The Pines by Robert Dunbar Page B

turned over to float on her back, and water dribbled out of her mouth, trickled shining down her chin and throat. Again she glanced up at the bank. Nothing moved, and she wondered what she kept expecting to see. All day, she’d thought these woods unutterably dreary and drab, but now in the lengthening shadows…
    Sand and pebbles, late afternoon sun full upon it, the bank shelved steeply down to the murky current. Light striped the water but couldn’t penetrate. Bright bands of sediment eddied.
    They kept clutching at her ankles—the black and twisted roots that grew out of the banks and deep into the water. And suddenly she recalled that Casey had mentioned giant snapping turtles. The voices of her friends drifted to her as she paddled against the stream toward them, her toes instinctively curled.
    “…weird…no beer tabs or broken bottles.”
    “Only because the water’s so dark, you know,” said Alan, lazing on the edge of the current. “Anything might be down there.”
    “…use to think cedar water was just like weak tea, but this looks more like coffee.”
    “Amelia, don’t you think you should get out soon?” Jenny stroked smoothly. “Before you’re permanently stained?”
    “Oh, Mom!”
    “While there’s still sun to dry off.”
    “I’ll watch her, Jenny.” Sandra scissored past.
    Turning her shining back to her mother, Amelia plunged at Casey, and he yelped as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, commanding him to carry her after Sandra. Watching their glistening limbs, Jenny suddenly felt drained, her leg muscles aching, feet throbbing from the day’s hike. Still, the warm water soothed; she wanted only to rest. Then an odd suspicion formed: the stream was attempting to lull her. Goose bumps rose on her arms and legs, and she wanted out.
    She kicked toward the spot where they’d left their packs. A clenched mass of roots gripped the shore, and below her, the streambed sloped away sharply, sliding grittily underfoot. To steady herself, she caught at a root, and her hand slipped down it. Slimy as a water snake, it left a wet sheath of green in her palm. She floundered, with one leg sunk to the calf in clammy silt, the streambed tilting farther beneath her. Hardly able to stand upright, she felt herself being dragged back into the middle of the creek and again tried to haul herself out. Clutching, she got a foot up on the bank, but it crumbled under her, sliding into the water. Panic gave her strength, and with a springing leap, she cleared the side.
    She clambered onto the sand as a big hunk of the bank fell away. “Oh!” She crawled faster. At last, breathing rapidly, she sat on a flat rock, well away from the edge. The sun slanted down on her, and a column of midges whirled in the light over the water. “Amelia?” Anxiously, she watched the others, as moisture spread around her on the rock. “Aren’t you tired yet?”
    Long-shadowed birches crowded near the creek, and tufts of pointed grass covered the sand hills. Beyond the bank, scrub merged with unbroken dwarf forest.
    She dried quickly. As she rubbed her naked body, beads of water rolled off, leaving a smooth residue, like a fine powdering of rust. Slowly, her muscles relaxed, yielding to the sunlight.
    Something fat and black glistened like a garden slug on the back of her ankle.
    Behind her, somebody spoke. “There’s a leech on you, girl.”
    They were making their final rounds of the day. The road between Chamong and Hobbston bent around a cranberry bog, where red and green mats of vegetation lay thickly on the water. They rounded another curve, and dogs filled the road.
    “Jesus Christ!”
    More than a dozen mongrels scrambled madly as Barry gunned the engine, whipping the wheel hard over. The car barely clipped a collie mutt, knocked it tumbling over the sand. Barry hit the brakes, and the police car scudded, plowing deep furrows in the road. Revolver drawn, he leaped from the car.
    Frozen, Steve gaped in