Chrislip College Journal

Hear This Story!

Requires FMReader Software ...

Don't got it?
GET IT!

Fame

Walter and I moved into the cabin late in the summer of 1974. It was right around the time of the Nixon resignation, an event important to this story only as a point of reference. The cabin was situated on a pristine lake not far from nowhere. We were Eastsiders; that is, we lived on the eastern crescent of the lake. Eastsiders were year-round residents. Most were poor, many were welfare cases, and some, like Walter and me for awhile, were food stamp recipients. The Westsiders, by contrast, owned bungalows and chalets that spread down to the edge of the water. They were lawyers and dentists from somewhere who came to the lake in the summer and left in the fall. As might be expected, the Westsiders did not set well with the Eastsiders, in spite of the occasional integrated barbecue or beach party. The general consensus held by we in the east was that Westsiders were money-grubbing hedonists whose values were irrevocably twisted by their quest for the almighty dollar. That was what we said, anyway. The truth was that we were mad because we were bums and they weren't. And we were bums, whether we faced the fact or not. And, as bums, we were doomed to live then and forever on the east side, in our ghetto by the sea.

At the time, though, Walter and I did not consciously realize we were bums, so to us the cabin was anything but a ghetto. Indeed, it was a fine place. It had a living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom without a door, and a kitchen. But the best part of the cabin was by far the outside part. We had a big backyard that was always dark and fertile from being so close to the lake. In the spring the gladiolas would bloom along the foundation and the leaves of the poplar trees would turn all fat and dewy. The grass would become the richest shade of green imaginable and dandelions would pop out by the thousands. The dandelions were the prettiest part of the yard. No, that is a lie. The dandelions were not the prettiest part. But if we said they were it gave us an excuse not to mow the lawn. Once we let a whole summer go by without mowing, and by September the grass was tickling the windowsills. Soon afterward, the landlord came around and demanded that we mow it, which we immediately did the following May, right after the snow melted in March. We were not the most ambitious people in the world, Walter and me.

Walter was two years older than me. He was my roommate and my best friend. But even so, I'll be the first to admit that there was something not quite right about him. He was a nice enough person, but if you ever ran into him in a dark alley you wouldn't want to run into him there again. He was about six feet four, and fat. His hair was Ronald McDonald orange, and he insisted on having it cut crew style at least every month. He had no lips to speak of and eyes that were always bulgy and yellow-rimmed. Because of his size he was usually gasping for breath in a frightening and unhealthy manner, and his skin had a reddish hue about it. It was not a normal red, though, such as is brought about by exposure to the sun, but rather a mottled, unclear red, owning less to the sun and more to the failure of something important inside. If he put a hand to his face and then took it away it would leave a big white handprint that would last for an hour. Then there was his social behavior, which wasn't much better. Walter didn't talk much, but when he did he usually ended up saying something he shouldn't have said at all. We were invited to a clambake on the beach one time by some Eastsiders with whom we had a passing acquaintance. The beer was flowing and everyone was having a good time. Then, after dark, one of the celebrants wondered aloud what time it was, and Walter, who had been a wordless wonder throughout the evening, stood up like some red giant against the blaze of the bonfire. All eyes were drawn to him and all conversation shut down. "It's later than you think," Walter solemnly intoned. That ended the party, and sent an Arctic chill up everyone's spine to boot. "Scary" was an adjective I often heard when people talked about Walter. Still, he and I always got along alright. It's just a matter of trying to understand a person, I suppose. I also felt a little sorry for Walter, him being so big and red and scary and everything. I was really the only friend he had, and since I was never overly popular myself, my being friends with him probably cost me whatever additional friends I had to begin with. They told me that if I kept hanging around Walter I'd get to be just like him, although I did not get big and red and scary. I thought that maybe I would in due time, but I didn't worry about it. There wasn't much I did worry about back then.

It was not always just Walter and me who lived in the cabin. We had our share of outcasts and weirdos; the fringe people we seemed to attract with such ease. One of the stand-outs was Dwan, a Filipino acrobat who lived with us for about two months. Dwan was with a circus that wintered over in Sarasota and barnstormed the Midwest during the summer. She liked her work just fine, right up until a stint in our town when the circus manager found out she was pregnant. I forget who the father was. I think he was a sword swallower. Anyway, she was fired on the spot and ran into Walter and me that night outside the big top. She needed a place to stay, so we took her home with us. It was nice having a girl around for a change. She brought to the cabin a sense of gentleness and stability. Dwan was also an excellent cook, and often we'd eat out dinner on the back porch, listening with rapt attention while she told us all about what life was like in the islands during the war years. The fact that she was born in 1955 hardly entered into it at all.

