Chapter 2: A Christmas Bandit
Daimy Hunt plugged away long after everyone else had left the shop, an old workshed that had once been a fine boathouse. Noting the time, he lay down his work and swept up. Out of habit he crept up on the finicky boiler and checked the sight gauges. Satisfied that it would slog through another night, he locked the double carriage doors and let himself out through the postern on the dock. Daimy stepped out onto the river, still amazed that it had frozen so thick, so early. The moon was high and the river smooth. Three days of strong winds had swept it clean. This was the widest part of the river, perhaps 200 yards across. And in the distance - toward the center, at a line about even with Ketchin's Hollow - Daimy spotted a figure pulling a heavy sled.Daimy walked out to the center of the river, where the man had stopped and was now preparing to make some sort of camp. He was a very old man. He looked like a prospector by the way he had tugged against the ropes, leaning out from his odd sled, dogged and steady. What he had been pulling appeared to be a large cedar chest on skis. Daimy came closer. No, it was an old ice fishing kit! A beat-up wooden trunk with gear lashed to the outside: a skimmer, a scoop, an auger, a two-gallon minnow bucket. They jangled as the ragged man lifted the lid of the box and reached in to unpack it. The moonlight lit even the whiskers on the underside of the man's chin. Daimy touched the tip of the hand auger: “Now that's what you call primitive.”
“Thank ye,” said the man, pulling out of the box a gang of wooden poles that looked as though they could have been stilts or crutches. He laid out the poles, saying, “A shanty like this goes up in a hurry. Frame and canvas.”
“Shanty? You don't mean to set up here?”
“You know the river, then. Better places I don't know about?”
“A better place would be any other river. Don't you know that there ain't been fish in this river in 50 years?”
“Fifty years - has it been that long?”
“Anybody within a hundred miles of the dam knows that. So you must be from further than a hundred miles.”
“I reckon I am. But I'm here now. Tell me your name.”
Daimy looked the man over. “That's always the first question, isn't it?”
“Well, it's better than picking a man's pocket to read his tags!”
“I was born Damian; I go by Daimy.”
“Ah, I knew a lad Damian once - true to his name he was.”
“True?”
“It fit. Damian, the Tamer - that's what the name means, you know: a soother. He was a tender boy.”
“And the name on your fishing license?”
“Funny that - they misspelled my name three different ways before they got it right. Would you hold this?” And he gave Daimy a small piece of mirrored glass with framing wire on the back. He then fit one of the poles into slotted brackets on the box. And on that he hung the mirror. “Never try to shave without one,” he said. And he stepped up to Daimy, seeming to observe the growth of his own beard, which was slight. “No,” he muttered, “but when you start in earnest, you'll know.”
Daimy stepped away and saw the pill-white moon reflected in the little mirror. Then he shook his head, “Jigging where there ain't no fish and shaving where they ain't no women! I've seen everything now!”
The old man rummaged undaunted through the trunk. Daimy looked more closely at the mirror and commented on what he saw there, “Of all the stupidest, show-your-money decorations at Christmas. ... Strange I never noticed before...”
“What's that, lad?” the man said, his head inside the great box.
“A lighthouse! Look at it - blowing out Christmas colors. Full-size. ”That's no department store prop. It's been built!“ Before he turned to look at the actual riverbank, he said, ”Figures it'd be on that side of the river.“ He tried to sight the image he'd seen but couldn't spot it.
“Where are you looking, lad?”
“I saw a lighthouse in the glass - huge, a four color beam, red and green and yellow and blue. Now it's gone.”
“In the glass, you say? It probably just caught me lighting up my old pipe,” and he took a draw on it, the embers playing with the black gradients of the air.
“I saw colors, not just red coals.”
The man pulled an ancient pocket lighter from his coat and laid it in Daimy's palm. “With that old thing, ya never know what color will erupt next.” Daimy flicked it. Out of the lighter rose a high orange flame, a ring of blue at the base.
“Orange doesn't pass for yellow.”
“Try it again.”
Daimy flicked the lighter: out grew a red-yellow flame, sputtering white and blue.
“I saw green.”
“Go on,” the man nodded and Daimy flicked it again: the flame cycled blue, orange, red, white - and green.
“For a fellow with a hand auger, I would've thought you a man for matches. Not this.”
“You're right about me, but that beauty I didn't buy. Prize from a fishing derby I won long ago.”
Daimy had been admiring the craftsmanship in the lighter - and significant craftsmanship it was. When he learned it was some award he felt the urge to toss it down an ice hole - thankful, though, in the moment after the thought that none had yet been drilled. “What was your catch?”
“Six pound Walleye.”
“But the fish engraved on this is a - pretty sure it's a sturgeon.”
“Oh, a fellow put that sleeve on for me later. See, I hooked up with some fellows in Watertown and we went out on Lake Ontario for a couple days. On the last day I struck - without meaning to - this giant of a fish. We had to cut the hole four times bigger to haul her in. She weighed easy as much as Carter, who went better than 200 pounds.”
“Yeah, I've heard plenty tales like that,” said Daimy with a slanted eye.
“Oh, it's not a tale: that's why I keep the lighter. That fish: easy about 100 years old, maybe more. Probably more. I figured she had another hundred in her. So I threw her back.”
“Wonder how she#'s looking today?”
Calm went out of the old man's face, giving way to a moment of fretful curiosity, but then it was calm again. “She may be running this very moment, right beneath our feet. God knows, all waterways connect in some form.”
