by Neil Hetzner
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Adventures of Bob Tom and Joe
Joe Fflowers is moving in fits and starts, like a jig. What flummoxes him is how he is fighting his way across the river’s current without moving his arms. Although he is only half-conscious, he is sure that the things, things that seem to weigh fifty kilos, hanging from his shoulders are his arms. It takes the boy longer to realize that the coat which had meant to kill him has saved him. Something has snagged the coat and he is being drawn toward shore. Joe lifts his head to see how he is being rescued, but he can see no one on the shadowy shore. He drops his head back down on his shoulder and lets himself be pulled along.
Five minutes later, Joe’s feet drag against the Hudson’s grainy bottom. Seconds after that, a hand grabs his shoulder and pulls him out of the river.
“Whoa. It’s a big un. Not much fight, but purty good weight. Lemme see if it’s a keeper.”
Joe senses a moon-lit shadow hovering over him. He feels a tug on his collar and realizes that his rescuer is trying to extract something from his coat.
“Wheejammy. That’s tough skin. Oughta cut it out, mebbe. Less see.”
While the man tugs and twists, Joe surrenders to the exquisite joy of being unexpectedly, inexplicably alive. His throat is burned raw. Just thinking of how much it hurts causes Joe to heave. As he turns his head, river water gushes from his mouth and nose.
“Willikers, he’s spoutin. Ahoy, Moby…no…lessee…too little…ah…Noby, yessir, Noby Dick, the little runty whale, he blows. My first, but runty little whale. Ahoy, Noby One, thar he blows.”
As his rescuer himself spouts, Joe lets his awareness lazily drift down from his throat to his arms and chest. The cold he discovers there is so profoundly different from anything he has ever experienced that it takes a moment to comprehend what it is. Once he does, a spark of consciousness triggers what should have been done autonomically. Joe’s body suddenly begins bucking like a wasp-stung pony.
“Whoa, Nellie. Where’d my whale go? Whoa! We gotta get this here bronco broke.”
A massive weight centers itself on Joe’s hips. Rough and powerful hands begin pulling his clothes off.
“Dang, he’s got prom queen skin. Get him nekkid, then what?”
While his naked body convulses, but stays on shore, Joe’s mind slides back into the river.
When he comes to, Joe finds himself wrapped in a smoky smelling thermet and curled around a small fire. His throat still is raw, but the inner cold has disappeared. In fact, his face is too hot. When he shifts his head away, his action draws his savior’s attention.
“Hey, Noby One, you there? Feelin better? You wuz shakin so fierce I thought the devil had your soul.”
Joe straightens his body.
“Lay still, little one. Ain’t you smart enough to get well slow? You stay still and I won’t. Well, Noby, let’s get ourselves acquainted. My name’s Bob Tom Damall. And danged if I don’t sometimes, but not this here time. I’ve been watching you since a little after you stole my boat. You owe me, Noby. You owe me big for that. My most favorite boat. Just two days away from makin it all nice, I was. Gone now. Unless it gits snagged up somewhere down river. But, don’t be countin on it, Noby, cuz the last I seen it, it was hurrying toward New Jersey like a damall tame horse toward stable oats.”
Even after Joe’s eyes adjust to the early-morning sunlight, he can’t make out any facial features on the man beyond a pair of small bright crow’s eyes and a prophet’s beard. Looking down, Joe can see that his rescuers hands are huge. With them planted on his knees, the fingers reach half-way down his calves.
When Joe pushes himself up on one elbow, Bob Tom diddles his head in despair at Joe’s stupidity. The boy stares at the anchorite for ten seconds trying to figure out if he is dangerous before asking, “Who are you?”
“Tole you—Bob Tom Damall.”
“But….”