Sometimes, right at twilight, Dwan would venture out onto the lawn and put on an acrobatic show just for Walter and me. I remember the way she would twist and swim in the starlight, freezing at the apex of the jump, a cosmic ballerina against the backdrop of the lake. She was very beautiful. It was during one such performance that she lost her baby. I had warned her to use some restraint in her gymnastics, but she said that if a woman was in good health to begin with she could carry on all normal activities during pregnancy. I argued that normal meant washing dishes and sewing and mopping the floor, not executing monstrous quadruple back flip somersaults with full twisting dismounts in the damp night air. But Dwan would not be swayed. When it happened, she fell out of a simple tumble and sank into the wet grass, crying. I don't know how, but I immediately knew what had gone wrong. Only if you are unfortunate enough to be a spectator at a miscarriage will you understand. You will notice a lessening of something. It's as if you're admiring a painting, and after you blink you realize that some subtle nuance has taken place. Something you hadn't even noticed is lost, whether it was the coloration of a face or the particular blue of the sky. It brings on a feeling of melancholy, because you automatically know that the change has somehow detracted form the overall beauty of the portrait.

Dwan would not let us call a doctor. She also refused to come into the cabin, and by morning she was streaked with dew and looking like someone written by Sylvia Plath. She left the next day. Sometime later we received a cryptic postcard from Harvard, Illinois, so I assumed Dwan had rejoined her circus. I was sorry when she left. I think I might have felt something for her, but I'm not very good at recognizing those kinds of things when they happen, and even less good at sorting them out through the clouds of retrospect.

Another temporary houseguest was Mac, a misfit biker from Detroit. Mac was only with us a few weeks, but they were a hectic few weeks, due to the fact that he subsisted entirely on recreational drugs. That isn't an exaggeration. Mac didn't eat. The first night he stayed, we fixed tacos, and no sooner had he taken a bite than he threw it back up. Then we tried giving him Cream Of Wheat. He heaved that too. We decided that Mac must have a stomach disorder and that only the blandest of foods would stay down there, so we took a piece of de-crusted white bread dipped in warm milk and fed it to him. He couldn't keep that down either. We couldn't think of anything blander than that, so we gave up trying. Mac said it wasn't really a problem, that he was one of those rare people who didn't need food to get by. He claimed that he could suck all the nutrients he wanted right out of the air, just like a grasshopper. As I said, he used a great deal of drugs.

Still, in spite of not eating and in spite of the drugs--or maybe because of the drugs--Mac didn't seem any the worse for wear. He was having fun. And as a result of his having fun, Walter and I had fun too. Mac was more of a party favor than a friend; we never knew what he would do next. He was always claiming to have seen God in various parts of the cabin. One night he decided to try to catch Him. Mac used a gingerbread man for bait, which he claimed God would like because it too was made in His image. God never did show up that night, and even if He had, Walter and I knew He would have been too smart to fall for a biker's tricks.

So Mac lingered on with us, taking drugs and remaining woefully unaware of the existence of cultures other than his own. Ultimately Walter and I decided that Mac would have to go. Drug peddlers were starting to hover around the cabin like clouds around a picnic. So on a cold night in the fall, he ambled off down the dark road, wheeling his bike, stumbling over either ruts in the dirt or patches of nothing that his damaged mind perceived to be ruts. I couldn't tell which. Mac runs a Buick dealership in Ohio now.

Eventually all the Dwans and the Macs and the stragglers and the drifters found their directions and moved on. And then there was only Walter and me for awhile, then there was only Walter and me for longer while, and finally it was just Walter and me for good. Our increasing lack of social contact caused us to wind down like dilapidated clocks. A good deal of time was spent in a fantasy world of our own creation. What we fantasized about most was being famous. We wanted wine, women and song, none of which were too prevalent at the time. And it wasn't just any brand of fame we wanted. What we wanted more than anything else was to be major league baseball players. More specifically, we wanted to play for the Detroit Tigers, as the best double-play combination in the club's history. Mind you, we were not good ballplayers. Both Walter and I were in terrible shape, he a bit worse than I. It's said, for instance, that during a marathon race a runner will encounter, somewhere around the twenty-mile mark, a psycho-physical phenomenon known as "the wall." At that point the bodily fluids are so gravely depleted and the senses so agonized that behavior is altered and hallucinations set in. If we were playing ball and Walter hit a home run--granted, this was rare--he would begin to hallucinate as he lumbered around third base. I was a little better, but only just. Neither of us had even gone out for the team in high school. We told ourselves that we didn't want our talents to deteriorate playing alongside a group of ragtags. What really scared us was that we would've gotten out there and discovered ourselves void of any talent at all. So instead of playing baseball we fantasized about playing baseball. It was light-years easier that way, and safer. (But even the fantasy could get quite involved. Every day when we came home from work we would pretend it was the ballpark we'd just left. "How'd you do?" Walter would ask. "Two doubles in four at bats." I'd answer. "I knocked in three runs and started four double-plays." Then it was Walter's turn. He always had to top me. I didn't mind that, but I thought my way was more realistic. We kept statistics on our imagined outings, and when the season was over I'd be hitting maybe .335 with 40 home runs and 120 rbi. Walter always ended up with something like an average of .875 with 98 home runs and 400 runs batted in. That seemed kind of silly even for daydreams.)

