Not to a fish, but to any other creature on earth, an innocuous looking strand of something or other, winding it's way to the water surface, would promise nothing bigger to come but Walleye follows the trail to it's source, a dark circle lodging against a slimy rock near the bottom of Lake Mento.
Bad ass"? My middle name. Leading the "Lost Boys Six"? My pleasure. On about March 17, 1996, we stole a boat from the local marina, as per usual and took our weekly joy ride. This boat,that night, was begging to be stolen. Keys in the ignition, gas metre reading full, on we jump. Except for Matty and Jeremy, the youngest of us. Four on the Whaler and those two on a stupid paddle wheeler that they had found beached next to the speed boat.
We left the bay area and headed into the lake. The paddle boat finally arrived in the lake but it was rough and they begged us to pick them up. We let them tough it out and get wet first, for being so stupid in the first place.
Jason cranked the speed even though I was steering. With two hundred and fifty horses under us, the rest of them flew backwards into a pile. No one steering now, the Boston Whaler did a couple of donuts before stalling out.
Gas metre read still full but the boat would not start. The wet ones of us were shivering and we decided to head back when the engine started. But it doesn't start. The lights from the harbour were still in sight and so was a smaller light moving steadily toward us. It was a camouflage blow-up type boat, like the ones that chase other whalers, the ones from japan, in the ocean, killing giant mammals from the sea. We six mammals, were about to join them but we don't know it yet.
~Jason just got back from four days on observation at the local psych hospital. Something about suicide. He said it wasn't bad there.
They even had a school. It was short term because Jay isn't nuts or anything like that. Some girl ditched him is all. It was all to much for him I guess.
Next time he thinks about killing himself he'll keep it to himself.
Bobbie and I shoplifted lunch five days a week at the local grocery store.
You'd be surprised how easy it is. Sometimes a customer sees, but we just open boxes and gobble.
Back at school we smoke stolen cigarettes at the spot there, off property while waiting for the bell, and the other four of us.
Once you are sixteen nobody chases you down if you are absent. The other four are sixteen but still hang around for the shop classes with friends from public school.
Jeremy, Jason, Matty and Dave pulled up to the smoking stop just off school property, in Dave's mother's shit-box Chevy. He had dropped her off at work. Piling in, we head for this night's party spot, Emily's house.
A little spliff is being passed and the joint and laughter are directed toward Matty who swears he will bring us Emma Lou Finlay's panties from her clothes line by next week at this time. By this time next week we are all human Popsicles near the bottom of Lake Mento.~Eight hundred feet is fairly deep for a lake, even one dug out by a glacier like Mento was. It's cold all year around and it's very narrow, only fifty miles across. A very angry glacier, and in a big hurry, had gouged out our water play world. About the only thing I learn ed in geography class is that glaciers do what they want, where they want, when they want, kind of like the Boys Six. We are no match for this situation but we don't know it just yet.Pulling up at the marina after Emily's party, it seems to me, we were not any more high and drunk than any other Saturday night.
A speedboat with keys and a full tank does not look like a 'set up', at the time. Naivety is a stupid reason to die. How long can we expect owners of millions of dollars of yachts to put up with the antics of six little ass holes, like us?~It might seem irrational for a seventeen year old to be caught up in the mess like this turns out to be. Fifteen years down here has gives a person some maturity, perspective and insight. The guy in the camouflage blow-up was the second part of the 'set up'. Putt putting along, we waits for the Whaler motor to cut out and then makes his move.
"Ahoy, 'sup?" His face is streaked black and his jumpsuit match his boat colour. "Dude we're dead in the water here, we don't think it's gas though."
'Dead in the water indeed'.
Dude says that he is part of coast guard practise manoeuvres that haven't started yet. He would be happy to tow us back but the blow-up motorboat's outboard cannot handle that much weight drag. Can we all pile on the paddle boat that we are pulling behind us? Since a couple of us are wet, he will get the Boston Whaler after dropping us back at the marina. We cannot believe our luck. He tosses six life jackets and we hop on the paddle boat.~Roy Bonisteel is a six generation New York State resident whose great great grandfather was an old time circuit judge. Their family estate is now a museum along twelve mile creek, twelve miles from the mouth of Lake Mento. Google map shows it on the other side of Bonisteel Road, near a bushy inlet, with no other houses around.
