We gently placed Pops in the middle on the bedroll. Buzzy climbed onto the front and I pushed us off from the bank into the rushing current. We immediately were pulled downstream. “Paddle!” I screamed, although Buzzy was already digging with fury. We were halfway across when the first shot hit the water and the rifle reported. “Shit!” We thrust even harder. The next shot splintered Buzzy’s paddle and knocked him in the water. The raft spun as he hit the river. We were seized by the current and quickly separated from Buzzy, who was swimming hard after us. The water splashed near him, then another rifle shot echoed off the trees. He dove.
The river took us backward as Buzzy broke the surface gasping, twenty feet upstream. I thrust in my paddle to slow us. “I’m good. You get outta here,” he yelled.
“No way. It’s too dangerous to swim. Just grab on and ride it.” We turned again, and in a few strokes he was at the back of the raft. I paddled as hard as I could and he kicked to reach the other side, but the river kept us centered. We rode downstream for a half mile, out of shooting range. The river took a hard left and the current swung us wide, close to the original bank.
“Let’s rest here an get a plan. I’m touchin.” He braced against the current in the chest-deep water and pushed the raft into calm under an overhanging willow. We tied off on the tree and lifted Pops to dry shade. His eyes were closed; sweat poured from his face and neck.
“I can’t believe he’s following us.”
“He ain’t followin us.”
“Yeah, he is.”
Buzzy shook his head. “He’s followin me.”
“What do you mean?”
“All them shots were at me. Evertime I put my head up or went down the beach, he shot. Evertime you did, he dint. Even jus now, when I was in the water, he was shootin at me, not Pops.”
“But he shot Pops. You saying he was aiming for you?”
Buzzy nodded.
“Who would want to shoot you?”
He shrugged. “All I know is if we stay together he’s gonna keep shootin at us. Eventually he’ll get you, me, or both.”
“What should we do?”
He pulled the crossbow pistol from the pack pocket. “I’m gonna go huntin him.”
“Son, that’s out of the question,” Pops breathed, eyes wide-open now. “We are dealing with a… psychopath here. Best we stick together.” Cough. “Float downriver to the trail. We can put some miles… between us and him.”
“I disagree, sir. We’re sittin ducks with a long way to home. He’ll never expect a kid to come for him. Y’all get downriver. I’ll meet you up the camp on Irish Ridge.”
Pops shook his head.
Buzzy continued. “Look, we gotta do the exact opposite a what he thinks we’ll do. If we’re lucky, I’ll be back before dark.” He knelt to Pops, opened his shirt, and peeled back the bandage. “It’s gettin all infected.”
He went to the willow tree and carved two fists of bark and put them in the poultice bag. “When you get to camp, make a tea with the bark. It’ll get his fever down.” He took a few fingers of poultice from the bag and grabbed the extra bolts from the side pocket of Pops’ pack, then handed me the big knife in its sheath. “You keep the bowie.” We helped Pops onto the raft. “Keep him high on top; we don’t want the river water gettin in there. An don’t ride the raft too far downriver; you got that waterfall.”
“Buzzy, I’m scared for you!”
He looked at me for the first time with the eyes of a child. “Me too.”
“Let’s just do what Pops says. He’s always right.”
He shook his head, looked down into the river swirl, then back up to me—child eyes traded for hard. “I gotta do this.”
“But—”
“I gotta do this.”
I reluctantly untied the raft from the tree and climbed onto the back and grabbed the paddle. Buzzy pushed us off with his feet.
“See you on Irish Ridge,” he said. I turned sideways to reply, but couldn’t find the words. He was standing on the bank, crossbow hanging by his side, eyes hooded with resolve. I swallowed hard on my dry tongue and felt the taste of vomit in my throat. He raised his hand slowly to wave good-bye. I did the same. He brought it down, watched us for a moment more, then turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.
As the river took the raft and we moved slowly away, I felt a strange sensation that I was stationary and it was Buzzy who was pulling away from me—Buzzy and the bank and the willow trees drifting off to some unfathomable point in the future; to some unknowable rank in the weave of time and being; to some place in the past that would cycle back on itself until the point and the rank and the brightest recollections of him were rendered to oblivion.
Chapter 33
THE RIVER
I paddled into the main current and felt its pull downstream. Pops was awake and propped good lung high, mash jug at the ready. “We’ve got six miles of easy river… til the first rapids,” he said, coughing. “There’s a hard double-S turn… right before… so we should put out there.”
“Don’t talk, Pops.”
He waved me away.
The air in the tent kept us buoyant on water that swirled and spun in eddies and whirlpools. I sat astraddle the logs at the rear of the raft, legs trailing in the brown, ruddering with the paddle to keep the craft pointed downstream. The river swung in a few wide turns to the right and the left but mostly stayed true to the middle of the valley.
A half hour later from somewhere upstream, the sharp crack of a rifle shot echoed off the surrounding hills, hanging in the air like coming thunder. I jerked around to the river behind, trying to cipher some understanding in the echo. My throat tightened and a numbness spread over me; the trees and the sky seemed to close in like we were rafting a tunnel.
Pops’ eyes bolted open. I looked at him, tears welling.
“We don’t know that was Buzzy,” he said.
I shook my head slowly and closed my eyes as tight as I could, hoping the darkness would blot out the reality of what we’d just heard. We listened for another shot, but the air was achingly silent. My tongue tasted of sour milk.
“Don’t even know… that was the same shooter. Could have been… a poacher.”
But we both had recognized the rifle report.
“Why would anyone want to shoot him?” I asked.
“I’m not buying… that the attacker was gunning for him… and not me.” Cough. “With me gone… Bubba Boyd has a clear path… to Jukes.” He coughed again.
“Why would anyone want to shoot him?” I asked the river and the full clouds and the limitless sky. A line of old willow trees leaned in over the bank on the expectation of an answer.