“And that#'s what you#'ve come for. You think that by coming to some wild random river maybe that fish is gonna show up again? With a ring in her gullet? Like capital D destiny.”
The old man chuckled, “Oh, no. The fish I don't expect to see again.” Then he went dreamy, “There are other sights, though” And Christmas is but three days away.“
“What you should ask for for Christmas is a gas-powered auger. Must take you twenty minutes to drill half a foot.”
“Yes, and every second a pleasure. Aren't they the greatest inventions: hand tools?”
Daimy involuntarily adjusted the satchel strung across his shoulder. “Hand tools for some jobs, but nothing beats power. I've made some of my own tools even.”
“Oh, is that your trade: you're a toolmaker?”
“No, I build ice boats. I mean, I've been apprenticing since I dropped out of school. I say because I'm not ashamed of that. I've built all kinds of skeeters and stern-steers by myself. I even won a design contest for a new kinda sloop.”
“That's a feat to celebrate, lad.”
“Not for long. I imagined it, designed it. But some crooked boatbuilder over there,” and he pointed to the western bank of the river, “nabbed the plans and went into production. Some swanky lawyer nabbed up all my rights. It sold like wildfire. They can do that, you know: chisel you out of what#,s yours.”
“I'm sorry, lad. But where one good idea flows, others will follow.”
“Do you know how much I could have raked in?”
“Do you like your work?”
“I love it! I mean, yes, I like it.”
“Do you please those who sail your craft?”
“Sure. But I don't much care to please the people who buy our boats. Listen, Mister, you're not from around here. Lemme give you the scoop: there's the people on our side of the river who make things for people on that side. Just take a look at the houses over there. Now take a look our side.”
“Three days more,” said the old man abstractly. “Christmas must come. Listen, lad, I've been keeping you. You must be a might busier than I am. After all, Christmas is coming.”
“Oh, I got stuff to do - but, you know, if there's anything you need help with before I take off.”
“No, the pleasure's in the work, lad.”
“OK. Don't freeze to death, Pop.”
“Good luck to you, my boy.”
Daimy came off the river and up the bank. He climbed the steeper slope, not worrying about the trace of footprints he was leaving behind; after all, he would return to the iced-over river which would lodge no trails. He considered the art he was about to practice. Choosing a home was childishly simple. He was looking at one now, utterly dark. He mumbled bitterly to himself, “Aruba, Bahamas, Cancun?” The drive had not been shoveled all season, and neither was the walk clear.
Daimy checked the street and then disappeared behind a hedgerow into the backyard. Outside the back door he opened his satchel, keeping his body in shadow but bringing the bag into a shave of moonlight. He eyed the instruments there, most of which could have been those of a dentist. He chose one and slipped it from its pouch. He inserted it into the lock and gently twiggled it, as if working a thin pick into the heartmeat of a nut. He preferred art, and so worked with patience and tenderness, neither of which were vexed by the cold on his thin bare fingers. But it was no good. He would not break glass on principle, especially not in a winter such as this. And so he went for a heavier tool. That, too, did not succeed, and he dourly contemplated the blasted gap between theory and practice. And so, feeling shamefully crude, he brought out the small chisel head crowbar, confirmation of all his failures and frustrations. He cursed the instrument and then jimmied the door open, splintering out the jamb.
Inside he shut up all the shades he came to. Then he flicked on his flashlight. “OK,” he said, “let's see the spoils of the tomb.”
Daimy swung his flashlight across the room. The signs weren't good. The carpet was worn. The furniture was museum age but far from museum quality. And worst of all: the TV, sitting atop a roller cart for god's sakes, had a rotary dial - one of those pre-remote jobs. He kicked at the cart which rolled away. “This has got to be a decoy,” whispered Daimy. Then he noticed the sealed rooms. Daimy cut the first seal along the edge of the jamb, perfectly straight and square, out of habit, unwilling to do sloppy work in anyone else's home. Inside, everything was mauve. On the wall there hung a dusty business school diploma: Pearl Something-or-other. Daimy read the date and liked what he saw: 1937. “Business ought to have paid off in seventy years,” he muttered. And it was not long before he discovered fruit. Not one, but two large jewelry boxes. All in plain sight - no attempt to hide anything at all. In a cynical age, this confused Daimy, but he did not linger on the notion. He shook a pillow from its case and stuffed it full. He was no expert, but he knew instinctively that he was onto a stash that was very old, very genuine and very costly. Even though it would only bring him a fraction of its worth, it was a healthy fraction.
In the next room Daimy heard a muffled thud. He stiffened. And listened. Nothing. He went on. Then he heard a soft groaning. He listened. He did not hear it again.
Daimy went through all seven sealed rooms. Only the dining room offered up as much value as the first, but he already had more than he could carry without suspicion. “This is enough,” he said. Then thought that he may as well have a quick look upstairs. He found the door to the stairway. The staircase, fully enclosed, looked more cavernous than it really was. Daimy poked his flashlight up and down. And there, sitting three quarters of the way up the stairs, was an old woman rubbing her eyes. After dabbing the pain from her face, she said to him, “Danny? Home from school already? Danny?” Daimy switched off the flashlight and then flicked it on again. She was still there.
Next Chapter: “Colloquy on a Narrow Staircase”
will be published Sunday, Dec. 14 Go Back up to the Chapter List
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gkuhny wrote on Jan 1, 2009 8:33 PM:
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