He stood up, wobbly in the knees, and grabbed the long oar, stirring it through the water on one side, then the other. Two animals began crossing the canal at the same time, one fifty feet ahead, one twice that distance. He could see only a vague movement where the farther animal swam, but she shot it first, as soon as it reached the bank, before lining the nearer animal in her sights and blowing a hole through the top of its skull.

“You didn’t get the one down there a ways.”

She squinted ahead in the long shadows. “Yes I did. It’s on the bank.”

And when he poled down there, it was.

They worked the sluggish canal for three miles, up to where crooked black oaks grew low and near the water, their limbs strung with Spanish moss shining silver in the reflection of the black swamp runoff. Forty-seven nutria lay heaped on the duck-boards, and the bilge ran red. Between shots she sat in the bow and thought of easy California, wondering what she would be doing if Dirk had not taken her job away. She saw the yellow fangs of a rat flash five feet away and she imagined it was her former boss as her slug slapped it dead between the eyes.

In the oak grove they drifted through wiry garden spiderwebs spanning the overhang from both banks, and several of the big spiders fell into the boat. She watched one crawl up to her kneecap, its orange-and-black legs and irridescent green body moving deliberately, before she backhanded it overboard. “Let’s turn around,” she said. “The boat’s crawling with these things.”

He poled the skiff into a wide spot and turned them. It was seven-thirty then, and nearly dark. “The spiders don’t bother me much. I’m scared we’ll hit a hornet’s nest in these branches.” He checked every low-hanging limb carefully with the light. On one was a black snake, which he ignored. On another was a small cone of yellow jackets, and he wondered how he had missed seeing them on the way up. Colette raised her rifle to shoot a nutria that had shown its eyes in Paul’s beam, and she let out a yell.

“What’s wrong?”

“A spider big as your hand. Right on top of the barrel.” She shook it off into the water.

“Hey,” he yelled. “Don’t point that thing at me.” He held up an arm.

“I didn’t point it at you.”

“Bullshit, you swung it past my face.”

“I wouldn’t shoot you. You’re not worth two dollars.”

He didn’t say anything, and she sat down to replenish the gun’s magazine. When she looked over, he was staring into the bilge, reaching for the bailing can. “I’m sorry,” she said.