Chapter 19

"Do you happen to have a jackknife on you, as we speak?" Susan said.

I grinned and took a small buck knife out of my pants pocket.

"Surprise, surprise," Susan said. "Same knife?"

"No," I said, "but same kind."

"And has it been useful?"

"Very," I said. "My father used to trim his nails with his."

"With a knife?"

"Yeah."

"Egad," Susan said.

"What's wrong with that?" I said.

"I grew up a nice Jewish girl in Swampscott, Massachusetts. I know nothing of the world of bears and buck knives."

"I've done what I can to educate you."

Susan nodded.

"And I'm grateful," she said. "So did her father show up in the night?"

"No," I said. "I slept like we used to sometimes, when we were kids. Close your eyes for a moment at night and open them a second later and it's morning."

"I remember," Susan said.

"When I opened my eyes, I was looking up through the trees and seeing blue sky. There were a few white clouds, and the birds were singing. I didn't know where I was for a minute. Pearl was sleeping beside me on her back with her feet in the air, and Jeannie was beyond her. And I sat up and looked around and remembered."

"What did you do about the bathroom?" Susan said.

I smiled.

"I was embarrassed to death thinking about it. But Jeannie just got up and said to me, ‘I have to go to the bathroom,' and strolled off into the woods. I scooted off in the other direction."

"Women are generally calmer about such matters," Susan said.

"I didn't realize nice Jewish girls from Swampscott even went to the bathroom."

"We don't," Susan said. "But I have a lot of non-Jewish friends."

"Like me," I said.

"Especially like you," she said. "Was she cute?"

"Jeannie?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Hard to describe. I mean, she had long brown hair and even features and her skin was kind of pale and she had nice lips, sort of full. Like yours. But what I remember most about her was this kind of softness she had, gentleness maybe, but affectionate. I bet she grew up to be a passionate woman."

"Like me," Susan said.

"Well, maybe not that passionate."

"So what'd you do?" Susan said.

"We ate some Oreos for breakfast and drank a little of the Coke, and then I climbed a tree and looked around. I couldn't see anything on the river. I couldn't see anything inland except more trees. No highways, no towns. No sound of traffic, no church bells, no factory whistles, no sirens, nothing."

"And you didn't know where you were," Susan said.

"Not really. I didn't know how fast we were going on the river. So, I didn't know how far downriver we were. I could tell from where the sun came up what direction we were heading. But that aside, I hadn't a clue."

"So what did you do?"

I shrugged.

"I decided to keep going until I found a bridge, or a highway or a town or something," I said.

"Going further away from where you wanted to be."

"I didn't know what else to do," I said.

"Like your father said, you were smart. You knew when not to fight. So you got back in the boat?"

I nodded.

"Back in the boat," I said.

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