Chapter 39

It's been a long and tiring day for the gods ... there's always so much to catch up on after a long Labor day weekend. Thor and the boys aren't all seeing, all hearing, or in complete control like one of the other gods ... or so he claims.

Fate had her feet up and munching buttered popcorn. She'd been looking ... and planning this little disaster ever since Andrea managed to slip past her fate when she caught the watch batted by the sturgeon.

"Damn it all! I missed it the first time and then she was supposed to be with her dad when the boat sunk!! Bitch!!" "The boat! ... the sturgeon wouldn't cooperate ... the day the car fell ... who puts jackstands under the frame? And the cops gave ... GAVE her the watch back!! They were supposed to hold it for evidence ... bastards. Honest cops!! The crazy on the water tower ... shoots her husband instead and it wasn't his time ... I mean ... who would have thought the bitch could shoot like that? Huh? and the rifleman on the island ... where did that wave come from? He missed ... from a hundred yards ... TWICE! ... well ... not exactly misses ... but not what I wanted. It isn't just anybody who can escape their fate."

Talking to herself, again, Fate said, "Fuck, I'm cold." A minnow, finally out of her long, wet hair, wriggled past her right ear and slitherd down her cleavage. She reached down between her boobs to grab the little bastard and all that did was let him squirm past her bellybutton and fall into the short and curlies. She'd leapt up and done a little dance ... the minnow fell out.

She flopped back on the couch. She looked at the watch and switched on the TV... "Lessee ... channel 313. She punched buttons and fiddled with the remote. An underwater view from a camera attached to the Kings Knight keel crackled and wobbled a little ... focused and there's the bottom ... it looks like all is going to work this time. Closer ... closer ... closer ... just inches away now.

"The boat is moving fast enough to snap the mast when she stops. Look at that ... mud swirls ... any second now. When the boat grounds David ... Anderson's Salvage David ... will have to drop everything ... look at all that mud ... the David's combine and Andy will have to spend the winter in Detroit." Fate is rubbing her hands with glee.

"There she'll fall in with evil companions and that'll be the end of her." She scooped another hand of popcorn, taking her eye away from the TV for just an instant. She looked back, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?"

The bottom had fallen out of the channel ... there was a good thirty feet of clearance..."What is that?"

That was the hollow hull of a sunken lake freighter ... all of five hundred feet long and devoid of deck houses and hold spreaders ... just five hundred feet of hole in the lake. This part of the middle channel was scoured by heavy currents and the boat never filled with sand. Dredging operations had knocked out the spreaders and the Army Corps of Engineers had blasted the deck houses.

Fate ... fucked by her own fickle finger ... and Murphy ... was stymied again! She threw such a fit! Earthquakes and tidal waves, eruptions and collapses galore. People dying right and left ... everybody but Andrea!! AAARRRGGGHHH!

"Andrea?" David was at the helm.

"Yes, David." Andrea spent her free time examining charts, but she was right behind David.

"We need to have her hauled," he said without looking around ... they were past the shallow part of the lake. There was a good sixty feet of water between the keel and the bottom.

"Why?" She didn't look up, she was still figuring depths and angles.

"She needs her name," he said.

"Ok."

David got on the radio. "Greg's Boat Company. Greg's Boat ... Kings Knight calling."

"Kings Knight, Kings Knight ... Greg's Boat."

"Greg?"

"I'll get him."

"Have him hail David."

Greg's Boat Company had been doing business in Detroit since 1906. They built, repaired, re-engined, lengthened, shortened and restored anything that had a hull and spent time on the water. David ... as Anderson's principal salvor ... had been to the yard many times having this and that repaired.