“Oh, I unnerstand, Noby. You don’t really wanna know who I am. You wanna know what I do cuz you think what I do makes me who I am. Who knows. You cud be right. Well, first thing,” Bob Tom flares a pair of drab gray wings so that he can lean sideways. He picks up a monstrous fishing pole with a twenty centimeter red speckled lure and points it at Joe’s face, “First thing, and mebbe the most important thing for you, I’m the best Damall flyin fly fisherman on the Hudson. That’s no lie. No one catches bigger, and no one catches better, and Damall certain, no one catches more. And I’m bound to be the first fly fisherman in these here parts to catch me a Noby Whale in midstream on the Hudson. Although I’ve pulled out a few rotters in my years. Whew, still remember the stink of one—old, old woman couldn’t a weighed more en forty k. Looked bigger, of course, cuz of the bloat. But, she sure rotted up bigger’n she was and smelled even bigger’n she looked.”
Feeling his stomach roil, Joe tries to change the subject, “You make your living fishing?”
Bob Tom Damall’s stertorous laugh rolls up and down the river like cannon fire.
“Noby, I don’t hardly make a livin’ fishin, furrin and some other things best done at night. But, I survive and have been since I come up here in ’62.”
“Up from where?”
The tip of the fishing pole transits a one hundred twenty degree arc.
“Ain’t it obvious? From down there. I come up and watched a slew of people goin the other way and I said, ‘You know what, Bob Tom? You’re right and they’re plumb wrong.’ And I’ll still say that whether that’s right or not cause I’m a feller slow to make up his mind and Damall slower to change it. Now, what about you, Noby? You just tell me what you do, so’s I’ll know eggzactly who you are and jist eggzactly how to judge you.”
Joe slowly works himself upright to gain some time. He studies the fire to gain even more. Finally, he looks into Bob Tom’s amused eyes and feels obliged to give him some of the truth.
“I’m Joe. I ran away from school and then I ran away from the people who helped me run away from school.”
“Yessir, and, then, you done run away with my boat.”
Embarrassed despite the humor in Bob Tom’s voice, Joe murmurs, “Yes, I did.”
“And, then, that Damall boat ran away from you.”
When Joe laughs, his throat hurts, “Yes, it did.”
“While you were fumblin your way downriver, no offense, but one of the things you ain’t is a riverman, was it all of you runnin away or was some of you runnin toward somethin?”
Joe shrugs his shoulders and gives a small grin, “Damall, if I know.”
Bob Tom shakes his pole at Joe, “See, Noby, hangin around me just a bit and already you’re smarter.”
The hermit starts to point somewhere with the pole, then carefully puts it down on the ground, “My experience is away’s always easier than toward.”
Bob Tom raises a wing so that he can stretch an arm behind the rock he is sitting on. Joe is startled to see that the old man has skinwings. Gray wrinkled folds of leather. Those fusty appendages command Joe’s attention even as the ancient hauls up a raggedy pak of a design as ancient as his wings.
“Iffen you’re all puked out, mightn you be gettin hungry?”
As Joe slowly chews strips of dried, black-colored meat, which Bob Tom insists is from the biggest, blackest bear ever caught in the Adirondacks, the river man…mountain…man, Joe is uncertain which way to think of him, tells stories about things he has killed of which there is a great diversity in species, but a singularity in characteristics. Each is the biggest, fattest, tastiest, tallest, fiercest, furriest, fastest animal of its kind ever seen in or above the Adirondacks or on or in the Hudson River and its tributaries.
While Bob Tom talks non-stop, his body goes from absolute stillness—wings relaxed, legs extended, hands on knees, unblinking eyes focused on the fire—as still as a zenpro or a hunting dog on point, to a flurry of little acts, like a squirrel in its nest—poking the fire, adding branches, re-arranging the rocks at his feet, using a twig to settle the folds of his wings.
The Sisyphean sun has rolled itself over the zenith when Bob Tom asks, “What’s your plan, Noby One?”
“The plan was that after the search for me died down I was going to go Montreal.”
“Noby, my new friend, you just might be a tetch dyslexic. Montreality, as I see fit to call it have’n been there a time or two, is north and this here river flows south. You’ve got to go more en forty thousand kliks, some of em none too easy, goin the way you’re goin, to get to old Montreality.”
