With confusing and at times contradictory advice from Tiny, Stan managed at last to place the truck where he wanted it, and then he climbed down from the cab to help load the equipment. Once all the gear was aboard, Stan got back into the cab, this time with Tom, while Dortmunder and Kelp and Doug and Tiny all clambered up into the back, which smelled faintly of several things: pine trees, possibly sheep, maybe one or two less pleasant things.
May and Murch’s Mom and Wally stood on the dark porch and watched the slat-sided truck bounce and jounce back to the street and drive away toward the reservoir. None of them waved, but all of them thought of it.
Once the truck was out of sight, May sighed and said, “I hope we know what we’re doing.”
“No, you don’t,” Murch’s Mom told her, and nodded after the truck. “You hope they know what they’re doing.”
Wally said, “The trouble with real life is, there’s no reset button.”
Why did they care about the weather? What in the world did Doug Berry and Wally Knurr have in common, and how did they even happen to know each other? And had Edna’s new friend Gladys been among those capering on the lawn beneath the cloud?
Myrtle couldn’t sleep. Her digital clock’s luminous numbers told her it was 01:34 in the morning, which would be later than she had ever been awake in her life. But the questions were so many, and so insistent, that they just wouldn’t let her go.
What did it all mean? First, a couple of months ago, Edna had seen a man she was sure was Tom Jimson ride by in a car. Then Wally Knurr had made himself known to Myrtle, in a way she now realized must have been planned and deliberate. Then Doug Berry had done the same thing and had made himself suspect to her as well by seeming to have some sort of hidden link to her father. And then Gladys had just happened to strike up an acquaintance with Edna.
Could all four of these be coincidence? Four people, apparently separate and having nothing to do with one another, but then three of them are suddenly together among a weird group dancing on a lawn, pointing at a cloud.
New Age cultists? The dawning of the age of… What comes after Aquarius? Pisces. Fish. A water sign, that’s why they were pointing at the cloud, waiting for rain.
No, her night thoughts were getting outlandish. She’d be seeing those people as aliens from another planet next, scheming against the human race.
Hmmmmm…
No. More realistically, they could all be part of some giant conspiracy. James Bond, or Robert Ludlum? Neither seemed quite right. That big blubbery blue Lincoln in their driveway was no Aston Martin, nor could she imagine anyone in that crowd on the lawn playing baccarat or using a cigarette holder. On the other hand, Doug and Wally both lacked that manic manliness, that completely daft take-charge self-assurance of Ludlum characters. (The ultimate Robert Ludlum character, of course, being Al “I’m in charge here” Haig.)
The old man. The old man who’d come out of the house just before Myrtle and her mother had turned the corner, the old man just barely glimpsed in the rearview mirror… would that have been her father?
This last thought agitated Myrtle right out of bed, but when she found herself standing on the floor in her white cotton knee-length nightgown, she was at a loss what to do next. Floundering, disoriented, she turned and looked out the window at the darkness of Dudson Center.
And saw lights in it. Over there, the next block over, seen past the shoulder of the Fleischbacker’s house, were lit rectangles of light. Upstairs windows, in rooms with lights on. Over on Oak Street. That house?
Quick, the bird-watching binoculars; where were they? It had been years since… moving swiftly, but silent as possible so as not to wake Edna in the next room, Myrtle felt in the dark through dresser drawers until her fingers closed on the remembered blunt weaponlike heaviness of the binoculars.
Now! Hurrying to the window, she put the binoculars to her eyes, adjusted the focus, and there, swimming into view, with its flat light and muted colors and foreshortening like a Hopper painting, astonishingly close, all of a sudden there was Wally!
What was he doing? He sat in that room very intently, bent forward, hands moving at… at a computer terminal. Look at the tension in that pudgy face! Look at the hobnails of perspiration on that broad low forehead!
Conspiracy. Was Wally the mastermind? Or was he even now in contact with the mastermind, either in an experimental laboratory concealed within Mount Shasta (Bond) or in an unknown cavern deep beneath the Pentagon (Ludlum)? Absorbed by Wally’s absorption, feeling that secret pleasure known to peeping Toms everywhere, Myrtle rested the front edge of the binoculars against the window and watched that round, gleaming, wet-eyed, passionate face. Aliens? SPECTRE? A conspiracy at the very highest levels of government?
Or could it, could it somehow be… the Mafia? Good God! Was she going to have to read Jackie Collins?
It seemed a good idea to approach the reservoir this time at a different spot, far from the sites of the first two attempts and also far from the dam itself, with its nighttime staff of employees. A minor county road crossed Gulkill Creek over a one-lane bridge not far from the upper end of the reservoir, and Gulkill Creek was one of the four small waterways that had in the old days meandered through the now-drowned valley, the four eventually combining into Cold Brook, which was still the name of the runoff stream below the dam. Where it passed under the narrow bridge on the county road, Gulkill Creek was about six feet wide, perhaps three feet deep, lined with bagel-sized rocks, and icy, all year. About forty yards downstream, having widened a foot or two, the creek passed beneath the fence encircling the reservoir, continued to widen and deepen as it sprinted down a gradual slope through scrub forest, and after another thirty yards entered the reservoir at a point just about opposite the dam, which even on a sunny day was barely visible from way over here. On a cloudy night, forget it.
All the way out from town, sitting in the back of the truck, Kelp and Doug went over the plans for the night, including their signal system. This time, their primary light sources would be underwater miner’s lamps worn on their foreheads, though they’d have regular flashlights hooked to their utility belts as well. The signals they’d use to communicate with each other underwater involved switching the forehead lamp off and on while facing the other guy: One off-and-on meant, “Come help me,” while two off-and-ons meant, “Ascend to the surface.” That was it; there wouldn’t be much by way of small talk at the bottom of the reservoir.
There was no traffic along this road at this hour. Stan stopped the slat-sided truck right on the one-lane bridge, and everything was off-loaded onto the weedy roadside. At this point, their boat was merely a bulky package looking something like extra blankets folded on a shelf in the closet, plus a bottle of compressed air. Guiding themselves by light spill from the truck’s head- and taillights, Doug and Tiny carried these components down beside the creek. Doug untied the boat package, inserted the bottle onto the nipple, and a low windy rushing sound started, soon joined by muffled thaps and boops as the boat uncreased itself, stretching and twisting like an Arabian Nights genie waking up.
Meantime, Stan took the empty truck away. Once it was gone, the overcast night was as dark as the inside jacket pocket of a suit that’s worn only at funerals. Doug put on his headlamp and lit it so they’d be able to see what they were doing.
The whoosh of wind inside the boat grew stronger, the pops and whaps louder, and before their eyes appeared the kind of rubber raft in which people survive miraculously for eighty-three days in the open sea. Or not.