Authors: Donald Westlake
The night
it
happened. Not a sea monster, after all, but some weird form of breaking and entering. Who would break and enter a reservoir, and for what possible reason? It didn’t make any sense, but that’s what somebody did, all right; the clipped–through padlocks found next morning, and the tracks of some large heavy vehicle leading right down to the bank of the reservoir, proved that much.
Unfortunately, these mysterious midnight prowlers had chosen to strike at a particular moment when Bob himself was overwrought, what with his just having returned from his honeymoon and starting back to work and all, and so he’d had this excessively emotional response when he’d looked out at the lake and seen what it turned out must have been a person swimming, but which, to his overwrought and excessively emotional eyes had, uh, seemed to be, um …
… a sea serpent.
Bob and the counselor had worked all this out pretty extensively the last month. In fact, Bob was beginning to believe that his terrible experiences of that moonlit night in April were a blessing in disguise, since they’d led him to Manfred, the counselor who was having an absolutely
significant
effect on Bob’s life.
But what a mess he’d made of things along the way, starting with his inability to find
Soldier of Fortune
magazine later that night when he’d driven away from the dam and home and Tiffany forever. Without
Soldier of Fortune,
his plans to become a hard–bitten mercenary soldier on some different and more interesting continent had been stymied, and so he’d bought a couple sixpacks instead and parked all night alone up on Ten Eyck Hill, overlooking the reservoir, waiting for the sea serpent to return.
It had not, of course, and at some point in his vigil Bob had finally passed out from exhaustion and beer (and, as he and Manfred now understood, overwroughtness and excessive emotion), and when he’d returned, bleary and messy, to his normal life the next day, he’d learned that nobody wanted him anymore. Tiffany, furious, had moved back with her parents. Down at the dam, they were talking about dereliction of duty. It wasn’t until Bob had agreed to accept counseling that his boss had decided not to fire him.
Once Tiffany had learned he was so serious about solving his problems that he’d started counseling, she’d come back as well — which had its pluses and minuses, to tell the truth — and over the course of the last month Bob felt that he and Manfred had made great strides together. Bob felt himself really coming together these days, both intellectually and emotionally. Right now, he was feeling very good about himself, very comfortable in his space.
It was going to take a little longer, though, for the crowd at work to settle down and forget the past and accept the new Bob. In the meantime, the other guys mostly didn’t talk to him — which was okay, too, considering the kind of talk they talked when they
did
talk — and he had this ridiculous extra duty every night, checking all the padlocks and all the roads to be sure those mysterious unknown swimmers had not returned.
But who were they? What made them do it? Cutting through padlocks, destroying official property like that, was serious business. Nobody would do such a thing just so they could go skinny–dipping with their girlfriend. Not when there were so many actual lakes and ponds all around this whole area. And not at
all
in April; way too cold. Some sort of Polar Bear Club branch of the ancient Druids was the only possibility Bob had come up with so far, which just didn’t sound all that probable, not even to him.
Well, again tonight, this padlock on the barrier next to the state highway was unharmed. Nevertheless, he was required to unlock it, open the bar, get into his car, drive to the property–line fence and the second padlocked barrier, check
that
lock, open it, and drive on to the reservoir, to the spot where
it
had happened.
Criminals do not return to the scene of their crime. Manfred said that was just superstition. But on the other hand, Manfred also said he should go along with everybody else for now, with all their myths and rituals, until the general community feeling was that he had atoned for his abandonment of them and their values. So that’s what he’d do.
Once he had the barrier unlocked and open, Bob sighed and got back into his car, shifted into drive, and headed down the dirt road, among the trees, in the dark, toward the water.
“What?” Kelp asked chirpily, nearby.
“Nothing,” Dortmunder said grumpily.
Because, of course, it
wasn’t
the last chance to change his mind, he’d missed that moment a long time ago. He was here now, with Kelp and Tiny and Tom and Stan Murch and this vivisected Hornet and this winch and all this rope, and there was no choice. Into the drink. “I could use one,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing!”
“All set over here,” Stan said, standing beside the car.
All set. Tiny had broken off a couple of pine tree branches to chock the wheels of the Hornet, though it didn’t give much impression of any lively desire to race down the gradual slope into the water. One end of the long rope from the winch was tied to a frame piece where the bumper used to be attached; not because they had any hope of winching the entire car back up to the surface, but only because that was the simplest and safest way to be sure they had the rope with them. The two big trash bags of Ping–Pong balls were in the trunk, which was closed only with a simple hook arrangement to make it easy to open underwater in the dark. The underwater flashlights waited on the front seat, the shovels and a four–foot–long fireplace poker in back. A second long coil of rope also lay on the backseat, one end extended forward between the front seats and tied firmly to the steering column. The two long poles, to push them along as necessary, were placed behind the front seats, sticking up and back over the rear seat.
The idea was, the Hornet would roll on down the track underwater, downhill almost all the way into Putkin’s Corners. Now and again, if they came to a stop, they’d stand up in the car like gondoliers and pole themselves along. Since only the points of the poles would ever touch bottom, they could minimize turbidity.
