She put the gun down and watched the twin marbles poised on the surface of the dark canal. “He must be over twelve feet long.”

“Makes you think twice about sticking your hand in the water.”

She took the oar and shoved them clear of a hyacinth raft, moving the skiff quietly, letting the light play on the surface fifty feet ahead. An animal swam into the beam and she dropped the oar, picking up the gun.

“Damn it, I lost sight of that rat.” She handed him the spotlight. “Shine it up for me.”

He swung the beam over to the levee side, on the left, and as soon as he touched the nutria with the light, she fired. The shot missed the brain and the animal tumbled wildly into the shallows. She ripped off three shots as fast as she could pump. “Let’s go get it,” she said, resting the crescent butt plate on her thigh.

The animals were not easy to find with the light, but once their eyes fired up in its beam, she would pump a round between them. After an hour they had piled twenty new animals inside. The skiff was wallowing low in the water, loaded with a hill of bodies so high Colette could no longer walk to the stern. Paul bailed what he knew was mostly blood from the bilge with his coffee can. He was done in; his muscles felt separated from the bones and lay like dead fish under his skin. He gritted his teeth and waited for her to give up first, to ask him how he felt, so he could say “All right,” but in such a way that would make her say she’d had enough. But she kept shooting and reaching down, bailing in the carcasses, not wearing a glove now, heedless of the knifelike carroty incisors. He put his fingers over the side, surprised at how near the water was to his hand.

“Colette, we don’t have much freeboard left.” He wasn’t going to ask to go. He would let facts decide the issue. He watched her head move around toward him, and he tried to guess her expression.

“Start the engine, then.” Her voice came like a cool note of music. “I’ll hold the light.”