“Look,” she whispered.

Ahead of us glimmered a small fire burning on a patch of dry land that rose like a giant elbow from the water. Two figures were gathered around the fire, cooking something, I could smell it. It smelled awful. Tally and I ducked low in the boat, hoping we would drift past in the fog and the darkness and no one would notice, they wouldn’t see a thing of us.

It worked. We passed them by no problem, we drifted until they were far out of earshot. Tally slumped over, all relaxed and pleased with herself.

That was a close one.

But I didn’t feel that way, not one bit. It was a missed opportunity is what I was thinking.

“I got to find out who they are,” I said. “They might know something about my pop.”

I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling about those two. It was something bothering me deep in my guts.

“Buddy, that is about the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my whole durn life.”

“Probably is,” I said. “But I’m feeling better now, half-healed-up thanks to you, and Pop’s life is at stake. I’d do anything to save my daddy, and you know it. So what I got to do is this.”

I untied my boots then and slung them around my neck. Last thing you want to do is hop into water with your boots still on. That’s how folks drown, or best case that’s how folks lose their boots and have to wander around barefoot the whole rest of the journey. Tally rowed us over to a big cypress tree and half docked us there, tying a rope around a knotty root sticking up in the water. We were lucky we didn’t get stuck right there, we were, seeing as how shallow the swamp could get. Maybe what I was doing was brick dumb, or maybe I’d find some folks that could help me. Who knew? But it was Pop we were talking about, and Pop was worth the risk. So I took a deep breath and then I hopped. I held myself close and tried to splash as little as possible, and when I went under, it was so deep my feet couldn’t touch, and my head popped up into the air and I was treading water.

I swam my way toward the two men, paddling quiet as I could. My feet could touch bottom now, the marshy, soggy earth. They sank deep but I could walk, and boy did it feel good to touch ground again. I was waist-deep in the water when my knee kicked a log real hard and I tried to step over it but the log rose in the water, it broke the surface with its green armored scales tough as tree bark and eight foot long.

It wasn’t any log. It was a gator.

The gator opened its jaws and it was like the mouth of the river opened up, it was like a sinkhole widened to swallow me whole.