When talking about fame, a problem I ran into with Walter was that he couldn't readily make the distinction between fame and infamy. I tried, probably in vain, to explain that fame is judged by deeds, not merely by the visibility of the individual in question. But to Walter, there was no difference between Sandy Duncan and Vlad The Impaler. Both names were known, therefore both were famous and worthy of emulation. Most of the time, though, I was able to convince him that as long as the Tigers needed help at shortstop and second base--and the Tigers would always need help at shortstop and second base--our fame and fortune would come from baseball.

Actually, we'd already had a taste of fame. But it was communal fame, so it didn't really count. It happened back in the spring of 1971, and concerned the alleged sighting by a group of teenagers of a serpent of some order in the lake. I say alleged because those teenagers were having a graduation beach party and they were most likely drunk and it was four-thirty in the morning when they caught a glimpse of whatever-it-was. At daybreak they went to the police, who questioned a few of the kids separately and were told wildly conflicting stories. The creature was forty feet long, said one, a sooty black color, with scaly bumps running the length of its body. It was eight feet long, said another, with little beady eyes, wavy green antennae, and skin like rugged sandpaper. Still another claimed that it was a hundred feet long and smooth as a kosher hot dog. One boy said he had flung his Bowie knife at the monster as it retreated underwater. He thought he'd stuck it in its back, but he couldn't be sure. The police laughed the whole thing off; even the witnesses admitted that their imaginations might have got the vest of them. The discovery of the monster-shaped log washed up on the beach two days later closed the case. Except that someone went to the local paper with the story, as well as with a very unlikely drawing of the monster based on the composite descriptions given by the teenagers. The article was meant only as a snippet of local humor, but as luck would have it the wire services came across the piece, snatched it up, and before you knew it the story of our monster was trumpeting for pate three of every newspaper in Michigan. Suddenly our town was on the map. We awoke one June morning to find scores of cars parked along the lakefront and people of every size and shape jostling for position to get a look at our monster. They came equipped with cameras, binoculars, and picnic lunches. One really old guy in Bermuda shorts came packing a shotgun. He was near-sighted, I guess, or senile, or maybe both, because he ended up blasting the daylights out of a sandcastle which he took to be the monster roaming the water's edge. The police took him away. Some of the more foolhardy souls waded waist-deep into the lake, poking the bottom with sticks, outwardly hoping that nothing would get them and inwardly hoping they'd be treated to the lavish spectacle of someone less fortunate being surprised by the beast and consumed in grandiose fashion. A gang of local school kids, sensing the chance for financial gain, dreamed up a name for our serpent. They called it Maxine, because it was said to resemble a sophomore girl of the same name.

Needless to say, Maxine never materialized. Pretty soon word started spreading that it was all a joke and that the credibility of the witnesses was questionable, to say the least. The crowd, grumbling and feeling cheated, dispersed by nightfall. All except for a swarm of fifty or so fundamentalist Baptists from Grand Rapids who claimed that Maxine was the anti-Christ and that the lake had to be drained and Maxine killed at any cost. They stayed on the beach well into the evening, invoking the name of God and clamoring for Maxine's death, deaf to the fact that she wasn't even real. When a deputy was sent to order them out, the Baptists responded with a plea to meet with the chief of police. The message was relayed, and the chief, a hard-drinking atheist, answered the Baptists by sending the fire department to turn their hoses on them. And that was really all there was to it. A couple of newspapers ran stories in the "What Happened To Maxine?" vein, but the publicity died fast. A psychologist explained Maxine away by describing the sighting as, quote, "The manifestation of fears felt by a group of teenagers as they sat on a dark beach and contemplated an uncertain future," end quote. It was as good an explanation as any. It was to be Maxine's epitaph. The legend vanished, as the Iranians like to say, into the dustbin of history.

So that was the only fame we ever knew. Because we weren't as broken down and starved for fame then as we would be in coming years, we didn't appreciate it the way we should have. But three years after Maxine, Walter and I became roommates. And soon after we became imaginary ballplayers.

