“Turn on the running lights and head for that blinking light off the port bow,” I told Kate. “Just fast enough to plane.” Always keep something in reserve, I thought.
The engine roared and our nose went up, then settled down a bit, as we spanked the waves with our bottom in an irregular, surging rhythm. The lake was definitely getting rougher. I looked back and the sheriff boat was following us.
“Kate, why don’t you get below for a bit?”
She nodded and I took the wheel. The sheriff boat hadn’t turned on its siren or anything; it was just laying back and pacing us. I risked a little more RPM, and that did it; the rotating light and the two tone squawker came on, and the gendarmes rapidly closed the distance. I cut the throttle as they came alongside and gave the wheel to Ellie as we settled in. The spotlight played on us, and around like they weren’t seeing what they expected.
“Who are you?” the bull horn blasted.
“Karl Karlsson, of Karl’s Marine in Nisswa,” I yelled. “I chartered the boat to get to a customer with problems down south. The girl’s my granddaughter, Ellie. What’s up?”
Silence. Then: “We got a storm warning. Have you got life preservers on board?”
“In the deck box,” I yelled back, hoping the hell they were. On top of concealing space alien frogs, aiding and abetting ladies of the evening, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a boat safety violation would have just about done it. I recalled Garrison Keillor’s tale about the circus elephant with its trunk in some poor guy’s Volkswagen, getting food from his kids, and had visions of my headlines reading; “Investigation reveals grandfather error.”
More silence, then, out of the bullhorn: “Be careful. Lots of drunks on the water tonight.”
“You bet,” I yelled. “Thanks for the warning.”
And with that they killed the revolving light, revved up and headed back north.
“Can I gun it?” Ellie asked.
I nodded, and we were off. We found we could do twenty-eight knots, but I took over again and backed off to twenty-two to save the engine and fuel. The Sun peeked out from under the clouds to the northwest momentarily. It was still sticky hot, but the spray cooled us. With light to see again, I took us closer to the west shore, more in the lee of the wind, and our bumping backed down. It was an idyllic moment.
“Look, Grandpa, Kate, a rainbow!”
Kate was out of the cabin in a flash. “Oh, magnificent!”
“Could be worse,” I agreed. “Is there anything to eat around here?”
“Uh, a couple of cans of tuna, some granola bars—”
“I’ll take one!” Ellie shouted, having been reprieved from tuna.
“OK Frog, what keeps you going?”
“Anything that burns will be quite satisfactory. Perhaps a sip of your petrol?”
Kate and I had the tuna and we all cruised merrily along.
Then the rain started down on us.
“My shirt’s getting wet,” Ellie complained, and pulled it off and threw it into the cabin, daring me to say anything. Before I could say anything, Kate laughed, said “Mine too,” and did likewise.
Whatever, I figured. I pulled mine off and threw it in after theirs. We all laughed.
“Can Ellie take the wheel for a bit?” Kate asked.
“Yes!” Ellie said.
Who’s to argue? “Keep well out from the shore now,” I told her as she settled in.
Then I turned, and Kate had her arms around me, and her lips seeking mine. I kissed her back gently at first, then kind of let myself get into it. We cooled it before Ellie got too much of an eyeful and stepped away from each other, holding hands, eyes glistening. I don’t get excited about very much anymore, but this had me pretty worked up. Chemistry, I guess.
“You could use some help at the shop?” she hinted.
“Don’t know if I can pay a living wage.”
“Room and board will do for starters.”
“Kate, it seems like yesterday you were twelve years old and off limits. We’ve only had twelve hours to get to know each other, as, well, adults.”
“It beats twenty minutes,” she laughed. “Look, here’s what I know about you. You’re a competent craftsman, too honest to ever get rich. You’ve got enough of a sense of humor to listen to a talking frog and enough imagination to go with it. You care about helping people you hardly know, enough to take crazy chances. You’re loose enough to put up with a little girlish exuberance. You love the water and the wind the way I do. You’re fit enough that you’ve got at least ten more years in you than the calendar says. And you come with a kid that’s got my maternal instincts going crazy.
“What you know about me is that I’ve got a damn good body and I’m not afraid to share it. I’m adventurous and curious enough to team up with Kim for money. I just gave up six thousand dollars and my junior year of college for the chance that you’ll take me in. I really do take dance at the U, but I’m not that good, and it wasn’t what I really wanted. This,” she waved her arms around, “is.”
I glanced down at the deck. The rain had picked up to a bit more than a drizzle, the wind put a little chill into our passage, and I shivered. I looked out to the lake; the clouds above were lit from beneath by the lowering Sun in a riot of orange, white, and grays that seemed almost green. The far shore was golden and the whitecaps sparkled.
I looked at Kate, hope all over her face, water running freely over her shoulders, arms, shaking free of her breasts as they rose and fell freely and naturally with every wave we hit, running over her firm stomach, past her small navel and soaking the white shorts clinging to her boyish hips to near transparency. Sharing. Was Kate an “Ado Annie” who was all heart and just couldn’t say no? How would I handle that when other men became involved? Did she just want to be real good friends, or was she going for the rest of my life? Could I trust my business to Kate’s impulses, however warmhearted? Just how many foolish decisions could a man my age make in one day?
I looked at Ellie, a miniature version of Kate in her intense concentration, seeming to develop before my very eyes. How unconventional should I let her be? Was that really my choice? Would Kate be good for her, or make her a social outcast? How much did I owe society, anyway? Was Ellie old enough to make her own decisions about these things? All she’d seen was the up side: the cheerfulness, the joking, the freeness. Ellie hadn’t seen the down side of Kate: opening herself up to some fat, filthy pig for a few bucks. Ellie hadn’t been the target of schoolyard sniping and cruelty, which would happen as soon as Kate’s history got around, and which was a given in a town like Nisswa. Ellie hadn’t seen Kate turned away from jobs, get rejected by her family, told she could never run for office, or worrying about venereal disease because of a month of impetuous sophomoric wildness.
That made me mad to think about it, but I figured it would come, in a worst-case scenario.
But Ellie had spunk. She’d seen the downside of losing her parents and her grandmother, and bounced back. She was already showing her independence from the crowd, keeping her hair simple and functional, nails short, playing with mechanical things, and getting good grades at school.
Damn, Terri Ann, I wish you were here. You’d know what was best. Watching the water run over Kate made me think of that evening in Terri Ann’s dorm at Wheatson College when half a dozen of us, fortified with Mogen David and Seven-up punch, decided to streak the frat house in the rain, misjudged the time, and had to crawl back in through a bemused junior’s first floor window to get back to our clothes. “I’ve never felt so fucking alive in my life,” Terri Ann had gushed while catching her breath. They talked that way in girls’ dorms in the late sixties. I kinda let myself go, knowing it would be a little hard for Ellie and Kate to tell the rain from the effects of nostalgia.