Drawn Into Darkness(33)

Justin! Walking downstream along the other edge of the river.

The sight of him alive made me feel almost dizzy with happiness and—and he simply had to see me. I couldn’t let him go past as the boaters had.

He disappeared from my view behind my snake-in-residence.

Lying with my right shoulder in the sand and my left one in the air, I took the risk of gingerly raising my left arm skyward and swinging it, waving.

The snake camped in front of me turned its head and sampled the air with its forked tongue.

And I saw Justin emerging from behind the visual obstruction, almost past me already, his eyes on his footing, his head not turned in my direction.

The incident of the two blind Bubbas had made me desperate enough to take risks. One of my few talents is whistling loudly enough to summon a taxi. Pretty sure the snake hadn’t heard—I mean sensed—anything like that before, but with no idea how it would react, I put my tongue to my teeth and shrilled.

Justin’s head snapped up. So did the snake’s. Justin stood still and looked toward me. As soon as I was sure he had seen me waving, I froze with my hand in the air.

The snake shot its head up to loom over me like a cobra without the hood. Hissing, it opened its mouth wide, I mean really wide, showing off the startling interior seemingly upholstered in puffy white silk.

Justin walked into the river, heading toward me.

All the turtles evacuated the log. I didn’t see them, not with my gaze fixed on the pristine lining of the snake’s mouth, but I heard them plopping into the water. Nothing else made quite the same splash as a big turtle.

I also heard Justin splashing as he swam across the river. The rhythmic sound changed from splashing to sloshing when he reached shallower water and walked.

The snake swiveled its rearing head toward Justin.

I heard him say, “Whoa. Lee Anna, lie still.”

I wanted to tell him no duh, but that would have involved moving my mouth. With my hand still straight up in the air I felt like some sort of ridiculous modern sculpture.

I heard the snap of a branch breaking and wondered whether Justin had stepped on it or what. I heard his footsteps padding along the sand toward me.

The snake struck.

Faster than my eyes could follow.

I almost screamed. At first I thought it was biting Justin.

Launching almost its whole long burly body, it struck again. And again. And again. A little farther from me each time.

Forgetting all about the imaginary snake lying on the other side of me, I rolled away, sat up, and saw Justin holding the cottonmouth at bay with a long, dead stick. As I struggled to stand up, the snake struck the tip of the stick again and broke off a considerable piece of it, which fell into the edge of the river and floated.

Justin froze.

I did the same, in a most undignified pose, with my butt in the air and my hands on the ground.

The snake eyed the only moving thing, which was the stick in the water. Then with simple dignity it slithered into the river and swam away, its head gracefully raised as if it were an ugly brown swan.

I breathed out, staggered to my feet, and cried “Justin!” as he headed toward me to help me. Without permission I hugged him rather hard.

“Please get off,” he begged, although he did hug me back. A little.

I backed off.

“God,” he complained, “that was like being attacked by a giant dish sponge.”

Finding myself shaky in the knees, I plopped my butt on the sand again and said, “Wow. That snake. Thank you for—”

“Forget it.” Blushing, he looked upriver, not at me. “We don’t have time. Uncle Steve has to be hunting for us.”

“I told you, he is so not your uncle.”

“What do you want me to call him?”

“Stoat the Goat.”

He looked at me and cracked up. He actually fell down on the sand beside me, laughing. At first I was pleased, but then I realized he sounded a bit hysterical. I laid a hand on his forehead until he calmed down some, then demanded, “Justin. What happened?”

“Huh?” he mumbled, still giggling.

“What happened after we got separated last night?”

“Oh. That. He knew we went down the river.” No more giggles, and no eye contact either. “He came after us with the flashlight.”

I felt cold little lizard feet run down my spine at the thought of Stoat searching for us to kill us. As smoothly as I could, I said, “Since you’re here, I take it he didn’t find you?”

“He almost did find me. He waded right past me, but he didn’t see me. I’d come up for air in the middle of a mess of brush and stuff the flood had piled up against something, and I guess it hid me pretty good. It was just dumb luck I happened to come up there.”