“When will we get there, and where is there?” Her patience at an end, she said forcefully, “John, I’m entitled to know what happened back there and why we left the way we did. It felt like an escape.”
“It was.”
“From what? Something Mutt heard outside? That’s what dogs do. They react to noises.”
“Not Mutt. He’s never growled. Not once. Not since I’ve had him. Just last night, a friend dropped by. He walked in unannounced. I wasn’t even in the room. Mutt never made a sound.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have growled at a friend.”
“He’d never met that friend. But Mutt sensed that he wasn’t a threat. I don’t know any of my neighbors. They’re strangers. They come and go without ever rousing him. Up till tonight, I thought he was useless as a watchdog. I’m glad I was wrong.” Appearing lost in thought, he pulled on the oars a few times before adding, “Mutt sensed a threat, and his instinct was right.”
“You saw someone?”
“From the shed. I have peepholes in all four walls, and I have the shed for just the purpose it served tonight. To watch someone who came there to watch me.”
“Is that what he was doing?”
“He walked around the house, looked through the windows.”
“Did he go inside?”
“No.”
“Any idea who it might have been?”
“I don’t have to speculate. I know.” He stopped rowing and rested the oars against his thighs. “When Mutt alerted us, you were in the middle of saying something. Was it important?”
She heard a rustle of motion on a nearby island and looked toward the sound. Whatever was there remained camouflaged, but she continued looking that way as she murmured, “You tell me whether or not you think it’s important.”
Turning back to him, she said, “The blood moons prior to the two in 2022 were in 2018. January thirty-first and July twenty-seventh. On each of those dates, young women were reported missing. One in Jackson, Mississippi, the other in Shreveport, Louisiana. As of yet, their fates remain unknown, the cases unsolved.”
He stared at her as though willing her to revise what she’d said; then his head dropped forward until his chin was almost touching his chest. Before either of them spoke again, Mutt woke up, stood, and shook himself energetically.
John picked up the oars, murmuring, “That means we’re here.”
Deftly he maneuvered the boat to the tip of a peninsula and pushed them through the shallows using one of the oars against the muddy bottom. When the hull scraped against the shore, Mutt jumped out onto the marshy ground.
Beth got out unassisted. When John joined her, he surprised her by dragging the boat out of the water and into a grove of trees. He covered it with brambles that had obviously been cut for that purpose.
By the time John had concealed the boat, Mutt had watered several trees and seemed to be waiting for them to follow him. “Go on,” John said, and the dog took off. “I’ll take the lead,” he said to Beth. “Stay close and watch your step. It’s an uneven trail.”
“To where?”
“Have you ever been to a Cajun fishing camp?”
“No.”
“Well then, you’re in for a real treat.”
His ironic tone suggested the opposite of what he’d said, but she had no choice except to fall into step behind him. They wound their way through the trees, ducking beneath low limbs and sidestepping depressions where scummy water had collected. Carefully placing her feet in John’s footprints, watching for obstacles like ropy tree roots and anything that slithered, Beth kept her head down, eyes on the ground.
She didn’t see the clump of Spanish moss dangling from a branch until its tendrils creepily grazed her cheek. Her breath caught as she drew up short and reflexively made a swatting motion.
John turned quickly. Seeing what had startled her, he brushed the strands of moss off her face. His touch was lighter than a waft of breath, and even after breaking contact, he didn’t withdraw his hand, but left it raised, close to but not quite touching her cheek.
Then he folded his fingers to form a loose fist and lowered it. “I know you’re not used to shit like this. You’re sure not used to me. I’ve put you through a lot today.” One corner of his mouth tilted up in a quasi-smile. “Just want you to know, you’ve done okay.”
He didn’t turn away immediately. In fact, he didn’t turn away for seconds that numbered in double digits. When he finally did, Beth realized that she’d been holding her breath in achy anticipation.
John removed the pistol from the waistband of his pants and set it on the middle shelf of an open cupboard that held a collection of mismatched dishes and serving bowls. Glancing at Beth, he said, “There’s a bullet in the chamber, so be careful if you pick it up.”
As if, she thought.
He took a bag of dog food from an upper cabinet and filled a bowl for Mutt. As he knelt to set it on the floor, he cupped his hands around Mutt’s head and scratched him behind the ears. “I’m on to you now. Playing dumb and useless is an act you perform to get me to feel sorry for you. When, in fact, you’re a genius.” Mutt tilted his head back, leaning into the massaging fingers, then nudged aside John’s hands in order to get to his dinner.
John patted him on the rump and stood up to find Beth watching him from where she seemed to have taken root in the center of the large but overcrowded and cluttered room. Again, she looked lost. A lot lost.
Extending her hands at her sides, she said, “This is quite a place. It’s got…” She took a look around, stopping on the stuffed head of a snarling razorback that hung on the wall above the sideboard. Coming back to him she said, “Character.”
He gave a humorless chuckle. “Very diplomatic.”
He looked around as she had at all the memorabilia affixed to the walls, which included rusty license plates from decades past, yellowed posters announcing boxing matches and parish Easter egg hunts, school pennants, words of wisdom embroidered on framed squares of muslin, shellacked prize-winning fish mounted on wood plaques, a stuffed baby alligator, and numerous hunting trophies whose antlers were cobwebbed. One of them had a glass eye missing.
“This place has belonged to my maternal grandpa’s family for generations,” he said. “He and my great-uncles would come out here at least once a month to escape their wives, kids, responsibilities. Fish all day, get drunk at night, repeat stories they’d repeated a thousand times, cuss freely, and tell dirty jokes without censure.”
He smiled wryly. “They used any excuse to throw a party, so a few times each year the whole clan would gather. Some of the happiest times of my life were spent out here, making mischief with my boy cousins, spooking the girls just to hear them scream, drinking beers we’d swiped from the coolers when the grown-ups weren’t looking.”