Boundary waters episode

Chapter 7, July 22, 1988

Jack and Gabe paddled the seventeen-foot, lightweight Jensen canoe through choppy waters across one of Insula's widest bays.  Kellan guided his sixteen foot kayak sporting a rod-holder on his right-front gunnel with no fishing pole attached.  He was out for a Sunday morning stroll he had said and  fishing was not part of his plan.  It was different for Gabe and Jack.  Heavy spinners trailed their canoe as they bobbed their way along. 

 The canoe and kayak paralleled each other as they traversed the bay and made their way to an inlet on the northeast section of the lake that would eventually take them to Alice Lake. 

As they reached the inlet, Gabe looked to the southwest.

“I hate to say it guys, but that looks like a storm coming and it’s not a pretty one.  I think we should paddle like crazy back for camp.  We could just make it, I think.” 

Jack and Kellan surveyed the sky, looked at each other questioningly, and then sighed.  They couldn’t see much happening where Gabe had looked, but had seen this from Gabe before.  He had an uncanny knack for reading the sky and being right on when it came time for predicting an “event”.  So, they put the pedal to the metal and hightailed it along the eastern shore back toward their camp.  

Sweat ran down his back as Jack put everything he could into his paddling effort in the front of the canoe.  The Hulas' had been brought up to make the one sitting at the front of the canoe the power paddler.  The occupant of the stern provided less power, but engaged in keeping the canoe on course through adept use of the longer paddle.  

Kellan thrived in situations where he could outshine his older brothers, but he had a difficult time keeping abreast of the lightweight canoe being powered by two men.  He had been a gymnast in high school and college, just missing out on qualifying for the Olympics his last year in college.  Still, his muscular body couldn't keep up with his brothers this time.

They rounded a point and now the two younger Hulas could see the gathering storm and hear the rumbling thunder.  Instinctively, all three put their shoulders harder into each paddle stroke, muscles burning and sweat dripping down their backs as they moved as swiftly as they could to the relative safety of their camp.  

Finally they raced around the last point and into the little bay where they had set up camp.  Low hanging, swirling clouds of green, brown, and yellow rushed towards them.  

"Move it!" Yelled Gabe as they paddled as hard as they could for the sand and gravel beach a hundred yards from their tents.  The wind hit them like a boxer as they jumped from their canoe and kayak and dragged them into the brush for protection.  Turning them over quickly, they huddled under the canoe, holding it down tightly as the wind tried to rip it away from them.  Rain pelted the canoe and them as it was blown sideways by the wind that must have hit seventy miles per hour.  The sound of the kayak being lifted and flung against a tree didn't escape their ears.

And then, just like that, it stopped.

Lifting the canoe over their heads and then turning it upright as they laid it down was surreal.  The wind and rain had vanished leaving water dripping from the nearby bushes and trees.  

Kellan didn’t want to look at his kayak.  The sound of it crunching into a rock or tree was still in his head and he was afraid to find out the extent of the damage.  

He didn’t spot it at first glance.  Walking several feet away from the canoe and turning his head, he spied it fifty feet away, mashed against a huge boulder.  He noticed the top of one of the side walls was bent inward, comforting him little, even though it looked like it was still seaworthy.

Kellan approached the kayak with Jack and Gabe following and grabbed the nearest side wall, lifting and pulling it away from the giant rock it had been slammed into.

After the kayak had been laid on the ground, Gabe walked over and looked at it.

“If it doesn’t leak, it looks useable.”  

Gabe grabbed the handle on the end of the kayak and dragged it to the beach, launching it into the now calm, little bay.  After some maneuvering he arranged his body into it and just sat, checking the bottom for leaks.  

Several minutes later, he called out, “Looks good, no leaks.”

Kellan breathed a sigh of relief as Gabe stepped out of the kayak and dragged it to shore.

“I think we were lucky,” Kellan said.

“No.  You were lucky,” said Gabe.  “We’d have left you here.  After all, it is your kayak.  But, seeing how you’re our brother and all, we’d come back for you sooner or later.”

“Gee, thanks, Bro.  You're a real human being.”

