Cale took the end of the tube from Wes. “I drop this on the deck and the gas spills out?”
“Correct,” said Wes.
“Good job. Get in the boat and crank ’er up.”
Wes climbed over the stern and out of sight. A motor made that coughing sound a starting motor makes. I found that I was on my feet and not feeling too bad, the throbbing in my head ramped down to something I wouldn’t even call pain. Meanwhile, Cale was letting go of the rubber tube. It fell to the deck like a wriggling snake and liquid splashed out, silvery in the moonlight, a few drops landing on his cowboy boots.
“Damn,” he said, quick-stepping back, too late. He flicked open the lighter and a short flame rose up from it. Cale made some sort of adjustment and the flame grew longer. Then he lowered the lighter and got ready to fling it, sideways-style, like a Frisbee. He didn’t see me coming at all.
And even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered: that’s how mad I was by then. THUMP! Like a big bass drum! Then everything went flying, the lighter rising the highest, spinning like a sparkler on the Fourth of July—not my favorite holiday, by the way—plus Cale and me also spinning—not quite as high, but enough to clear the stern of Little Jazz. We came crashing into a boat tied to the platform at the back—not the pirogue but a bigger boat that floated beside it, a green-painted boat with Wes at the motor. Wes’s eyes got huge; the lighter sizzled as it hit the water; and then we threw down, trust me.
We had shouting, we had screaming, we had the taste of blood in my mouth. Wes fell against the motor and all of a sudden we took off backward, zooming away from Little Jazz and down the bayou. Wes kicked out at me. Way too slow: I got his ankle between my jaws.
“Do something, for Christ sake,” he screamed. “He’s biting my leg off.”
I felt Cale’s hand on my collar, pulling, yanking, jerking. I went stiff, all my muscles straining the other way, one of my best moves. Meanwhile, lights were appearing on shore, one, two, more.
“The net!” Wes shouted. “The net!”
“What goddamn net?”
“In the bow!”
Cale’s hand left my collar. I squeezed Wes’s ankle good and tight. He screamed again. The motor was screaming, too. I felt my very wildest. These two perps—and that was what they were, all right—were going to pay, and pay big time for—
What was this? Something fell over me with a soft thud, almost the sound a blanket would make. I don’t like blankets on me and this was the same kind of feeling. I let go of Wes’s ankle, tried to twist around, but I was all tangled up, tangled in . . . in a big fishnet! Cale loomed over me, tugging at this and that, and then Wes was up and tugging from the other direction. I snapped my jaws, got fishnet in my mouth, bit at it and bit at it, thrashed my body around with all my strength, but the net closed around me tighter and tighter until I couldn’t move a muscle more than a twitch or two.
They rolled me up in a ball and shoved me against the side of the boat. All I could do was bark. I barked, but not loud, on account of hardly being able to open my mouth, the net pressing in so tight.
The scream of the engine died down, the boat coming to rest and rocking on the water. High above a cloud, silver at the edges and black in the middle, glided over the moon and the night went dark.
“I’m bleeding like a pig,” Wes said.
“Don’t want to hear about it,” said Cale. “Let’s go.”
“Back to the houseboat?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you want to finish what we started? The fuel line thing?”
“With every hillbilly in the swamp waking up? I thought you were supposed to be smart. Head for the rig.”
“The rig?” Wes said.
“Something wrong with your hearing?”
“But what about him?”
“Him?”
“The dog.”
Cale gazed down at me, his eyes in shadow, just two dark holes. “Snack time for Iko,” he said. “Drive.”
Iko? Had I heard that name somewhere? Was it important? Bernie!
I heard the engine crank up and felt the boat swing around but couldn’t turn to see what Wes was doing in the stern, what with being so tangled up. The bow rose up and we sped across the water. Down on the deck, unable to see over the sides, I saw only the starless, moonless sky and Cale, picking up his hat from under one of the seats. It was all crushed up and dirty; I felt good about that. Cale flung it over the side, then stood in the bow, his back to me and his thin hair streaming in the wind. I barked just in case he was forgetting what I had in store for him, but couldn’t rouse up much sound at all, and now I’d somehow got my whole muzzle stuck in one of the net openings.
