OFF MY DOCK

Boaters solve the mystery of lingering lingerie.

The evidence was incriminating. And while no crime had been committed, it had to be destroyed. When we were younger men, my good friend Chuck Larson owned a family cabin on the Chippewa Flowage, deep in the heart of the Wisconsin North Woods. In Minnesota they’d call this place a lake house, in Michigan it’s a cottage, and in New England it’s a camp. The Larson cabin dated back to the 1920s, when city people could put up a modest summer dacha on a 50-foot lakeshore lot. The structure was in fact ordered as a kit from Sears.

The Chip, as it’s called, is a huge expanse of interconnected lakes, and by land Chuck’s cabin was a winding 45-minute drive from the nearest launch ramp. For years, he and I would fish the Chip on opening day, the first weekend in May, and swing by the cabin by boat just to see that it had survived the winter. On the day in question, we decided a fire in the wood stove and a libation would relieve the spring chill, and so I busied myself arranging the kindling while Chuck inspected the cabin for rodent infiltration. I had just struck a match when Chuck shuffled back into the room.

“What do you think of this?” he asked. Chuck was holding up a pair of panties. “Those are fancy. Did Gladys lose her undies?” I asked.

“These are not the style my wife wears, and they are certainly not her size,” Chuck said as he examined the garment carefully. “I have no idea where these came from. They were on the floor under the bed.”

We both pondered for a moment. “Probably best to just get rid of that item,” I said.

“Easier to put socks on a rooster than explain panties to your wife,” Chuck said, and he tossed the lingerie into the now-flaming wood stove, a preemptive self-pardon of sorts.

A few weeks later, I met Chuck at the Lake View Inn bar. The mystery had deepened. Chuck returned to the cabin, and this time found a bra and a T-shirt. Each, again, clearly not belonging to his wife. There were no signs of forced entry, and nothing missing or disturbed at the cabin.

We talked through various scenarios, and determined that only one other person knew the hidden location of the spare house key—his brother-in-law.

A few months later, Chuck’s sister filed for divorce, and the now ex-brother-in-law moved back home to Texas. He never really fit the decor up here, anyway, with all that Lone Star swagger. Last summer, he swamped his fancy center-console in one of those boat parades on Lake Travis. You might have seen that on the news.

“What were the last words out of a Texan’s mouth?” Chuck asked later, over his beer at the Lake View.

“Watch this!” I replied. “And what were the last words out of his brother’s mouth?”

“That’s nothin’!” Chuck responded with a guffaw.

Ah, it never gets old.

For years, he and I would fish the Chip on opening day, the first weekend in May, and swing by the cabin by boat just to see that it had survived the winter.