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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 25, 2018)
OCTOBER 25, 2018 // 7 Continued from Page 4 That was all they ever found. So when Kyle again pointed north, Nathan helped him exhume Bill Ling- ard’s 20-foot troller, the Ansa Ansa, from the old man’s front yard, and they towed it across town to slip it into the dark, still waters of Black Lake. The signs posted next to the boat ramp were all warnings to be ignored. STOP AQUATIC HITCHHIKERS! ELECTRIC MOTORS ONLY SPILLS aren’t SLICK As the boat drifted away from the shoreline, Nathan watched the flicker- ing candles of Sara Olson’s makeshift memorial grow smaller and smaller until all the lights bled together into one winking point like a dying star. The shrine had erupted at the base of a gnarled hemlock, its roots leap- ing four feet out of the earth, leaving a mossy hollow bedded with needles. Photographs, handwritten notes and drawings, votives and vases of flowers huddled limp and soggy with rain on a damp wool blanket. Yet someone was still coming around to rouse the candles. Sara had been — is — an Ilwaco High track star and would run the pe- rimeter of the lake rain or shine, with or without her teammates. So it made sense to honor her here, even if the tree was just stage right of the porta potty. Earlier, as Kyle had dipped the trail- er into the lake, Nathan couldn’t help but shudder at the bobbing glow cast off the shrine. As shadows shimmied against the exposed roots, he imagined this must be what cell bars looked like inside a murky medieval dungeon. He hadn’t told Kyle this, but the night poor Sara Olson had gone miss- ing, he had woken up shivering fetal, way off-trail somewhere in Cape D., with enough bumps and scabs about him to think that he’d wrestled a black- berry bush that had won hands down. Now every day they didn’t find that girl was like hoisting another ten-pound sack of guilt upon his shoulders. Kyle chirped a happy cuss as the engine began to churn, spitting a cloud of invisible black smoke into an invis- ible black night. He tossed Nathan a congratulatory beer. “I can see why Bill kept this out of the water for so long,” Nathan said. Beyond the beer, they’d brought a handle of Fireball and scared up a crab pot and an old trawl net. One bare bulb mood-lit the tiny wheelhouse with the wrong mood. There was a fillet knife near the stern on the portside, a tuna hook hung star- board. When they usurped the vessel, there had been a pile of cinderblocks set above the fish hold, but they had left those on Lingard’s lawn. No need to take on extra weight when you are sure to take on extra water. “How long’s she been dry?” Kyle asked. “Three, four years? Lingard’s not been right since Ansa up and left. That’s why you should never name a boat after a woman you love. The boat may be around longer. Still, that Ansa though.” Nathan nodded, sipped his beer. Ansa Lingard fell into legend shortly after arriving at port on Bill’s arm. No one had ever seen her before they shacked up. She was obviously for- eign-born but no one could throw a dart at the exact place on a map. Beautiful and she could drink like a fish. Plenty coveted her; others snickered, considering the postal costs Lingard had dropped to move so much wife internationally. But, in the end, she was wiry, cu- rious, friendly, hard-working, unas- suming, perplexing, charitable, a little handsy, elegant, direct, and then gone. Bill cut weird pretty quickly after that. He dumped his boat on a trailer in his front yard and wandered the lawn in slippers and a bathrobe. Nathan and Kyle would spy him often, sitting atop his cinderblock thrown aboard the Ansa Ansa, just drifting through an arpeg- gio on his guitar, cooing at his knees. Sometimes he was just there reading out loud or crying or whispering, even if it was raining. Continued on Page 8
