The Island
CHAPTER ONE
It was gonna be a hell of a fire. He hoped he didn't get blowed
out of the water. The old man poled the johnboat silently across
the night black waters of Eckles Lake, the motor shut down and
raised out of the water. He was alone, standing on the stern
seat, working the pole against a mud bottom just a few inches
deep, watching for the darker shadow that would tell him he was
where he meant to be. He shoved, listened to the slap-slap of
thin water against the squared off flat-bottomed bow, then pushed
again. A fingernail of moon showed briefly through scudding clouds
as though a door swung idly open just a crack in a night-darkened
drafty house, to reveal a flickering candle in the hall. The
moon was no use to him, an annoyance of exposure. The lake and
the big river that fed it was known to him, lived-in a lifetime,
each creak on the stair a comfort, every slap of water as natural
as a ticking clock.
He was old, but not insignificant in his years as city people
become, the decades ambushing them in the shaving mirror. Certainly
not a man you'd pass on the
street without notice, notice fairly screamed from his silhouette. Erect
and purposeful, a Moses descending.
Alone in the boat, he'd easily pass for just another duck hunter
out in predawn to set a spread of decoys, a common enough event
in this far southern Illinois
hunting country as opening season approached. As natural to the casual
observer as the structure he approached, a duck blind. Not a
small hide some local
farmer might throw up on a weekend to try his luck after crops were in,
but a massive
double sided blind, its camouflaged shooting platforms separated by a covered
and brushed boat slip large enough to shelter an eighteen foot johnboat.
Christ, you couldn't miss it, fingernail moon or not. Seventy some years
in these waters
and he could have made the trip stone blind.
Would have, too.
A serious piece of work this blind, looking for all the world
like a small floating island camouflaged to the water with
willow. Room enough for six
shooting north, or if the wind were to switch, shooting south with equal
ease. A dog
ramp trailed down into the water from each corner for the alert Labradors,
thick coated Chesapeakes or Water Spaniels shivering with anticipation.
Inside, lined against the front walls convenient benches faced racks awaiting
steady
old Model 12 pump guns, gleaming inlaid Purdy doubles, heirloom Winchester
21's, Berettas from Italy and the less fancy but reliable Remington 1100's.
Ducks were shot seriously in this backwater country along the
Illinois River. Millionaires from Chicago missed the opening
of the Opera with their
bejeweled
wives to shoot shoulder to shoulder with college professors, garage mechanics,
stockbrokers and plumbers drawn to this shared activity not by social
or economic class, but by a migration stronger than either. Equals
squinting
into dawn
skies, their wives and businesses abandoned as they murmured over shared
coffee, listening to the sky more than looking, always listening.
But no decoys lay piled in the old man's johnboat, no dog stood
alert in the bow. True enough a shotgun lay alongside him, loaded
but not for
ducks,
not
this time anyway. For the old man to move across land or water without
a gun in his hand or at his side would be out of his character. Where
stacked decoys
would lie several weeks hence, four five-gallon cans of #2 fuel oil
rode heavily ahead of the middle seat, two with proper caps,
the others stoppered
with flannel
torn from a long discarded shirt.
He chuckled to himself and at precisely that moment the moon
chose to show itself as two hundred mallards, startled by the
gliding apparition
wakened
and rose ahead of the johnboat in panic. It made him itch. All those
birds and no punt gun fastened to the bow, string to trigger. The
way it was
done by market hunters in sneak boats by the covering darkness of
similar nights
and he'd taken pleasure and profit in that illegal work until the
fancy restaurants in Chicago were made to account for their wild
duck under
glass. It made
him itch.
There were nights he'd killed two hundred ducks in one pull
of the string at a dollar a piece, in times when men worked for
a dollar
a day and
there was
no work. Sneaking out before, after, during the season on lakes
that might easily hold ten thousand resting ducks rafted up together
with
heads under
wings---pole his way, just as he was doing now, then nearing the
edge of a raft make one quick whistle and pull the string. A thousand
heads
raised,
the
punt gun strapped down like a small cannon in the prow of the boat,
loaded with carpet tacks because they were cheap. Kill two hundred
before they
even took flight, don't bother with the cripples, just pick up
the dead and get
out. A farmer waking to the single 2AM blast would recognize it
for what it was and merely roll over, figure three more hours
'till milking.
A
warden would
hear and know he'd been snookered once again and try to figure
which lake among hundreds the shot came from and where the landing
might
be. It made
him itch.
His johnboat nudged the blind and he could smell the new lumber,
rough sawn and recently nailed, tar papered, chicken wired and
camouflaged with green
willow fresh cut and layered in. Nice job, as nice a piece of work
as he could have done himself and he admired the work as he prepared
to
destroy
it, splashing
one can, then another over the structure. It took the better part
of
half an hour, but he had the time and this was a labor of love.
Not an act of revenge against a man, although he'd handled
a few of those in his time. Hank was an okay guy for an outsider
and
he'd stood
to buy
him a
beer from time to time just after ravaging some small or large
part of his duck hunting operation. He wasn't quite sure why he
did that,
the
offer of
beer that is, maybe because he did like him, liked the way he leaned
right into the work and valued the island like he valued the island.
He knew
why he ravaged. There was a kind of greed in those confrontations
over offered
beers that went unaccepted, both men knowing the truth and one
of them daring the other to put a stop to it. But it didn't matter,
not really.
There was
no stopping a man who won't be stopped.
Took him twenty years to close down the original club. Bastards,
they all had money, Chicago money and they paid to rebuild what
he burned,
replace
what
he stole and tore up until they all got old and tired of paying,
spending more time drinking and playing cards than hunting and
finally they
all went home
for good, all but Hank Edson. Damn the luck, before he could find
a backer, the young member stepped in and bought the place. Rightfully
his place.
It made him itch.
Oh, he’d maybe never of owned it, but it was rightly his place all the
same and if he could never own it, no man would be comfortable on it. Not while
he drew breath, while he could pole a johnboat in the pitch dark and come up
with the scratch for twenty gallons of fuel oil. So Hank hung in for twenty
years as well, but he was losing, you could tell he was losing if you had eyes
for it. The old clubhouse leaned a bit more with every season and it was hard
to get share croppers to put up with the only access to the island being a
hand ferry. Not easy cranking a semi of corn or beans across the cut that formed
the island. Yeah, he’d a figured Hank to wear down sooner, but he'd wear
out all the same and he reached for the last can. Gonna make a dandy fire.
Buy
THE ISLAND now
RETURN TO HOME PAGE
|