In 1978 it occurred to us that we should have our own baseball diamond, so we built one in the backyard. It was not a diamond, really, but simply a place where we could practice our double-plays. Now for a truly effective double-play, you need a first baseman, and since we didn't have one we were forced to make one. We found a couple of two-by-four boards, one about six feet long and the other about three feet long, and nailed them together crossways so that the finished product resembled a sort of drunken crucifix. Then we stuck it in the ground and nailed a fishing net to one of the "arms." This was our first baseman. His name was Bucky.

What I would do was throw a rubberized baseball against the cabin hard enough so that it bounded back to me. Then I would scoop it up, if I was lucky, flip it to Walter, who would catch it, maybe, and who would then throw it into the fishing net, sometimes. Often Walter missed the net, and when he did he would start jumping up and down and screaming "Bucky moved! Bucky moved! Bucky moved!" Bucky hadn't moved, obviously, since he was only a sorry little cross. I hoped Walter realized this, but the red in his face would get even redder as he yelled at Bucky to quit clowning around and get his head in the game, and I knew he was dead serious. This only added another layer to his aura of strangeness, and I was glad I was the only one around to see it.

The summer of '78 was a good summer. The poplar leaves were more fat and dewy than ever, the grass was luxuriantly green, and happy evenings were spent with the sound of rubber baseballs slamming against the hardwood of the cabin. We bought new baseball gloves, and for hours we would sit on the porch rubbing oil into the pockets until the texture was just right. With idle curiosity we wondered what the Westsiders were up to, but we reassured ourselves that nothing they were doing could match the satisfaction of breaking in a new mitt.

June and July passed quickly, as they often do when transitory contentment is mistaken for happiness. But for Walter and me, the summer came to an abrupt and unexpected halt at the tail end of August. For in August, God and the Detroit Tigers conspired to play a mammoth practical joke that shattered our dream world into a billion jagged slivers. The Tigers brought up from their farm team a shortstop and second baseman whose names were Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, and they would be, according to the experts, the most gifted double-play combination in the team's history.

The rug was jerked out from under us. I was disappointed, but tried to be philosophical. I think I knew deep down that Walter and I would never really play for the Tigers. It was like the time I was ten years old that I decided to build a spaceship and fly to the moon. In my heart I knew I knew I would never do it, but it was fun to think I would. It was the same with baseball. We would never be rookie superstars. We were far too old, for one thing. Trammell and Whitaker, the real stars, were still teenagers, while Walter and I were tucked away in our mid-twenties. So I was sad when it happened, but not surprised.

Walter was surprised. To him there had never been any doubt that we would achieve stardom with the Tigers. It was something, he thought, that was destined to be. Now, as he saw two others handily stepping in to take our places, he fell apart. We listened on the radio to one of the first games Trammell and Whitaker played, a game in which they each got two hits. I remember Walter standing in silhouette against a back window, and each time he heard the sound of bat meeting ball his body would convulse, as if each base hit was sending a horsehide bullet into the spine of his imagination.

Walter didn't talk much for a few days afterward. He didn't eat or sleep much either. He went to work as usual, and went through all the motions, but there was a vacancy about him that hadn't been there before. He seemed to by drying up and blowing away from the inside out. It wasn't too unexpected, then, when he moped in from work one evening lugging a case of beer and a couple bottles of Scotch. Some of the magic had gone out of his life, and he meant to replace it, if only for a while, with another brand of magic.

Let it be understood that I don't drink a lot. And the reason I don't drink a lot is that when I'm drinking I tend to forget things. You might say that's not unusual, that lots of people are forgetful when they drink. That may be true, but most people forget little things, like where they left their car keys. I forget important things, like who I am and how to go to the bathroom. And those are two things you ought not forget under any circumstances. But I drank a lot with Walter that night. When I was through drinking a lot, I drank some more, until my thoughts disengaged and my head drifted away to a charmed country of its own.

By midnight I was sitting in the big overstuffed chair in the living room of the cabin. Well, not exactly sitting. I was in the chair, but I was upside down, with my legs hanging over the back and my back on the seat and my head dangling down in front. I wasn't aware I was doing anything out of the ordinary. Because of his vast weight, Walter had a greater capacity for alcohol. He was quiet most of the night, but it was a different quiet than the quiet he had been while being unhappy about baseball. This was more of a reflective quiet. I sat there, upside down and blissfully content, watching Walter as he stood at the window and looked out over the moonlit lake.

It was then that he suggested we try to catch Maxine.