Joe, who has already felt a dozen different emotions about Bob Tom, experiences a surge of anger swell within him.
“I know where Montreal is. I planned to go downriver to Albany and then back up to Montreal.”
“So, where’s that plan got you now?”
Joe bangs his fists on his knees in exasperation.
“I don’t know.”
”But, not to the mountain of reality?”
Joe says nothing, but shakes his head in despair.
“Because?”
Joe yells, “Because I didn’t know it was going to be such a fight in the river.”
“Yore a mite feisty, Noby, but even so, I’ve got two thoughts. The first is that just because you kin put a boat on a river don’t make you a riverman. I’m a riverman. You may be lots of things. I wouldn’t know about that, but you ain’t a riverman. My second thought is that it ain’t much of a plan or, mebbe, not much of a man behind the plan, if all it takes is a little bit of roily water to change what a person wants to do.”
“What do you know? I’m fifteen. I escaped school and the hawks and my parents. I escaped the Greenlanders. I got myself here.”
“Son, those Greenlanders if they’s the ones I think they are, ain’t nothing more en a den of bristle-lipped wimmin. And you’re here cuz I was kind enough to pull you here, instead of doin what I oughta done, which is rescue my very favorite boat. And, furthermore, if I was to ask you where here is, I bet you’d be hard put to say much more en this here is between the North Pole and equator. So, don’t yell at me, and, especially don’t yell at the kind soul who let you steal his favorite boat instead of making you into jerky and who rescued you and not his dear and favorite boat when a little bitty water couldn’t be handled by a whiny little man boy. Seems to me you ain’t much more’n just a little bitty whale with a big spout.”
Joe fights the tears that are forming in the corners of his eyes, but loses.
When Bob Tom sees the welling in the boy’s eyes, he directs his fishing pole toward the Hudson.
“There’s plenty of water out there, Noby One. I don’t guess we need any more. Let’s see if we can’t figger out doin somethin a little more useful.”
Joe and Bob Tom spend most of the day resting and making plans. Joe tells more of his story, but he doesn’t tell his rescuer any of the details of his family because he isn’t sure whether Bob Tom Damall, if he knew, might not think it was a good idea to kidnap and ransom Joe Fflowers.
The plan the two finally come up with is that Bob Tom will help Joe get to Albany, where he will catch a hover train to Montreal.
After telling Joe to stay put, Bob Tom takes to the air and flies north up the river. About an hour later Joe spies him flying back south towing a canoe behind.
“Let’s get goin. I’m feelin awful bad bout stealin this. Seems sad to have a sin on my soul for such a poor excuse for a boat. I wouldn’t a needed to do it if you hadn’t a stole and then lost that favorite boat of mine.”
Feeling cockier from the food and rest, and also thinking that the boat Bob Tom has dragged ashore looks much better than what he lost, Joe asks, “Why didn’t you just fly south and look for your boat?”
“Yore gonna question the judgment of the best waterman on the river? Get in this here sorry boat before I toss you back where I found you.”
While Bob Tom breaks down his fishing pole until it fits into a case no longer than a commuter’s umbrella, Joe climbs into the canoe and sits on the forward thwart.
The river man looks at Joe and shrugs in resignation.
“Tarnation, Noby, you’re no smarter en a barnyard chicken. In the back, son, in the back, unless yore hankerin for another little swim.”
Though he doesn’t understand Bob Tom’s reasoning for unbalancing the boat, Joe crawls into the back of the canoe. His stupidity colors his cheeks and neck when Bob Tom lashes his fishing pole into the canoe, hooks a light line from the bow of the canoe to his belt, shoves the boat into the water, and launches himself into the air. From fifteen meters overhead, the grizzled man tows the canoe into the center of the river to catch as much current as he can. Once in mid-river, Bob Tom lazily flaps his fusty wings kilometer after kilometer.
As a hockey player, Joe is used to expending all of his energy in two minute spurts. The longer Bob Tom flies, the higher he rises in Joe’s esteem.
