by Grace Draven
Above him, the buzzard spiraled upward, dipping down before rising again. Jenny knew.
Another hour saw him no better off. He had not found good open water, much less a channel with a perceptible current, from Jenny’s spring or otherwise. He took his direction from the sun—a more trustworthy compass here outside the sweetgum palisade than within it—and headed west, toward where Jolly Bay and the marina must be. He nudged the canoe from clump to clump, fearing all the while that he was only making his situation worse. He tried to visualize a map of the Choctawhatchee River drainage in his head, figuring approximately where he must be, given the time he had spent at Gallant’s Landing before following the ivory-billed woodpecker up the channel and from there into the swamp, but it didn’t help. He knew the general direction he must travel, but anything more specific was beyond him. While chasing the ivory-bills, he had lost track of his route into the swamp, and consequently his relative position in the watershed.
There was nothing for it but to press on and hope for open water.
The heat of the day built, becoming oppressive with the glare of humidity whitening the sky above. The gnats and mosquitoes were relentless everywhere there was no sun. In the sun, horseflies buzzed and bit. Napier repeatedly hung his head over the water and sluiced his face and neck. Swatting made his skin sting afresh, and he was not sure if the blood on his hands belonged to him, or to the bugs.
After a while, he drank more water, rinsed and ate another strip of jerky. The salt tasted delicious, even though his stomach churned a little uneasily.
Salt. Of course.
Napier took a last swig from the bottle, swished it around his mouth, and licked his lips to be sure no salt remained on his skin.
Then he brought a cupped handful of swampwater to his lips and took a small mouthful.
It didn’t taste even slightly brackish. He was still out of reach of the tidal influence of the bay, except for how it might slow the drainage from the swamp.
He spat out the water, shipped his paddle for a moment, and thought. The water here was still fresh, or at least contained so little salt as not to be perceptible. Looking around him, he could see the vegetation was not the sort that grew near more brackish water. His progress had been both slow and small.
The cypress knees about him showed that the influence of the tide could be felt even here, but the change in water volume—as marked by the difference in the bark on the knees—was slight. But with a tide change roughly each six hours, he was bound to eventually sense the drainage flow. He simply had to wait, and the canoe would be pulled in the direction of a channel.
But could he wait? Napier no longer felt the panicky gotta-get-out-of-here that had consumed him in the dawn and had urged him to stab in desperation at the gum trees, but he was still too edgy to sit and wait for the peapod to tell him which way to paddle. What if he’d already missed an outgoing tide, while he was pushing west? What if the next tide was a rising tide? He reached out to a nearby ti-ti plant, pulled off a couple of leaves, and set them afloat on the surface a foot or so from the canoe. Then he watched them, marking their positions against roots and branches nearby.
A buzzard above him sailed in and out of sight in the gaps in the tree canopy. Jenny’s buzzard? A different one?
After ten minutes, he still knew nothing more, but he could be at the midpoint of a tide, or simply in a backwater where the tide was barely felt, if at all.
“Shit.” He hissed the word between his teeth, and just then one of the two leaves seemed to edge past its neighbor.
Wind? Or the faintest hint of a current? Napier held absolutely still, concentrating on his sweaty face to see if he felt a breeze. Bugs settled on him, delighted to find their target defenseless.
No breeze. The one leaf pulled past the other; no more than half an inch, but it was moving. Better still, it was moving west.
Napier waved away the mosquitoes, picked up his paddle, and pushed in the direction the leaf indicated. As he passed the two leaves, he scooped them into the canoe and rested them on his bag like talismans.
Above, the buzzard rode a swirling thermal, keeping pace with him. Waiting for him to die, lost in the cypresses? Or reporting back to home base?
Every few minutes, rather than risk losing the current, Napier shipped his paddle and set the two leaves into the water. Each time, one or both would indicate the slow drift of water to the bay, and he would be off again, weaving around hamaca and cypress, crossing small patches of open water into tree-choked swamp. By early afternoon he guessed he’d made a mile of progress, slowed by backtracking before correcting course around obstacles.
