Continued from Part IV:
“I heard it from one of the other guys afterwards. When they went down to the dock the next morning, Johnny’s boat was missing. Apparently he had gone out alone. How he managed it I’ll never know. His wife, Cindy, she said he had left at two in the morning—poor thing, she didn’t think anything of it, we all took third shift sometimes. Well, within the hour big seas came up, and by the time anyone knew he was gone there was a snowstorm to boot, the worst kind, that turns to ice as soon as it touches your hull. Nobody could go out. We called the Coast Guard, and soon as they could, boats were out like a shot to look for him, but out there—that’s a whole country where men don’t belong. If you catch her in the wrong mood, it’s worse than being stranded in the desert. If you have the newest, slickest safety equipment on the market, she’ll crush it to bits in her jaw and leave you helpless as a baby.
“That was a horrible week. Boats kept going out, looking and looking. We kept hoping for a call from another port, but it never came. Sure, some dumb nut could go out and get himself killed, we said, but not Johnny. He was shaping up to be the best fisherman I ever knew. He’d done nothing but handle that lake since he was ten years old—and we kept telling each other, he’ll show us up at last—you’ll see—this time next week, we’ll be laughing.
“Well, the next week came, and the week after that—but there was no laughing. We never found him, nor the Fleet Mary. And then, a year afterwards to the day he went out, that light appeared and stayed for a week—and it’s done the same every year since.”