| The Fog | |
|
by Jim Hurt
So
we launched and headed out of the harbor. The
cooling tower was to our right. Fred
didn’t have his new compass mounted on the dash of the boat yet. His boat has a rod locker that runs down the port side with
carpet on top. His console is on
the starboard side of the boat. So
I sat on the rod locker to his left and put his new compass on top of it, right
in front of me. “Okay, we’re
headed due northeast right now, Fred.
Let’s hit it!” I yelled out enthusiastically.
“Here
we go!” Fred yelled back as he hit the throttle and we took off.
“This Hoosier is going to catch some walleye!” Now Fred is really from New York and just happened to
be living in Indiana at the time, so I don’t know why he said that.
I think he was just caught up in the moment.
I
was watching the compass as we were running out into the lake and was real
impressed with how true Fred was keeping the boat.
Looking ahead into the fog, I noticed it seemed to be getting thicker. “Fred, visibility is getting worse out here.”
“Yeah,
I’d say it is about fifty yards now. Watch
out for other boats, okay?”
“Okay
by the way you’re driving the boat real straight.
This compass hasn’t moved one bit.”
“It
hasn’t?” he said with a puzzled look. “Are
you sure that thing’s working?”
“I
think so. Turn off course a bit,
and we’ll see.”
So
Fred turned to the left and the compass kept pointing due northeast.
He turned to the right and the compass still read the same thing –
northeast. I tapped the compass to
see if that made any difference. It
didn’t.
“Fred,
this stupid compass is acting like it’s locked onto a magnet or something!”
“Oh
no! Jim, there’re speakers at
each end of that rod locker for the stereo!
Look, you have the compass right over that speaker!”
“Uh
oh, that means we haven’t actually been going due northeast this whole time!
What the heck are we going to do now?” I
asked. We both looked at each other
and started laughing. “Man, I can’t
believe we were so stupid as to not think about that speaker being there,” I
said.
“We?
What do you mean, ‘We’? It
was you who put the compass there!” Fred said, grinning.
“Hey,
this isn’t funny! Who knows where
the heck we are?”
“Well,
for one thing, get that compass away from the speaker and let’s see what it
says.”
I
did, and we were heading north. “Well,
we’ve come about two miles, so we should be about to where those reefs were,
but we may be too far to the north,” I said.
“Or
we could be too far in about any direction.”
“Maybe
we should head back in and start over,” I wondered out loud.
“Hey,
look, there’re some boats, Jim.”
“Ha!
I knew this would work!”
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