“Prior engagement,” Skink explained. Catherine couldn’t be sure, but she thought he winked his good eye behind the sunglasses.
Decker got the Minicam focused while Catherine fitted the headset over his ears. In the earphone he could hear the director hollering for Camera Two to get steady.
“This is a breeze,” Decker said. A four-year-old could work the zoom.
Skink rubbed his leathery hands together. “Lights! Camera!”
Decker aimed down the lake and waited. Before long a bass boat chugged into view. It was Fast Eddie Spurting, going slow. The reason was obvious.
He was towing two other boats.
“Is it Spurling?” the TV director barked at Camera Two.
“Yep,” Decker said.
The word was relayed to Reverend Weeb, who got on the PA system and beckoned all within earshot to return at once to the dock area. Even those who had fled to the buses emerged to see what was going on.
“Go tight, Rudy,” the director instructed Decker, and Decker obliged, as Rudy would have.
As the procession of boats tediously made its way up Lunker Lake Number One, a few people in the crowd (specifically, those with binoculars) began to react alarmingly. Curious, Charlie Weeb stepped down from the stage to join his congregation at water’s edge.
R. J. Decker was doing quite well with the TV camera. Through the viewfinder everything was in perfect focus.
There was Eddie Spurling half-turned in the driver’s seat as he checked the crippled boats on his towline.
The first was the wooden skiff—there were Jim Tile and Al Garcia, sitting aft and stern. They toasted the TV lights with cans of Budweiser.
Charlie Weeb let out a whimper. “Mother of God, it’s the Tile Brothers.” He had completely forgotten about the spic and the spade. “Get the camera offa them!” the preacher screamed.
Slowly R. J. Decker panned to the second boat, and when he did his knees nearly crimped.
It was the Starcraft, and it wasn’t the way Decker had left it.
Catherine said, “Oh no,” and moved behind Skink. She leaned her head against his back, and closed her eyes.
The boat was full of buzzards.
There was a ragged cluster of at least a dozen—burly fearless birds; oily brown, stoop-shouldered, with raw pink heads and sharp ruthless eyes. They belched and shifted and blinked in the bright light, but they didn’t fly. They were too full.
“Tough customers,” Skink whispered to Decker.
Numbly Decker let the TV camera peer into the boat. He ignored the disembodied voice shrieking from his earpiece.
The buzzards stood in a litter of human bones. The bones were clean, but occasionally one of the rancid birds would bend down and pick savagely, as a possessive gesture to the others. The biggest buzzard, a disheveled male with a stained crooked beak, palmed a bare yellow skull in its talons.
“Looks like a dog,” Skink said, puzzled.
“It’s Lucas,” Catherine sighed. “Rage, I want to go home.”
As soon as Eddie Spurling tied off the boats, Charlie Weeb barged forward and said, “Why’d you tow those fuckers in?”
“Because they ast me to.”
“So where’s the fish?”
“No fish,” Eddie Spurling reported. “I got skunked.”
Weeb sucked on his upper lip. He had to be careful what he said. There was a decent-sized crowd now; the other contestants had hung around just to see how the famous TV fisherman had fared.
“What do you mean, no fish—how is that possible?” Weeb spoke in a low strained voice. He used his eyes to grill Eddie about the ringers—where the fuck were they!
“Damn rascals just weren’t bitin’.”
“You’re in big trouble, Eddie.”
“Naw, I don’t think so.”
The sports reporter from OCN poked his microphone into Spurling’s face and asked the star of Fish Fever what had happened.
“Just one of those days,” Fast Eddie mused, “when you feel like a spit-valve on the trombone of life.”
Al Garcia and Jim Tile climbed out of the skiff with the Igloo cooler. Skink was waiting for them.
“We didn’t get Queenie,” Garcia said.
“I know.”
Garcia looked at Jim Tile, then at Skink.
Skink said, “Bet you boys had some engine trouble.”
“I don’t believe this,” Garcia said. He realized what had happened, but he didn’t know why.