“Whatcha making?” I said.

“Fishing line,” she said. “Think you can find me a hook?”

We were moving so slow in that mucky green swamp water that it was no problem for me to reach out and catch hold of a twiny catbrier vine and cut an extra-mean-looking thorn off it. While I whittled that thorn sharp, Tally snatched a handful of crickets out of a passing spiderweb stretched between two low-hanging cypress limbs. I thought about making some dumb joke about her stealing from her own people but I was afraid she would take offense. The way she smirked to herself, though, I figured she was thinking the same thing. We hooked a cricket right through the thorn and dropped it in the water.

It took a while, hours even, but eventually Tally caught us a catfish, a long-whiskered wriggling sucker that Tally yanked into the boat and I bashed in the head with an oar. After that, Tally tried to get me to fish, but I wouldn’t dare.

“Why?” she said. “Is it because my webbing spooks you?”

“Naw,” I said. “It’s my bad luck. Last time I went fishing the only thing I hooked was a snapping turtle the size of a bear. It like to took my hand off.” I sighed. “Fish always get away from me, right when I pull them out of the water. Yes ma’am, letting me fish with your line is a bona fide waste of time.”

What I did do was stretch out on that skiff and take a good gander at my surroundings. I hadn’t been home to the swamp in ages, and oh my was it ever good to be back. I watched an egret swoop into the water and come up with a beak full of fish. I watched a woodpecker hammer away at a maplewood tree. I saw a meadow of yellowtops growing right up out of the water. I saw water bugs float themselves like pirate ships across the belly of the murk. I saw blackjack vines wriggle same as if they were snakes, you couldn’t half tell them apart. I saw swamp lilies so beautiful I wanted to yank them up and make a bouquet out of them.

“Now we got to stop,” said Tally, “so we can cook and clean this sucker.”

I nodded.

“But let’s be quick about it,” she said. “We’re after your daddy, ain’t we? Can’t let him get too far ahead of us.”

We pulled over on a sandbar, a small island rising out of the muck. It took a while but I gathered a few limbs from a dead, lightning-struck tree and built a fire, while Tally cleaned the fish. It wasn’t much divided between us, but at least it was a mouthful or two. I guessed that was better than nothing.

We drifted on and on, sometimes Tally rowing and sometimes me, not seeing a single durn sight of Pop. We passed some stilt houses here and there, windows shut tight, doors barred, little eyes peeping from behind the curtains. Folks were watching, and that was a fact. Wary is what they were. One old man stayed seated on his front porch with a rifle trained on us.