But durn if it wasn’t the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.

Cecily Bob grabbed Pop like a rolled-up carpet and pushed him headfirst out the window. I heard the sound of a thud, like Pop had smacked on something wooden.

A boat. They were loading him up in a boat, floating right there on the slough.

Cecily Bob slithered back out the window, thunking down on the boat, where I’m guessing Mr. Hugo waited with my daddy. I could hear the both of them laughing, the slap of oars on water.

Now I was faced with a conundrum. On the one hand, Pop told me to stay still. He was quite obviously scared, both for his safety and for mine. These men were killers and they’d bested Pop easy, even if he had let them. What chance did I think I had against them? On the other hand, this was my daddy we were talking about, the man I loved more than any other in the world. Heck, I’d just gotten here, finally met back up with him after years apart, and folks were already stealing him away.

Frankly, that ticked me off. Who were these men to show up and steal Pop away on the very night I came to see him? The nerve of those guys. So what if they were killers? They had my daddy.

I scrambled out of the loft with Pop’s knapsack in my hands. I snatched up his knife from the floor and sprinted out the door of the cabin, around back to where Pop kept his skiff. The moon was bright and full, casting a white road down the water. I could see the two men up ahead in a dinghy, rowing fast, my daddy tied up between them.

If I was going to catch them, I had to hurry.

I pushed the skiff into the slough and climbed inside. I paddled my way to deeper water, and before I knew it, the river had caught me.

The current was real strong, I had forgotten that. I had forgotten that even though it looked still and brown and almost solid, like a dirt road, the river was always moving, always churning wild underneath.

“Water,” Pop always said, “is the most powerful force on earth.”

Mom would snort. She used to be playful back then, when I was a little kid, back in the swamp. I could remember how she’d give Pop a hard time and then giggle when he snapped back at her.

“What, pray tell, is so funny about water being the most powerful force on earth?” Pop would say.

Mom would shake her head. “You’re wrong, David. It ain’t water that’s so powerful. It’s love.”

Pop would chuckle at that. “Fine, have it your way. Water and love. Nothing’s stronger than water and love.”

The river was black and the stars shone in it like open mouths. Fog hung low on the water like the river’s own breath, and I saw the dinghy, the two men rowing, not too far ahead. I could hear their cackles like goblin laughs, like two little hunched-over demons poking at their prey.