Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [38]
I grew up in or around the woods so I’d grown accustomed to the sights, smells and sounds. Especially the sounds, since my nose has never been that reliable. While it may get quiet at night, it is seldom silent. Birds, crickets, frogs, gators, dogs, you name it. And often they will feed off each other. Little sounds here and there that create some sort of animal-chain reaction. If one chirps or croaks, often the others will assume it’s okay to do the same. The reverse is true as well. If one goes silent, the others will fall silent long enough to figure out why. I sat back down on that log and noticed how deathly quiet the woods had become.
I started thinking about old movies. Especially those scenes in which some character named Festus, Stumpy or Lefty scratches the back of his neck and says, “I can’t see them, but I got a notion we’re being watched.” Usually, he’s right. Because the next scene we see is filled with Indians wearing war paint.
I can’t explain it, but I had that feeling. I went over it in my mind: I heard a stick crack. Under weight. Probably more than a squirrel or raccoon. Also, the sound appeared muffled. Deer and hog feet don’t do that ’cause they’re hard. But people feet and bear paws do. To be honest, I wasn’t too concerned about bears. Black bears are more curious than dangerous. But it’s that other possibility that had the hair up on my neck.
I unzipped the tent, lifted Abbie—still in her sleeping bag—off her mat and pressed my finger to her lips. “Shhh.” She hung her arms around my neck. I looped my arm through the Pelican case lanyard and then the sling of the shotgun and slipped down the bank out of the fire’s reflection. I crossed the river—ankle-deep—and walked up a sandy beach on the Florida side. Abbie whispered, “What’s wrong?”
I scanned the river, listening. “Not sure.”
I set her down on the bank beneath a few overhanging trees. Twenty minutes passed. While we waited, I found myself plotting tomorrow’s path in my mind, thinking about where we could lunch and where we might take on more water. Where we might encounter people, where we could hide. While the river was cleaner than most, and you could drink it if you had to, I tried not to given the runoff. Too many pesticides I couldn’t see and too much manure I didn’t want to risk tasting. Artesian wells fitted with hand pumps dotted the riverbanks if you knew where to look.
I was about two seconds from carrying Abbie back to the tent when the first man appeared in the river. He was tall, skinny, barefooted, wore cutoff jeans and a T-shirt with no sleeves. He had stepped out from behind some trees, dipped his feet into the river and walked slowly to the canoes. He picked his feet up slowly, and then slipped them back in the water without a sound. Deer walk the same way when they don’t want to be noticed. A second man appeared behind him and walked directly to the tent with a third man close on his heels. The first man picked through the canoes while the second and third tore the tent apart. I could only hear snippets. They whispered in harsh tones.
The two at the tent got in a shoving match and then threw the whole mess—tent, my sleeping bag, our clothes and everything else I had stowed—into the fire. The flame-retardant tent smothered the fire, filling the campsite with smoke, causing more shoving and all three to cough. Finally, the heat won. The flames caught, climbed chest-high and lit the riverbank.
By the time the smoke cleared, the quiet man picking through the canoes had packed most everything we had into one canoe and began pulling it back upriver. A hundred yards or so later, he pulled it up the riverbank and slid it into the trees. For several minutes I could hear him sliding it through the woods. The fire roared and crackled, showering the bank in heat and light. The two that remained were getting more aggravated. Their faces glowed golden. I saw enough to know I didn’t like them but not enough