Paul Zindel - Loch

Loch waited until Dr. Sam had left for the base before he called Sarah. Cavenger had always let Sarah have her own private cellular phone. Loch remembered their first silly date, in London when they were eight years old. Dr. Sam had brought Loch with him to London for meetings with Cavenger. Sarah had a crush on Loch and had wanted to go out for an ice cream soda. Cavenger thought it would be fun to have Sarah take his chauffeured white stretch limo. She had her personal phone that afternoon, and ever since.

“What?” Sarah answered.

“Hi,” Loch said. “Did I wake you up?”

Sarah was glad to hear his voice, in spite of her pounding headache. “No.” She rubbed her head trying to get blood up to her brain.

“How do you feel?”

“Rotten. How about you?”

“I’m okay,” Loch said. “I was just wondering if you had wheels and wanted to hang out later.”

Sarah climbed back under the covers with the phone. “Loch,” she said, “I need a day off. I haven’t felt this whacked out since we were in that truck crash in Guatemala.”

“The truck only fell on its side,” Loch reminded her.

“To me that’s a crash.”

Loch could hear she was really drained. “All right,” he said. “I’ll check on you later, okay?”

“Thanks,” she said. Then she remembered something. “Loch?”

“Yep?”

“Thanks for-”

“Hey, no problem,” Loch said.

By noon there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Loch and Zaidee decided to cast spinner and spoon lures off the old dock near the trailer. Nothing decent was biting. The only action they saw was from small sunfish who were furious the lures were sputtering through their underwater mud beds.

“My arm hurts,” Zaidee complained, trying to find a new grip on her rod.

“Mine too,” Loch admitted. He looked toward the deep water. “We know there’s got to be some great salmon or trout out there.”

Neither of them could help eyeing their bass boat tied up at the dock. It drifted back and forth in half circles, knocking gently against the rubber tires lining the pilings.

“We could take the boat out and stay in the shallows,” Zaidee said. “We’d be safe-the water’s really clear there.”

“Let’s not, and say we did,” Loch suggested, his long shaggy hair covering his brow now. Zaidee switched to a heavier spinner, casting it as far out as she could. No matter how she tried, it always fell short of the black water where the shallows gave way and the bottom fell sharply into the great trench of the lake.

“We could just stay along the shoreline,” Zaidee said. “There are shallows all the way up to the salmon grid. Imagine the size of the fish up there. Fish always hang out at a dam.”

“We told Dad we wouldn’t,” Loch said.

“We’ll be safe,” Zaidee insisted. “If one of the creatures did come out of deep water, we’d be able to see it in plenty of time and hit the shore.”

Loch thought that over a moment and decided it really wasn’t a bad idea. “I’ll tell you what,” Loch said. “First, I’ll ride up to the grid by myself. If it looks really safe, I’ll come back and get you.”

“No way,” Zaidee said. “If you left me here, maybe one of those creatures would come out of the water and eat me in the trailer.”

“Plesiosaurs don’t go on land.”

“Well, then, I might take a nap and sleepwalk into the lake-”

“Let’s just forget the whole thing,” Loch said, ticked off. He changed from a spinner to a popper, tossing it far out. He made a half dozen more casts. There wasn’t a decent fish in sight, and it was a really beautiful day. The deep water was plenty far from shore. There really wasn’t any way anything could strike out at them without their seeing it coming. He made a few more casts with Zaidee just tapping her foot, watching him.

“All right.” He broke down. “Let’s skip the fishing. We can at least take a boat ride in the shallows.”

They both laughed, and raced up to the trailer to grab gear for the boat.

“You pack pretzels and sandwiches,” Loch said. “I’ll ice the cooler.”

Zaidee threw the refrigerator door open, pulled out some roast beef, ham, and cheese, tossed them onto white bread, and put them in the picnic basket. She left the pretzels in case Dr. Sam wanted some with a beer when he got home that night. Besides, she liked the Wheat Thins and Mallomars better.

“I’ll wait for you in the boat,” she called to Loch. She grabbed the picnic basket in one hand, the laptop in the other, and went out the door.

“Be right down,” Loch yelled.

Zaidee was sitting in the bow seat and was on the second screen of Crashers by the time Loch boarded with the cooler and scuba gear.

Zaidee’s jaw dropped. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I probably won’t use it,” Loch said, slapping the air tank. “But maybe I’ll want to get a closer look at something.”

“That’s not the problem. Something might want to get a closer look at you!”

“Lighten up,” Loch said, starting the motor on the first pull. He threw it into forward gear, and the churning propeller thrust them quickly away from the dock. He turned long before the deep water, brought the boat in close to shore, and held it steady. The sky was clear. Even the deepest water of the lake had given way to an intense, spectacular blue.

There were more logs in the water than usual. Loch knew they must have drifted over from the north side of the lake after the storm had swollen the log pond at the old mill. He kept his head high as the boat rushed across the water. One thing he knew they didn’t need was to hit a log and bend the prop.

Loch had always thrilled to moving fast across a lake on a perfect day. On the brink of the open water, his mind would flood with thoughts, so many at the same time that he felt part of a vast kaleidoscope. He would think of poems and music. Sometimes he’d just remember his mother and what it had been like when they were all a family. Lately, during the last few months, he had begun to think most about feeling lonely, and what he was going to do with his life. All the problems and questions lurking in his mind and heart would tumble toward answers in the hugeness of a lake.

The outboard churned out a good-sized wake, a trail of bubbles and waves fanning out and violating the calmness of the water for a great distance behind them. He guided the boat along, taking note of half-sunken trees and patches of lake grass that he knew might hold big fish. There were stretches of tall pines that threw their branches out over the water to make the great cooling shadows largemouth bass liked on hot afternoons. He glimpsed sudden, whirling circles where the sound of the outboard interrupted pickerel basking in the sun. Over all were the mountains rimming the lake, looming tall like protective, watchful giants.

Zaidee went on high alert when Loch cut the speed and shifted into neutral near the salmon grid. He put on his scuba mask and hung his head over the side of the boat as it drifted toward shore.

“What are you looking for, fingers? ” Zaidee asked.

Loch put his hands in the water and began paddling. Slowly, easily, he guided the flat-bottomed boat in closer to the shore where the first beast had been trapped and broken through the net. In the clear shallows he could see the scrapings on the bottom of the lake where the creature had struggled. There were fragments from the ripped rope net wedged between small rocks, shreds waving, pointing toward the shore as though there were some sort of undertow.

Loch lifted his head out of the water to get his bearings on the salmon grid. Its great aluminum-and-steel structures were a hundred yards farther along the shore.