He needed to go faster. He had no idea how much farther it was to Jolly Bay, but he knew he did not want to be on the river come dark. Dipping his cupped hand into the water, he lifted it to his lips and tasted.
Yes. Salt, the merest trace. Hardly enough for his tongue to detect. Now he looked closely at the vegetation and saw that it was thinning, becoming less tangled. His muscles clenched with renewed energy and he paddled harder, deep pushing J-strokes on the left, then the right. Keeping the peapod aimed west.
The bow of the canoe emerged past a lush clump of ti-ti and there it was, the channel of the Choctawhatchee, broad and iced-tea clear. The river was all dimples, whirling purls and eye-stabbing glints from the lowering sun and the white glare of sky.
Napier almost didn’t believe the evidence of his eyes. He laid the paddle across the gunwales ahead of him and slumped in relief, his head bent nearly to his knees. A dry sound croaked out of him, half relief, half sob, as the gentle but certain current brought the peapod into the main channel.
It was then that the alligator hit the canoe’s side, toward the stern. The force of the blow spun the canoe to the right, a sickening lurch. Had Napier not been bent low in the boat, he would have gone over the side. All he saw of the alligator was a thrash of the tail and the whirlpool left behind, erased by the current in moments. He grabbed the gunwales in both hands, staying low to let his body mass help the boat steady itself.
The paddle floated not far from the canoe, the yellow blade glowing against the tea color of the Choctawhatchee.
“Fuck,” Napier wheezed. The old man from the marina spoke in his head.
Ain’t sendin’ you out with just the one. What if a gator bites off your blade?
Maniac laughter burst from Napier as his head turned like an owl’s, trying to look all directions at once. The gator was nowhere to be seen.
Maybe it had simply been headed downstream itself, not paying attention to what was ahead of it, and struck the canoe by accident.
Except Napier didn’t quite believe that. He hadn’t seen a single alligator since he first stepped into the canoe two days ago. The swamp was their habitat, sure. He saw gators from time to time in his job.
But this…
After meeting Jenny, everything out of the ordinary was suspect.
Overhead, of course, was the buzzard. Napier jabbed his stiff middle finger upward.
The next hit came from beneath only a moment later, as if in retaliation for his rudeness. The jolting heave rocked the canoe hard onto its port side. Like an open, smiling mouth, the canoe drank a deep draft of the Choctawhatchee. Napier’s go bag was instantly awash and he knew a fleeting moment of agony for the camera. None of that mattered, because the next hit, just as Napier was nearly in reach of the floating paddle, tossed him over the side into the river. The gator’s body slammed by him, its tail driving it forward. Napier flailed toward the surface, his head breaking the water immediately. He cast wildly around for the canoe and found it riding low in the water not far away. He clawed toward it, kicking clumsily with his booted legs. There was no time to shed the boots for better mobility. He had to get into the questionable safety of the boat, or die.
Napier heard the gator before he saw it. The Choctawhatchee churned violently a half-dozen feet away, and then the hit—oh God, the force of the thing, like being slammed by
a truck with teeth. The jaws clamped over his right shoulder and Napier caught a glimpse of glowing green before the gator’s eyelids shut reflexively as it closed its jaws.
The beast took him down, the terrible death roll beginning. Napier saw nothing but his own breath as he screamed underwater, shining bubbles in the brown river, made turbid by the gator’s thrashing. His free hand flailed, curled into a fist, struck over and over where he remembered seeing those terrible glowing eyes—glowing Jenny-green, the green of fireflies, like the eyes of the terrible cottonmouth that he’d stabbed—the knife, but the knife was on his right hip, and his right arm was halfway down the beast’s throat.
The water took the strength from his punches and his lungs began to burn. The gator would take him to the bottom, twisting and rolling all the way, and shove him beneath a handy log, leaving him there to drown and bloat, tenderized by the river, nibbled by passing fish. Food for a week’s worth of heavy meals.