After the sun finishes its labors and goes home, the night sky is clear. The stars are jewel bright and the world is silent except for the skirring of the canoe through the current. After what must have been an hour, Bob Tom’s voice booms down to ask if Joe’s parents are the worrying kind.
“They probably didn’t start out worrying. They probably started out being angry that I didn’t do what they wanted. By now, though, I’m sure they’re worried, especially my mother.”
Bob Tom thunders, “How much does that bother you?”
“I’ve been too busy to think about it.”
“That’s Damall busy, Noby. Mebbe I should save my wind for breathin and let you take this time, since you ain’t got much to do but sit back and let me work, to think about how you feel about what you’re putting your folks through.”
Joe tips his head to yell up, “I’m not gone forever. I just need to stay away long enough so that I can’t fledge.”
“Okay, Noby One, hearin you say that, I just decided that I ain’t gonna save all my breath. I grew up in some pretty high hills. When I was just a kit, I did everything a young'n could do in them hills. I hiked, climbed, fished, parasailed, spelunked caves, trapped critters, rode mountain bikes and lots more. You just try to name it and I can just about Damall garantee I done it. And I loved evry minute of it. I could get all squidged up inside just thinking bout how good and easy, real easy, those times were. But, Noby, you know what? They weren’t nothin compared to flyin higher and higher as the sun sets, or flappin alongside a big old turkey vulture or flyin blind through sunrise fog where all you can see is a ghostly rosy glow way far away.
“Flyin, Noby, why there ain’t nothing like flyin. It’s purty easy for some folks to be god-denying with both feet on the ground, but you come up where I am right now and its purty Damall hard to imagine that some big hand ain’t stirred the pot.
“Okay, I’m done. I’m sure you listened real hard to jist about evry word. You think about your folks first and, then, you think about what a time we’d be havin if you were up here with me.”
Surprising himself, Joe does just as he is told. He thinks about where his mother would be sitting and waiting and how she might touch a cup of lattea two or three times with her long manicured fingers, touching, but not drinking, blinking, but not crying, and wondering if it is her good son or an evil stranger who’s breaking her heart.
After a long time Joe leans far back on his seat so that he can see the silhouette of Bob Tom above him. He studies the slow, steady, graceful pace and wonders just what the riverman is experiencing. How silver is the starlight on the tops of the pines? How much sweeter is the mix of river smells and fresh air up there? What does the Hudson’s snaky tributaries look like from high above on a moon-lit night? Joe thinks about how a person can’t ever go slow enough in a plane to see the same kind of detail as a winger would flapping over the treetops at fifteen kilometers an hour. A person would see more things in a roto, but with a lot more noise and smell. And how did a lifetime of seeing those things from above compare to living a small fraction of a life in the cold friction-free world of the ice rink?
It is after eleven and Bob Tom has been flying for almost four hours before he drags the canoe out of the current and heads it toward shore.
They eat more bear strips and Bob Tom gives Joe something he calls bark brew. They sleep for five hours before his guide rousts Joe awake to tell him that if they get moving they can be in Albany just after sunrise—late enough to get around without attracting too much attention from the hawks, but early enough that there won’t be too many people on the streets.
Bob Tom’s estimate proves accurate, but by the time Joe comes ashore just under a bridge that carries a rail line across the Hudson his plans have changed. The hours he has had to think have led him to the conclusion that, indeed, he loves hockey, but it has come to him just how much of his motivation not to fly has been birthed by defiance. It is exactly because flying is what he is supposed to do, what is expected of him as a Fflowers, that he doesn’t want to do it. He knows this is normal. He is acting just like a teener is supposed to act. But, he tells himself that even the dumbest teener must know that there is a difference between a whim and something that lasts forever. Joe decides that a smart teener wouldn’t do something that would permanently thwart his future. In the hours of being drawn along the moon-dappled river by the gray on black shadow above him, Joe has come to understand that if it could be a choice between flying now, or flying later, he would choose later. If, however, the choice were between flying now, or flying never, then, he wants to fly.