Roy was born and raised on the lake. The third of five boys, he always played 'catch up' in a birth order that had him as pinned as as an insect in a collection of old world has-beens. He has enough money but it is doled out as a trust so often is and so, even though he does not have to work, his deep unhappiness with his life keeps him an unmarried hermit wearing his father's old clothes and neglecting upkeep of another historic house his parents had left him. He seldom bathed or washed his hair but he figured the creek kept him clean enough. Over the years Roy becomes a more than proficient fishing and gaming guide.
He has a diving license and can fix any broken down motor the marina at the mouth of twelve mile creek calls him about. He even welds underwater.
On the weekends Roy meets with a militia group who 'murder' each other with paint balls and all the other para-military games 'Lost Boys' on this side of the lake like to play.
Every year, he and three others circumnavigate Mento and it's fellow lakes in a yacht race. The cup is to boat racing what the World Series is to baseball and what the Daytona 500 is to NASCAR. With the Gold Cup in his grasp, for the ninth time Roy hoped for better competition every year.
The Lake Mento 300 yacht race course is a circumnavigation of the lake that starts at Port Debt Yacht Club, heads east and rounds goose Island, then heads south to Oslego NY where it turns east along the south shore to the Giagara River mark before heading to the finish line at Port Debit Yacht Club. The race is a test of preparation, teamwork, navigation and perseverance.
'Captain Roy Boy' leads the three man team to victory every year. The family marina made good from these wins in boat sales, docking, slip rentals, engine repairs,supply sales,launching and hoisting fees.~
Bonisteel Bay Marina, located on beautiful downtown Bonisteel BayAny idea how little changes over two hundred years in a small town? But to make a smaller list, at least one descendant of the first four hundred to settle stays, even if it is a distant cousin. Roy Bonisteel was a hanger on. In this vein he kept to himself, kept the peace, and was semi-productive. Other cousins, and co-owners of the old family marina tried bossing him but Roy's engine repair expertise kept them at bay and when he took any boat he wished on a 'test drive' upon Lake Mento, which he did quite regularly, they could say nothing.Heading due south, he arrived in Canada after a twenty minute speed ride, at his families twin marina in Bassering Ontario, only fifty miles away. Everyone was in a tizzy and no what a co-owner wants to witness during a spot check. Missing boats, wrecked boats, irate customers, suicidal managers.And then it occurred to him. This was something he alone could completely fix. If years of para-military exercises had taught him anything it was,"Don't Tread On Me".Davey misses Canada and we are starting to miss Davey. Parts of him float as a rumour does, on their freedom ride to Canada.At home the rumour and ineuendo about our diappearence had stopped. Parents had turned against each other. Peers had started jobs and families. And Davey's bits and bites wafted their way home. And they might have made it too except for the fish. A Muskie here, a Pike there, wolfing down his bits and bites.~
One push confirms his motherload of a find. More of the same food leaks with his every probe. Quite a cache. But how to hoard it? A feeding frenzy would never do. Smart fish Walleye Pike. He crashed to the surface and swam off.
Every evening, upon returning, the locaton of his evening snack was secure and known only to him. Davey's Gravy, and all his. For, what seemed like a long time, to a fish anyhow, he supped on and on, dining alone. Hannibal Lector eat your heart out.
~
Always the kind who noticed the cockroach on the wall of the provincial museum on the school trip, of course I yell, "COCKROACH!" The rest is better than watching a food fight or Ultimate Fight Club.
When confronted in the Principal's office I insist, "but there was a cockroach!"
While being lectured about the meaning of the word,'discretion', my eyes involuntarily roll back in my head. Administrators consider that type of,'rolling the eye movement as,'attitude', then things go haywire. In school suspensions are routine. That means you get to stay inside at recess but in the office area so the teacher can still have a break. On account of there being so many jerks, I hate recess anyway. My social skills are not the best.
Recess ends with me in trouble everyday anyhow so it's, 'six of one, half dozen of the other', as for what is going on.
