Chapter 14
An occasional turtle splashed off a log into the water as we drifted past. In the front of the rowboat Pearl was very interested in the turtles. As she was with the frogs that jumped or the jays that flew about under the high treetops. On a small island in the middle of the river we saw a huge snapping turtle that made an odd noise, between a hiss and a grunt, at us as we floated by him. Pearl laid her long ears back flat and hunched a little at him.
She'd hunted enough and been trained enough so that she never made any noise in the woods. She'd bark at people from the front porch of our house. But in the woods she never made a sound unless we ran into a drunken bear.
Occasionally we passed a fishing camp or a little summer cottage with a boat dock. And, of course, here and there along the riverbank, with wide empty spaces in between, there were towns and roads and cars and ma-and-pa stores and people doing the stuff that people do. But on the river, mostly, we were as alone as if we had gone back in time.
White perch broke up from under water now and then to snap a dragonfly, and if I looked straight down into the rust-colored water, sometimes I'd see a channel catfish. The river smelled swampy, and along the shoreline among the trees were a tangle of wild blueberry plants and the little thorny vines that I didn't know the name of that caught at your ankles when you were hunting.
The banks of the river were muddy and the roots of trees that grew close to the river were exposed. Tree roots are not good looking. Once I saw a doe come down through the underbrush and the root tangle to drink from the river, picking her way so lightly it was like her feet were reaching down to touch the ground. Above us all, a hawk circled and banked without any effort. Once in a while he would suddenly drop like a rock into the water and fly off with a fish or a frog. He would disappear for a while and then he would be back, circling and banking effortlessly. Pearl watched him for a long time.
I wasn't wearing a watch, but the sun was very low when I spotted the bass boat. It was pulled up onto a small muddy area at the edge of a big island in the middle of the river where the river was at its wildest. The motor had been tilted into the boat, so that what I saw was the naked propeller staring out at me.
I maneuvered myself downriver, which was the only direction I could go, past the bass boat and in among the exposed roots of a cluster of birch saplings. I tied the boat to one of the saplings and sat listening. Pearl looked at me over her shoulder. What are we doing?
I put my finger to my lips, though she hadn't made any noise and I knew she wouldn't. The woods weren't quiet. There was the sound of the river and of frogs making frog sounds and birds twittering. But I heard no human sound.
I gestured to Pearl and she went out of the boat among the root tangle and up the muddy bank as lightly, almost, as the doe had come down to drink, a little ways back. I followed her. I got my feet wet and slipped once on the muddy bank, but in a minute we were both standing in a small clearing among the trees. Pearl began suddenly to sniff near the edge of some brush. Then she darted into the bushes and scrabbled around in there a minute and came out with a dead muskrat, whose neck she had just broken.
"Lucky you," I said to her. "Supper."
She showed me the muskrat. I nodded and patted her head.
"Go on," I said. "Eat it."
She looked at me and dropped the dead animal and looked at me and wagged her tail.
"Go on," I said.
She dropped her head and nosed it over onto its back and bit into its belly.
"Yum," I said.
There were some wild blueberries and I ate some while Pearl ate her muskrat. The blueberries weren't much. But they were better than raw muskrat.