“Never claimed to be one of those.”

Jack jumped into the tit for tat, “We knew you were close, Gabe, but always a little suspect.”

After cleaning up the campsite, which had been littered with cooking utensils, forks, knives, and bowls, the Hula brothers took the food pack down from the tree it had been hung in and gorged themselves on cheese, bread, and summer sausage.

Seminar with Grant Blackwood

We met from 9-5 in the library with author, Grant Blackwood.  It was a great listening and hands on experience.  I came away with a great deal of respect for Mr. Blackwood as a presenter, writer, teacher, and human being.  Many tools were presented to enhance writing skills.  All of them were easy to put into practice and very helpful in dealing with writers' block and generating ideas for writing.  I'll expand upon those in later posts.

In case you missed an earlier post of mine, Grant Blackwood has coauthored books with Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, and at least one other author whose name I'm having a difficult time remembering right now, but he's pretty famous as well.  Blackwood has also written his own stand alone novels which are in the action/thriller genre.

Grant Blackwood class

I'll be attending a writing class with Grant Blackwood on August 20th from 9-5 in the Austin Public Library.  Mr. Blackwood has written several mystery novels in collaboration with Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy, besides penning his own series of books.
The weekend following that I'll be attending the Austin Artworks Festival and attending several author presentations, including one being put on by Harriet Ulland, who writes non-violent books with a little mystery mixed in.
I'm looking forward to both events with a lot of anticipation.

BTW, I've just added my latest book, The Book Club Murders, to the Austin Public Library.  It is available in libraries across the country if you go to your local public library and put in a request for it.

More conversation with the woodsman

Another pause ensued before, Jack spoke again.  

“When we got to Mom and Dad’s house, the paramedics were already there working on Dad.  He was laying on the steps to the garage with his shirt off while the medics calmly worked on him.  I think he was dead already.  Mom, Ceila, and I huddled off to the side, crying, shaking, not willing to let go of one another.  They said they got a weak pulse so they  took him in the ambulance to the emergency room where we met them. We waited in a room off to the side from where they were working on Dad.  It seemed like we waited for hours, although I’m sure it was only about fifteen minutes.  After a while I couldn’t stand it so I went into the room where Dad was.  The doctor and nurses had stopped trying anything and all I could say was, ‘is that it’?  The doctor nodded.   I was dumbfounded.  I went and got Mom and Celia and we stood there and talked to Dad, no, ordered him to fight and come back to us… but he didn’t.”

Gabe spoke, “That’s when you called me and Sydney to let us know.”

“Yeah.  That was the hardest call I’ve ever made in my life.”

They both sat, elbows resting on their knees.  Words weren’t coming from either one so Gabe picked up the bottle of Jeremiah Weed and filled their glasses again.

“To Dad!” Gabe said as he raised his glass in the air.  Jack did the same and they clinked them together, spilling a little of the weed on the ground.

“That’s a terrible waste of the weed!  Be a little gentler next time,” Gabe said jokingly.

Outside, the weather was getting stormy.  The sound of the wind whipping through the leaves of the trees became stronger and a chill filled the sanctum of the shelter.  Smoke from the dying fire no longer drifted lazily to the center of the abode, moving gently throughout and then over to the cracks between branches that made up the walls.  It now moved directly to the east causing them to move their handmade chairs.

“Looks like a storm to me,” Gabe said in a voice rising above the noise of the wind in the trees.  The wind driven rain began pelting the shelter with a vengeance, followed by hail.  They both moved a little closer to the center to avoid the drops blown in from the side walls.

“Couldn’t you at least have constructed these walls a little more water proof?  You are the woodsman of the group,” Jack yelled above the roar of the wind, rain, and hail.

Gabe retrieved his wide brimmed hat from a corner where the shelter leaked pretty good and plopped it on his head.  

“I’ll bet the golfers are a little pissed off at this turn of events,” he said with a chuckle.

“I checked my smart phone before I came and it didn’t look like anything coming through until later.  Guess the weather man was wrong again,” Jack said.

 The hail only lasted a few more minutes before the rain took over again.  After ten minutes, the wind died down and the rain stopped revealing patches of blue skies and sunshine.

