separate the things to… be shipped home, and leave the rest and he’ll take care of it. But I do feel strange about going there, Paul.”
“I’d like to look around too, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I hoped you’d want to.”
“But I may have to leave you there and come back for you.”
“That will be all right. Once I get started I’ll be all right.”
“So let’s get started now.”
Six
STANIAL HAD A two-thirty appointment with the man who had turned in the alarm about the possible drowning. The man and his family lived in a small pink cinder block house about two miles from Flamingo Lake. Children were whooping and racing and cycling through the streets and small yards. Willard Maple was a gaunt, hollow-chested man in his late twenties with large fading tattoos on both lean forearms. He was spraying shrubbery when Stanial drove up. They moved into the shade of the carport to talk.
“The way it was, Mr. Stanial, I got off shift that day at twelve noon, and it was a hot one, and when I get home Peg says lets go on over to Flamingo Lake, and I says sure. But with the futzing around and having lunch first and her calling up her sister to find out we should pick them up too, we got there maybe twenty minutes to two, Pete and Em and their one kid, and the two of us and our three, all piled into that old station wagon of mine there. There’s three little roads to the lake and the way we do, if the first place is crowded we go along to the next one, and so on. But there was just the one car there, and so we agreed it was okay and I put the car in as much shade as I could find and we all come piling out and down to the beach with the gear. There was a stripedy towel spread, and a radio playing and a beach bag and woman’s sandals and nobody there. It wasn’t creepy right away. You don’t think much about it. The four kids didn’t mess up the beach because they all of them went racing off to look in the hollow stump where they’d hid some kind of treasure last time. Pete is sure it’s a couple and they gone back off in the bushes. But it was my Peg pointed out the foot marks, woman-size feet going on down to the water across that maybe ten foot of clean sand all dimpled from the hard rain. Then it did seem kind of spooky. We stared way out all around and not a head nowhere. We yelled separate and all the same time and listened and didn’t hear a thing. That’s when we shut the kids up so good they started crying, soft like. And by then we were talking soft. Pete said we’d look like pure damn fools we report a drownding and it turns out somebody came by in a boat and took her for a ride. But Em said she wouldn’t go off and leave her little battery radio running, would she? And that seemed to settle it. So Peg and me stayed and Pete went off in the wagon with Em and the kids and stopped at the Amoco station and phoned in it looked like some Mrs. Hanson had drownded and he told where. We knew the name from looking at a wallet sort of thing in the beach bag. So like we arranged, Pete left Em and the kids off to his house and came on back and made it fast enough to get here just ahead of the rescue people and the ambulance, but by then some of the gas station guys had come over and they’d told other people and we were getting a crowd, and this may sound like a terrible thing to say, but after getting the whole thing rolling like that, the thing I was most scared of was that damn fool woman coming walking along the shore and wanting to know what the hell was going on. Well, as they were getting set to get into action, there was a boat out there and a kid in a mask and flippers and the first thing you know that kid is yelling and everybody looked at him and he came a-sidestroking in towing something. They went down to meet him, and that was one husky kid, but as soon as he could stand up and take a good look at what he’d towed in, he ran a little ways and threw up. They put that oxygen thing on her
“I’d like to look around too, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I hoped you’d want to.”
“But I may have to leave you there and come back for you.”
“That will be all right. Once I get started I’ll be all right.”
“So let’s get started now.”
Six
STANIAL HAD A two-thirty appointment with the man who had turned in the alarm about the possible drowning. The man and his family lived in a small pink cinder block house about two miles from Flamingo Lake. Children were whooping and racing and cycling through the streets and small yards. Willard Maple was a gaunt, hollow-chested man in his late twenties with large fading tattoos on both lean forearms. He was spraying shrubbery when Stanial drove up. They moved into the shade of the carport to talk.
“The way it was, Mr. Stanial, I got off shift that day at twelve noon, and it was a hot one, and when I get home Peg says lets go on over to Flamingo Lake, and I says sure. But with the futzing around and having lunch first and her calling up her sister to find out we should pick them up too, we got there maybe twenty minutes to two, Pete and Em and their one kid, and the two of us and our three, all piled into that old station wagon of mine there. There’s three little roads to the lake and the way we do, if the first place is crowded we go along to the next one, and so on. But there was just the one car there, and so we agreed it was okay and I put the car in as much shade as I could find and we all come piling out and down to the beach with the gear. There was a stripedy towel spread, and a radio playing and a beach bag and woman’s sandals and nobody there. It wasn’t creepy right away. You don’t think much about it. The four kids didn’t mess up the beach because they all of them went racing off to look in the hollow stump where they’d hid some kind of treasure last time. Pete is sure it’s a couple and they gone back off in the bushes. But it was my Peg pointed out the foot marks, woman-size feet going on down to the water across that maybe ten foot of clean sand all dimpled from the hard rain. Then it did seem kind of spooky. We stared way out all around and not a head nowhere. We yelled separate and all the same time and listened and didn’t hear a thing. That’s when we shut the kids up so good they started crying, soft like. And by then we were talking soft. Pete said we’d look like pure damn fools we report a drownding and it turns out somebody came by in a boat and took her for a ride. But Em said she wouldn’t go off and leave her little battery radio running, would she? And that seemed to settle it. So Peg and me stayed and Pete went off in the wagon with Em and the kids and stopped at the Amoco station and phoned in it looked like some Mrs. Hanson had drownded and he told where. We knew the name from looking at a wallet sort of thing in the beach bag. So like we arranged, Pete left Em and the kids off to his house and came on back and made it fast enough to get here just ahead of the rescue people and the ambulance, but by then some of the gas station guys had come over and they’d told other people and we were getting a crowd, and this may sound like a terrible thing to say, but after getting the whole thing rolling like that, the thing I was most scared of was that damn fool woman coming walking along the shore and wanting to know what the hell was going on. Well, as they were getting set to get into action, there was a boat out there and a kid in a mask and flippers and the first thing you know that kid is yelling and everybody looked at him and he came a-sidestroking in towing something. They went down to meet him, and that was one husky kid, but as soon as he could stand up and take a good look at what he’d towed in, he ran a little ways and threw up. They put that oxygen thing on her
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