Kyle's Island (6 page)

I did as I was told. We chewed companionably for a while, and then he said, “Clyde told you I wanted to see you, hmm?”

“Yes, sir.”

You could tell he wasn't used to talking a lot. It was like he didn't know how to begin. “Thing is, I promised my daughter. That I wouldn't go out on the lake alone anymore. Since I had that dizzy spell.”

He seemed to feel he had said enough, but I was puzzled.

“You want me to go fishing with you?”

“Yep.”

“When?”

“Every day. Can't stand living by the lake and not being out on it. You know how to be quiet, don't you?”

“I think so.”

“Don't want someone blathering to me all the time. I see
you leaving early. That's when I like to go. Dawn till breakfast. About five hours. Pay you five dollars a day.”

I just stared at him. Five dollars a day? How many days would we be here? The neon numbers began flashing down—
395
,
390
,
385
… “Great,” I managed to say. “When do you want to start?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I'll be here.”

“One thing. You'll have to row. I don't like motors.”

I had to hide disappointment. We had a motor for our boat, but I wasn't allowed to use it. Mom hadn't even had anyone put it on this summer. For a minute there, I'd pictured me and him cruising down to the far end of the lake. If we were just going to row, we'd have to stick fairly close by. Oh, well—I'd be doing what I loved to do and getting paid for it. How lucky could I get?

“Thanks a lot, Mr. Butler,” I said.

“Call me Tom.”

I let myself out of the kitchen and loped back up the road. I could hardly wait to tell Mom. She was down by the lake, sitting in the shade of the hickory, reading a book. “Hey, Mom!” I called, hurrying down the steps. “Guess what? I've got a job!”

“A job?” She put down her book and took off her sun-glasses
to look at me. “What kind of a job?” I told her all about it, beginning with what Clyde said. “Are you sure you won't mind being tied down that way? I thought your mornings alone on the lake were pretty special to you.”

“Being with Mr. Butler will almost be like being alone,” I said. “He hardly talks, and he doesn't want me to talk much either.”

She laughed. “That sounds like him.”

“Tell me about him,” I asked.

“You know a lot already.”

“Tell me what he was like when you were little and knew him.”

“Well, let me see—he was never very talkative, not even when his wife was alive. Her name was Mary Ann, and their daughter, Lou, is just a bit older than I. They had a float out on the lake then, and Lou and I used to swim together sometimes. When we'd finished swimming, we'd sunbathe on their pier, and Mary Ann would bring us down some of her cookies and tall glasses of cold milk. Then she'd stay and talk—she loved to talk, and I don't suppose she got much conversation out of Tom. I always wondered if he was so quiet before the war, when they got married.”

“Before the war?”

“The Second World War, honey. Tom Butler was in the
Air Force. I think he was shot down over Germany. I know he was a prisoner of war for a long time. He never talked about it, though. At least not to me. I don't think even Lou knows much.”

I was quiet. It was strange to think that someone I knew was old enough to have been in World War II. How old was he?

I asked Mom. “Oh, he's probably in his fifties or sixties now, I suppose. I think he was older than most when he enlisted. What kind of dizzy spell did he have, did he say?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I guess you'll be all right. He'll be sitting all the time you're in the boat. But you make sure you both wear life preservers, you hear?” I had to grin. The only time Mom says “you hear?” is when we're up at the lake. Gram used to say that, too.

“Hey, Kyle, put on your suit and come in with us!” Andrea yelled from down the shore a bit, where she and Vicki and Josh were swimming. Or where she and Vicki were swimming, and Josh was paddling. I remembered about wanting to help him with his swimming this summer.

“Down in a minute,” I called. I gave Mom a quick kiss on the top of the head and started up to the cottage. Thinking about the money I'd be earning, I began to whistle. It
looked like maybe we could save the cottage after all. Just like I'd thought.

* * *

A little later I was standing in the lake. Josh was standing in front of me, his arms folded stubbornly across his chest. “You have to put your face in the water,” I told him for the hundredth time. He'd just showed me how far he could already “swim.” “If you try to hold your neck up like that all the time, you'll get tired. You want to be able to swim a long way and a long time.”