Air. He needed air. No way to tell which way was up as the gator twisted and spun. Napier’s ears popped painfully in the intensifying pressure. The deeper they went, the cooler the river water became, until he felt the cold and slippery weeds of the bottom. He had to take a breath. His lungs would burst if he did not. In desperation he stopped punching and instead groped over the jagged head of the thing until he found an eye and gouged there as hard as he could, driving his thumb hard into the lid and beneath, scraping with his nail—
It let him go for a moment. Napier felt the tug of the surface and flailed that way, afraid the gator was only shifting its bite. Now it hit him again, at his right hip, where the old man’s pig-sticker waited in its sheath, but it was a nudge, not a strike.
The knife. It was almost as if it sang in Napier’s ears, a high brittle song of deadly beauty. His right arm felt sluggish and he wondered how damaged it was, but he fumbled for the hilt of the knife as he kicked for the surface. Just one more breath, that was all he asked. One more chance. One.
The old man’s pig sticker came into his hand like it had been there all his life, smoothly, sweetly, sure of itself. His right hand was still weak, so he shifted it to his left, where it felt just as good. His head broke the surface an instant before the gator surfaced. Green eyes glowed at him, a window into an other-worldly intelligence, the same as the snakes and the catfish, and Jenny herself. He whooped in a breath, his left arm swinging as if guided by the angels. The knife’s tip bit deep at the corner of the opening maw, and the gator turned, thrashing. Napier stabbed again but the knife skittered on the armored back, having no impact. The gator moved away, distancing itself from the dark iron blade. Napier flailed toward the canoe, dragging it over on its side and heaving himself in despite the flood of water that came with him. The floatation chambers at stern and bow kept the canoe near the surface, though the gunwales were perilously low, and wavelets lapped over the side every moment. The dropped paddle was nowhere to be seen, but the second paddle had been trapped beneath the thwarts and was still in the boat. Napier got hold of the grip and pulled it toward him, the old man’s knife still in his hand.
He glanced at his right shoulder, expecting to see blood spurting from the gator’s bite.
There was nothing, not even holes in his shirt. His shoulder hurt like a sonofabitch, but there was no blood.
No blood.
He didn’t stop to analyze it. Time for that later, if he survived the next thirty seconds. He paddled his flooded boat toward the riverbank, shoulder aching, the dark blade of the knife cutting the water where he gripped it and the throat of the paddle together.
The gator came again, moving fast. The wooden side of the canoe was all the barrier Napier had now, but the boat was so low in the water that there was no longer any danger of tipping. He just needed to stay in it long enough to reach shore. As the gator neared, Napier lifted the paddle and brought the edge down on the beast’s head, right between its glowing green eyes.
The gator’s eyes closed, but it came on as if it would simply thrash its way into the boat with him.
Napier raised the pig-sticker with a scream of terrified rage and stabbed the tip down, aiming for the half-closed eye he had gouged with his thumb, but missing by an inch. The tip skidded along the cheek, drawing blood but doing no real damage. Yet it was sufficient—with a slap of its massive tail, the gator turned aside and went under the water.
Napier paddled for shore. The canoe was heavy and slow, as if he was trying to paddle the whole damn river. At last he rammed the bow into a tangle of ti-ti and scrabbled out of the boat onto the bank. He crashed through the underbrush, hardly feeling the slap and scratch of branches and thorny vines. He traveled a good fifty feet before he stopped, wheezing and panting, to look behind him.
The river was smooth and quiet, as if nothing had ever happened. The current had erased the turbulence of the terrible battle. The canoe lay canted in the shallows like an exhausted beast. Napier had taken the paddle—a weapon—with him as he fled. It was in his right hand, and the poniard was in his left. The poniard vibrated in his grip. He thought it was because he held it so tightly—his life depended on it, after all—but as he stilled and quieted, he realized he could hear the blade humming. Lifting it closer, he peered at the tip, where the slightly ragged edge had captured some tissue and blood from the alligator’s head. A full-body shudder wracked him.
