“What are these pebbles?” he asked.
“Some old guy picks’ em up on the beach and grinds’ em smooth,” he said. “Then some other old guy paints magic letters on ‘em. You can use ‘em to tell fortunes. There’s a little book that tells how.”
“Have you had your fortune told?”
“Yeah, Elizabeth said I’m gonna make a lotta money if I work hard and use my brain as well as my muscles.”
“I’ll take a set,” Qwilleran said. Mildred would know about rune stones. She could read palms, handwriting, and tarot cards but never read any of them in Arch’s presence.
He put the gift in his van and went down the pier to The Viewfinder. It was a
sleek white cruiser with V-hull and open cockpit. Bushy, obviously pumped up with pride, was waiting for his reaction.
“Neat craft!” Qwilleran said. “Great deck space! What’s the horsepower? How many does it sleep?”
Bushy pointed out the two-person helm station, the well-engineered storage space, and the amenities belowdeck: four berths, a slick head, and galley with refrigerator, stove, and sink. “I’ve gotta work a lot harder to pay for this baby,” he admitted.
With both men seated behind the windshield, the craft moved slowly out of the dock, putting on exhilarating speed when open water was reached.
“This bucket really moves!” Qwilleran said.
“And steers like a dream,” Bushy boasted.
“Good visibility of the water.”
“Did you see the compass and depth-finder?”
“What’s our destination?” Qwilleran asked as the boat skimmed over the glassy lake in a world of its own.
“Traffic picks up Sunday afternoon,” Bushy said, “but I thought this would be a nice time to go out to the lighthouse.” He pointed out islands, shoals, and fishing banks and knew their names.
Near the Pirate Shoals, they spotted a cabin cruiser and a speedboat lashed together, starboard to starboard.
“What’s that all about?” Qwilleran asked.
“Looks like some kind of hanky-panky. Take the glass, Qwill, and see what you can see.”
Training the binoculars on the tęte-á- tęte, he reported, “No one visible in either boat. Maybe they’re below in the galley, making bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches.”
“Ha!” Bushy said in derision. “Can you see a name on the transom of the cruiser?”
“It looks like Suncatcher. Does that ring a bell?”
“Nah. I don’t hang around the marinas. Also, it could be from some other harbor. Any fishing rods in evidence?”
“There’s one in a holder, and it’s bobbing. They’ve got a bite, but they don’t want to burn the bacon.”
“I’ll circle around, so you can see the name on the speedboat.”
It was an older craft and not as shipshape as the Suncatcher. Its name was Fast Mama.
“Whoo-ee!” Bushy said.
There was no registration tag visible, an omission that reminded Qwilleran of an uncomfortable day-cruise he had taken when he was a newcomer at the lake. The Minnie K was an old tub that docked downshore in the bulrushes because it had not passed inspection and was operating illegally. He said to Bushy, “Let’s take off before they get the idea we’re tabloid journalists and start shooting at us.”
The Viewfinder moved quietly away and a few minutes later passed the south end of Breakfast Island, restored to its wilderness state after a failed attempt at development. Farther up the shore the island changed its name to Grand Island, and there was a marina with yachts and sailboats from Chicago. Beyond that were the palatial “cottages” of summer people from Down Below - the ones who would boat over to Mooseville and spend money at Owen’s Place and Elizabeth’s Magic. At the north end, the lighthouse stood on a rock-bound promontory, site of so many early shipwrecks. Now there were ringing buoys to warn craft away from submerged dangers.
“Here’s where we’ll anchor,” Bushy said.
Pasties were a perfect easy-to-eat picnic food, and the Nasty Pasty had packed individual cans of tomato juice, apples, coconut cupcakes, and a thermos of coffee.
Qwilleran said, “For a landlubber from Lockmaster, Bushy, you know your way around these waters pretty well.”
“You’ve got me wrong, Qwill. I was born and brought up near the lake. I relocated in Lockmaster when I married. Believe me, it’s good to be back here. I have a passion for fishing and boating. You probably never heard this, but my family was in commercial fishing for three generations before my grandfather sold out to the Scottens. He was always telling me about the herring business in the twenties and thirties. They used wooden boats and cotton nets - and no echo sounders or radio phones. You wouldn’t believe what fishermen went through in those days.”
Try me,” said Qwilleran, always curious about someone else’s business.
“Well, the Bushland Fisheries regularly shipped hundred-pound kegs of dried salted herring Down Below, salt being the preservative in those days, before refrigeration. And here’s the interesting part: The kegs went to Pennsylvania, West VIrginia, and other coal-producing states, and the miners practically lived on herring. They could buy it for four cents a pound. The fishermen got a penny a pound and worked their tails off to get it. They were up before dawn, out on the lake in open boats in all kinds of weather, hauling heavy nets till their backs nearly broke, filling the boats to the gunnels with fish, and racing back to shore to dress it. Sometimes they worked half the night - salting it, packing it, and loading it on a freight car before the locomotive backed up and hauled the car away.”
Qwilleran said, “I hope they didn’t use gill nets.”
“No way! They used coarse-mesh ‘pond’ nets.
That’s spelled p-o-u-n-d. I never found out why it was pronounced the way it was. In the spring, after the ice broke up, they drove stakes in the lake bottom - tree trunks as long as fifty feet - and they drove ‘em with manpower before the gasoline derrick came into use. After that, they set out their nets and visited them every day to scoop out the catch. When cold weather came, they pulled up the stakes before the ice could crush’ em. Then they spent the winter mending nets and repairing boats.”
“I can see why your grandfather wanted to gel out of the business,” Qwilleran said.
“That wasn’t the reason. He wasn’t afraid of hard work. It’s a sad story. He lost his father and two older brothers in a freak incident on the lake They went out in a thirty-five-foot boat, the Jenny Lee, to lift nets. The weather was fair. Lots of boats were in the fishing grounds, all within sight of each other. Suddenly the Jenny Lee vanished. One minute she was seen by other fishermen; the next minute she was gone. The authorities searched for a week and never found the bodies - never even found the boat underwater. The whole village of Fishport was in mourning. It’s remained an unsolved mystery.”
Qwilleran stared at Bushy sternly. “Is this an actual fact?”
“It’s the God’s truth! There’s a memorial plaque in the churchyard. Someone wrote a folksong about it.”
“Were there any speculations as to what happened?”
“All kinds, but there was only one conclusion, and you won’t like it, Qwill. It had to have something to do with the Visitors - like, they could make a thirty-five-foot boat vaporize. There were lots of talk about the Visitors way back then, you know: Blobs of green light in the night sky… Sometimes shining things in daylight. That was before I was born, and they’re still coming back - some years more than others.”