Turning her over at once, he heard a blast of water come up. She heaved, began gasping, started to move under his fingers, and he listened to all of it, the sounds of her coming back. In five minutes she was in the world, and he found her twisting hands and held them. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m here.” He felt her pull her hands away, then grope openhanded, as though playing the piano. Touching her face, he found that her eyes were open, and he asked if she could hear him. In a tiny, croaking voice, she told him yes. Feeling carefully above her hairline, he found a three-inch-long cut slick with blood. He guessed she had struck her head on the bottom of the boat, maybe on the iron rudder.

“I feel awful,” she said. “Where am I?”

“On the bank. Be quiet.”

She turned her head and spat. “Have I been sick?” She began coughing violently, the spasms scouring her lungs.

“Yeah,” he said, falling back in the weeds, suddenly too weak to tend her. He listened to her move around, and he savored her motion.

“How did you fish me out? Did I come up by the boat?”

“I swam.”

Her voice was reedy, and she coughed again. “How long?”

“As long as I had to.”

He imagined that she was next to him, holding her head. “Jeez, how did you find me in the dark?”

“I swam as long as I had to.”

“How could you?” She put a hand on his arm to locate him, then took it back.

To Paul, the touch was like a live wire. “Don’t worry about it.” He turned on his side, ignoring a catbrier burning around his biceps.

*   *   *

In an hour they moved to the top of the levee, where the grass was short. Paul looked across what he imagined to be cane fields, but could see nothing, so they lay down again, endured the mosquitoes, and slept on and on toward sunrise. He awoke at the cry of an egret and sat up to find himself drenched with dew, the hair of his arms glistening like frost. The tops of cypresses were backlighted across the canal, and gradually daylight filled in the details of branches and leaves, the woods and marsh developing like a photograph in a tray. He looked down at Colette’s face, which was frowning through a smudge of blood and dirt. Examining the wound on the top of her head, he saw that it was a propeller cut. He wiped her face with the tail of his shirt, and she stirred and began to wake up slowly. He flexed his sore arms, wondering if he could pull her upright, out of the wet grass, then decided not to.