All Simon hears in the glare is “DNR!” The other three are already charging downstream along the bank, spray from their heavy strides breaking and shimmering in the fog that holds the spotlight like a phosphored cloud. Simon takes off after them and he hears a motor cough up and the quick shifting of gears. He looks behind and sees people with sun-bright flashlights pounding in the river after them. He looks ahead and sees the lights of a three-wheeler bouncing through the brush and scattered trees of the riverbank. Jumbo, Boo and Ned keep running straight. Simon veers off toward the center channel and around the island where Jumbo and Boo can’t go with their waders because the water is too deep. The water gets deeper and it splashes against his chest. The current is strong and he feels his feet go out from under him. His baseball cap pops off his head and bobs and drifts along the top, turning in the current until it sinks, only to be washed up limp and muddy in the cattails at the next bend where no one will ever find it.

22

Simon emerges from the forest three days later.

The water carried him downriver into the weeds, where he lay gasping, watching the headlights of the three-wheelers cross back and forth on the other bank until the game wardens shut off the motors. He imagined them dismounting; swinging their booted legs high over the plastic saddle like mounted cowboys. He could hear them swearing and talking. The sound of cigarette lighters carried across the river. Simon lay flat, his boots full of water, and pressed his body deeper into the mud as he heard the game wardens grunt and heave the washtub full of fish into their truck. He lay sucking shallow breaths and thought he was too close, so he edged himself into deeper water and began to float downstream along with the sticks and spongy logs washed away from the banks. He floated feet first and kept his head above water by moving his arms out to the side, as if boating down the river on a crucifix. It was still dark and the night sky limned the banks into a jagged border with no markings except that of blackness against the near-dark sky. The river turned sharply and Simon couldn’t steer himself back to the center of the channel and he washed up gently in the logs and brush along the riverbank.

He stood and grabbed the red willow that grew half-submerged in the shallows and carefully climbed the bank into the night-cast shadow of spruce and cedar, trees he knew not the name of.