canoe floated, I stepped in and pushed out onto quiet water. I took six or seven strokes to get upriver from the falls and looked deep into the tangle of root and ferns for the spot where I’d first seen the floating bundle. The moon broke away again from its cover and flickered on the river surface.
Hoo, hoo.
The double notes of a barred owl sounded so close behind me the skin on my neck shivered.
I half turned my shoulders to look but my weight shifted in the unfamiliar boat and it started to roll. At the same instant, the first gunshot roared out of the darkness and I let the momentum of the canoe spill me into the water.
It was an ungodly noise in this quiet place and even though I was three feet underwater I heard the second shot explode the air. The round crackled through the shell of my overturned canoe and I swear I heard it sizzle through the water before it smacked hard into my thigh. The bullet felt like a dull iron poker. I could feel it sear through muscle and stop, trapped there. I thought about my neck. How I hadn’t even known the first time I’d been shot. The pain in this one was different, hot and cutting, but I stayed under, holding my breath, waiting for the next one.
He was up high, I thought. Maybe in the trees. I knew that with the moonlight, he’d see my white face the instant I came up, if he hadn’t already.
I looked up but could see nothing through the surface water. Blackness. A soft swirl of moonlight that wiggled and disappeared. I was still underwater, my lungs starting to ache. I couldn’t stay down but how do you raise your head when you know a bullet’s waiting for it? I felt for the canoe and my fingertips found the gunwale.
Could I come up under it? He had to think of that. My feet were in the soft river bottom. Could I push the boat to the river bank where I’d have some cover? My lungs were burning now. All the choices were bad.
I reached to touch the other side of the canoe and took the chance he knew I would, and came up into the trapped pocket of air. Now I was truly blind. But he didn’t fire.
“Just like shootin’ fish in a barrel, Mr. Free-man. Isn’t this just how the tourists like it?”
His voice sounded dull and muffled, bouncing off the hull of the canoe, echoing in the air inside. But there was no mistaking it. The smartass inflection. The way he broke my name into two words. I could see his bearded face in my head. The hard, sharp cheekbones. The dark sullen eyes with the flash of anger. It was Blackman.
“How’s it feel in there from the fish’s side of things, Freeman? You know, the tourists want to think it’s sport. But there ain’t much sport to it, is there?”
It was impossible from under the shell of the boat to tell the direction of his voice. But I could feel the current swirling around my legs. He would logically be upriver of the dam. I hung onto the edges of the boat and let it slowly drift.
“All them folks out for the wilderness experience. Hell, they don’t know wild until it comes up and really bites them. Right, Free-man? How’s wild feel under there, Free-man?”
His voice sounded different now. Louder. But closer? I was on my knees now. My foot caught on a root as I moved back with the current. The bullet wound was singing with pain. My right knee ground into a rock.
“Oh, they all want to feel the wild. ‘Take us out in the Glades so we can feel what it’s like.’ Shit. They don’t belong out here any more than you do, Free-man. All they do is steal it. Piss in it and spoil it. You’re no different, Free-man. Coming out here trying to live in my country.”
I could hear the water spill at the falls behind me. I couldn’t tell how close I was. I dug my feet into a wedge of rock. Shit. Why didn’t he just shoot?
“How about it, Free-man? You pissin’ in there?”
Thump!
Something hard and heavy hit the canoe hull and the trapped noise cracked inside and snapped in my ears.
“Huh? How about it, tourist?”
The force of wood on the hull rang again. This time dead center on a middle rib. It had to