Safe from the Sea Read Online Free Page B

with cement, carried them one at a time to the table. Finally he brought two mugs of coffee over.
    “You want anything else?”
    “No. Thanks. This looks great.”
    “Well, then, come on while everything’s still warm.”
    They ate silently at first, blowing on spoonfuls of steaming oatsand sipping their coffee. Neither had much flavor, and the raisins and nuts were hard as stones. Olaf thumbed through the mail Noah had set on the table, taking measured bites, determined to show that whatever ailed him hadn’t gotten too far along yet. Noah couldn’t bring it up, not yet, so instead he said, “You’ve been doing your reading.” Two bookcases in the dark corner of the cabin teemed with paperbacks. “Since when are you such a bookworm?”
    “What else have I got to do up here?”
    “Looks like you’ve been fishing,” Noah said.
    Olaf paused over a spoonful of oats. He looked at Noah. “Fishing? Sit on the dock and catch a perch and call it fishing?” He put the oats in his mouth. “I haven’t fished the steps all year. I thought we could go over there after breakfast.”
    “It’s been a while. But fishing the steps sounds good.”
    Olaf said, “All right, then. We’ll go fishing.”
    N OAH OPENED THE cabinet and saw half-a-dozen rods hung carefully on the inside of the door. Among the collection he recognized his old fly rod—the one he had used as a high school kid almost every summer day—and his favorite Shakespeare spin caster with the cork handle. He had seldom used the spin caster after he’d discovered fly fishing.
    “My god,” Noah said as he stepped out of the house. “This is the same rod and reel I had as a kid.”
    “That’s a good setup. I just changed the line and oiled the reel. It’s all ready.”
    Noah imagined his father’s huge, bumbling hands, arthritic and pained, putting a new line on the reel. He must have spent a full afternoon on it. “So we’re all set, then?” Noah asked.
    “And we better get moving. By sunset it’ll be raining like the end of days.”
    They descended the hill and climbed into the boat, Olaf straddling the forward thwart, leaving Noah to row. Noah untied the stern line from the dock and pushed out into the shallows. The oarlocks shrieked as he made his first stroke. With each stroke after, they quieted until he turned the boat north and the oarlocks quit complaining altogether.
    Lake Forsone was cut from an ancient batholith, the last above-water remnants of which rose in a sharp palisade of iron-streaked granite on the far northern shore. Fifty feet tall and a quarter mile long, the cliff dominated the landscape. On the western edge of the escarpment the Sawtooth Creek emptied into the lake. It was here that the late-season trout would be gathered on what the Torrs had named the first step. The water beneath the palisade descended in four broad steps to a depth of more than a hundred and fifty feet. There were almost a thousand lakes in the county, Forsone was the deepest.
    The southern quarter of the lake was much shallower, and the rock outcroppings that dominated the northern shore gave way to a muskeg thick with black spruce and fen. The muskeg drained into Tristhet Creek, a fishless stream that trickled all the way to Lake Superior. Noah watched as a barred owl rose from its hollow tree in the bog land, its wings flapping in slow motion. A breeze rose with the bird.
    By the time they reached the shadowy water beneath the palisade, Noah felt well primed. It had taken him nearly half an hour of constant rowing. He reached over the gunwale, cupped his hand, and brought a scoop of water up to splash his face. It was ice cold and clear as glass.
    When he turned to his father the old man was already tying a bucktail jig onto Noah’s line. “It’s still enough we won’t drift much,” Olaf said, handing him the rod. “Cast up against the cliff, let it sink, crank her in. The water’s cold enough the lakers are out of the depths. They’re