?Weren?t we?? Kelly asks.
She glances back at him, but Kelly keeps the scope trained on the surface of the water. Caitlin pushes her palm deeper into my chest.
?You believe me, don'?t you??
?Of course.?
?If you ever worry about what he was saying, then Quinn got what he wanted.?
?I know.?
Her anxious eyes remain on mine for several seconds; then she hugs her cheek against my chest. As I stroke her hair, three quick splashes come out of the dark.
Caitlin stiffens. ?What?s happening??
?It?s starting,? says Kelly. ?Jesus.?
?He?s dead, isn?t he??
A shriek of terror pierces the night.
?Guess not.?
?Have they got him?? she asks, squeezing my wrist tight enough to cut off my circulation.
The next scream is defiant, like that of a hiker shouting at a grizzly bear to forestall an attack. Sound can carry for miles over water, and from this distance it?s as though the nightmare is playing out only a few feet from us. Wild splashing echoes over the lake, as though a dozen kids are leaping into it from tree limbs. Then a high wail rolls out of the dark, rising in pitch until a glottal squawk cuts it off, and I know without looking that Quinn?s head was just dragged beneath the surface. The sound of thrashing water makes my skin crawl.
?I can?t listen,? Caitlin says, shuddering against me. ?Do something, Kelly. Make it stop.?
Keeping the night-vision scope trained on its target, Kelly reaches back blindly toward the dashboard. I step around Caitlin and give him his pistol from the storage slot. He raises it quickly with his right hand, aiming along a path parallel to the scope held against his eye.
?I need light.?
I scoop the flashlight from the aft deck and point it along the path of his aim, but I see neither man nor beast in its beam, only a churning maelstrom of water like a sand boil behind a saturated levee.
?My God,? breathes Caitlin.
?He?s gone,? Kelly says with finality.
?We should go too.?
Kelly lowers his pistol, but he doesn?'t take his eyes from the slowly subsiding frenzy.
?Let?s
? Caitlin pleads. ?I want to forget this.?
I nod, thinking,
EPILOGUE
FIVE DAYS LATER
The season has turned at last. Before we even got off Lake St. John, a wall of rain rolled out of the west and covered the land for twelve hours before moving on. Behind the rain came a cold wind that took the last illusions of summer with it. The leaves on most trees are still green, some so dark they'?re almost black, but now the bluff is splashed with orange and yellow sprays of autumnal color.
Caitlin and I are on the river again, this time in Drew Elliott?s old Bayrider, which I borrowed from his storage building. We?'ve come to spread Linda Church?s ashes. We chose the river because it was the place where Tim and Linda found each other. On shore, Tim belonged to his wife and son. But on the
where he went to work as a sort of penance for his squandered birthright, he found another lost soul who might have become much more, had she been born with Tim?s advantages.
Caitlin and I haven'?t spoken much since the night Quinn died on Lake St. John. I?'ve spent most of my private time with Annie and my parents, mulling over the past and wondering about our future, but the aftermath of what happened on the
has kept Caitlin busy day and night. In addition to writing stories and fending off requests from other media, she has funded and overseen the effort to rescue the fighting dogs Sands kept on both sides of the
river, and also to return the many stolen pets to their owners. Some of the fighting dogs had to be put down, but others will be adopted. So far, twenty-three dogs and cats have been returned to homes as far away as Little Rock, Arkansas. I suspect that this whirlwind of activity has helped distract Caitlin from the aftermath of what we did on the lake that night.
Kelly left town the morning after Quinn died. We walked down to the bluff together and watched the big diesel boats push barges up and down the river for a while. The
had already been towed to a refitting yard for repairs, so once again Pierce?s Landing Road led only to an empty stretch of water. Leaning on the fence near the gazebo, Kelly told me that he?d spent the previous night reading a copy of Mark Twain?s
that my father had lent him. It seemed an odd choice after what we?d done at the lake, but I supposed Kelly needed a way to come down from all that had happened that final day.
?You know,? he said, ?if you count the Missouri as the main channel of this river, the Mississippi was the longest river in the world until army engineers shortened it by three hundred miles. Longer than both the Nile and the Amazon.?
?I didn't know that.?
?Me either. In 1811, there was an earthquake so big that part of the river flowed backward for hours.?
?I have heard that story. New Madrid, right??
Kelly nodded. ?Created a hole so big that the lower Mississippi flowed backward until the hole filled up. There?s a lake there now. It?s in Tennessee.?
Kelly rarely chatters to hear his own voice, so his musings prompted a question. ?Why do I get the feeling there?s a message here? Are you going Zen on me??
?Maybe so, grasshopper.
That'?s the message. Man wants to control this river, but the river wants to go where it will. And in the end, it will.?
?I still don'?t get it. Beyond the obvious, I mean.?
?Look out there,? he said, gesturing with his arm to take in the great sweep of the river. ?River pilots like Sam Clemens had to learn everything about the Mississippi. Every bend, cut, crossing, chute, island, hill, sandbar, and snag along thirteen hundred miles.
Then they had to learn it all over again on each passage, because the river changed that fast. Not many men had the brains to do that, and even fewer had the guts to risk the lives of a boat full of people at every turn. Steamboats wrecked all the time.?
?Uh-huh. And??
?Well?I could see how a river pilot might start feeling like his job was futile?even absurd. There certainly were easier ways to make money.?
I suddenly saw where he was going. ?Like writing, for instance??
?Well, Twain did a little writing, yeah. But he did his share of piloting too. And he was proud of it.?
