“That’s right,” I said, nodding. “I tried to tell Mom that about a hundred times.”

“No doubt you did,” said Pop. His face got stern a moment. “You ain’t planning to set this place on fire, are you?”

“Nope,” I said. “Wouldn’t dream on it.”

“That’s my boy,” he said. “Now how about we get us some grub?”

Pop gave me an old pair of his boots, a little too big on me, but they did the job. Then he took me down to a creek where he’d set up some mudbug traps, baited with fish guts and old chicken feet. The traps were full, a massive catch, probably twenty crawling red mudbugs in each. He tossed them still alive in a big black pot and chucked in spices and taters and corn, and when they were good and ready we dumped them out on the table and went to town, cracking the backs and slurping out all the meat and spices, the cuts on my fingers stinging, my tongue like it was about to burn off, all that spicy river food. The best part was sucking the gunk out the head. You couldn’t get mudbugs in town, and it had been ages since I’d had them. After we ate, Pop told me stories by the fire, stories of gamblers and bandits and fearsome pirates, all on this river, this very one. He told me about Madame Caravel and how he nearly lost his pinky finger in a knife fight. He told me about getting hexed by a witch lady and how one time he saw the ghost of his old boss Mr. Jim floating over the waters on the exact same spot where he’d drowned.

“What about the Creepy?” I said.

“You mean the baby snatcher?” said Pop. “The one who eats up innocent little children for fun? It ain’t true. A fella like that don’t exist.”

“Well this blind man I met on the road said to watch out for him.”

“I lived in these parts my whole life. Don’t you think I’d know if there were any baby eaters around? Besides, you come to a legend like that, you always find a person at the bottom of it. An honest-to-God human being. And when it’s a human being involved, flesh and blood, same as us, well, ain’t nothing too much to be afraid of, is there?” He lit his pipe and took two big puffs. “See Buddy, you can’t be trusting any old man you meet on the road. You don’t know what such a man wants. You can’t trust a person if you don’t know their angle. And everybody’s got one, of that you can be sure.”

“Even Mom?” I said.

Pop laughed. “Don’t you doubt one second your mom’s got something cooking. That lady schemes more than any person I ever met. Probably why I fell so hard in love with her.”

I wanted to ask him another question about Mom, why she had left Pop in the first place. I’d always wanted to know, and every time I asked Mom she’d just go silent, and why would I want to go upsetting my mom like that? So I generally kept mum about the whole thing. But now was my chance. Now I was gonna finally get to know what happened.