This Side of Death Ch. 6 Home Before Dark
Something in the middle of the night rousted me from a deep unconsciousness. It was the sound of an idling boat. Like a bolt of lightening, I remembered the 'night light' which I had left hanging on that dead tree hanging off the point. What had guided me home may now have just invited an unwanted guest. After the initial shock of waking with my hand over her mouth, I left Ms. Kendel Dawn to scramble out the front of the tent, crawling carefully out toward the clift's edge. Extremely thankful for small favors, I found my 'night light' batteries had long since died.
"What is it," Dawn whispered as I pulled her down to lay next to me. Silently we watched together as a hundred-thousand candle power lamp searched the shoreline. Whoever it was, they were definitely searching for something and my guess was, it was Max searching for his mistake. Eventually, the small craft ventured north toward Witch Candle Cove.
"What do you think?" I asked my uninvited guest who had rolled over and was looking wide-eyed at the featureless sky above. Her answer was long in coming but it was one that neither of us wanted to admit.
"It was him. That was my boat. He must have figured out where the keys where and how to crank it down into the water. We may have spent our honeymoon on a boat but he never seemed interested to go out in mine. But that was my boat. I knew it was my boat even before I saw it. Its got that big old Chrysler outboard which takes a miracle and a prayer to find parts for. Daddy bought it when we were kids."
There was a long pause in the conversation before Dawn eventually broke the quietness of the wood and waves.
"You called it right on the money. He's out here looking for me. How could I have been so blind. I thought this sort of thing only happened in movies."
Neither of us remembered much of what followed. We just each took turns staring at the tent ceiling for the remainder of the night, not remembering whether we fell back asleep again or not.
Early the following morning I got us a quick breakfast and then to sooth my guest, I let her use what water was left in my camp shower as I began packing everything up. Dawn showered as I carried the boat back down to cove below. Returning to begin transporting kitchen and tent and everything else back down, I stopped at the ridge. I knew time was of the essence but a man has to do what a man has to do. For there, sitting down in the grassy ridge, I watched my damsel lather herself from top to bottom and everywhere in-between without her giving second thought to my return to the top of the ridge to sit and stare at her. Maybe later than night she would take one with me.
I had seen it all before; the night I carried her up ridge after rescuing her from the frigid waters of Witch Candle Cove. That was the night I undressed the wet noodle of a woman, toweling her dry before slipping her into some of my dry clothes. I had guessed her to be in her forties but not far into it. I'm sure most took her for being in her mid to late thirties. However, wearing only her shivering birthday suit, I had noticed baby evidences and willow wisp wrinkles, all the tells of maturity. I had also noted that she was no city slicker. She had not participated in the now all too prevalent shaven pubs. Her bush was not even swimsuit shaven. It was natural and full. She was also no gym rat. Though her midsection was flat, it wasn't athletic taut. Its shapeliness had more to do with right eating and good genetics. As she rinsed I gazed and gawked at her two mounds of mother's flesh. They weren't photogenic Playboy, one gallon jugs. They were three bears perfect. Not too big. Not too small. Not so big so as to sag and not to small as to have nothing to handle. I reasoned that perhaps somewhere in her lineage there was a little Spanish or even native Indian for her nipples had an umber hue about them. Observed while shivering, I knew they had the ability to poke an eye out.
As I watched Dawn towel herself off before bounding back to the tent, the buoyancy of breasts singing a sirens call, I got backup and continued my task of breaking camp before the long paddle back. I had left her my dry suit. It would be big on her but is was quite elastic and would protect her from the cold water.
The previous evenings event had changed my mind as to heading back to my truck alone before returning in a more appropriate means of travel for Kendel.
Once again my damsel of the deep reclined across the rear deck of my fiberglass stiletto while wrapping her slender arms around me as we launched out into warm, sunny two foot swells. The best laid plans of mice and men had planned for a long week-end in ocean and woods by myself. Who could have known? Who could have predicted? We never know what lies around the next corner. The morning sun eventually gave way to a late morning mist. The fiberglass pencil made slow progress southward. We both thought, if I was able, to bypass the cove that led back up to where her father's boat supposedly now resided. Rather, I would do my best to paddle all the way back down to where I had originally set out. Though it was a good four hours beyond Kendel's cove, I was thankful that I no longer had to paddle as if the woman life, who's arms were wrapped about my waist, depended upon it.