At first I didn't know what he was talking about. After all, seven long summers had passed since the Maxine episode. It had been at least three summers since I'd even thought about it. When I realized what he was suggesting I told him he was drunk and gave him a chastising glare, which, had I not been upside down, might have worked to better effect. But Walter claimed he was not drunk. There was a look of mad excitement in his eyes as he said that since the baseball dream was dead, the only way we could ever get famous would be to catch Maxine and turn her over to the proper authorities, dead or alive. Why, we'd be in newspapers on TV screens across America, he said. I reminded him that Maxine was a joke. She was a shadow, or a floating log, or a flight of fancy. Whatever she was, she wasn't something that could be caught. It made even less sense than Mac trying to catch God in a cardboard box. God, at least, was real. Or at least enough people believed in Him to make Him real.

But Walter countered that Maxine was as real as you or me, that she had been out there waiting for us for seven years, that he knew exactly what and why she was, and that he would explain it all to me someday. I protested again. Walter turned on me. He slammed me up against the wall and said "This is life." He didn't shout the words, but they rattled inside of me with more force than any shout possibly could have. And though I didn't understand what he meant, I found myself timidly nodding my agreement. Yes, I would help. We would try to catch Maxine.

Bolstered by a couple more swigs of Scotch along with beer chasers, we set off to ready the expedition. The first order of business was to scout the beach for a suitable boat. Since we had no experience in monster-hunting, our only prerequisite was that it be an unlocked boat whose owner was a sound sleeper. Walter said he would take care of that. I was instructed to browse quietly through all neighboring garages to gather anything that might come in handy in the trapping of a serpent. I turned out to be a bad scavenger, due mainly to my bleary condition. Often I would gain entry into a garage in admirable James Bond style, then forget what I was supposed to be doing there. When at last I finished I piled my cache into a little red wagon and joined Walter on the beach. He'd found us a boat. It was a twelve-footer, wooden, with a set of chipped oars and a tiny outboard engine clinging precariously to the stern. He said it would have do, and told me to dump my wagon-load of accessories into it. Some of the things I'd gathered would be useful and some would not. Among them were a flashlight, a large coil of half-inch rope, a fishing pole, an ax, eleven golf balls, a minnow net, half a dozen railroad spikes, three swim fins, some pinochle cards, and a Shirelles record.

It was nearly one o'clock in the morning when we finally pushed the boat out into the water. The surface of the lake was like glass, and only a few points of light stood out as evidence of life on the west side a mile across. We paddled out a hundred yards before Walter pulled the engine's starter cord. The motor coughed, then began puttering away in a determined and workmanlike fashion. As we moved into deeper water, Walter leaned over the side and looked downward for some sign of Maxine. My mind was still buzzing from the Scotch, but instead of making me brave where monsters were concerned, it had just the opposite effect, and I sat huddled squarely in the middle of my seat, refusing to peer over the edge. Walter berated me for this. He said that there were countless life forms now in existence of which mankind had not even an inkling, and that I should be looking out for any of those life forms that might be living in our lake. I answered that a certain percentage of those unknown life forms were bound to be awful, and that I was in no mood to look over the side of the boat and see something awful looking back. Chasing a fake lake monster was bad enough.

It took us fifteen minutes to get halfway across the lake, and then Walter steered us toward a darkened cove near where the teenagers had supposedly spotted Maxine, and where the boy had flung his knife at her retreating form. It was in a secluded part of the lake, bordered by thick woods except for a broad strip of sand where kids could build bonfires and have parties with little interference from the police. The spot was accessible only by way of a narrow, bumpy trail road through the woods, and it was thought by the police that merely traveling it was punishment enough for whatever petty crimes that the gathered teenagers might commit. The water was crazy in this section of the lake. It started out shallow, but about ten yards off shore the bottom dropped twenty feet. Then there was a series of black slate ledges, followed by a sloping declivity of sixty more feet. The result was a hole some three hundred yards in diameter whose depth at the center was anywhere from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet.

It was roughly in the center of this hole that we parked, or whatever you call it when you stop a boat. If we had to be out fishing for monsters, we couldn't have picked a better night. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The moon was rising, and the pine branches brushing across its face gave the illusion of a finely cracked china plate. The atmosphere was clear, windless, and the stars flared with a vengeance. Suddenly I felt very sleepy, and I slipped down between the front and middle seats and rested my head on a cushion. Walter, meanwhile, had lost none of his spirit of adventure. Keeping one eye peeled on the water, he sifted through the odds and ends I'd collected. When he came upon the long coil of rope, he fashioned a lasso out of it, threw the loose end to me, and told me to fasten it to the anchor lock, which I lazily did.