When Joe tells Bob Tom that he is going to call to let his parents know that he is coming home, he isn’t surprised to see the riverman nod his head and smile in agreement. What does surprise him is when his guide throws a lock line on the boat, carefully slings his pole case under his wing and cheerfully says that he is accompanying Joe to the depot.
“You don’t have to do that. I’m okay. I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me. I’ll ask my parents to thank you in more than words—maybe with something that could turn into another favorite boat. Just tell me how to get in touch.”
Bob Tom fiddles with the buckle of his pole case strap so that it rides higher on his shoulder.
“C’mon. We better get movin. My guess is the depot ain’t gonna be close. I wanna see you safe and sound.”
“But, I’ll be fine.”
“Make a promise. Keep a promise.”
“You didn’t promise me anything.”
“Not you, Noby One. My dotter. I promised my dotter I’d see you safe.”
Even before he blurts the question, Joe knows the answer and that knowledge surges through his body like a high fever.
“Blesonus is your daughter?”
Bob Tom nods as proudly as when he was telling Joe stories about his trophy catches.
“Yep, my one and only.”
“You were a Greenlander? Part of the kin?”
“Yep, again. Noby, you’re sharpenin up. I stayed as long as I could for her, but I finally got wimmined out. Them bristle-lips got to be where none of em was tolerble for more’n the time is takes a tick to puke. An it was just my luck that the worst one was my soulmate and mother of my one and only.”
Joe can feel himself on the verge of hyper-ventilating.
“Who’s Blesonus’ mother?”
“Why you know who. That ole possum ugly bristle-lip you done fed her soup to.”
Joe makes a complicated sound that inadequately expresses the encyclopedia of thoughts and feeling he is having.
Flaring his wings to keep the tips off the levee where they are standing, Bob Tom bends over so that he can slap his huge hands against his knees as he laughs so loud that a small flock of buffleheads dabbling near shore take to the air in disgust.
“Damall, Noby Flowers, flesh of intelligent flesh, you are a slow one. Iffen a man was interested in improvin his fortunes, he could do worse than throwin you in a sack and sendin off a ransom note. Just so that don’t happen and snarl up my hi n bye with my one and only, I’ll stay alongside til I’m satisfied evrythin is just the way it should be.”
It takes most of an hour to make their way to the Albany Noramtrax depot. When they push their way into the crowded, low-ceilinged cavernous room, dozens of heads look up and stare at the unusual duo. Since he has made the decision to go home, Joe hasn’t thought that there are still good reasons to conceal or alter his looks. Now, however, seeing how much attention Bob Tom and he are drawing, he thinks that definitely is a mistake. Across the graffiti-covered deformed plastic benches he watches several sets of people lean their heads together to whisper. Two raggedy looking bob n hobs, wearing their de rigueur many studded boots and hand-chopped pageboy haircuts and carrying their immense skateboreds, get up from their bench and start toward Bob Tom and Joe.
“Let’s go find the commix so’s you kin talk to your folks while I trade stares with a couple of these here rough and tough hombreros.”
At the commix, all three of the cam-fones are out of service. The blog on the cam-fones says they’ll be back up in an hour. Joe turns back to see how things are going with the riverman. The first two bob n hobs have been joined by two more and a tag team of keds. Joe notices that Bob Tom’s pole case is off his shoulder and that he is tapping it against his thigh like a truncheon.
Joe spins back to the array of iconics before him. If he can’t reach his parents directly, he will have to do it indirectly. Either way, it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a future in hanging around the depot. Sensing the air behind him go electric, Joe quickly swipes and buys a pre-paid mypods. He turns to see the six thugs have formed a circle around the river man. While his antagonists have the scowls and puffed breasts of the threatening male of most species, Bob Tom is smiling broadly as he leans on the now extended pole case. As Joe comes closer, Bob Tom is saying, “You young'ns ever heard of Paul Bunyan or Pecos Pete? If you ain’t, it’s yore loss cause I’m cut from the same cloth. You’ll be well-advised to turn tail now afore anythin happens to you that’d put a serious damper on yore future happiness.”