Time passed, how much I didn’t know, with nothing to hear but the throb of the engine, nothing to see but Cale’s back and the night sky. After a while, a jagged hole appeared in the clouds and the moon poked through. Bernie had explained all about the moon to Charlie. It had once been part of the earth! Bernie knew just about everything. He’d know what to do right now, for example. Something quick and blazing with the .38 Special would have been my guess.
Cale raised his hand, made the slow-down motion. The boat slewed around to a stop. The engine went silent, and then there was nothing to hear but the water’s peaceful lapping sounds around us.
Cale and Wes loomed up over me. Cale was closest, so I lunged at him, forgetting all about the net around me. How crazy was that? The truth was I couldn’t move. How could anyone forget a thing like that? I tried to snap at Cale through the gap in the netting, got nowhere with that either.
“You take that end,” Cale said.
They both stooped, both grunted, and next thing I knew they had me in the air, Wes on one end of the rolled-up net and Cale on the other.
“On three,” Cale said. They started swinging me. “One. Two. Three.”
And then I was airborne, sailing over the water for what seemed like a long time, my body all twisted up in the net. Three was not a number I had any use for: that was my only thought.
TWENTY-THREE
Everything is different underwater: the sights, so blurry; the sounds, actually kind of clear; the smells, not nearly so strong as above water and coming to me in a different way, impossible to describe; and the feel, which is the best part.
But not now. Now it was all bad. I was spinning slowly in blackness and also going down. I didn’t want to go down, wanted more than anything to go up. Up was the only place not so completely black. Swim, big guy! You’re a good swimmer. Swim! Bernie’s voice, so clear he could have been right beside me. The truth was he was even closer than that. I swam toward the place of incomplete blackness.
Swimming is a lot like trotting, except in the water, so I’m good at it, no question. But not now. Now I could hardly get anywhere, and all because of the net. The net wanted me to go down. I wanted to go up. Gotta want it, big guy. I wanted it! I wanted it! I wanted it more than the net wanted it the other way, if that makes any sense, probably not. I swam my hardest, my legs making the water go whoosh whoosh. Was I getting somewhere? Yes, the incomplete blackness seemed closer. The net was still all around me, tangling me up, but looser down here than on the boat, the water lifting and shifting the cords of the net, almost the way the breeze ruffles a picnic blanket, say you and Bernie and Suzie and Charlie were on an outing. Oh, how nice that would be!
I churned my legs, one paw poking through the net and then another, rose up and up. But maybe not fast enough, because now my chest felt like it was getting pressed by something heavy. Air! I needed air and I needed it right away! All I had to do was open my mouth and take in a big, big gulp—
No, Chet! Hold on and swim, just swim!
But what about the feeling in my throat, a feeling that I had to breathe this very moment?
Hold on!
I churned and churned, all this crushing going on against my chest, my eyes stretching like they were getting pressed right out of my head—not that,
please!—and then suddenly there was a loud splash, and I felt air.
Air! So wonderful! I’d never given a thought to the wonderfulness of air and wasn’t about to start now. My nose was stuck in one of the holes in the netting. I raised it as high as I could and just breathed. I breathed and breathed and breathed, paddling gently in warm calm water. But on the surface: that was the point. I paddled on the surface, breathing the soft warm air and filling up my whole body with it, paddled and breathed until I started sinking again, sinking out of the air. A terrible jolt of something—I wouldn’t like to call it fear—shot through me and I thrashed my way back up to the top.
What was going on? Wasn’t I a good swimmer? Hadn’t Bernie said so? Then that was that.
Think, big guy.
Good idea. I thought. And right away I thought about the net. It hadn’t given up yet, still wanted to carry me down. The net wasn’t made of heavy stuff, but taken all together it was heavy enough to sink me if I was paddling gently along. So therefore?
Paddle harder, Chet.