Then we waited. I laid back and flirted with sobriety, listening to the occasional snapping of twigs from shore, knowing that if I looked up I would see a herd of night-grazing deer warily minding us from afar. An hour passed. Walter kept his ever-watchful eye on the water, as I did, though I did so without any sense of expectation. I was watching the brilliant starscapes that pattered down on the grassy lake. The reflection of Andromeda was clearly visible on the water, and I gazed at it, half-dreaming, and remarked to myself that I'd never noticed those two large yellow stars in that constellation before. Then a small breeze brought a chill to the back of my neck. I raised my head from the cushion and stared harder at those two yellow stars, and all at once I realized that they were not being reflected by the water, but were in the water itself. Then with an implosion of fear I understood that those stars were not stars at all. They were eyes, staring at me just as intently as I was staring at them.

I sat bolt upright with a shout, unsure at first whether what I was seeing was real or the by-product of a boozy dream. Walter swung the flashlight in the direction I'd been gaping, and as he did the eyes and the head that owned them broke out of water. The thing was a good thirty feet away, but even so I could see that it was enormous; the head was at least four feet across, very real, and clearly belonging to an animal beyond the circles of my experience. As quickly as it had surfaced it dipped beneath the water. I turned to Walter for some confirmation that I hadn't lost my mind, and the stricken look on his face told me I had not. Before either of us could speak we heard a splash, and we saw that the animal had surfaced again, only this time it was much closer to the boat and swimming closer still, leaving a sizable wake behind. I yelled for Walter to start the motor, but he just watched trance-like as the creature approached up. Then just before impact, it submerged again, and we felt the boat rock gently back and forth from the watery repercussions.

I was on the verge of panic, and any ideas I'd had about getting famous were long gone. My only thought was to retreat quickly to safety. But whatever fear Walter felt was fleeting. He wore a jubilant smile, and with a whoop of delight he shouted that we had found Maxine. No, I said, we had not found Maxine. Maxine was a fairy-tale, a happy little creation of someone's make-believe. What we'd found was something altogether different. A mutant sturgeon, perhaps, or a malformed eel. But it was not Maxine. And rather than quibble about it, it was my opinion that we should take our leave.

But the future courses of our respective lives at that moment came down to the seating arrangement in the boat. Walter was sitting in the back, and the back was where the motor was. For me to reach the motor would mean having to lunge over Walter's imposing form, which quite probably would spill both of us into the lake. So in the quiet of a dark lake that suddenly seemed so foreign and malevolent, a tiny dictatorial municipality was formed: Walter had the motor, therefore we would stand and fight.

There wasn't much time for an argument. With a loud splash the creature surfaced fifteen feet off the bow. It swam toward us. I waited for it to dip out of sight as it had before, but this time it reared up instead of down. The mouth clamped over the side of the boat. I tried to scream but couldn't. Moving also seemed like a good idea, but I was statued with fear. The thing made an obscene grunting sound. Its rubbery lips flounced up and down on the boat. Then abruptly it let go and swam off.

Frozen though my body was, my mind had switched into a mode of intense clarity, and I'd been able to take the thing's appearance into account. Or at least the appearance of its head, for that was all that was visible. It was, as I said, about four feet across; it was either grey or black, and studded with thick knobs of hide. The eyes were unlike anything I'd ever seen, an unearthly color of yellow that, for some reason, nearly caused me to be sick.

An uneventful thirty seconds went by. The water was still. I began to allow myself the luxury of believing the thing had lost interest in us now that it knew our boat was inedible. But wishful thinking never goes unpunished. Ten yards off starboard the water began to boil and it busted the surface once again.

The boat began to rock from side to side. Startled, I turned and saw that Walter was standing up and twirling his lariat over his head, looking for all the world like a poor man's Tom Mix. I was about to shriek my protest, but then I realized it wasn't necessary. There was no way that big, uncoordinated Walter--who could barely walk and talk at the same time--could possibly rope something so animated.

But of course, he did just that. He stumbled and flung the lasso with all the grace of a drunken fat man and the loop dropped over the creature's head as lightly as a snowflake into a meadow. The thing went under, and the rope, knotted to the anchor lock, was pulled taut. The boat lurched forward, tumbling Walter into the stern. Our quarry was towing us away from shore.

It seemed to defy all logic and reason that we had lassoed someone's flight of fancy. It was impossible, I told myself. But then the thing rose out of the water, and as it lunged forward to submerge again I could see its wide back break the surface, and in the stark moonlight I could just make out the rusted handle of a Bowie knife protruding from the dark hide. I knew we had her.

But who had who? It's amazing how fast a person can sober up when he's in a rickety boat that 's being dragged around a lake by a monster at two o'clock in the morning. And now that I was sober I took a good look at the situation and realized it was Maxine who had the upper hand. She sliced through the water with us in tow for the better part of a half an hour. A few times she turned and tried to attack the boat, but the rope kept her from getting a running start, so she couldn't do more than give us a nudge. Other times she seemed to be trying to drag the bow under the waves when she sounded, but the buoyancy of our forlorn craft was too much for her.

