by Jayne Louise
‘Okay,’ Jem whispered, stepping back into the cockpit, ‘we’re about twelve feet away. We can’t reach it with the anchor.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll take it,’ I said.
Jules came aft then too. ‘It’s her turn,’ she said of me.
‘Shhh,’ Jem told her. ‘We know that.’
So as those two got the lines ready I peeled off the cami top and dropped it down the hatch into my bunk, and then I slid off the bikini bottoms. This is one of the fun little rituals we have for adventures like this. Of course we could take the canoe to carry the anchor out– but where’s the fun in that? None of us has ever disliked swimming, nor even passed up an opportunity to swim even when it’s not necessary. And for a chance to go skinny-dipping, any of us might just contrive some circumstances to make it seem appropriate even when there are plenty of options. It’s just how we are!
I lowered myself down the transom ladder, carefully folding the bottom two rungs down into the water. After such a hot day it was very warm on top, almost like bath water, but it got a lot colder farther down as I felt with one foot for the bottom. For a moment I thought we’d be lucky– but there it was, muddy and gooshy about three feet down, and even less just to the side. With as little splash as possible I let go the anchor and floated backwards away from the boat. Of course it was very shallow up towards the bow but I avoided the weedy bottom as much as I could and took the end of the cable forwards to the bank. That was muddy and slimy too but fortunately it was high tide and the ground right above it was dry. I stood up on the bank, wrapped the cable around a tree, and drew it back towards the boat, finally running out of length about four feet away.
‘Rats,’ Jem said, leaning forward on her hands and knees from the deck of the boat.
‘Get a short line,’ I said, barely above a whisper, ‘and even a block or something from the shelf under you.’
‘Okay,’ she said, and turned on her knees to the hatch. Immediately Jules was there with the block, and I stood in the mud and clipped the shackle into the eye of the cable while they sorted through the vee berth and found a piece of line. Jem tied it to the foredeck cleat and passed the end to me, and I passed it through the block and passed it back to her.
‘Don’t take up on it till we set the anchor,’ I reminded her, and made my way back through the muck to the stern of the boat.
The Batsto current was icy compared to the top of the water and I actually dunked my head once, just to cool off. Jem was there, lowering the little 8-lb anchor to me, and I lowered it into the water and then swam with one arm out astern while she paid out the line. ‘Okay,’ she called at last, seeing the marking for fifty feet on the rode.
‘Okay,’ I said, breathing hard as I was treading water by then. I gave a few more strong strokes and then dove, letting the anchor go down before me till I felt it bump bottom. It was chilly down there and I came up at once. Treading water again my feet were a lot warmer– the water was probably six feet deep.
‘Okay,’ Jem said softly, and took a turn on her cleat. I swam straight back to the boat to help her. We led the stern line to a winch and took a few turns on it till the bow line came taut, and so Dove was moored to shore with a pocketknife-proof piece of cable and an anchor set six feet down and fifty feet aft. We were about as secure as we could make ourselves.
Jules had tugged the canoe forward and tied it alongside, and Jem went down and washed her hands to prepare our supper. We hadn’t intended on eating too much– there were plenty of activities for us still to come.
Jules and I pulled the cover over the mainsail and then unfolded the awning over that, going down each side adjusting the lines to keep the skirts down pretty low, to block the sun in the morning. I didn’t expect any of us would want to get up too soon. As we did that we heard the sound of a small outboard motor coming up the river. I wasn’t worried– we had plenty of time before he got close enough to see us. In fact we were just setting up the cockpit table under the awning by the time we saw their lights. Keeping quiet we watched them motor by, far out of the channel. We could hear the two guys talking out loud, which we always say is a dumb thing to do at night, because everyone can hear you. We kept our lights off and they never even looked over at us. I never even thought about having to put anything on. When he had gone on round the bend towards the Sweetwater boat ramp Jem stood up in the hatch with a platter of sandwiches. So we sat there sort of feasting on that till at least 10:00.
* * *
* * *
II
The invasion of Batsto
We slathered Off all over ourselves again– this is when Jem and Jules took the rest of their clothes off, and I fitted the mosquito screens into the hatches then. We weren’t using any lights down below but the red night-vision ones and we’d been speaking in whispers the whole time. It’s important to stay inconspicuous. ‘Have you heard anything?’ Jules asked me once, and we all stopped chewing to listen towards the woods.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s still too early yet.’
Jem nodded. ‘I know. Where are we going?’
‘Where do you want to go?’
They both shrugged, pretty much at the same time. ‘I don’t care,’ Jem said. ‘Maybe up the creek here to the bridge.’
I nodded. ‘Maybe.’
‘You have an idea,’ Jules smiled at me.
‘Maybe. I just want to know what you want to do.’
Jem thought. ‘It might be nice to visit the graveyard again. I love that place in the evening.’
I nodded. ‘It is nice. Very restful.’
‘I wish we could get the canoe up to the lake,’ Jules said. ‘I love that lake. I would love to canoe it.’
‘We never have, have we?’ I said. ‘I suppose we could carry the canoe over.’
