CHAPTER 15 - SALT
Sonny woke with a start, dripping with sweat, and didn't know
where he was for a moment. The echo of a dream hung in his head,
something about a barrel full of poison, and being pursued across
tidal ledges by armed men in fish scale armor, and wearing flippers.
He'd just thrown himself into a deep crack in the ledge he was
running across, as some kind of mechanical cormorant went droning
overhead. Sonny could still hear the drone.
Then the dream was gone, and he was sprawled on Suzy's big brass
bed, a sheet tangled around one leg. He could hear some kind of
airplane flying low over the reach. It was hot and close in the
bedroom, and the scent of his wife's gewgaws and folderols was
cloying. Untangling himself, Sonny swung his legs off the bed,
sat upright on the edge, and put his elbows on his knees, working
his fingers on his scalp.
"What would Grandpa Tink have done?" he wondered. He knew which
barrel had disturbed his sleep. If Gram already knew something,
it wouldn't be long before someone else sniffed out the windfall,
and following the trail from the Jones Ground to Sonny's barn
might not be so difficult after all.
Sonny got up and shocked himself fully awake with a cold shower.
Then he dressed in clean clothes and went out through the connecting
building and into the barn. Sonny had built new stalls for Suzy's
riding mare when they were first married, all of two years ago,
but she'd taken the horse when she stormed out. Now the barn was
silent, redolent with dried manure and fresh hay, flies buzzing
at a south window. Sonny went over to the double swinging doors
and lowered the latch plank into place, securing the doors, then
he latched the access port, and turned toward the pile of loose
hay.
Sonny could see where Jumbo and Buster had buried the barrel,
and he easily uncovered the big gray drum, standing it upright
with an effort. "First things first," he thought, fishing a 5/8
open-end wrench and a matching box-end out of the toolbox on the
workbench. In a few moments he'd cracked the nut and bolt securing
the latch band to the head of the drum, broken the water-tight
seal of the head gasket, and pried the top off the barrel.
It was full of thick plastic envelopes, as they expected, and
Sonny hefted one. "Probably a kilo," he judged. How many were
in the barrel? A fortune in contraband, to be sure. He noticed
the sliced bag Buster had punctured, and chuckled, shaking his
head. He took this one, and half a dozen other bags, placed them
in the bottom of his mechanic's box, and put the nesting tool
tray in place over them. Then he replaced the head on the drum,
and rebolted the latchband, torquing it tight. Tossed the wrenches
into the toolbox tray.
Sonny grabbed the drum's top rim at 2 o'clock and began spinning
it counterclockwise across the barn floor, toward the back of
the building. "Old Tink would get a chuckle," Sonny thought, sweeping
hay off a trapdoor hidden near the rear wall. The back of the
barn was set on pilings over the water in a tiny cove off the
reach, and his grandfather had devised this way of moving contraband
during Prohibition. He tested to see that the old trap would still
open, and when the hinges complained, he went over and got some
WD40 and sprayed them. While he waited for it to penetrate, he
moved a block and tackle from over the haypile to a beam over
the trap.
When they'd first brought the drum aboard SUZY, they'd cut the
buoy line off close to where it was tied to a wire loop welded
on the side of the barrel. Now Sonny measured off 12 fathom of
potwarp, tied an unpainted styrofoam buoy to one end, and the
other to the loop. Then he went over to one of the stalls where
there was a pile of 50 pound bags of salt, cut the top one open,
and began measuring salt into an empty burlap bag with a one quart
coffee can.
Sonny was plotting an old poacher's trick. You fill a bag with
salt and tie it to a buoy attached to what you want to hide under
water. If you match the buoyancy of the float with just the right
amount of salt, the salt will dissolve and the buoy will pop up
when you want it to. The key is timing the rates and weights.
Tink had taught Sonny the rule of thumb as a childhood rhyme,
and he was chanting it as he counted, smiling with memories. When
he'd prepared three 24-hour bags, he tied their throats tightly
with baling twine, set them in a fish tub, along with some more
twine, and dragged it over to the trap. He checked the trap door,
and it opened easily and silently. Sonny closed it, set the drum
on its side, dragged a tarp over trap, drum, tub, buoy and all,
and pitched loose hay over the works.
Just then he heard an outboard cough, and start. Going over to
the window Sonny looked down on the family float, jutting out
below Tink's old fish house at the mouth of the cove. Buster's
boy Dunk, was casting off a line, and motoring out into the reach.
Dunk throttled up onto the step and headed east.
"Must have been visiting Gram," Sonny concluded. Which reminded
him. He doublchecked to see that everything was hidden, then he
took the can of WD40 and went next door to oil Gram's front door
hinges.
When he slipped in the door Sonny could hear Gram's voice down
the hall. She was on the phone, and he could just make out her
saying something about "..little girl Annie.. No.. It's not
right," as he sprayed oil on her hinges.