Perfect! And so quick, just when I needed it. Bernie handled the so-therefores, possibly a detail you’re familiar with. I paddled harder, all my legs sticking through the net now, and stayed on the surface, no problem at all, although I wished the net hadn’t got hold of my tail so tight, keeping me from moving it even the littlest bit.
I turned my head, although not as easily as usual, on account of the net having gotten twisted up in my collar. All I saw was the night, blackness everywhere, not a single light showing—a sight I’d seen once or twice on cloudy nights way out in the desert, so it shouldn’t have bothered me. But it did sort of bother me. The desert was my home.
No time for home thoughts at that moment. I paddled, not my hardest but pretty hard, and kept myself, or at least my eyes and nose, above the surface. From time to time a bit of water splashed in my mouth. It tasted salty—saltier than the water in the bayou although not as salty as the ocean at San Diego. Bernie had told me not to drink that salty San Diego water. What about this water, not quite so salty? I tried some—not bad at all—and was realizing how thirsty I was when the clouds parted and out came the moon again.
It stunned me. Had I ever seen anything as beautiful? So big and round and white and shining: it reminded me of Bernie, the shining part. And all around me sprang up tiny moons, bobbing on the water as far as I could see in every direction, beauties piled on beauty.
Whoa: every direction? There was water around me for as far as I could see in every direction? That couldn’t be good. I was fine for now, paddling along, but wasn’t getting back on solid land the goal? Where was I even supposed to aim for? What if I ended up swimming in the wrong—
I stopped right there, not even letting that thought get a foothold—just another one of my strengths. The point was, I had to keep swimming, and swimming pretty hard, if I wanted to keep my nose in the air. And I did want that, wanted it more than anything. I swam, and swam some more. Not so bad: I had the moon for company.
The moon slid across the sky the way it does, too slowly to see, except whenever you checked it again it wasn’t in the same place. Bernie had explained the whole thing to Charlie once, using a basketball, a tennis ball, and a golf ball. The fun we’d had with that, even though basketballs are just about impossible for me. But that day, the great day of the moon explanation, was when I figured out that by curling back my upper lip I could get one of my long teeth—humans called them dogteeth! What a life!—into a nice position for poking it through the skin of the basketball, which promptly shrinks down to manageable size.
Charlie had laughed and laughed. Not Bernie; at least not right away.
I checked the moon. Someplace different, just as I’d thought. A breeze sprang up, and right away waves rose on the water, not too big, maybe as high as my buddy Iggy, back home. The problem was that both the breeze and the waves were in my face. How come they couldn’t have been coming from different directions? Not that I was complaining, but with the net trying to drag me down, it was easier to turn around and paddle in the exact opposite way, with the wind and waves at my back. So that was what I did.
I paddled along, glancing at the moon now and then, and after some time realized it was moving right along with me. That felt pretty good: always nice to have a buddy. One funny thing: the water, which had been nice and warm at the beginning, now seemed colder. Not a problem: I was a pretty big dude—a hundred-plus pounder, in case I haven’t mentioned that already—and could handle the cold. But what was this? All of a sudden I was shivering? Shivering for the first time in my life: I only knew what shivering even was from seeing Charlie step out of a cold shower, the day Bernie had made a cost-saving adjustment to the water heater pipes, all fixed by the plumber in no time.
I stopped paddling, rose up and down on the waves, and shivered, forgetting for a moment about the net. But the net—which was showing signs of getting heavier—hadn’t forgotten about me, and as soon as it realized no paddling was going on, it dragged me down under. I snapped out of the whole shivering thing and got my legs churning. I churned and churned away but didn’t reach air. Instead, things got darker and darker. That made me kind of wild, twisting and flailing around in the cold blackness, and in the twisting and flailing I happened to see where the moonlight was coming from: the exact direction I’d been churning away from! How crazy was that! I got a grip, told myself never to lose it again, and swam my hardest toward the moonlight, surprisingly far away. I swam and swam, the chest-crushing now hitting me even worse than before, that feeling in my throat telling me I had to breathe growing stronger and stronger, and all of a sudden it was the strongest thing I’d ever met up with in my whole life, stronger than me. Yes, much stronger than me. I opened my mouth and bubbles flew out and I breathed.
