“I prefer oars,” Skink said, but there were none in the boat. “You can hear more with oars,” he remarked.
R. J. Decker noticed what he was talking about. Across the water, bouncing off the pilings, came the sound of men’s voices; pieces of conversation, deep bursts of laughter, carried by the wind.
“Let’s drift for a while,” Skink suggested. He picked up one of the fishing poles and made a few idle casts. Darkness had settled in and the lake was gray. Skink cocked his head, listening for clues from the other boat.
“I think I see them,” Decker said. A fuzzy pinprick of white light, rocking.
“They’ve got a Coleman lit,” Skink said. “Two hundred yards away, at least.”
“They sound a helluva lot closer,” Decker said.
“Just a trick of the night.”
After a few minutes the light went out. Skink and Decker heard the ignition sounds of a big engine. It was probably a bass boat. Swiftly Skink hand-cranked the outboard and aimed the johnboat toward the other craft. Legs wide, he stood up as he steered, though Decker couldn’t imagine how he could safely navigate around the highway pilings, not to mention the submerged stumps and brush-piles that mined the lakeshore. Every so often Skink would cut the outboard and listen to make sure the other boat was still moving; as long as their engine was running, they’d never know they were being followed. Sitting on two hundred horses, you can’t hear yourself think.
After a few minutes the other boat stopped and the Coleman lantern flickered on again. The men’s voices were faint and more distant than before.
“We’ll never get close,” Skink muttered, “unless we walk it.”
Fortuitously the wind pushed the johnboat into a stand of lily pads. Hand over hand, Skink used the roots to pull them to shore, where Decker tied the boat to a sturdy limb. He grabbed a flashlight and hopped out after Skink. They followed a ragged course along the shoreline for probably four hundred yards, taking tentative spongy steps and using the flashlight sparingly. They passed through a trailer park with particular stealth, not wishing to be mistaken for bears and blasted to oblivion. Far removed from his native territory, Skink’s nocturnal instincts remained sound; his path brought them out of the bogs within thirty yards of where the bass boat floated.
The lantern illuminated two men, not the Rundell brothers. “Local boys,” Skink whispered. “Makes sense. Need someone who knows the water.” The anglers were not casting their fishing lines; rather, they seemed to be studying the water. The deck of the boat bristled with rods, each with a line out. In the penumbra a half-dozen red floats were visible bobbing around the sides of the boat. “Live-baiters,” Skink explained. “My guess is worms.”
R. J. Decker said, “It could be anybody out for a night on the lake.”
“No,” Skink said, “these boys are out to load the boat.”
And they were. Every so often one of the poles would bend and flutter, and a bass would splash out in the pads. Quickly one of the men would snatch the rig and reel in the fish as fast as he could. The bass were quickly unhooked and put in a livewell under a hatch in the stern.
This methodical fish-collecting went on for two hours, during which Skink said little and scarcely moved a muscle. Decker’s legs were cramping from sitting on his haunches, but it was impossible to stand up and stretch without being seen. Mercifully, as the wind stiffened and the temperature dropped, the two poachers finally called it quits. They reeled in the worms, stored the rods, cranked the big engine, and motored slowly—confoundingly so—up the southeastern shore of the lake. The boat stayed unusually close to the elevated highway, maneuvering in and out of the pilings; occasionally the lantern light flickered across the faces of the two men as they leaned over the gunwales, peering at something which neither Decker nor Skink could see.
Of course it was Skink who led the way back to the johnboat. By the time they got there, the marsh was empty and silent; the other men had finished their business and roared away.