Carefully, he cleaned the poniard’s blade with the tail of his sopping shirt.
The poniard quieted.
Napier lifted the blade, his hands shaking so hard he nearly dropped it, and kissed it. Placed it once again in the wet leather sheath.
Afterward, he sat down hard among the smilax vines and spiky shrubs, and waited for the shaking to stop, and his gut to stop cramping.
The river flowed past, smooth, clear brown, and quiet.
Overhead, a buzzard still circled.
The day had moved on into afternoon, a time of stifling heat and glassy light, before Napier struggled to his feet and stumbled to the canoe again. Most of the water had drained from it as it lay on its side. Now he righted it and took stock. His go-bag was gone—not in the shallows, and without doubt a dozen feet down in the muck of the river bottom, and with it the camera and all proof of the ivory-bills. He struck his thigh with his clenched right fist and immediately regretted it. Though the gator hadn’t broken the skin, it had bruised and wrenched his flesh.
Of all the things he’d started this journey with, all he had left was the old man’s knife, one of the two paddles, the clothes on his back and his sodden boots.
And there, rolling gently back and forth in the bottom of the canoe, was the bottle of water filled at Jenny’s spring.
Napier threw back his head and cawed a broken, crazed cackle.
Then, shaking a little and more than paranoid, he pushed the canoe away from the bank, stepped in, and paddled downstream as hard as he could. Afternoon meant evening, and evening meant darkness, and darkness meant…
…Jenny.
He was sure of it.
Not long after, he passed Gallant’s Landing. The place was as empty as it had been two days before. No one there to ask for help, food, or something to drink—because he was damn certain, no matter how thirsty he got, he would not crack that bottle of spring water until he got it back to the lab at work for testing. The heat and sun were beginning to get to him, but if he just kept paddling, now that the current was with him, he might make Jolly Bay in an hour and a half, maybe less.
He checked the water around him for trouble, then scooped a few hasty handfuls of water and splashed them over his hot face and head. It helped, for a while. Napier shifted the paddle in his grip and kept stroking. His shoulders and upper back ached. His arms burned. His palms were raw and he felt blisters rising.
In the bow of the boat, the plastic bottle of beautifully clear water sparkled as it rocked in the trough of the keel. He remembered the spring’s sweetness, and how he had drunk from it until his stomach was swollen. Still he h
ad wanted more.
He wanted more even now.
Napier dry-swallowed and kept paddling.
Gallant’s Landing was out of sight beyond a bend in the river when he heard the ivory-bills’ plaintive cries. This time it wasn’t simply one or two beeping in their cartoonish way. It was half a dozen or more, filling the air with their noise.
Napier paddled faster.
The ivory-bills swooped past him, winging along the channel of the Choctawhatchee. Three of them landed on a snag barely a quarter mile ahead and scuttled up and down the dead trunk, pounding away and shucking bark.
Napier shipped his remaining paddle and looked up into the glare-bright sky. The sun was lower still, beaming into his eyes. The ivory-bills were silhouettes, jerky as marionettes on the trunk, the reddening eye of the sun behind them. He shouted from his dry throat at the circling buzzard overhead.
“Go away, Jenny! Let me be!” He coughed and swallowed afterward; the shout hurt.
The ivory-bills burst from the snag as if he’d thrown a rock among them. They vanished into the trees, silent. Napier watched them go. Except for the bird skull in his pocket, he would no longer have believed they were real. He could not present the skull as proof that the ivory-bills weren’t extinct. For proof, he needed current-dated photos, a fresh corpse, or film footage with indisputable views of the white patches on the birds’ backs. He needed to be able to bring experts into the Choctawhatchee estuary and let them see for themselves. Scientists with more credentials than he possessed would have to validate his claims.
All of that was lost to him now, along with everything in his go-bag. Napier would bet money if he were to paddle upstream with a canoe full of ornithologists, even if he showed them Gallant’s Landing and the pile of woodpecker-scaled bark at the base of the snag, he would not be believed. And Jenny would no doubt prevent him from finding her spring ever again.