Paul Zindel - Loch

“How about this?” Loch said, bubbles rising as he looped over backward. The creature stayed with him, circling at his side. By now Loch knew the creature understood it was a game, and they began to spin and turn joyously beneath the water.

Zaidee knew Loch’s air supply would be running out soon, that he’d have to come up. She hung over the edge of the pool, watching Loch cavort in and out of the deep shadows with something that looked to her like a big otter. It appeared they were playing a weird game of tag.

When Loch finally started up toward her, the creature followed almost to the surface, but then disappeared into the water plants.

Loch’s head bobbed up near the ledge.

“What is that thing down there?” Zaidee asked. “Whatever it is, I think it’s making the static line on Crashers go bonkers.”

Loch pulled himself out. “You’ve got to see it to believe it,” he gasped. “You got another sandwich?”

“There’s half a ham and cheese left.”

“Hold it over the edge,” Loch told her. “It needs to know you’re a friend.”

Zaidee scrunched up her face. “I am not that thing’s friend!”

“Come on,” Loch said. “Don’t you want to see it?” He took the sandwich and stuck it in Zaidee’s hand. “Just let it watch you putting it in the water. It can see what you’re doing.”

“Big deal. Dad let me feed otters in the Galapagos when I was three years old.”

“Do it!”

He helped hold Zaidee as she reached out and set the sandwich in the water. She no sooner let go of it than the head of the creature exploded from the surface, hurtling the bread and meat into the air. As the food fell down, all Zaidee could see and hear was a whirling blur of ferocious, gnashing teeth. Zaidee screamed until the creature had finished its feeding, closed its mouth, and settled quietly at the edge of the pond to look at them.

“Nasty,” Zaidee said.

“Right,” Loch agreed. “It’s ugly as sin, but it’s all ours!”

It didn’t take Zaidee long to see past the gnashing teeth, beyond the horror of the creature’s face, to realize what a mind-boggling, cool thing they had found. She fed it every last piece of food they had, including the Mallomars.

“It loves chocolate,” Zaidee said. “It’s really smart.”

Loch laughed. “I think it would rather snack on a nice, fat salmon.” Then, deadly serious, he continued, “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“What about Dad?” Zaidee asked.

“Of course we’re going to have to tell him,” Loch said. “But if Cavenger finds out, how long do you think it’d be before he’d have his name on a plaque with the creature stuffed and under glass in the British Museum?”

Loch and Zaidee swam and played with the beast all after-noon, but finally the time came when they had to leave.

“We have to go now,” Loch told the creature. It was as if the moment the thought had entered Loch’s mind, the creature understood. It began to make rapid, sad sounds.

CLICK CLICK …

CLACK CLICK CLACK …

“What’s it doing?” Loch wondered.

“It doesn’t want us to go,” Zaidee said.

The creature lifted the hoods of its eyes high and stared at Loch and Zaidee.

CLICK CLACK … CLICK …

“It knows we’re going to leave it alone again,” Zaidee said, giving the creature a last gentle pat on its head.

“We’ll be back,” Loch promised.

The creature swam back and forth in the pool, lifting its head high to watch Loch and Zaidee until they disappeared over the ridge. By the time they had made it back to the boat, Loch had thought of a name for the creature. “Remember that Robert Burns poem ‘To a Mouse’?” Loch asked Zaidee. “I had to memorize it once.”

“I don’t remember.”

“It was about a mouse who ends up homeless because its nest gets dug up by a farmer’s plow,” Loch said, as he got into the boat and primed the motor. “I remember only the first line, ‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie …’ ”

Zaidee untied the anchor rope, pushed the boat off, and settled back into the bow seat. “That’s a long name.”

“Wee Beastie,” Loch said, leaning over the outboard and pulling the start cord. “That’s his name.”

“Wee Beastie?”

“What do you think?”

Zaidee turned the name over in her mind as the motor coughed to life. “I think I like it,” she said.

“Then it’s settled.” Loch threw the boat into gear and gave it full throttle. The boat hurtled back out onto the lake. The tall pines along the north shore cast huge shadows across the shallows, making the drift logs harder to see.

“Dad will freak when he finds out we took the boat,” Zaidee said, worried.

“Not when we show him Wee Beastie,” Loch said.

Zaidee opened the laptop and brought Crashers up on the screen. “The game picked up the sounds from yesterday’s creatures too,” Zaidee said. “How come their lines were on this before they showed on the sonar screens?”

“Look, it’s a computer,” Loch reminded her. “Maybe there’s something about having Crashers with 580 megabytes that turns it into a kind of receiver for sonar.”

“What’s a megabyte?” Zaidee wanted to know. “You said one day you’d teach me all about computers.”

“It’s going to take more than one day, but what I’m saying is maybe the creatures register on our screen because of those sounds they make, like whales and dolphins do. Maybe Wee Beastie and these guys make more concentrated and directed sounds, waves that can travel through water, then vibrate the surface and continue through the air. Who knows?”

“There are no interference lines now,” Zaidee said, keeping one eye on the edge of the deep water.

When they got back, they tied the boat at the dock and hurried up to the trailer. They tossed their gear inside and walked down the driveway to the south road to look for a lift to the base. A beat-up Toyota 4?4 headed their way. Loch waved it down. It was only after the truck stopped that they both realized it was Jesse Sanderson, the caretaker of the logging mill, behind the wheel.

“I’m not riding with him,” Zaidee whispered as Loch opened the door. “He’s probably drunk as usual.”

“Where you kids headin’?” Jesse asked, his mouth open wide, proudly revealing his gold front teeth.

Loch decided he’d get Jesse to say a few more words to see if he had been doing any afternoon nipping. “Hi, Mr. Sanderson. We were out to see you at the logging mill with our father, remember?”

Jesse took a closer look at them as he lifted his rifle off the front seat and stuck it on the shelf below the rear window. “Oh, yeah,” he said, his big belly hitting into the steering wheel. “Wanted to know what I’d seen in the lake … and I told you. Something with a head big as a barrel, yes, sir, big as a barrel …”

“He’s sober,” Loch mouthed to Zaidee as he slid into the middle seat. “Can we ride along as far as the base?” Loch asked Jesse.

“Glad for the company,” he said.

Zaidee made a face. She hopped up next to her brother and slammed the door. Jesse put the truck into gear. Its front end had a major shimmy, but Jesse was driving slowly enough.

“Seen anything in the lake lately?” Loch asked, checking to see how much Jesse knew. Everyone at camp knew he was a big creep, and he was always wandering around trying to stick his big red nose into the expedition’s business.

“Can’t say I have,” Jesse said.

“What are you doing on this side of the lake?” Zaidee wanted to know.

“Ran out of supplies. Had a little shopping to do.”

Zaidee turned to look behind her. She saw a half dozen cases of beer jiggling in the bed of the truck.