Gabe and Jack conversation

Soon, the stories were coming fast and furious, along with a continual supply of the “weed” filling their glasses.

“Hey, did you ever hear much about how I got lost the first day of school at Banfield?" Jack asked Gabe.  

Gabe had heard the story many times of course, but dutifully listened as Jack recounted the tale of a lost child on his first day of kindergarten.

"I had boarded the bus at 7:15 in front of our house with the Klippers.  I hadn’t known any of the other kids who lived a half-mile north of our house; so it had been a quiet, intimidating ride.  I was one of the younger kids on the bus-being only four years of age."

  Back then a child could enter kindergarten if he turned five before December 1.  Jack’s birthday was a late one-September 23.

"The bus stopped here and there picking up other kids who I didn’t really know either.  I felt out of place as the other kids all seemed to know each other and involved themselves in talking and it was all noise to me as the bus rumbled toward Banfield.”

“When we finally got to school, everybody piled out of the bus like they were going to the fair.  I took my time gathering up my stuff and was the last one off.  I seemed to be the only one on the sidewalk leading up to the door of the school and I never saw the teacher.  I turned around and watched the bus haul off and then walked up to the closed door.  I tried to open it but I could’t budge it.  Not really knowing what to do, I started walking home, only a five mile walk.”  

Gabe pretended to yawn.

“Am I keeping you awake, Gabe?”

Feigning waking up, Gabe shook his head and sputtered, “No, no keep going.”

“I guess you know the rest.  Our neighbor convinced me to get in her car by the Mapleview Cemetery and took me home.  When we got to our place Mom was so happy to see me she hugged me like she was never going to let me go.  And then she got mad and wanted to know what happened.  All I could do was show her the handcuffs I’d found in someone’s yard as I was walking home.  Little did she know that her little kindergartner was beginning his school life as a thief.”

“Yeah, well, that was hardly the worst of it,” Gabe said.

“That was the worst thing I’d ever done,” Jack said indignantly.

“I wasn’t talking about you.  I was talking about me and how I disappointed them every step of the way.”

“You didn’t disappoint them every step of the way.  You just… challenged them to love you.”  

Gabe scrunched up his lips and merely said, “Well …I certainly did that.”

A silence engulfed the two as they sat, lifting their shots of weed to their lips, Gabe totally enjoying his while Jack still gagged his down, although it was getting easier the more he drank.

After heaving a huge sigh, Gabe said,” You know I have many regrets about my life.  The biggest one was not being here when Dad died.”  He hung his head low, breathing heavily while hiding sobs Jack knew were there.

“I have the same feeling,” Jack said.

Gabe looked up quickly.  “But you were here!  You got to see him and talk to him.  I would have said so many things to him, not the least of which was I loved him and was sorry for all the heartache I had caused him and Ma.”

Jack explained.  “I saw him a few days before he died.  We had met for breakfast at the Sterling Cafe with some of Mom and Dad’s breakfast friends.  I had said something, I can’t even remember what it was and then Dad commented on it…and I knew he was wrong, so I told him, with some irritation in my voice, that he was wrong.  Those turned out to be the last words I had said to him.”  He turned his eyes to Gabe who was looking straight at him.  “Gabe…the last words I had said to him were belittling with a little anger showing on my part.  And then when we got the call from Mom who was sobbing that he was having a heart attack and that we should get there right away, all I could think of was don’t die, please don’t die cause I don't want those words to be the last ones that you ever heard from me.”  Jack’s voice was halting and his eyes had welled up a little with tears on the brim of overflowing his lids.

“You can’t hold that against yourself, Jack.  You know that he knew you loved him.”

Jack’s head bobbed up and down in agreement as he said, “I know I know, but still, I think of that and I say to myself, would it have hurt me so much just to have agreed with Dad, rather than letting him know he was wrong?  I don’t know.  I guess we all have regrets.  I’m not making the same mistake with Mom or any of my kids or my wife.  Life is too short to say cruel things in the heat of a moment and not be able to take them back when that person is not around anymore.”