Carl vs. the Nazis: Ch 1 Up the Creek

Up the Creek

Joe dozed on the beach while I threw pebbles at his sunburned back, making bets with myself as to how high they would bounce or which way they would roll.
"Ouch!"
I tossed three more.
"Stop that, you cloth-head!" he shouted, without looking up. "Carl, that really hurts! Don't you have anything else to do?"
Of course I didn't. Five years earlier when the resort was still open, the beach would have been filled with people playing volleyball, buying Cracker Jacks from the snack stand or riding paddle boats. Today, the beach was eternity's waiting room for a handful of senior citizens with straw hats and floral bathing suits. They read in their beach chairs, presided over by a lifeguard who twirled his whistle and stared at the empty lake through mirrored sunglasses.
It had rained all week, so we hung out at our cottages playing Risk and Monopoly and eating potato chips. Today the sky was so clear it seemed like we could almost see the stars. I looked over the lake to the hills and the vacant camps and saw nothing. We were 14 and bored.
I found a nice-sized rock and aimed it toward the reddest part of his back. Bulls-eye!
"Jerk!" Joe punched me in the shoulder. Hard.
"Didn't even feel it. Let's get on our raft and get out of here," I suggested, now that I had Joe's attention. "This is boring."
"Nice idea, Carl," said Joe sarcastically. "Where would we go? We've seen everything a dozen times."
We had built the raft in June, and passed most of the summer piecing it together and exploring the lake. Willie, the old man who used to work at the New York docks, showed us how to make it sturdy. It floated so high it could cross over the rocks and sharp stumps that stood a few inches below the surface near the Great Swamp.
The lake was 100 acres, not including the swamp. On the opposite shore was the old boys camp beach where the decaying dining hall stood with its lonely chimney reaching over the forest like a great stone tree. To its left was the Great Swamp: a tangle of barren pine forest surrounding bogs and marshes. To the right of the old camp was a cove where Beaver Brook fed the lake.
This was our first day in the sunlight after a week of rain. We had spent many hours fishing in the rain from our raft, sheltered under the dam. Too young to drive and with nowhere to drive anyway, the raft meant freedom; although we got sick of the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn cracks from the elderly cottagers. They thought they were clever. Had they ever read any other books?
"Why don't we go up Beaver Brook? We've never been there."
"Why would we want to?" Joe mumbled sullenly, again lying on his stomach with his face buried in his arms. "Anyway, the stream is too shallow and the raft couldn't make it."
"Come on," I urged. "It beats sitting here waiting to qualify for Social Security. The lake and the stream are so high from the storms that we can bring the raft right up to the entrance. We'll anchor it and walk up the brook. We can finally find out where all this water comes from."
Joe slowly lifted his head and looked thoughtfully across the lake. I knew I had him. We had always wondered about the source of Beaver Brook. The old timers said it was spring fed. Near the road we found a few large sandy springs bubbling into the stream, but not nearly enough to account for the constant flow of that clear brook. And we prided ourselves about knowing everything about the forest. He nodded slightly and rose. We would be African explorers looking for the source of the Nile.
We poled across the lake and tied our raft to a stump near the brook. We were clad in T-shirts, bathing suits and sneakers. On my surplus army belt were strapped a canteen and an ax. Joe brought a Bowie knife. We stuffed ourselves with peanut butter and fluff sandwiches, root beer, apples and potato chips and left the cooler on the raft.
We hesitated before stepping into the swamp slime. It smelled of centuries of decay. On earlier trips, we had seen snakes thicker than our arms and longer than our bodies. Even now, a snapping turtle with a fist-size head and a body like a boulder dozed on a nearby stump in the summer heat. It occurred to us that one misplaced step could disturb his mommy napping in the slime.
Even more terrifying were the campfire ghost stories we had heard since we were tiny: stories of people disappearing while walking the Rickety Bridge, a narrow row of raised planks that crossed the marshy part of the swamp, connecting the boys camp to a movie theater.
"Let's get it over with," said Joe. We stepped in and sunk to our knees, and slogged to the brook. Twice the suction of the muck pulled off one of my tennis shoes, and I had to replace it while balancing on my other leg, which slowly sank in the slime. I had to dig the stinky muck from my shoe's opening to have a place to put my foot. I tried to comfort myself by talking while Joe stood by waiting.
"Joe, those stories were really dumb, weren't they?"
"What stories?"
"You know, when we were little. Mr. Mayer told us about people who just disappeared around this place. He talked about hands reaching up from the swamp and pulling people into the slime. He said if you cross the Rickety Bridge at night without a flashlight, and look into the swamp in the moonlight, just below the surface you will see faces of people gasping for breath. They seem to be calling for help. Creepy stuff."
"Spooky," said Joe, mockingly.
"He told us he went out at night himself and saw these things. What's more, he said he saw a strange blue glow in the swamp. He was terrified, but figured that since he was halfway across the bridge, he'd keep walking. He told himself the light was caused by gasses in the swamp or maybe it was a reflection. But the light seemed to move toward him, like it was following him. He turned around and walked back as quickly as he could. He couldn't risk running on that slippery bridge and falling into the swamp. The light kept coming closer. He said it was like one of those nightmares where some monster is trying to eat you, but you're frozen, just standing there."
"I guess it didn't get him?"