‘Oh, please!’ Jem laughed, almost too loudly. ‘Three chicks carrying a canoe across the road in the middle of the night, like that?’
We all kind of laughed at that. ‘I was just thinking we could go see Batsto,’ I said.
‘Really?’ Jem’s eyes widened. ‘Tonight?’
‘Won’t they have guards?’ Jules wondered.
‘No one who would be awake in another hour or two,’ I said. ‘Only the ranger, and we know all about him.’
Jem nodded. ‘Yes. Just avoid any headlights, and he’s no problem.’
I smiled. ‘Light is his friend. It’s not ours. He needs it; we avoid it.’
‘Cool,’ Jem smiled.
‘What if there are dogs?’ Jules worried.
‘There won’t be. They’ll be tied up if there are. They’ll bark, we’ll run, and if we make it to the lake or the creek we’ll be fine.’
Jules nodded. We’d dealt with dogs before in the same way. ‘So we’re just going to run across the road? Where can we cross?’
I shrugged. ‘Anywhere. All we have to do is have no traffic for thirty seconds.’
Jem smiled again. ‘This rocks,’ she said. ‘I can hardly wait. And so what will we do there?’
‘Anything we want,’ I said, and leaned back in the cockpit seat. The half- moon was under a thin haze of clouds, as though a front were coming, but the barometer was staying steady. The night would pass quietly and calmly and it would be just as hot and mild tomorrow.
‘Oo,’ Jules said then, ‘we could play on the swings.’
‘They have swings?’ Jem wondered.
‘Yes! Don’t you remember?’
‘Barely,’ Jem said, and then suddenly were were all glancing round at each other and giggling.
Jem and Jules went for a little swim after that. I cautioned them to not be too energetic in the water– I guess it was just because I was feeling bloated from eating and so I went to the potty. They were still in the water when I came up and started getting the boat ready to leave. I guess it was about 11:00 then. It was still too early– there could be too much traffic– but I was also concerned about making our way through the woods t
o even get that far. Finally I called them both over and said we would do a recon, to check our perimeter.
Jem nodded from the water and then offered to swim a little up the delta to discover any evidence of people at the canoe-launch area. It’s about half a mile up the little river, but if there were any people there we’d hear them pretty far down. She disappeared for a while, doggy-paddling with scarcely any sound at all, and returned to say she had heard cars on the bridge and the waterfall beyond, but no voices or music or anything.
I nodded. ‘Good,’ I whispered, lending her a hand to get aboard. ‘As long as that’s clear, we won’t run into anyone in the woods. We can go in to the path and make our way up that way.’
Jem ducked under the awning then. ‘Okay. What are we bringing?’
I shrugged, standing there under the awning watching her drip all over the cockpit floor. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of anything we need.’
Jules finished flushing the potty and came back to stand up in the hatchway below us. ‘Should we take shoes?’
‘We could,’ I said. ‘But I was thinking we could just wade over to the bank and go in that way. No need to take the canoe in from here.’
We all looked over at the bank then. Scarcely twenty feet away it seemed like a dark, foreboding forest from which no one would ever return. I shook my head at that thought. It’s just a bunch of trees! We’ve been here before!
‘We’ll get muddy,’ Jules said. ‘The bottom is really gooky.’
‘We’re washable,’ Jem smiled.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And the less we bring the less we have to worry about.’
None of us had expected to bring flashlights. A flashlight is only good for protection against the people who see you because you are using it. Staying unseen is a far better defensive strategy. Besides I’ve always liked being completely natural in nature. There’s something really satisfying about strolling through the glory of some uninhabited woods with nothing to carry, nothing to wear, and nothing to worry about. I mean– we don’t even have earrings. Except maybe for shaved legs, the three of us standing there in the boat were no more altered from when we were born than mere growing up had altered us.
‘Okay,’ Jules said bravely then, turning round to gaze off at the woods, ‘are we just going to go, then?’
They both turned back and looked at me. So– I was still the leader, then. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Let’s just lock up and go.’
For us, ‘locking up’ isn’t really the most accurate term. We set the combination padlock on the companionway hatch, and we bolt the foredeck hatch from inside. The deeper of the two cockpit-seat lockers is locked with a padlock too, but in the shallow one, over the foot of my bunk, we stash the cell phone and a flashlight, carefully hidden in an old canvas drawstring sack in there with the winch handles and sail ties. We leave three clean towels draped over the lifelines with clothespins to hold them there– they’re navy blue and help screen the cockpit so we can crouch behind them to hide, if we have to get to the boat in that much of a hurry. The key switch for the fuel-tank shutoff is located in that locker too– and the key hangs in the one protected by the combination padlock. Since there’s more to fear from people on land than on water, we don’t worry so much about intruders seeing the bottom two rungs of the boarding ladder left down and so we’re able to climb aboard in a hurry from the safer stern end of the boat. With the boat tied up like it was tonight, we can slip the cable at the bow from the deck, pulling it around the tree and in after us as we reverse away towards the stern anchor. We can then pick up that one too and get down the river without ever having to step on dry land. For the few times we don’t take it ashore, the canoe lies along the side of the boat, leaning on two bumpers and moored securely with bow and stern lines and also a short length of cable we use with another padlock so that no one will be able to steal it easily. Tied like this it does not have to be moved immediately if we have to get under way in a hurry, but if we are already in the canoe we just tie the painter to the stern cleat as a tow line and let it bump around till we are safely away with the chance to adjust it properly.