As it became clear that we were in no immediate danger of dying, Walter and I began to consider a course of action. We decided to start the motor and see if we could gain any leverage against Maxine. Walter pulled the starter cord, but only gave an innocuous sputter. He gave it a hard rap with the heel of his hand; too hard, apparently, because the motor fell off and plopped into the water. If it was any consolation, the rap fixed it, though. It kicked into gear just as it fell away, and we watched it puttering along just under the surface in would-be comical fashion. It followed us for awhile as if trying to catch up, then took a nosedive and buzzed out of sight. Walter then remembered the set of oars in the bottom of the boat. It occurred to him that if we could drag ourselves closer to Maxine by pulling on the rope, we might be able to hit her with an oar hard enough to stun her, then maybe drag her in to shore. It seemed like a good idea, especially since Maxine was heading in a direction that would bring us within fifty yards of shore upon which perched our silent cabin.

Walter put his shoulder to the task and strained at the rope with all his might as I balanced myself on the bow, the oar raised in readiness over my head. Luckily, Maxine was moving through the water like a swimmer doing the breaststroke, bobbing her head every few yards.

With one final Herculean yank, Walter brought us upon her. I swung the oar with all my strength. It splintered to pieces against her head. But the swing threw me off balance. I windmilled my arms crazily, clawing the air for a grip that wasn't there. For a moment I thought I would make it. But no. I fell into the water with the same blank terror that one might feel falling into an open grave.

I closed my eyes and dogpaddled in a loopy, senseless circle, waiting for Maxine to finish me. The water was icy cold; a fitting temperature, I thought, to go along in the jaws of a monster. When ten seconds passed and I was still among the living, I dared to open my eyes. The dark figure of Maxine was bobbing beside me in the water, close enough to touch. What's more, I could feel the sandy lake bottom between my toes, and realized I was standing in water that was only chest deep.

Walter followed me into the water. Without a word we both grabbed onto the rope and began the task of dragging Maxine shoreward. She seemed sufficiently stunned, but we tugged from a respectful distance, ready to flee should the situation change.

Within a quarter hour we had dragged her far enough so that she was half in and half out of the water. She was beginning to stir, so Walter picked up one of the railroad spikes from inside the boat and brought it over to where she lay. We tied Maxine's rope to the spike and hammered it into a solid piece of ground between the roots of a willow tree. After that, we collapsed with exhaustion and exhilaration onto the wet sand. We went into the cabin and brought out some beers to toast our triumph over Maxine, as well as the fame that was sure to follow. Then it dawned on us that we hadn't had an up close look ar our quarry yet, so we took the flashlight, approached the tranquil form of Maxine, and shone it on her.

She was huge, at least twenty feet long. Her skin was elephantine grey, and bristly hair stuck out in incidental patches. There was a flipper on each side of her belly, and a set of claws near her snakey tail that looked as they too might become flippers after a few thousand years of evolution.

Then Walter shined the light in her eyes, and I sucked in my breath and stumbled backward. Out on the lake I had thought of those eyes as ugly; now as I looked into them, a terrible wave of lost hope swept over me. I felt my knees give way, and dropping to the sand I delivered onto it an ungodly mixture of Scotch and beer with one retching spasm. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Walter doing the same. I stood and tried to lurch toward the cabin, but Walter caught my arm. He was blabbering. He said it was important that we look at Maxine again, that we had to stare into her eyes and see our reflections there and watch until we weren't afraid anymore.

We stood and faced her, and the despair and ugliness that pulsed from those eyes Aseemed to wash down my body and stain me forever. I stifled a rising gag and continued to look. In using the word despair, I don't mean to suggest that Maxine herself was in despair over the predicament she was in. No, the misery and despair were things she created within herself and channelled outward, hurting us instead of her. As for her own frame of mind, she seemed to regard us with a certain arrogance, as if daring us to finish her off. She was not afraid for herself. The yellow eyes, though--odd and detached--stabbed into us, and into the reflections of us that danced on her filmy retinas. Those few minutes were the worst of my life. I felt dizzy and confused, and rivers of sweat traced their courses down my face and chest.

Walter turned and began walking back toward the cabin. Moments later, I heard the screen door slam at the back of the cabin and Walter emerged carrying an ax. I suddenly understood that he was going to kill her. He would make sure she didn't escape. But it was more than that. It was the eyes, I thought. The idea was going on with his life while knowing his image was engraved on them was more than he could bear. Maxine's eyes had to die.

I saw Walter pick up the ax and walk over to her. His posture betrayed his anger, as did his silhouette. He defined a severe, electrical shape that contrasted weirdly against the gentleness of the lake. He hefted the ax in his hands, testing its weight. Then he raised it high over his head.