"No, he hit the edge of the forest and ran through. He panicked, so he missed the trail and came out scraped and cut when he hit the road. From there he ran two miles home. His father told me Mr. Mayer looked a frightful, bloody, bruised mess when he staggered in. Every night for weeks he woke up screaming. Mr. Mayer says he still has nightmares about it twenty-five years later."
Joe shrugged. "The swamp's a nasty place with scary things in it. It would frighten anyone and do all sorts of weird stuff to your head."
"So you don't believe him?"
"Nah. He's a great story teller, said Joe. "But there's got to be an explanation."
"For what? For him getting so banged up?" I asked, scrambling up the rocks where the clear water of the brook pushed back the slime. I stood in the rushing water and watched with joy as the current rinsed the mud from my sneakers. Clouds of mud shot back like jet exhaust.
"For all those missing people," said Joe.
"What missing people? Is that another one of Mr. Mayer's stories?"
"No, for real," said Joe. "My dad even showed me some articles from newspapers. Years ago a half-dozen guests at the hotel were walking home from the theater on the bridge, and they just disappeared. The police dredged the swamp. They even used those big, nasty grappling hooks to try to snag a body, but never found them. Dad said that when he was a boy, he saw an old woman hobbling on the Rickety Bridge with a wreath. She told him that her brother, a doctor, was one of the people who disappeared. She wanted to leave him a tribute."
"That's weird," I said. "Why would they have been walking there in the first place? The bridge doesn't even go past the hotel. It goes straight to the camp."
"Hey Carl, look at this stream go!" shouted Joe, abruptly changing the subject.
After weeks of rain, the brook was a torrent of cascading foam. The stream formed a tunnel through blossoming rhododendrons and mountain laurels. The brush so densely crowded the stream on both sides that we couldn't set foot on the banks. We would need to wade up against the powerful current like salmon.
We dove in and spent the afternoon wading and swimming. When we lost our grip and were washed downstream, we returned to the same spot to get flushed again. We came across a beaver dam and dove from the logs that the beavers laid across the stream. The steady wind kept the mosquitoes and deer flies away.
After about two hours we saw a clearing. We heard a splashing and a muffled conversation.
Joe and I froze solid, but not in fear. Growing up in the woods taught us the importance of silence. Standing still as stumps we had often watched a mother doe nurse her fawn, seen a bear grazing on blueberries with her cubs, and seen flocks of turkeys and pheasants walk past us. With this skill we went undetected, even when playing where we did not belong. Once when we were camping, we had laid still among the ferns in the forest dusk for twenty minutes while David Damon, the resort's evil caretaker, walked around us, trying to find the trespassers. As he walked around, we crept up and retrieved out tent and sleeping bags. In frustration, he polluted the air with curses and drove home.
We crept up the stream with only our heads out to get a closer look at the people ahead. The stream seemed to end, or begin, at a waterfall flowing from a large sandy pool, lined with limestone blocks in a clearing. A half-dozen men and women were swimming laps, lying on the limestone walls, jumping off rocks and swinging on a rope into the water. They gave the full throated shouts and the screams of uninhibited joy that you only hear from little children who haven't been taught by their mothers to, "Settle down, honey, because your getting out of control." As we approached, two revelations startled us: They were very old and very naked.
Their wizened little bodies and angular faces made them look like elves who had been left in the sun too long. They acted like children. They swung and fell in two at a time from the rope. Like otters, they climbed, slid and rolled down a steep rock into the water. The man with the oldest face I have ever seen, and only a few long wisps of white hair and wrinkles like an elephant did a banana splash from a small cliff. He held his right leg tightly behind him, leaned backwards and jumped. As he hit the water he screamed, "Incoming!"
Their cackling and dry-throated singing rang though the woods. The shock was too much for Joe.
"Jeeze!" he gasped.
Like a flock of startled sparrows they scattered, swimming to edge, scrambling up the stones, and running into the rhododendron jungle. Except for the oldest one. He stopped on a stone. An enormous old carp shimmering in the sunlight, he looked me in the eye and held me hypnotized, a captive. Life seemed to shine from his eyes, as though his soul were too big for his body: growing so fast he had to pour some out every day. Then he smiled. His teeth were large even and white, and the smile was one of pure joy, with no hint of the cynicism or malevolence that the years usually bring, even to the kindest people. I stood stunned. Then I realized since he had seen me, I knew I better explain that I was not a weirdo spying on him and his friends. He might tell the police, or worse, tell Damon.
"Wait up!" I called, running toward him. "We were just out hiking!" He skipped into the woods.
I pursued him on a narrow deer trail, my eyes soon filled with tears from the sharp leaves and my knees scraped from not quite clearing the dead pine trees when I jumped.
I didn't mind. It felt good to run. I was fast and sure-footed, and used to moving in the forest. Skipping over rocks and branches. They could not be far ahead. Then I heard all I needed to hear.
"Ha," said a sleepy, mocking voice. The laugh came from behind me, lost in the thick woods. The old man was watching me, hidden safely in the brush. He despised my pursuit. He knew as I knew I could never find him in the thick forest. I slowed and looked about casually, so it would not look as though I were trying to catch him. I turned around and shuffled to the pond, trying to hold my head high. It was embarrassing someone so old could get away so easily.
"Carl vs. the Nazis: Ch 2 Lost"