The load of rats went for $134, and then Nan drove Colette to the hospital for stitches. She insisted that she could not afford to pay, and she would not stay overnight to have her lungs monitored. After a long argument, the head nurse yelled down the hall that they would have to write off the sutures as charity, and even the poor, damaged people in the waiting area of the emergency room looked at her with traces of contempt. Colette was angry down to her soggy boots, but on the way home she looked at the crumpled money from her labor and could not believe that it could all have been taken for a few inches of thread and a squirt of medicine. She remembered the salary she had earned in California and could not begin to imagine what she had done with it all.

Paul’s sister drove her to the Thibodeauxs’ so she could give Paul his share. There, she found that ten people had shown up to see him, but he was still cleaning out the skiff, so they lighted on her for the story. Someone passed her a plate of white beans and rice with a gravy steak nestled on top, and as she ate, she told what happened, and then later retold it with more detail to Mrs. Fontenot, who had tottered in late in the telling. Those who had loaned her money for the venture were there, and she offered to pay them back, but they refused loudly and with much waving of hands.

Eventually she got free and walked over the levee, where she saw Abadie and Paul down in the willows, working on the skiff.

“Getting ready for this afternoon?” she called out.

Paul gave her a frightened look. “What’s happening this afternoon?”

“We’re going back after more nutria.”

After a while he stepped around the old man into the bow and then nearly fell out into the shallows. “You need a bigger bandage on your head. Some of your brains are leaking out.”

“Gas up at the landing and I’ll make sandwiches and buy another light.”

“Hell no. I’m about to drop.”

“Look,” she said, pointing at the water. “Look at all the work you’re doing. You’re feeling better already. Go home, get your mamma to rub you down with a whole tube of Deep Heat, and take a nap.”

“Why today, already?”

She showed him the little wad of bills. “This is why. Come on. We’ll wear life jackets this time and tow that little aluminum johnboat that’s under your daddy’s house. We’ll put some of the nutria in it and make better time that way.”

He took her by the arm and led her up the levee a few feet to a cypress drift log and sat her down. “How’s your head? Did they shave the cut?”