"I can't see anything. The water's too muddy."
"Try again."
"He's tired, Allie."
"He can rest after he's found our propeller."
Mother said, "Let me go."
Father said, "What if you drown?"
"What if Jerry drowns?"
She said it in a slow suffocated way.
Father scratched his beard with his knuckles.
He said, "I need you here, Mother."
Jerry tried four times. Each time, the current pulled him back to us empty-handed. At last he was so tired he could not raise his arms, and Father had to tug the harness line to keep him from being taken downriver.
It was my turn. I swam to shore, then dived to the bottom at the place Father had indicated. I stuck my hands into the mud and raked it. The mud ran through my fingers. The churning river was like vegetable soup, with sunlight knifing into it and showing me long shadows I imagined to be alligators. As my breath gave out, I broke the surface of the river and saw that I had traveled almost to the boat.
"You're not serious," Father said. He made me swim back.
The sludge and weeds at the river bottom disgusted me. The dark current sucked at my legs. Mud floated into my face. But worse, being on Father's rope was like being a dog on a leash. Staying on it, I was in his power. But if I cut myself free of the rope, I would be swept downstream to drown.
It was a dog's life. I was glad Jerry had said the things he had. Why hadn't I told Father what I thought of him? A dog's life — because we didn't count, because he was always right, always the explainer, and most of all because he ordered us to do these difficult things. He didn't want to see us succeed, he wanted to laugh at our failure. And not even a gun dog could find a small propeller at the bottom of this river.
I told him I had swallowed water and felt sick and could not go down again.
He chuckled — I knew he would — and said, "Children are no use at all in a crisis. Which is ironic, because children are the cause of most crises. I mean, I can look after myself! I don't need food, I don't need sleep — I don't suffer. I'm happy!"
April said, "Dad, is this a crisis?"
"Some people might say so. We've got an engine we can't use. We've got a boat that won't move forward. We've got two cripples who can't find the prop. If the anchor or that line cuts loose we'll be wallowing down the drain. And it's getting dark. And this is the jungle. Muffin," he said, "some people might call that critical."
Mother said, "I want to try, Allie."
But Father was putting the harness around his waist. He tied the free end to the rail. He said the only thing he trusted to hold his lifeline was one of his own knots.
He went over the side with a heavy splash. We watched him take a dive, expecting him to find the propeller on the first try. He came up — he did not raise his hands. He dived again. He was a strong enough swimmer to hold his own against the current, but when he dived a third time he did not come up.
We waited. We watched the water ribbing over that spot.
Clover said, "Where is he?"
"Maybe he sees it," Mother said.
A whining net of mosquitoes came and went.
April said, "He's been down a long time."
"It's dark down there," Jerry said.
We stopped holding our breath.
More minutes passed. I could not say how many. Time did not pass precisely here. The day was light, the night dark: time was lumpish. Every hot hour was the same, silent and blind. He might have been under for an hour.
Mother went to the rail and plucked at the line. She lifted it easily and dragged it on board, coiling it, until she had its whole length out of the water. The end was kinked like a mongrel's tail, where the knot had been.
"He's gone!" Clover screamed. She became rigid. And she cried so hard she gagged, then cried more because she was gagging.
Jerry said, "I don't see him."
But Jerry had stopped looking. He was staring at me. His face was relaxed — very white and hopeful, like someone sitting up in bed in the morning.
Mother shook her head. She gazed at the torrent of water slooshing downstream. She did not speak.
I felt suddenly strong. A moment ago night was falling, but now everything was brighter. The sky was clear. Tiny insects fussed above the river. A quietness descended, like that sifting of gnats, and silvered the water and streaked it like a new tomb. This stillness sealed it.
"He's somewhere! He's somewhere!" But April's voice did not disturb the river or the trees. She clawed her hair. She held Clover and they gagged together on their sobs.
"We can drift," Jerry said. "We'll tie up tonight and go down the river tomorrow. It'll be easy."
I said, "What if Dad was right?"
"Don't be frightened," Mother said.
Jerry said, "We're not frightened!"
Mother said, "I can't think." Her listening face was lovely. It did not register a single sound. It did not hear April saying we were going to die, or Clover calling out to Father, or Jerry describing our easy trip down to the coast.
Little Jerry, set free, was scampering around the deck.
"Listen," Mother said.
The water trickling silver, the slouching jungle — it was an insect kingdom of small whistles, a world of crickyjeens.
A Zambu went by in a cayuka. That was like time passing, the duration of his coming and going. It was the only time here — a man's movement. This Zambu was alive.
"We won't die," I said.
Mother did not hear me, but I meant it. Our boat was small, and it hung precariously on a line in the middle of the river — on air, it seemed. But I had never felt safer. Father was gone. How quiet it was here. Doubt, death, grief — they had passed like the shadow of a bird's wing brushing us. Now — after how long? — we had forgotten that shadow. We were free.
"In a couple of days we'll be on the coast," Jerry said.
"We'll die there!" Clover said.
It was what Father had always said. I thought I believed it. But he had gone and taken fear with him. I heard myself saying, "We can get rid of this outboard. We'll build a rudder. The current will take us."
Jerry tried to make the twins stop crying. He was saying, "Don't you want to go home?"
Was it that forbidden word that did it?
There was a splash — explosive in this whistling world. There was Father's wet streaming head, his beard brushing the rail, the chunk of the brass propeller hitting the boards, and his howl, "Traitors!" Then all the light was gone.
27
FOR THE NEXT three days, as punishment, Jerry and I were towed behind the boat in the dugout. We ate in it and slept in it. It tailed and twisted like a plug trawled at the end of a fishing fine. There was hardly room to lie down. The barrel was between us, and the fruity, sourly luscious gasoline fumes mingled with the burned-cloth stink of the outboard's exhaust and gave me a prickly headache. We knelt in the water that seeped through the splits in this hollow log and we killed time by dragging a hook off the stern, hoping to gaff a catfish.
Father sat at the end of the thirty-foot towline, on the stern rail of the hut-boat, his back turned to us. I hated his shoulders, his greasy hair, the slant of his spine. I imagined how it would be to stick a knife in it, just below his ragged collar. Sometimes I saw myself doing it. There was no blood in my imagining — no scream, no struggle. Just a grunt of released air as the blade slipped in and the hilt smacked against flesh. Then he was gone, like an inner tube with a rip. I saw it so clearly my arm ached, as if I had already done it — punctured him.
I listened to him, thinking that he knew what was on my mind, and felt guilty. But all I heard was Mother arguing, trying to convince him to let us aboard. He would not discuss it. He said we deserved worse. He was hard to hear over the motor roar. He prided himself on the fact that he had never spanked us, or laid a hand on us in anger. But it would have been better for us if he had beaten us yesterday. This dugout and the bugs and the heat hurt more than a whipping.