Chapter 3

Adrift: 3

The price of gold started going down and kept going down. Jimmy got two grand for five and a third ounces ... but the price was $429 and change in Grand Rapids on the day Mr. McKinnon sold Jimmy's gold. Three years before his sale the price fix was $850 on the twenty second of January ... after a slow decline it dropped nearly $200 in one day and peaked over five hundred just a few times for a few years. Later it dropped to two hundred eighty an ounce. By 1987 gold had recovered and kept climbing.

When June decided to sell ... begrudging every speck and flake ... it was below three eighty. But she had a lot more. She could have been working as a waitress for fifty dollars a week and tips but her two weeks of labor in the river netted her sixty thousand dollars.

She might have gotten a lot more gold ... if Jimmy hadn't used the watch, timed it to one BC and mined the living daylights out of it. He studied the water coming out of the spring and realized that gold flakes were in the water. Inside the spring must be a hotbed of gold. The spring pulsed ... lots of flow ... not so much ... lots of flow ... not so much. During the periods of lesser flow the flake gold settled out.

Jimmy took just enough gold to bet on the Super Bowl ... at the beginning of the season. The Super Bowl odds before the first exhibition games were enormous. True, you had to bet a grand but the odds were eleven hundred to one. His grand bet brought One million, one hundred thousand dollars. He did it twice before no bookie alive would take the bet.

Secure in the knowledge that the bet was good ... he had to time it back to pick up the cash ... Jimmy went to school ... and fucked his sister.

I beg your pardon ... in a tone of voice that did no such thing ... that's my sister you're talking about ... and how did you get in MY story ... huh? Huh? Amateur hack! God ... you didn't even tell the part about HOW I made the first bet. I'll get back to that as soon as I learn my lessons from my Mom. And learn them I did. Mom was happy, but she had the batteries as cover. Junie had her period and started the pills. She had her second period...

I made love to my sister...

"Oh ... JIMMY!!! Oh God ... oh fuck oh dear ... JIMMY!!"

"Stick a sock in it Junebug," Mom hollered over the buzz.

"Sorry Mom ... I had NO IDEA!! Good ... Good ... Good..." SURE-REEK! "Yes Mom ... bite the pillow ... mmmmmfphffgurgle. Sorry Jimmy."

"June ... look what you've done to Jimmy's back ... NO!! Don't roll over, James ... This is gonna hurt ... All I have is this old iodine ... Jimmy ... come back here... STAMP NOW! ... Junie ... sit on his legs."

"Oh Jimmy ... I'm sorry ... your back looks like hamburger," hysterical giggle..."Mom ... I'm gonna be sick!"

"June ... you did that to him ... you sit there and look ... and don't - you - dare - puke!! Jimmy ... I was worried you wouldn't get the job done ... you did ... I'm proud!"

"Thanks Mom ... OW!! I thought you were OW! done ... fuck ... sorry Mom ... OW FUCKIN' OW!!"

"See Junie ... look at what those classy fingernails did to Jimmy's back ... that's muscle. No Jim ... don't try and look ... Junie ... It's going to be a while before you can ride ... Jim's back can't stand a saddle ... It's you in missionary or doggy. He looks plumb awful!!"

"Jimmy ... that was wonderful ... and I can't wait ... but it looks like I have to."

Hey, you ... Mr. Smart mouth narrator ... summer's not over ... you got me back in school already? I sure as hell can't can't be going to school with my back like this. School? Eighth grade? Gym class? No way!

While I was having my little soliloquy with my tormenter, June and Mom were examining my back closely.

"We need Jean ... sit on his legs again, June Bug ... she can tell us if he's gonna need stitches." Mom kinda giggled, "And that buck is why I wanted you to sit on his legs again."

"He'd have got away for sure," Junie said. "What are we going to tell Jean, Mom?"

"I don't know. Let me call and see if she can come over and look."

She went in the living room and called. Pretty quick she came back ... too quick. June had me down her throat and I was trying manfully not to come. My back ... and the iodine smeared scratches hurt just enough to keep me on the edge.

"June!"

"Mom," she whined, "I got off the last time and he didn't."

"Jean is coming ... and it looks like James isn't. So you run out to the boathouse roof and get some sun. Jim and I need to decide what to tell Jean."

June Bug ran out to the boathouse ... she kept a bikini in the house part of the boathouse.

The boat house:

The boat house is a two storied affair that's sixty-six feet long and twenty-five wide. It was tall enough for the rich old Chicago doctor, Doc Smith, to keep his really cool wood boat out of the water during the winter. Doc died in 1965 ... the boat was sold and the whole place more of less fell apart until Mom bought it with Dad's insurance.

Pentwater lake front property was no prize until the Feds came in and made the village hook up the sewer system to a big settling pond on the east side of town. Until the Feds did that, most toilets flushed into the settling system called Pentwater lake. Even today, water from Pentwater lake is a rich brown color and NOBODY swims in it.

The boat house belonged to the two story log cabin Doc Smith used as a base for drinking and carousing during summer storms. Otherwise he was on the boat running between Whitehall and Ludington chasing teenaged girls. He must have caught a lot of them because he left his 'butter pats' over half of western Michigan's waterfront.

You realize this is all rumor and innuendo from my Mom and Jean ... and their Bridge Club ... and I'll be damned if I know why they called it Bridge when all they ever played was cribbage.

Anyway, the boat house had a lift in it that was good enough to pick Doc's boat completely out of the water. He had three inch thick boards from the Mill that went from dock to dock and kept the wind and snow out while a crew scrapped the hull and re-varnished it every winter. That boat looked brand new every spring.