The hot sun caused my mind to wander. I wondered about those two missing people. If I ran into them, I wanted them to still be alive, and if they were, I wanted them to have rations. If I had to share my Hershey kisses with them, it meant that I’d already eaten at least half of my ration. My stomach wouldn’t understand if I starved it. I needed to find my way back to civilization.

  I figured my best chance of finding civilization was to find a road. My best chance of finding a road would be to walk in the opposite direction from the river. I’d gone only a short distance when I realized that the trees that hovered over me while I was on the water hadn’t continued to keep the sun off me. It was much hotter than the air conditioned confines I’m used to. In a short time I’d managed to sweat off a couple of ounces.

  It took me only a couple of days to find a road. It wasn’t yellow or brick, but I hoped it would lead me back to my recliner. I stood by the road and took stock of my situation. Not wanting to waste a lot of time, I took off in the direction that was closer to
Hilldale. At least it was somewhat the same direction from which my water craft had floated me. I hoped it was only a matter of minutes until a vehicle passed by.

  It didn’t take me long to realize that someone must have posted detour signs on each end of whatever road it was on which I found myself. I continued walking, walking farther than I wanted to walk in my lifetime. It was beginning to look like my socks would dry out before I encountered another human being.

  After somewhere around a mile or so, or two or three days’ travels, I spotted a driveway that led a house, well back off the road. Judging from the sun that beat down upon me, I gathered that it was close to noon, and anyone knows that all country people come in out of the fields at noon to eat lunch, to gain enough sustenance to go back out and work in the fields some more. That wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, but if I found myself staring at someone who lived this type of life, there was no way I was going to quibble with how he or she chose to live. I would simply stand there, look pitiful, and hope that this person would invite me to dinner.

  I arrived at the farmhouse and listened. I heard no one starting up a chainsaw, nor did I spot anyone wearing a hockey mask, so I stepped up onto the porch and walked over to the door. I knocked gently, not wanting to alienate anyone. When my first knock aroused no one, I knocked more loudly, and gathered the same result. It was then I remembered how a lot of country people enter and exit using their back door. I walked around back and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, I looked around for the bell, the one the wife rings to let her husband know that it’s time to come in from the fields and chow down. I found the bell and rang it as if Quasimodo were deaf. This brought some dog that must have been sleeping and caused him to start nipping at my soggy socks. I think only the smell shunned him away.

  I waited a reasonable amount of time for someone to arrive from the hinter fields, and when no one did and I realized that it wasn’t a Saturday, I figured the poor people had to give up farming and get a job in town. I only wished they could have held out for a couple more weeks. I plucked a Hershey kiss into my mouth, a kiss that held up better than the others, and gained enough strength to make it back out to the road.

  On what seemed like the morning and the evening of the second day, I found myself within one hundred yards or so of the road. I looked up and saw a car motoring down the country road. I hollered, waved my hands back and forth, jumped up and down, and as a last resort, ran toward the vehicle. On my way, I huffed and puffed, but I didn’t blow any houses down.

  I arrived at the road about the same time as said vehicle reached the next time zone. The sun must have been really beating down by this time, and it had affected me so much that the car actually looked like a police car, one of ours, even though this wasn’t our county. Even more than that, the passenger looked a lot like my friend Lou, the one who suffered a concussion at the school, mere days before I arrived at my present location.

  I looked up and down the road. There were no trains, planes, or automobiles, so it was time to make a decision. I could sit down beside the road and hope that humans found me before buzzards did, and that those humans were law-abiding citizens. Or I could ease on down the road. In a weak moment, much against my better judgment, I eased.

  A hundred or so miles down the road, or a few centuries later according to the Mayan calendar, I took stock of my situation and realized I was down to one Hershey kiss. If I were to survive, it was up to God to turn it into a loaf of bread and a fish. It was then that my hallucinations increased, because I heard a sound that strangely resembled a motorized vehicle. Just in case it was real, I turned, not wanting to be run over merely because I didn’t get out of the way in time. Again the vehicle looked like a police car, and again the smiling face in the passenger seat looked like my trusted friend Lou. He and the driver seemed to be singing. The car pulled up and stopped beside me.

  “Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream; Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

  I looked around for a second vehicle, one whose occupants were not having fun at my expense. When I saw none, I made do with what I had.

  Weary from my forty years in the wilderness and not thinking clearly, my not-so-pleasant voice shouted, “Where have you been?” It was then I looked at the driver, who strangely resembled Heather Ambrose, the woman of my dreams, the prettiest young thing the police department has to offer.

