“Yes!”
“Did he give you directions?”
Mutely, Ettie went to the car and got in. Two minutes passed before Susan slipped into the driver’s seat next to her. “Ettie?”
Ettie said nothing, and Susan started the engine.
“Get out of here,” Ettie told her. “Pull out onto the road again. Turn left.”
“That’s away from the cabin. I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Home-home,” Ettie said. “Not away-home. Turn left.”
“Our bags are back at the cabin.”
“Left.”
Susan turned left.
“Go down this road,” Ettie said, “ ‘til you see a road off to the right through the corn field. There’s no sign and it’s easy to miss.”
Wanting to do more than glance at her, Susan slowed instead. Twenty miles an hour. Fifteen. Ten.
“Slower,” Ettie told her. “Follow it to the woods. Stop the car and get out. Look for the path. Follow the path to the house. A Injun named George Jones lives in the house. He knows. Give him ten dollars.”
“You said ‘Injun’,” Susan muttered. “You never even say Indian.”
Ettie said nothing.
Half a mile later, Susan saw the road, braked too late, backed up, and turned down it — a red-dirt road barely wide enough for a farm truck, two ruts flanking a strip of grass and weeds.
When the road would take them no farther, she and Ettie got out.
“Please don’t lock the car,” Ettie said. “I’ve got a feeling we might want to get in and get away quick.”
Susan stared, then shrugged. “I think I see the path. I’m going down it. You can wait in the car if you want to, but it may be quite a while.”
“You won’t leave the keys?”
“No.”
“Two will be safer than one,” Ettie said.
The house was a shack, perhaps ten feet by fifteen. An Indian woman was tending a tiny plot of vegetables. Susan said, “We’re looking for George Jones,” and the Indian woman straightened up and stared at her.
“We need his help. We’ll pay him for it.”
The Indian woman did not speak, and Ettie wanted to cheer.
Susan opened her purse and took a ten-dollar bill from her wallet. She showed it to the Indian woman. “Here it is. Ten dollars. That’s what we’ll pay him to guide us to Hunter Lake.”
Something that was no expression Susan had ever seen before flickered in the Indian woman’s eyes. And was gone. “He fish,” she said.
“In Hunter Lake?”
Slowly, the Indian woman nodded.
Susan breathed a sigh and gave Ettie one triumphant glance. “Then take us to him, or tell us how to find him.”
The Indian woman held out her hand, and Susan dropped the ten into it. The Indian woman clutched it, wadding it into a tiny ball.
“How do we get there?”
The Indian woman pointed. The path was so narrow as to be almost invisible even when they were on it. A game trail, Susan decided. “Deer made this,” she told Ettie.
If Ettie spoke, twenty or thirty feet behind her, she could not be heard.
“They need water,” Susan explained, “just like us. They must go to Hunter Lake to drink.” Privately, she wondered how far it was, and whether her feet would hold up. She was wearing her jogging shoes, but she rarely jogged more than a couple of blocks. Ettie, in jeans, T-shirt, and loafers, was probably worse off still. But younger, Susan told herself. Ettie’s a lot younger, and that counts for a lot. “Ettie?” She had stopped and turned.
“Yes, mother?”
“Am I going too fast for you? I can slow down.”
“A little bit.”
Susan waited for her to catch up. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
Susan bent and kissed her. “Really, dear. I love you. You know that. I’ll always love you.”
Ettie shook her head. “That’s not how it will be. Not really. I’ll always love you, Mom.”
Susan kissed her again. “Now tell me what’s troubling you.”
“I was wondering if I’d turned off the TV before we left.”
“Really, dear?”
Ettie nodded.
“Is that all?”
“Why I’d told you that stuff. About the Native American. All this. I could have just said he wouldn’t tell, only I didn’t.”
“Because you’re an honest, decent person, Ettie.”
Ettie shook her head. “Because he made me. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.”
“Well, come on.” Susan turned and began to walk again. “It’s probably right over the next hill.”
“It’s a long, long way,” Ettie said despondently. “Besides, this path doesn’t even go there. We’ll walk until we’re too tired to walk any more, and be lost in the woods. Nobody will ever find us.”
In point of fact, Susan was right. The path skirted the crest of the hill and descended sharply through close-packed hardwoods. For almost twenty minutes Susan and Ettie picked their way through these, Susan holding up branches for Ettie, who hurried under them, waving away mosquitoes.
As abruptly as the explosion of a firework, they emerged into sunlight. Water gleamed at the bottom of a steep hillside thick with ferns. On the other side of the gleam, water like molten silver cascaded down the face of a miniature cliff.
Susan raised her camera. A hundred yards or so down to the water — from here, she could only suggest that by showing a few fern fronds at the bottom of the picture. Then the water, then the cliff with its waterfall, then white clouds in the blue sky, and thank God for sky filters.
She snapped the picture and moved to her left.
“Are we really going to stay here?” Ettie asked.
“Only overnight, dear. We’ll have to carry some gear from the car — not the tent, just the sleeping bags and a little food. It won’t be all that hard. Will you want to swim?”
Ettie shook her head, but Susan was looking through her viewfinder and did not see her. It wasn’t really a hundred yards, she decided. More like fifty. She snapped the picture, and decided the next should be taken at the water’s edge.
“Mom…”
She stopped and turned. “Yes, Ettie? What is it?”
“I wish you wouldn’t go down there.”
“Afraid I’ll fall in? I won’t, and I doubt that it’s very deep close to shore.” Susan turned and began walking downhill again. She was a little tired, she decided; even so, walking down a gentle slope over fern was remarkably easy.
“Mom!”
She stopped again.
“Where’s the Native American man, Mom? Where’s George Jones? He was supposed to be down here fishing. I can see the whole lake. There’s nobody here but us.”
Suddenly, Ettie was tugging at her arm. “It’s coming up! Get back!”
It was, or at least it seemed to be. Surely the lake had not been that large.
“It’s a natural phenomenon of some kind,” Susan told Ettie, “like the tide. I’m sure it’s harmless.”
Ettie had released her arm. Ettie was running up the slope like the wind. A loafer flew off one foot as Susan watched, but Ettie never paused. She walked up the slope to the spot, found the loafer, and looked back at the water.
In a moment more it would be lapping her feet.
She turned and ran, pausing for a moment at the highest point of the path to watch the water and take another picture. That was probably a mistake, as she realized soon after. The water had circled the hill, not climbed it. She ran then, desperately, not jogging but running for all that she was worth, mouth wide and eyes bulging, her camera beating her chest until she tore it off and dropped it. The Indian shack was nowhere in sight; neither was her car. Woods gave way to corn, and corn to woods again, and the water was still behind her. When the land over which she staggered and stumbled rose, she gained on the water, when it declined, the water gained on her with terrifying rapidity.