OCTOBER 25, 2018 // 7
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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.
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