  “Cy, are you okay?”

  Since the question appeared to emanate from the woman of my dreams, I refrained from the gruff answer I would have given anyone else at that moment.

  “Well, it hasn’t exactly been my best day.”

  “So, Lou was telling me. You poor thing.”

  With that she sprang from the car and hurried around to where I was barely standing. She threw her arms around me and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was enough to make me want to locate the owner of the rowboat to find out when it would be available for rent again.

  In a matter of seconds, my thoughts changed to how I could arrange for Lou to get back to town and Heather and I to be stranded together. It was then that her words brought me back to reality.

  “You two have really had it rough today.”

  “I was being banged against the rocks by the rapids, but I don’t remember Lou being in the boat.”

  “Yeah, but Lou got shot at, and almost run over.”

  I looked at my partner in crime, who nodded. Surely Lou wouldn’t have made up some story just to get Heather’s sympathy. Only I would have done that.

  “It’s true, Cy. When I got up off the ground I saw that you’d disappeared around the bend, so I tried to figure out what to do. I ran to Tweetie,” (Lou sometimes calls Lightning Tweetie), “saw that it was locked, and the keys were nowhere to be found. Since neither of us have a cell phone, I figured the only thing to do was head out to the road and flag down the next motorist. It was almost fifteen minutes before someone came along. I saw this old lady driving a truck, and I started waving my hands frantically, trying to flag her down. When I saw her speed up, instead of slow down, I reached for my badge to let her know that I’m a cop. Evidently she thought I was going for a gun; because she almost clipped me as she sped by, hit the brakes hard and spun the truck around to where it was facing me, then reached for the shotgun mounted behind her. I’d barely dived behind the edge of the building when the first blast of that shotgun came uncomfortably close to the only body I’ll have for the rest of my life.

  “About this time, another car came along, saw the gunfire, almost clipped me trying to turn around as quickly as possible, and headed off in the direction from which he’d come. Luckily, this person called headquarters, and they sent Heather. When she got there, after we’d enjoyed a leisurely lunch, just kidding, Cy, she called in and reported what had gone on. Someone downtown decided to postpone dragging the river for your body and sent out an officer with a small boat and a trolling motor. A few minutes later, he reported that your rowboat had run aground a mile or so down the river, on the opposite bank. Do you realize how far we had to go before we could find a place to cross over to this side? We’ve been driving back and forth looking for you.”

  Lou’s words weren’t as comforting as Heather’s arms and lips, but I appreciated his concern. When he finished sharing his dilemma with me, Heather suggested that I get in so she could drive us back to Lightning. Momentarily, I pictured Heather and I alone there, with Lou still knocked out from his concussion, but then I remembered that I was old enough to be Heather’s father, and that I was the one who encouraged her to take up with Officer Davis.

  When I realized that Lou wasn’t going to get out and give me his portion of the front seat, I hopped in the back, where the prisoners are transported to jail. We’d gone only a quarter of a mile when dispatch called Heather. A teenage boy had called in to report that someone had stolen his rowboat. He added that while that had happened before, it had never happened since he’d started hiding the
oars. Since the boat was stolen from near the county high school, they wanted to know if there was any connection between the theft and her present assignment. Heather confirmed that there was, and I got on the radio to tell them where the boy could find his rowboat.

  Lightning seemed excited to see me when we returned to the school, where Heather dropped us off. As it turned out, Lou hadn’t eaten either, so we dashed off to the Blue Moon for a very late lunch. The ordeal had lasted so long that my socks were dry by the time we arrived.

  Chapter Four

  I was so worn out and starved that I didn’t do much the rest of the day except eat and sleep. Of course some people say that’s all I do anyway. They don’t realize how much reading I do.

  I was hoping for a return back to mundaneness, but that wasn’t going to happen. In some ways, the next day was worse, because the next day I had to do something I dreaded each time it happened. Not only did I have to walk despite all the aches and pains I had in places that I didn’t know existed, but it was the day when I had to drag myself in for my every-six-month physical, listen to Doc complain about the sorry shape I was in, and then convince him to pass me again. Only this time it was different. This time Doc was more obstinate than I was.

  “Cy, do you realize that you’ve gained weight?”

  “Your scales must be off.”

  “Nope, and they’re the same scales I use each time I need to check your weight or weigh some livestock. Only this time, instead of the much-too-heavy three-hundred-three pounds you usually weigh, you weigh in at three-eleven. Cy, that’s just too much. I’m not going to pass you.”