driftwood and went to the Pelican box and brought back a tube of Neosporin. “Here, wash your hands off and use some of this. Better if we let it breathe in open air than cover it. What they told me when I burned my thigh on the Kawasaki.”
“You did?”
“Fell over at like one mile an hour. A sizzling August afternoon. My inner thigh hit the motor and it made a sound I’d rather forget and smelled like pork chops.”
“Gross.”
“I jumped in the cow pond like a cartoon character. Bad idea. Not the cleanest water. By nightfall there were streaks running up my leg. Pop was at the Cattlemen’s Association meeting in the Springs. I called my neighbor’s mom, who was a nurse, and told her and she said, ‘Jack, you listen to me. That’s blood poisoning. It’s serious shit. Things can fall off.’ I looked down and saw how close it was to things and I drove myself straight to the ER.”
Jack’s hair was sticking out and he was immersed in the memory and wore a look of confounded horror. Wynn laughed. “You trying to scare me?”
“No, no. Sorry. You’ll be fine. But we’ll get it looked at as soon as we hit the village.”
Wynn sat beside his buddy. “She doesn’t look good.”
“I was thinking that. Something’s screwed up inside her. He hit her more than she told us about, or she blacked out.”
“Should we try to make a couple of miles before full dark?”
Jack shook his head. “We won’t get far. Plus we’re safe here. If he’da been anywhere near we’d have known about it by now.” Jack spat onto a chunk that had gone to ember and it hissed. “We were really lucky up above. He missed us at forty feet with a shotgun. That won’t happen again.”
“You don’t really like her.”
Jack’s head came around and he looked at Wynn and his eyes were dancing with the old mischief. “How should I know? Do you?”
Wynn shrugged. He pulled the canoe from his pocket and tugged free the clip knife and sprang it open with his thumb. He dug at the wood with the point where he was hollowing out the bow.
“You like her,” Jack said. “She’s your kinda gal. Smart, tough, no BS, probably pretty. She’d boss you around just like your mom.”
“Hey!” Wynn grinned. It was good to have the old Jack back. “You don’t like her?” he said. “I mean Maia. I know you love my bossy mom.”
Jack snagged the tin of Skoal from his breast pocket, where it had miraculously stayed buttoned through the swim. It was still wet but chewable. He said, “I think she comes from a world I don’t understand. That shit about competing publications. Why would you live like that?”
There was no answer forthcoming, but there was the contingent crackle of the fire and the wind fluttering through it. They were on the green side of the creek and they could hear loud crickets again. Jack said, “And how on God’s earth could that lead to murder? Murdering your wife?”
“He must have been drunk.”
“She didn’t say that.”
“No.”
Jack said, “I’ve been thinking of that Windigo story you told me. The hungry ghost. And how the country has been drying up. And those people dying on the river last year. Like maybe the whole river is cursed. Like whatever stalked those folks in the village could turn a marital spat into murder.”
Wynn remembered in a flash Jack pointing the gun above the last portage—his best friend. Had it been a real threat? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t say anything.
In the saying nothing and in the hushed tones of the fire there was a hum of something persistent and barely registered, the twang of a bass guitar string long seconds after the last note was struck. It thrummed the dusk almost without sound, like the quality of air before a lightning storm. Jack heard it first and sat up. Wynn stopped touching the edges of his burned face and listened.
It wasn’t a lightning storm or music, it was a motor, distinct now, distant but growing closer, and it lacked the chuff and throb of an outboard, it was smoother, steadier, it thrummed through the twilight with the modest growl of an electric engine. It was the two drunks. Had to be. Jack and Wynn stood. They glanced at the woman asleep on the pad and trotted to the water. And stood there side by side like some backcountry couple who hear