“Like Dad did?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he really swim all the way across the lake?”

“Yep. Mom rowed the boat alongside him in case he needed to stop, but he didn't.”

Josh turned his head to look out across the lake. His eyes narrowed. “Did he swim fast so no fish could bite him?”

“Fish in this lake don't bite people.”

“Sharks bite.”

“But there aren't any sharks.”

“There might be, and you just don't know.”

“Sharks live in salt water. We have bass and bluegills and perch and pike and catfish—like that.”

“And turtles.”

“Yeah, and turtles.”

“Turtles bite. A snapping turtle could bite off your toes.”

I had an inspiration. “That's why you need to put your face in the water—so you can see what's around you.”

He thought about that, then said, “Okay,” kind of doubtfully. He uncrossed his arms, bent his neck, then stopped. “Kyle?”

“What now?”

“What if I swallow some water?”

“You swallow water every day.”

“But this water might have stuff in it.”

“Like what?”

“Fish poop.”

I worked hard to keep my face straight. I didn't want him to see me laugh. “Fish don't poop around here,” I told him. “They go out to the middle to do that.”

Okay, so I was making that up, but I didn't know what else to say, and it seemed to satisfy him. He ducked his head down, and after a bit he got the hang of duck-breathe-duck. But later the sun disappeared, and when he stood I could see goose bumps on his shoulders, and his lips were blue. “Time to get out,” I said. “Race you to shore.”

I didn't let him win, of course, but I let him come close. That's what Dad used to do with me.

WHEN I AWOKE IT TOOK ME
a minute or so to figure out what I was hearing. Then I realized. It was the
plip-plop
of raindrops falling on the wooden shutters outside the screens. Crud! Mr. Butler probably wouldn't want to go out in the rain. What time was it? I didn't hear any birds, and it wasn't quite light out. I'd set our little alarm clock just in case, though I'd been pretty sure I wouldn't need it. It hadn't gone off yet. Couldn't be too late. I rolled over to look. Quarter till five. I thought of going back to sleep. It was nice and warm under the covers. But I was wide awake. I decided to go ahead and get up. I'd go down to Mr. Butler's, see if he was out, and if he wasn't, I'd take our rowboat and go by myself. It didn't sound like much of a rain.

A little later, crunching my way up Mr. Butler's gravel driveway, I was glad I'd gotten up. He stepped out the door like he'd been waiting. Like me, he had a raincoat on. At
home I wouldn't be caught dead in a raincoat, but up here I liked wearing Gram's old yellow one. She'd called it her slicker. It was made out of some heavy, shiny material, and it had a hat that stuck out over your eyes to keep the rain out of your face, with a long flap on back to keep your neck dry.

“Morning,” I said.

He grunted and handed me his tackle box. I carried the box and my pole in my right hand and a can of worms in my left. We made our way down the hill in silence. At the bottom of the hill, he motioned for me to go on out to the boat. He had eight or ten cane poles standing up against a small shed, and he kind of looked them over before he picked out one and brought it to the boat, which I'd already untied from the pier.

I held up my hand to steady him as he stepped down in, but he ignored it. The boat rocked only a little; he had good balance. He settled himself in the stern and I poled us out to deeper water, then put the oars into the oarlocks and began rowing. It was a lot harder with him in the boat, let me tell you. When I was out from between piers, I asked him, “Where to?”

“Let's anchor off shore down by Johnson's Point. I hear the bluegills are biting.”

The shore was a dim outline on my left as I pulled steadily at the oars. The mist was heavy this morning, and the raindrops made little bull's-eyes in the water. A few other boats were setting out, too, most of them outboards, of course. Hooded figures waved as they emerged from the mist and then passed on into it again, the motors dwindling into the distance. In the stern, Mr. Butler sat still, his legs spread wide to accommodate his overhanging stomach, his hands on his thighs.