Oh, no: not air, but cold salty water was what I breathed. I choked and gagged and then splashed up onto the surface, felt the air, choked and gagged some more, and finally puked up water, lots of it. And felt better right away, always the way with puking. I paddled on, after a while realizing I was now paddling into the wind and the waves. Hadn’t I decided to go the other way? I circled around and swam.
Get the picture, net? I’m swimming
I only forgot to keep swimming a few more times, hard to say how many, but more than two, and always because of getting distracted by the shivering. Would you believe it was the same thing every time: the net pulling me under; swimming in the wrong direction, down instead of up; racing to the surface; fighting the urge to breathe until it couldn’t be fought anymore; puking in the warm night air? Although the truth was the air no longer felt so warm on my head—by that time poking completely through the hole in the net where just my nose had been stuck before, but twisted even tighter than ever in my collar—plus the wind was blowing harder and the waves had risen. I checked the moon once more—it was swimming, too, just like me except across the sky!—and maybe on account of waves being on my mind just then I got hit by what Bernie calls a brainwave. Possibly my very first: I couldn’t think of another. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the brainwave itself: all I had to do was keep my eye on the moon! If I kept my eye on the moon at all times, the net couldn’t pull me under. The truth was I really didn’t want the net to pull me down again even once more. Inside that truth was another truth I didn’t even want to think about, namely the possibility that the next time I wouldn’t have the strength to—
I remembered I didn’t want to think about that and stopped on a dime. Bernie could shoot dimes right out of the sky: I’d seen him do it. I paddled along, my eyes on the moon and my mind on Bernie shooting dimes out of the sky, and then simply on Bernie. I felt pretty good, maybe not tip-top, but no complaints. After a while Bernie’s face appeared on the moon, as clear as day. Then I did feel tip-top. I paddled along and watched Bernie. Sometimes he gave me a smile. My tail would have wagged if it hadn’t been so tightly caught in the net. It tried anyway. How crazy was that?
I
kept my eyes on Bernie-in-the-moon. His lips weren’t moving, but I could hear his voice: Doin’ good, Chet, doin’ good. I got so caught up in that that I forgot the other thing I was supposed to be doing, besides keeping my eyes on Bernie-in-the-moon. What was it, again?
Swim.
Swim, that was it! What was with me, forgetting a simple thing like that? I swam and kept my eyes where they had to be to make sure the net didn’t get its way. Also I shivered, an extra thing I didn’t actually have to do. It happened anyway. So I was doing one more than two things, which would make . . . Hey! I was right on the edge of what would you call it? A breakthrough? Would the answer be—
On, no. Not a noseful of cold salty water. Was I sinking again? I really didn’t think I could—
Churn, big guy, churn! Churn for your life!
I churned, better believe it. I churned up that water big-time with my legs, or at least kept them moving a bit, and my nose rose up out of the waves, and I breathed in the lovely air. I was doing not bad. Getting my legs to cooperate—which I’d never even thought of before—now took some extra effort; other than that, no problems. I told my legs in no uncertain terms, whatever that might have meant, to do their stuff, and they sort of did. But perhaps, what with all that extra effort, it took me longer than it should have to notice that the moon was gone, although Bernie’s face was still there, drifting in the sky. Not long after finally getting with the program on that, I also grew aware that the sky itself was no longer dark, but quite lightish, almost like it was day. Right around then a real big wave raised me high up and I saw . . . green? Was green one of the colors I wasn’t supposed to be good at? I was pretty sure I saw some green in the distance, and even if not it really didn’t matter, because I smelled green: green, green, unmistakable green, specifically the rot all the green had in these parts. Had I ever smelled anything so beautiful? I didn’t even try remembering. I just swam toward the green, my legs pitching in on their own when they felt like it. Bernie faded very slowly from the sky. I watched him till he was completely gone and then for some time longer. Meanwhile, the green rot smell grew more and more powerful. I finally took my eyes off the sky and had a look around.
The Sound and the Furry Page 18