“We get done with you, geri, you’ll be fardin out your ear.”
The relaxed old man looks over the heads of the hostile tribe to say to Joe, “Ah, Noby One, I believe our business may be finished here…cept for one small item. Do you think you could member what you done with my most favorite thing and mebbe do the same with one of these here young'ns?”
Joe nods and edges closer to the nearest bob n hob. The fat pock-faced boy, whose ears stand out two inches from his greasy skunk-striped hair, is nonchalantly leaning against his immense skatebored. Another boy, the one who has told Bob Tom’s fate, whips his licorice stick frame around to stare at Joe
“Forget the geri; it’s the rich dwert we want.”
As the leader steps toward Joe, Joe yanks the skatebored free from the fat boy. Bob Tom yanks the lower third of his fishing pole out of its case.
As all six teenerz leap toward Joe, he back pedals as he sweeps the skatebored in front of him like a ship’s boom swinging over a deck. One boy is knocked into a second, and both stumble to the ground, but the other four keep coming. Knowing that it will take too much energy to change the direction of the eight kilo skatebored, Joe keeps spinning like a windmill. As he comes around he catches one of the keds on the shin. The boy yelps as he bends down to grab his leg.
“I love me a fracas.”
Bob Tom, poking and pointing his chopped off fishing pole like a musketeer his foil, comes at the remainder of the crew from behind. He stabs one bob n hob hard in the back of the knee. The leg buckles and the boy goes down. When the leader turns around to see what has happened, he takes a shot in the stomach so hard that the air which explodes out of him is so foul it could be from his bowels.
“Git. I’ll meet ya outside.”
Joe looks at the depot entrance and sees that if he goes that way he is apt to get caught up in the crowd gathering there. He turns the other way and begins running toward the doors that lead to the air trains. One of the two remaining hob
s takes off after him. Once he is through the double doors and out under the canopy that shelters the passengers from Albany’s bitter rains, Joe throws the huge bored down in front of him and jumps on. Even though it has been years since he has ridden a bored—skateboreding is definitely not something done, or even spoken of at Dutton, except by a Retro-neo-emo named Quacks—as soon as he is moving Joe can feel some of the old body memory coming back. A big grin crosses his face until he takes a quick look behind and sees that the hob on is bored is is gaining on him. The boy’s arms are flashing up and down like pistons, which is a part of skateboreding Joe didn’t remember. A second later he realizes that each of the hob’s fist holds a long thin bladed screwdriver. Joe guesses the tools aren’t for making repairs.
Seeing the spikes of the screwdrivers draw closer, Joe slams his foot to the pavement three quick times trying to pick up speed. Looking to his right, Joe sees that the jaded passengers on the departing air train are barely looking out the windows at the unfolding drama he is starring in. Another quick head twist tells Joe that he is losing the race. He looks ahead to see where he can ditch the skatebored and try to outrun screwdriver boy. Twenty meters ahead, the canopy ends and a high mesh fence begins. The ramp itself curves off to the left. Joe figures that as he enters the curve he will shoot the bored back into his assailant and run to safety.
Just shy of the curve, Joe hears the hob muttering something. It takes Joe a half-second to figure out that his hunter is chanting, “Stab him. Kill him,” in cadence to a click being made by a chipped wheel on his bored.
Joe’s heart rises into his throat as he hurtles into the curve with his knees deeply bent and his center of gravity far off the bored. The ramp continues back toward the street, but instead of the walkway being edged with grass, it is bounded on both sides by a meter high wall to keep people off the grass. Joe tries to figure the odds of being able to fire the bored at the boy, leap to the wall, then to the ground and outrun his assailant with his bum knee. Instead of seeing himself sprint to safety, the image that arises in Joe’s mind is of two screwdrivers sticking out of his back as he tries to scramble over the wall.
