Bobby blew air through his lips. “Well!” he said. “Your own barlow is a special thing. Yes indeed. I remember when my papa got me my first barlow. Had a spring-steel sheepfoot blade, nickel bolsters en handle scales made out of a rhino’s horn. Of course, you can’t get rhino horn these days. At least that’s what they say on the TV. Not a bad thing, mind you, letting rhinos alone, but a body’s gotta wonder if you lay off ’em too long they don’t become as much a menace as ’em packs of coyotes we got around here. Imagine that, young man! Packs of rhinos!”
Bread looked at Tiffany and saw in her eyes that he should just listen politely, so he did. And Bobby went on about how he heard a good many of them bushranger fellers still made good livings letting rich folk shoot crocodiles on safari, but Bobby couldn’t see why anyone wanted to shoot a crocodile in the first place. They didn’t have no horns to speak of for making good barlows, and they had to smell something awful muddy. At least with turtles a person can rustle some soup, maybe make a pair of earrings for a girl from the bits of shell. Oh well.
Epilogue
THREE FLAT-BOTTOMED BOATS SMOKED AND HUMMED THEIR WAY upriver through the black water. The breeze felt cool and good on Fish’s forehead. He sat on the rumbling aluminum floor, leaned back against his mom, who leaned back against the bench. Cattails and marsh grass scrolled past. The river bent west into the sunset, and Fish let the trees and sky and light wash over him.
Up ahead, Fish could see the silhouette of his grandfather in the first boat, kneeling in the prow and shielding his eyes from the sun, pointing out channels. Constable Bobby sat behind him, huddled in a blanket, while two of the soldiers looked at maps and steered and spoke into radios. As the boats banked, Fish turned for a moment to look back. In the last boat sat Bread, between Tiffany and Cal, all three wrapped up. Bread’s face was angled up into the orange light, his hair ruffled in the wind, his eyes closed, still and calm. Jacks stood in front of them all, with his paws up on the gunwale, his fur ruffled too, his tongue wagging.
Fish had already finished telling his mom how the river spit him up, how Bread’s dad came at them, how the bruin bear came. He told her everything—about how they ran and swam, about how cold the rain was. He told her about his grandfather astride a horse, peering out over a river. He told her about Bread facing down the sheriff, and the man with antlers, and the belly of the turtle he didn’t eat. He told her what it felt like to go over the falls, tumble through all that darkness and thunder. He told her what the trees sounded like in that storm. He told her about their raft. And then he said something that made her weep and smile and hug him to her chest.
“Dad’s not gone, Mom,” he told her. “We can’t see him, but he’s not gone.”
His mom trembled. “You’re right,” she said, smiling through her tears. She kissed his head, smelled his hair, rubbed the bones and muscles in his back and shoulders. “He’s still here,” she whispered. “I can feel him.”
THE BOAT PITCHED. ITS SQUARE BOW LEAPT AND SLAPPED THE WATER. The sun was lower in the sky now, orange and red, and darkness would come soon. The moon rose. The soldiers tightened clamps of spotlights to gunwales. The breeze felt colder. Something about the air felt like heaviness, something about the transition of light, or the smell of the boat exhaust. The boats hummed, and Fish couldn’t put his finger on it. And then it struck him. It was the weight of a dead man, still buried in the river. They hadn’t found him. The soldiers talked to Cal about it in hushed tones, turned their backs to Fish and Bread. Fish tried to picture Bread’s dad down there, waving in some dark current, pinned in the rocks, but when he did, it mixed together in his tired mind with all the other ways the boys imagined saving Bread from his father. There was the time they buried him in the anthill. There was the time they ran him down with tractors. And now there was the time they went over a waterfall, and the bruin bear came, and how it all buried the man for good. Fish couldn’t hold it all in his mind.
The river spread out into a tangled maze of marshes and channels now. Fish’s grandpa pointed, then held up his hand. As they passed the bay where the storm had hit, all of the boats slowed down and gathered together. The trees were all topped off, the water still strewn with debris. Everyone watched the bay as it passed. There was silence and stillness except for the low thrum and pop of idling motors. Bread and Cal and Tiffany stared together at the wreckage. Fish stared at them and at it, and then looked upriver toward his grandfather. His grandpa was already looking back at him, and he gave Fish a nod. It was a slow nod, quiet, and Fish knew what it meant. It made something cold and brave rise inside him. Fish stirred in his seat. He and Bread were alive, but the darkness had come too close. It had come with so much force. And part of the heaviness Fish felt—and there was something of this in his grandfather’s nod, too—was the realization that the darkness would come again. He and Bread would grow up. They’d learn to drive cars.