Once they reached Putkin’s Corners, they’d have to get out of the car and walk, which would roil up the bottom some, but that couldn’t be helped. They would use the second rope then to keep in contact with each other and with the car as they made their way around the library — directly across the street from the railroad station,
that’s
a help — and into Tom’s goddamn field. The four–foot–long poker would be poked into the soft bottom in the area where Tom had buried his casket, and when they hit it they’d dig it up and drag it — this would be a tough part, full of hard work and turbidity — back to the Hornet. There, they’d attach the long rope to a casket handle, then open the car’s trunk — carefully! don’t want the trash bags of Ping–Pong balls to escape and float up to the surface — tie the bags of Ping–Pong balls to the casket on both sides to lighten it, then give the prearranged three–tug signal to Tiny and walk back up the track with the casket as Tiny cranked the winch.
Not exactly a piece of cake, but not absolutely impossible either. And this time, if anything went wrong, Dortmunder would definitely remember his BCD and rise up
out
of there. Count on it.
“
I’m
ready,” Kelp said. “You coming, John?”
“Naturally,” Dortmunder said, and plodded over to get into the Hornet, sitting behind the wheel, the underwater flashlight in his lap, Kelp on the seat beside him, grinning around his mouthpiece. At
what?
Dortmunder put his own mouthpiece in and nodded to Tiny, who pulled away the tree branch chocks, and nothing happened. Dortmunder made pushing gestures, and Tiny said, “I know, I know,” and went around to the back of the car.
While Tom stayed with the winch, Tiny and Stan pushed on the car, which rolled sluggishly, and then less sluggishly, down the incline toward the reservoir. “Mmmmmm!” said Kelp, in delight, as the Hornet’s front end plowed into the black water.
The front wheels hit with a little splash. Dortmunder expected the water’s drag to stop the damn car again, but it didn’t, at least not right away. Rolling slowly, but rolling, the Hornet moved easily down into the reservoir, water bubbling up into the passenger compartment around their feet through the holes where the accelerator and clutch pedal used to be, then pouring in through the larger space where the dashboard once spread, as the hoodless front went beneath the surface. The windshield and side windows caused a little wake to boil past them as they rolled on, water bubbling on the outside of the glass. There was no rear window anymore, it having gone with the top, so all at once the interior was
full,
water halfway up their chests, a few seconds of freezing icy numbness, as Dortmunder had expected, and then it was okay.
Breathe
through the mouth.
Breathe
through the mouth.
Breathe
through the mouth.
Breathe
through the mouth.
Kelp pulled his mouthpiece out long enough to cry, “It’s working!” and then popped it back in as the water closed over their heads. Water tumbled around their face masks. Trapped bubbles of air in the car’s doors and trunk and frame began to work their way clear for the straight run up through the black water to the eddying, then quieting, surface.
Bob switched off his headlights, got out of his car, and stood leaning his skinny butt against a front fender, arms folded, gazing out over the water. Nobody could say for sure how long it would take him to do this pointless inspection every night, since nobody had ever had to go through this nonsense before him, so there was no reason why he shouldn’t take a little time out for himself along the way.
Darker tonight, without the moon, but lots of high tiny white pinpoints of stars in clusters and lines and patterns all across the black sky, looking as though they really ought to mean something. If only the thousands of white dots were numbered, you could connect them, and then you’d know it all. The secret of the universe. But nobody even knows which dot is number one.
Maybe the sun? Our own star? Maybe we can’t see the pattern because we’re
in
the pattern. Have to talk to Manfred about that.
Ever since he’d started the counseling, Bob had learned there were depths and complexities within himself that his schooling and his family — and
certainly
his retarded boyhood friends — had never evoked. Ways of seeing things. Ways of relating himself to the world and the universe and time itself.
What did it all matter, really, in the vastness of space, the fullness of time? Maybe Tiffany wasn’t exactly the ideal person to spend the rest of one’s life with, but what the heck, maybe
he
wasn’t anybody’s lifelong ideal either.
Look up at all those pinpricks of light up there, all those stars, billions and billions, so many with planets around them, so many of the planets beating
some
form of life. Not human beings, of course, and not the kinds of aliens and monsters and ETs you saw in science fiction, either. Maybe life based on methane instead of oxygen; maybe life closer to our plants than our animals, but intelligent; maybe life in the form of radio waves. And all going on for billions of years, from the unimaginable beginning of the universe to its unthinkable end. What were Bob and Tiffany in all that? Not very important, huh?
So take it easy, that was the answer, don’t get so
excited
about things. Don’t get so excited about sex — that’s what got you where you are today — or your future or your job or sea serpents or the simple–ass stupid asinine meatheaded
dumbness
of one’s pals and coworkers. Accept the life you’ve got. One little life in the great heaving ocean of space and time, the
hugeness
of the universe.
Think about all those lives up there in space, unguessable lives, millions and millions of miles away. Each life its own, each life unique, unrepeatable, soon ended, a brief shining of the light.
“And this is mine,” Bob whispered, accepting it, accepting all of it: himself, Tiffany, Manfred, his shit–for–brains buddies, his small destiny in this unimportant spot on this minor planet circling this mediocre sun in this lower–middle–class suburb of the universe. “I accept,” Bob whispered to the universe.
Bubbles. Little air bubbles breaking the surface of the water, out a ways and off to the right. Hard to see, in this thin starlight barely brushing the black surface of the reservoir. Just a few little bubbles, rippling the water. Bob smiled, calm, accepting it. Some fish down there, moving around.