“Stab him. Kill him,” seems to come from just behind Joe’s left ear. The wheezing teener slaps his foot to accelerate and, as he does so, the exact same noise echoes from behind him. The street is still thirty meters away when Joe feels a thud at the back of his neck. He flinches as he anticipates the screwdriver being shoved deeper into his flesh. Instead of pain, however, what he feels is his speed suddenly picking up. As he hurtles down the walkway, he has to work to stay on the skatebored.
“Keep your Damall balance, Noby,” Bob Tom yells from ten meters above as he locks the line on his fishing reel and begins towing Joe rapidly away from the trouble at the depot.
“Stab him. Kill him,” falls to a whimper as Joe hurtles off the walkway and makes a wide sweeping turn into the street, just missing a truclet speeding down the road. The tiny truc swerves sideways and half its contents, jugs of maple syrup, go spilling from the back and bounce and split along the cratered highway. The smell of breakfast fills the air.
Joe and Bob Tom’s return from depot to boat takes less than half the time of their journey from boat to depot. Joe’s heart is still pounding, but Bob Tom looks like he’d just holed a forty foot putt.
“I love me a fracas. Don’t get much chance anymore. Mountains are mostly empty. The bears are scared and I cain’t quite bring myself to scrap up with all them bristle lips. Damall, that was a good time. Even though I almost hurt my favorite fishin rod poking at them boys. I’m awful glad I met you, Noby One Fflowers. You’ve let a little lightning out of the bottle. What next? How bout a walk-about? You and me and Noramica’s most thrillin sights and sounds?”
Joe finds himself smiling and shaking his head as he compares the man standing before him with his father.
“I’m going to get in touch with a friend with this,” Joe holds up the new mypod, “and have her get in touch with my parents to keep the hawks out of it.”
Bob Tom looks longingly as his fishing pole as he slides it back into its case, “Sounds dull. When’s the latest you can fledge safely?”
“I can’t wait much longer. If I’m going to do it, I need to go home now and get it done because I have to be back to school in two weeks.”
“I could turn you into a passable riverman in two weeks.”
Joe thinks hard before he answers, “Maybe after school’s over. Let me talk to my mother and father….”
Bob Tom interrupts with a roar, and for a second time, the dabbling buffleheads have to scatter.
“Mother. Father. Parents. Damall, Noby, ain’t you got any folks? No mom or dad or a ma or pa? Jeezuz Crikey.”
“We’re not exactly on a first name basis in my family. But, let me talk to my…folks…maybe I could hang out with you for another week, then fledge and get back to school a few days late.”
The surprise on Bob Tom’s face, and whatever feelings are triggering it, causes him to turn away and cough a couple of times.
“Damall, I’m so used to breathin pure, this here city air’s got me goin.”
Joe is surprised when his screen tells him that Prissi’s mypod is off-grid, but he is stunned when he calls Nancy Sloan to track down Prissi and hears about what has happened. He drops to his knees as he listens to Nancy say that Prissi thinks his grandfather and Jack are responsible for the death of her father and the attacks on Prissi herself. When Nancy finally stops talking, it takes Joe almost a minute before he can gather himself enough to ask Nancy where she thinks Prissi might be. Nancy says that she doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know, but that she does want Joe to talk to his family and make sure that they know that the Sloans are innocent and have had nothing to do with anything.
When Joe fills Bob Tom in on the details of what he has already surmised from listening to one side of the conversation, the riverman says, “I guess we’re gonna go on that walk-about anyway.”
“What can we do?”
“Do? Well, Damall, Noby, we’re gonna find this here Prissi. She ain’t, is she? I sorely dislike prissy. If a woman ain’t got what it takes to worm a hook or gut a buck, what good is she?”
Joe tries to allay Bob Tom’s fears with some of Prissi’s exploits.
“Well sounds like she’s got gumption. But gumption ain’t always enough, though it’ll take ya pretty far. We better get goin.”
“And do what?”
“Noby, what do you expect the best hunter, trapper and tracker you’re ever gonna meet gonna do? We’re gonna find that girl and save her. Someone’s gonna regret this here cavalry just got called in. Saddle up, young'n. Time’s awastin.”