A dog was barking. A cricket chirped in the flowers. The wind blew the sound of a distant horn on the west side over to our side, and the soft wet crackle of the stars rounded out the simple symphony. In the midst of that symphony, a big, red, scary young man swung an ax with a primitive fury, severed a half-inch rope, and gave a monster freedom.

I watched Walter struggle as he pushed Maxine into deeper water. Finally she could swim on her own, and with a twist of her body began moving slowly toward the cove where we had found her. Until she disappeared from view, I watched, thinking that Walter had done a very nice thing. Years would pass before I realized that niceness had very little to do with it. And it would be even longer before I understood just what Maxine was, and why we were the only ones who could have caught her. I laid in bed and tried to think about those things, but the long-lost effects of the liquor were reclaiming me, so I closed my eyes and let sleep climb to the summit of my brain and plant its tattered flag.

I awoke the next morning with one of those epic hangovers that country singers get paid a great deal of money to write about. I staggered to the kitchen in the glare of obnoxious sunlight and fixed a glass of Alka-Seltzer. Then I sat down and tried to read the morning paper.

Walter came creeping from his room an hour later. He slurred a good morning and mixed himself a hangover remedy consisting of tomato juice and a raw egg, which he poured down the sink after deciding that the hangover might be the lesser of the two evils. He was quiet for a while, then he mentioned that it was certainly something catching Maxine the way we did. I stared at him blankly. I, naturally, had forgotten we had caught her at all. But at once it came back to me. Walter said it was tragic that Maxine had broken her rope and gotten away. I agreed; there was no justice in life. Then Walter ducked behind the sports page. We never spoke of Maxine again.

We went to work the next day, and when Walter came home that night he said it was high time we picked up the pieces and started doing something with our lives. So the day after that we went into town and applied for better jobs; ones that would get us out in the world and let us meet other people. And in the meantime we invited a bunch of our neighbors, as well as some Westsiders, over for a cookout. We'd ignored them for so long, and were genuinely surprised when they turned out to be fine and friendly people. The evening was a big success; we all promised each other that we wouldn't be such strangers in days to come.

Walter and I had one last fling with baseball. I read in the paper that the Detroit Tigers were holding an open tryout in Kalamazoo, and I convinced Walter that we should go. Not because we had any chance of making the team, of course, but to confirm to ourselves that the talent we'd pretended to have for so long was just that - a pretense. So on a green and breezy day late in the summer, he hopped a Greyhound to Kalamazoo. I tried out at shortstop and Walter tried out at second base, and our lack of talent was laid bare for all to see. We were beyond lousy, bobbling everything hit our way. Then I tried my hand at pitching and Walter tried catching, and we were quite a bit better in those positions, but certainly not good enough. All in all it was a fun day, and we were able to laugh along with everyone else at our ineptitude. We had gone on a lark, the lark was over, and we were happy.

We didn't play much baseball after that. As much as we loved it, the time had come to face the fact that we'd have to be content with listening to the games on the radio. It wouldn't be so bad once we got used to it. Soon after our trip to Kalamazoo we pulled Bucky out of the ground. We didn't have the heart to throw him away, so we set him up in the living room to serve as a testament to the times, and occasionally as a hat-rack. He never was much of a first baseman anyway.

And so the summer of 1978 ended much as it had begun, with hazy soft-focus days and cool dream-logged nights. It was a sweet-sad summer, like the last headlong rush into childhood's end, and when it was over we had made some new friends, laid down our mitts, caught a monster, and decided not to be afraid anymore. I guess it's a decision everyone has to make whenever they look into an uncertain future, whether they see that future as a nine-to-five prison with the walls closing in, or as something hideous with a rusted knife in its back and a scrap of rope around its neck. I guess it all depends on how you look at it.

I still don't know whether Walter and I will get those better jobs we applied for, but I'm not worried. The law of averages states, after all, that for everything bad, there is something wonderful and good lying in wait in its own elusive place.

(Editor's note: As it turned out, the baseball tryout in Kalamazoo was not nearly as disastrous as the narrator of the preceding story thought it to be. Both he and "Walter" [not his real name] were called back for another look, not as shortstop and second baseman, but as pitcher and catcher. They were subsequently signed by the Detroit Tigers and relegated to the organization's Class A minor league farm team in Florida. They graduated to the Double A squad in 1981, and by the 1985 season they had worked their way up to the Triple A team in Evansville, Indiana. Last year was their most productive season. The story's narrator complied a pitching record of eight wins, one loss, and an earned run average of 3.01. "Walter," meanwhile, batted .289, with ten home runs and 68 runs batted in. Both are expected to be called to the major leagues when the parent club opens up its roster in September.)