We made good time thanks to the rise of a late afternoon wind in our favor, arriving us back near Duchess Harbor an hour after sunset. My vintage five hundred dollar pick-up, purchased locally six months before in the dead of winter, was found as I had left her --faded red and rusty with half a bed full of assorted driftwood gathered for firewood, landscaping and carving. Kendel took her place on its well-worn leather bench seat while I unpacked the boat and stowing it up onto a pair home made cradles atop the truck bed. With little fuss or fanfare I headed us back to my cabin-in-the-woods.
With only bare bones food back home in the fridge and no grocery stores in-between, without protest I pulled off into the local greasy spoon and ordered double my usual, informing Nancy, an always smiling round faced server, that, though cut short, it had been a long weekend and that I was sure that I could eat a horse. Ten minutes later I was pulling back down into my drive again and in under the make-shift car port before escorting my passenger inside my be-it-ever-so-humble, comfy homestead as both arms of the kitchen clock pointed at the ceiling.
Up at first light, I had Dawn call her accountant. Tracy, a late sleeper, accepted all apologies, pretending she was glad to help. Two hours later Dawn answered the phone. Neither the business account nor her personal savings account had any withdrawals over the weekend. "I own you one, Tracy. I've been a silly girl. Probably nothing. Passbook's are probably in Max's SUV. Yes. Gone again. Mexico. Two weeks. No, there wasn't anything else. Oh wait! Would you be a dear and pretend I never called you? I'm such a ditz lately. And would you be a dear and do what has to be done to put the house in Audrey's name. I'll contact the insurance company to make her the primary beneficiary. Thanks for the heads up. Not sure why I didn't do all that to begin with. Hu? Laugh out loud, sweetie. NO! I'm sure there are no more little one's on the way. Very funny, Trace. Remember. I never made this phone call."
Dawn then called her house. "Got the answering machine," she mouthed as I closed the connection. Ten minutes later, same thing. Forty-five minutes later, I left the message, "Max, where are you! Hey, buddy, give me a call when you get back. We need to talk. By the way, where's the Mrs.?"
Dawn's house was a good hours drive north of town. Armed with twenty-five of my dwindling dollars, Dawn purchased one pair of jeans, a sleeveless blue plaid cotton blouse, one pair of size five white tennis shoe's (complete with pink shoe laces) and one child's yellow raincoat and hat. The bill totaled twenty-one fifty three at Martha & Joe's Resale shop on the outskirts of town. Dawn changed in the ladies room while I deposited the last of my cash into the empty tank of a thirsty truck. Thrift shopping had put an inner smile on the woman now seated next to me as I headed us toward Coastland State Bank.
"Wish me luck," she beamed nervously. Like a lost memory, I watched the yellow vinyl tent disappear into the wall of water drumming on the top of my old truck. Twenty minutes later I followed her in. Coastland State Bank had originally been a small single building constructed from that same dark granite of Witch Candle Bay. The out of place vanilla colored brick addition ostensibly shouted sixties.
Opposite of the original building which now housed the president and assorted loan officers, the vault sat open at the far end of the out-of-fashion modern addition. I aimed myself toward it looking in vain for the child dressed in yellow vinyl. Polite and pleasant, Lillian Kablutsiak led me back into the vault to retrieve the safety deposit box, seven-ninety-three. It was the same burgundy colored box that the bank had rented me six weeks earlier. Smiling Lillian had dark, wiry hair and round reddish face which had greeted me several times before. I guessed her to be in her early fifties. She was dressed in the bank uniform of royal blue. Lillian expressed her individuality by draping gaily colored tribal beads around her short, thick neck. The silver ring on the third finger of her left hand was without ornamentation or jewel. I had seen similar rings offered to the tourist hoards which always seemed bent on taking something home with them which gave evidence that they had seen a real American Indian.
Lillian left me alone with my ten dollar safe deposit box. I knocked the agreed code on the wall of the small five by five courtesy room. I knew the contents of the box; one truck title, a fifty-four year old birth certificate, a few commemorative coins, two war medals, one picture and what money I had left to me. The unlatched door behind me squeaked on its hinges as three manila envelopes fell in on the floor. Closing and locking the door, I retrieved the envelopes, laying them on the shelf next to my open lock box.
Two of the envelopes, legal size, appeared empty. They were not. Inside the first was the deed to the 'been-in-the-family-two-hundred-years' house. In the second hid a fresh, crisp Coastland State Bank cashier's check. It read one million, three hundred thirteen thousand, eight hundred thirty two dollars. I wrinkled my brow before stuffing it back into the envelope and sliding it in on top my five hundred dollar truck title.
