"Why didn't you?"
"No time," I said. "If I lost contact with you, I wouldn't have known where to look."
She nodded.
"I think you are very brave," she said.
"I'd feel braver if I wasn't so scared," I said.
"Maybe he won't follow us," Jeannie said. "Maybe he'll wake up and find me gone and say to hell with it. Or maybe he won't even remember I was with him. He forgets stuff a lot."
"Or maybe he'll come after us like a bat out of hell. My uncle Cash always says that you can hope for the best, but you need to be ready for the worst, you know?"
"Yes," she said.
I felt my eyes blink shut for a moment and my head drop. I jerked my head up and opened my eyes.
"We gotta sleep," I said.
"Okay," she said.
I worked us over to the shore with my broken oar and pulled the boat into a little cove.
"Can you carry the stuff?" I said.
Jeannie nodded and gathered the blanket roll into a kind of a sack. I bumped the rowboat against the bank. Pearl hopped out and began to sniff around. Jeannie climbed out carrying the blankets and stuff. I tied the rowboat to a bush that hung over the water. Then I climbed out and followed Pearl and Jeannie up the bank. It was dark under the trees. I could hear Pearl snuffling around in the darkness. We were in a small clearing under some high pine trees. I was so tired I could barely stand.
Jeannie took the food from the blankets. I gave Pearl some peanut butter and crackers. Then I took a blanket and gave the other one to Jeannie.
"Will you be able to sleep?" I asked.
"Maybe. What if he comes and spots the boat?" Jeannie said.
I took the rope and strung it about a foot off the ground across the area between us and the river.
"He won't see this in the dark, maybe trip on it. Might wake us up, or at least Pearl, and maybe we can get away. Right now, I gotta sleep."
The ground was covered with pine needles. I got rid of a couple of sticks and a rock and lay down with the blanket around me. The blanket didn't smell so good. But I was too tired to care. Jeannie lay down beside me, and Pearl burrowed between us.
"My father is afraid of dogs," Jeannie said. "Always was. Says it's 'cause somebody set their dogs on him when he was a kid."
"Good," I said, and fell asleep.
Chapter 19
"Do you happen to have a jackknife on you, as we speak?" Susan said.
I grinned and took a small buck knife out of my pants pocket.
"Surprise, surprise," Susan said. "Same knife?"
"No," I said, "but same kind."
"And has it been useful?"
"Very," I said. "My father used to trim his nails with his."
"With a knife?"
"Yeah."
"Egad," Susan said.
"What's wrong with that?" I said.
"I grew up a nice Jewish girl in Swampscott, Massachusetts. I know nothing of the world of bears and buck knives."
"I've done what I can to educate you."
Susan nodded.
"And I'm grateful," she said. "So did her father show up in the night?"
"No," I said. "I slept like we used to sometimes, when we were kids. Close your eyes for a moment at night and open them a second later and it's morning."
"I remember," Susan said.
"When I opened my eyes, I was looking up through the trees and seeing blue sky. There were a few white clouds, and the birds were singing. I didn't know where I was for a minute. Pearl was sleeping beside me on her back with her feet in the air, and Jeannie was beyond her. And I sat up and looked around and remembered."
"What did you do about the bathroom?" Susan said.
I smiled.
"I was embarrassed to death thinking about it. But Jeannie just got up and said to me, âI have to go to the bathroom,' and strolled off into the woods. I scooted off in the other direction."
"Women are generally calmer about such matters," Susan said.
"I didn't realize nice Jewish girls from Swampscott even went to the bathroom."
"We don't," Susan said. "But I have a lot of non-Jewish friends."
"Like me," I said.
"Especially like you," she said. "Was she cute?"
"Jeannie?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Hard to describe. I mean, she had long brown hair and even features and her skin was kind of pale and she had nice lips, sort of full. Like yours. But what I remember most about her was this kind of softness she had, gentleness maybe, but affectionate. I bet she grew up to be a passionate woman."
"Like me," Susan said.
"Well, maybe not that passionate."
"So what'd you do?" Susan said.
"We ate some Oreos for breakfast and drank a little of the Coke, and then I climbed a tree and looked around. I couldn't see anything on the river. I couldn't see anything inland except more trees. No highways, no towns. No sound of traffic, no church bells, no factory whistles, no sirens, nothing."
"And you didn't know where you were," Susan said.
"Not really. I didn't know how fast we were going on the river. So, I didn't know how far downriver we were. I could tell from where the sun came up what direction we were heading. But that aside, I hadn't a clue."
"So what did you do?"
I shrugged.
"I decided to keep going until I found a bridge, or a highway or a town or something," I said.
"Going further away from where you wanted to be."
"I didn't know what else to do," I said.
"Like your father said, you were smart. You knew when not to fight. So you got back in the boat?"
I nodded.
"Back in the boat," I said.
Chapter 20
It would have been peaceful drifting along on the river, under the trees, if there weren't somebody after us with a bowie knife. And if we had something besides Oreo cookies for breakfast.
"Do you think he's still after us?" Jeannie said.
I noticed dark bruises on her wrists. Probably from when her father grabbed her.
"Don't know that he's not," I said.
"He'll be drunk," Jeannie said.
"Still?" I said.
"He's drunk all the time," Jeannie said. "I don't think he can stand being him if he's sober."
"I wonder how he got to be that way," I said.
"I used to wonder that too," Jeannie said. "Now I don't even care. He's too awful."
"Was there ever a time he was nice?" I said.
"No."
"Poor devil," I said.
"Poor wife and daughter," Jeannie said.
"You don't like him at all," I said.
"I hate him," Jeannie said.
I had nothing to say to that.
Big drops of rain began to splat on the water, sending out wide ripples. I looked up through the leaves and the sky was dark. It got darker as I watched. And the rain came harder. Pearl didn't mind being wet. But she didn't like the feel of the raindrops hitting her. Jeannie unrolled the blankets and put one over Pearl. She offered me the second one.
"No," I said. "You."
"But what about you?" she said.
"I'm a Spenser," I said. "Tough."
She smiled and put the blanket over her head and around her shoulders.
"My hair must be a mess," she said.
"Kind of," I said.
"You didn't have to agree so quick," Jeannie said.
"But you still look good," I said.
"Ha!" Jeannie said.
The rain came harder. It was quite dark under the trees. The river meandered mostly, in big looping curves, so that ten miles on the river might be one mile as the crow flies. At the moment we were in one of the more or less straight stretches, and ahead of us I could see something through the murk. It might have been a bridge. The rain came straight down and fast. It was hard to see through it. We drifted toward whatever the something was, and when we got close enough, we saw it was a railroad bridge.