It wasn’t a lightning storm or music, it was a motor, distinct now, distant but growing closer, and it lacked the chuff and throb of an outboard, it was smoother, steadier, it thrummed through the twilight with the modest growl of an electric engine. It was the two drunks. Had to be. Jack and Wynn stood. They glanced at the woman asleep on the pad and trotted to the water. And stood there side by side like some backcountry couple who hear a strange car coming up the crick road for the first time in a year. Jack had a second thought and went back for the rifle. They waited in the dusk.
It was a gentle right bend and the long canoe appeared in the middle of it as if breached straight from the dark water, or as if the silvered water itself had formed and reformed until it gave substance to two shapes, the men, the two idiots, one thin, one fat, straining forward to interpret the flames they saw on the beach. The skinny one in the bow whistled, a piercing Bronx cheer that muted even the crickets for a startled second.
“Hey! Hey! Is it you-all?” That was the fat man.
Jack glanced at Wynn, who seemed stunned. Maybe by the dumbness of the greeting; maybe it was a trick question.
The fat man cursed. The canoe came ineluctably closer.
“Fuck a duck,” the fat man said, very clear. “It’s those kids. It’s you kids!”
“The short one’s got a gun,” the thin one said.
“So what, everybody’s got a gun up here. Hey! Hey! Fuckin’ A, we’re glad to see you-all!”
They came in like that, thrumming steadily over the dark mirror of the river, revealing the white square-tailed twenty-one-footer smirched with black, and one long gunwale, the starboard, edged and roughened with char where it had burned. “Fuckin’ A! We thought you-all were crisp by now. Damn!”
There was something wrong with the electric motor, because it was louder than it should have been, it sounded almost like a blender, and the fat man drove the canoe straight into the rocky bar. The boat hit the stones and the two men jerked forward and back in practiced synchrony and the hull grated up onto the shore and the fat man throttled the motor two more times for good measure and cut the engine. He was grinning. He was wearing a camo Texas A&M cap and in the dusk he was all teeth. “Whew!” he said. “That was one hellstorm, wasn’t it? We thought we were safe once it jumped, but a backdraft caught us. We shoulda waited a day. Man.” His eyes followed the creek. “Look at you-all. Just back into the green like any other Sunday. Hell, I woulda stopped here, too.” He clambered forward, knees walking on the bags of gear, and got out on dry rocks and came at them with his hand out. The thin man hadn’t budged—he was staring at the fire, at the person lying there, and Jack could almost hear the gears clicking in the man’s head from ten feet away.
“Brent. Remember me?” Fat Man shook one boy’s hand, then the other’s. “I remember you! We shoulda listened. Man! We caught fire at sea like that destroyer, whatchamacallit?” The boys had no idea. “Almost punched our ticket, I mean. That was waaay too close for comfort. Glad you-all—” He stopped short. He looked into Wynn’s face and grimaced. “Ow. You, too. That doesn’t look too good,” he said with real concern. “You boys came that close, too. I think we got some sterile bandages. JD—” He turned back to the boat and saw his buddy’s face and followed his gaze. “Wha—?”
Brent peered into the dusk, glanced back at the boys. Jack unslung the rifle, which was not lost on anyone.
“There was just two of you before,” Brent said softly.
Jack didn’t say anything. Nor Wynn. They didn’t know what to say. Neither had digested much of what they’d been through; what had happened since they’d met the men on their island was too immense.
The fat man worked his jaw, surveyed the little beach. “As far as I know there was only one other party up here—must’ve got dropped in at Moose Lake before us. A man and a woman in an Old Town. Green. A green eighteen-footer, I’d guess. We kept seeing them far off and wanted to stay out of their hair. We weren’t in no hurry.” The man spoke quietly but loud enough for his partner to hear. Jack watched as JD slowly slipped their Winchester bolt-action—probably an aught-six—out of its place under the bow deck: they had worked out the same configuration, pilot in the stern, shooter in the bow.
Brent was in no hurry now. He was a cool customer, for sure. He turned back again and looked each boy dead in the eye. It was as if he were searching for something inside them. Even in the half-light Jack could see, and remembered, the grainy mineral blue of the man’s eyes.
“Looks like her. From here. Can’t be sure. Same size, about. The long brown hair. Where’s the man?”
Silence. The crickets were at it again, and the low burble of the current and the eddy slurping the shore. Wynn cleared his throat and opened his mouth and Jack touched him with the barrel of the rifle. Wynn’s head swung around and he saw Jack’s face and shut his mouth and swallowed.
“That’s how it is, huh?” Brent said. “Some sort of Deliverance shit going on here and everyone’s clammed up?” He chewed the corner of his mouth, frowned. “We got through the goddamned fire, and I mean that was nip and tuck. Thought we had clear sailing. Fuck.” He turned his head sideways and spat. “You chewing?” he said to Jack. Jack nodded. “Give me a dip, will ya? I ran out in week two.” Jack took his left hand off the rifle and unbuttoned the shirt pocket and handed the man the tin. “Thanks.” Brent handed it back.
Jack said, “It’s not what you think.”
“No?”
“She’s hurt bad. We’re trying to get her out to a doctor. But—”
“I’m listening. With great interest, I surely am.” Brent spat.
“Her husband did this. Threw our shit in the river at the first portage and paddled out.”
Brent worked his jaw, cocked his ear sideways as if trying to hear the faint winds of logic.
“Then we flipped in that last big rapid, lost the rest of our food and warm clothes,” Jack said.
It was getting darker. The tide of night seemed to flow up the river and settle over the water and spill over the banks. Ever so slowly. Where there were trees the gathering darkness was rising up into the shaggy tops, which had gone still. The sunset wind had nearly died. It was just a stirring of air upstream that came with a cool touch that presaged another night of frost. For the first time in what seemed like years, Jack smelled less char than the cold scents of sediment-laden water.
He said, “It’s a long story. We thought we were fucked. Now we need to get her out to the village. You can move a lot faster with that motor. Maybe you can take her at first light.”
Brent studied Jack. And spat. Then he looked up at Wynn, who, even hunched, with his hands in his pockets, towered over them both. Even in the thickening dusk Wynn was all freckles and unruly curls and earnestness and seemed much more Norman Rockwell than James Dickey; he looked like a kid who had never had a mean thought in his life. Brent said, “You wanna put that rifle away somewhere?”
“If your man does.”
Brent whistled softly and JD tucked the aught-six back under the bow. Jack slung the .308 over his shoulder. Brent said, “I owe you one, back at the island. We were on a little bit of a bender.” His chuckle was mirthless. “Maybe we weren’t paying attention to what we should have. The day after you left, JD climbed a tree. And we saw that motherfucking fire. We didn’t get overcranked, but we kept an eye on it. So, thanks.”
Jack nodded. “Okay, well,” Brent said. “She’s bad?”
Jack nodded again. Brent said, “We’ll camp with you-all and take off at daybreak. Sound good? We’ve been fishing and we’ve got a bunch of extra food. Looks like you could use a good meal.”
* * *