“Right about here,” he said in a bit, and I shipped the oars and we let down the anchors. We were maybe twenty-five feet out from the reeds. There was a drop-off on our right, I knew, and I wondered whether he planned to fish shallow in by the reeds or deeper on the other side. I didn't wait to see what he would do. I'd already made up my mind to fish just in from the reeds. But shortly after my bobber hit the water, his splashed down only a little ways off. It felt good to see that his choice was the same as mine.

I don't want to brag, but I'm a pretty good fisherman. I learned from Gram. From Dad, too, but Gram was the best. I guess once when I was little, I told a friend that everyone had to do what Gram said because she was the Boss of the Lake. Since she really could be kind of bossy, that became a family joke.

“I know this lake like I know my own backyard,” she'd say. “Been fishing it for sixty years.” Dad had taught me how to bait my hook and set my bobber and handle my pole, but Gram had taught me about fish. She taught me that perch like to hide in the underwater grasses near shore, that bass go deeper as the morning passes, that the bigger the bluegill, the more boldly he takes the bait, and that when you're fishing shallow you don't yank at every little dip of your bobber—you wait for a rapid downward plunge.

We anchored there by the reeds for an hour or so, while the rain fell gently and the sky lightened. Then at about six, when the sun was just rising over the far end of the lake and a mother duck led a line of ducklings into the water down near the lily pads, the fish began to bite. I caught the first, a good-size sunfish, and then Mr. Butler caught two bluegills. I was freshening my bait when I saw his bobber suddenly disappear. Whatever had his bait, it wasn't fooling around. He didn't act excited at all, just stretched one leg out to brace himself and began pulling. I watched, intent. The line wasn't circling, it went straight out from the boat. His pole was bent.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“Turtle,” he said, disgusted. “And a big one. I'll be lucky if he doesn't break my line.” Sure enough, in a few minutes
I saw the broad greenish back of the turtle, just as the line snapped and Tom's pole sprang upward.

“Waste of good bait,” he grumbled. “I woulda liked to get the hook out of him.”

The rain stopped about then, and the sun turned the horizon all pinkish gold. I love the way morning happens. One minute everything around you is gray—sky, water, shoreline, trees. Next thing you know, like magic, all the color is back—deep blue water, green and brown cattails, orange life jackets in a heap on a white pier, and you didn't see it happen. Too bad Andrea wasn't here. I'll bet if she had been, she could have shown me. She'd have said, “Look, Kyle. Morning's happening,” and I'd look up just in time to see it, see everything change.

The fish stopped biting. We pulled up anchor and I rowed us over to the west side of the island, where it drops off pretty steep, and we caught a couple perch there. We'd taken off our raincoats by then, and the sun was beginning to feel hot on my neck. Mr. Butler's stomach grumbled. I could hear it clear down at the other end of the boat. “Time for breakfast,” he said, and pulled in his line.

I stared at him. Breakfast? He'd been eating ever since we came out. From one raincoat pocket, he'd pulled a thermos of coffee; from the other, a couple of bologna sandwiches
and a bag of cookies. He'd offered me a cookie, but I'd shaken my head, and he hadn't offered again. He'd eaten the whole bag, and I mean a whole bag like you buy at the grocery. There must've been two dozen cookies in there. He'd finished his thermos of coffee, too.

Dad and I never ate in the boat. We'd fish till we were famished—lake air will do that to you—then we'd go in, clean a couple perch or some bluegills, and take them up to the cottage. If we hadn't caught anything that morning, we could get something out of the live-box. Between the two of us, we kept it full. Dad would fry the fish in cornmeal till they were brown and crispy on the outside, white and flaky inside. They were the best! We'd eat until we were full, then push back our plates and just sit and talk until the others woke up. Well, I was famished again today, but I didn't see how Tom could be. And he sure wasn't going to sit and talk to anyone.

I wrapped the line around my pole, pulled up anchor, and began to row toward home. About halfway across the lake, he said, “Glad to see you use a pole. Any fool can catch a fish with a rod and reel.”

It was the last thing he said to me that morning. We finished the ride in silence, and when we got to shore, he
climbed out without a word and left me to tie the boat up as he mounted the hill to his cottage.