“The boat fell apart. It just ... fell apart all around you.” Hal looked at the boards floating loose on the water forty feet out. They bore no resemblance to the tight handmade rowboat he had pulled out of the boathouse.
“It’s all right now,” Hal said, leaning back on his elbows. He shut his eyes and let the sun warm his face.
“Did you see the cloud?” Petey whispered.
“Yes. But I don’t see it now... do you?”
They looked at the sky. There were scattered white puffs here and there, but no large dark cloud. It was gone, as he had said.
Hal pulled Petey to his feet. “There’ll be towels up at the house. Come on.” But he paused, looking at his son. “You were crazy, running out there like that.”
Petey looked at him solemnly. “You were brave, Daddy.”
“Was I?” The thought of bravery had never crossed his mind. Only his fear. The fear had been too big to see anything else. If anything else had indeed been there. “Come on, Pete. ”
“What are we going to tell Mom?”
Hal smiled. “I dunno, big guy. We’ll think of something.”
He paused a moment longer, looking at the boards floating on the water. The lake was calm again, sparkling with small wavelets. Suddenly Hal thought of summer people he didn’t even know—a man and his son, perhaps, fishing for the big one. I’ve got something, Dad! the boy screams. Well reel it up and let’s see, the father says, and coming up from the depths, weeds draggling from its cymbals, grinning its terrible, welcoming grin ... the monkey.
He shuddered—but those were only things that might be.
“Come on,” he said to Petey again, and they walked up the path through the flaming October woods toward the home place.
From The Bridgton News October 24, 1980
MYSTERY OF THE DEAD FISH By Betsy Moriarty
HUNDREDS of dead fish were found floating belly-up on Crystal Lake in the neighboring township of Casco late last week. The largest numbers appeared to have died in the vicinity of Hunter’s Point, although the lake’s currents make this a bit difficult to determine. The dead fish included all types commonly found in these waters—bluegills, pickerel, sunnies, carp, hompout, brown and rainbow trout, even one landlocked salmon. Fish and Game authorities say they are mystified ...
Cain Rose Up
Garrish walked out of the bright May sunshine and into the coolness of the dorm. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and at first Harry the Beaver was just a bodiless voice from the shadows.
“It was a bitch, wasn’t it?” the Beaver asked. “Wasn’t that one a really truly bitch?”
“Yes,” Garrish said. “It was tough.”
Now his eyes pulled in the Beaver. He was rubbing a hand across the pimples on his forehead and sweating under his eyes. He was wearing sandals and a 69 T-shirt with a button on the front that said Howdy Doody was a pervert. The Beaver’s huge buck teeth loomed in the gloom.
“I was gonna drop it in January,” the Beaver said. “I kept telling myself to do it while there was still time. And then add-drop was over and it was either go for it or pick up an incomplete. I think I flunked it, Curt. Honest to God.”
The housemother stood in the comer by the mailboxes. She was an extremely tall woman who looked vaguely like Rudolph Valentino. She was trying to push a slip strap back under the sweaty armhole of her dress with one hand while she tacked up a dorm sign-out sheet with the other.
“Tough,” Garrish repeated.
“I wanted to bag a few off you but I didn’t dare, honest to God, that guy’s got eyes like an eagle. You think you got your A all right?”
“I guess maybe I flunked,” Garrish said.
The Beaver gaped. “You think you flunked? You think you—”
“I’m going to take a shower, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, Curt. Sure. Was that your last test?”
“Yes,” Garrish said. “That was my last test.”
Garrish crossed the lobby and pushed through the doors and began to climb. The stairwell smelled like an athletic supporter. Same old stairs. His room was on the fifth floor.
Quinn and that other idiot from three, the one with the hairy legs, piled by him, tossing a softball back and forth. A little fella wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a valiantly struggling goatee passed him between four and five, holding a calculus book to his chest like a