So, with all these preparations done we lowered ourselves over the side and paddled gently and quietly up the cool current of the Batsto River. There are a few places where we can climb up to the bank easily and we went by the first two, choosing the third because it is closest to the path inside. In fact once I had got to my feet and scampered over the prickly grass to the path, there was a surprisingly good view of the little delta and the Mullica to where houses were lit up half a mile or more away. Just to the left lay Dove’s stern, safely hidden by the thick summer foliage of the woods. I was really very sure the two guys in the little outboard boat had no idea we were even here.
Jules and Jem stepped over the brush into the sandy bed of the path then, brushing off their legs and bottoms. We’d already coated ourselves with Off again but it doesn’t work forever, so we knew we shouldn’t be gone more than a few hours. ‘Okay,’ Jem said softly, ‘which way?’
‘This way, of course,’ I whispered. ‘The creek there stays on our left.’
Jem nodded. In the faint traces of moonlight peeking through the tree cover I barely saw her. More than just being dark, the woods were hot. Crickets and locusts sang out at the top of their lungs, and half the creatures of the woods were too restless to stay still. Even as we began to move onwards in the nearly pitch-black forest, something scampered away just to our right. Jules let out a little peep and then recovered herself. Our first rule: do nothing to give away our presence. And that includes remembering that there are no predators in these woods. The deer and rabbits are more afraid of us than we are of them.
I started leading the way, keeping my eyes down at the faintly lighter patches of sand on the path and placing each foot down as though I might discover hot coals or rusty spikes. After a few minutes our visibility got better, and we could all make out our surroundings. We had not been here in a month, and then at an earlier hour, so we’d been able to see our way. And we’d had flashlights and the cell phone and our handy air-horns and cans of pepper spray and mace. And we’d been dressed. But I have a good sense of direction and it was not hard making out the turns and angles of the path on its way towards Route 542.
The path was rutted from the wheels of a car, but I could not imagine anyone daring to drive back here at night. For one thing even headlights would not have shown much of the way. For another, the overhanging branches would have scratched up anyone’s car. And for another, the sand was too soft for decent traction. Maybe a 4-x-4 might have done it, but a 4-x-4 would have been too tall to avoid the branches. It was just as well no cars ever came through, because cars bring people, and the woods where we walked were almost pristine. There was no garbage, no unexpected piles of broken-bottle glass, no cardboard beer cartons, no used condoms. Our bare feet tread softly upon the bare sand, making no noise, disturbing nothing natural. Like Indians we made very good time, walking one after the other, and speaking only in whispers if we even spoke at all.
I wished we had brought a watch, but from last time I knew it would have been about ten or twelve minutes of leisurely strolling before we would come upon the road. The path broadened, and then there would be an intersection where it joined, at about a right angle, the one that turned parallel to the road and formed a kind of U-turn that any car could use on 542. A small clump of shrubs and trees, maybe only 20 feet deep, formed the only barrier between the U-turn path and the public road.
This was where it would get interesting.
‘Shhh,’ Jules said– the one with the most sensitive hearing.
I stopped, frozen in my footsteps. The others did too. ‘What?’ Jem asked.
‘Shhh,’ I said, and caught it.
It was the faint sound of a police radio.
Instantly our hearts raced. Probably a radar trap for the highway! –lying in wait just inside the clump of shrubs and trees, re
ady to pounce unawares on some late-night speeding driver. I thought, not moving, and decided we definitely had to have a better look. ‘Okay,’ I whispered quietly, though I might have only mouthed the words because those two were merely inches behind me. ‘Let’s see if he’s here to stay!’
Jem nodded. Jules caught my hand once, and I just smiled at her. Jem pulled her back, and I crouched down and started forward.
I made it round the very next bend and immediately a car went by on 542. It sounded fast– maybe it wasn’t really. But in the weird white glow of its headlights I made out the silhouette of a vehicle on the other side of the clump of trees and bushes. It was an SUV– probably a Jeep like the rangers use. It was not a regular patrol car.
I bent over even further and crept, very slowly, across the ‘U-turn’ path and into the shroud of the bushes. The ranger’s truck was about 40 feet away. I could make out clearly the shape of his head and arm along the top of the door and the faint glint of the chrome mirror and the eerie white glow of the side of the truck. He was just sitting there, in the dark, not reading the paper like some of them do. I realized he might have been able to focus even better on the surroundings, especially weird little sounds emanating from the forest just a few yards away. Then I stepped on something that crackled. It wasn’t even very quiet. I just stopped my breathing and slowly turned my head up to see if he’d noticed.
At that moment the radio in his Jeep spoke. He listened to the message and then moved to pick up the mic. ‘Yah, I got you there,’ he said– his voice sounded as clear as though he were right next to me. ‘Can’t believe she would really say that.’
