Free Burial Ground by Malcolm Shuman Page B

it to me.
    “Water?” she asked sweetly.
    “I’ll go a little longer, thanks,” I said, and then kicked myself mentally.
    Just ahead of us was a bottom area, studded with jutting cypress knees. The surface was green with duckweed and I wondered if we dared try to cross. But before I could say anything, she was sloshing forward into the swamp, arms outstretched for balance. I started to call after her and realized it would do no good.
    I saw the water reach her calves, then her thighs.
    Grudgingly, I admitted I’d been wrong in my assessment of her ability do to fieldwork. All I could do now was follow.
    I tried to hurry, but the mud sucked at my feet and I felt like a man in a dream.
    Twenty feet ahead of me, she was hauling herself up out of the water, though it looked like she’d found a briar patch for her landfall.
    I wondered if she had a collapsible machete in her pack.
    Somehow she found her way out of the briars and I followed, leaving bits and pieces of myself on the thorns. She waited, standing atop a tree stump, and took a reading with her compass.
    “Straight ahead,” she pronounced.
    Who was I to argue?
    The undergrowth grew thinner, and I saw with relief that the surface we walked on was becoming sandy. The smell of the river was heavy now, and I listened for the sound of waves or boats passing, but as yet there was nothing.
    “Look,” P. E. called, pointing. There was a lighter area ahead, where more sun fell through the trees, and I knew it had to be the path that ran from one end of the island to the other. A few seconds later I emerged onto the trail. It had been made by the jeeps and ATVs going to hunting stands. I would have given several portions of my anatomy for an ATV just now.
    We reexamined the topographic sheet. The easiest way off the island was to follow the trail right, toward the tip, and then take what appeared to be a small bridge back across the bayou. If we did this, we would have a trek of half a mile across the floodplain and another mile or so through the hills on a winding track, before we hit the paved road, a mile north of where our cars were parked.
    “Are you sure you don’t want some water?” she asked.
    This time I swallowed my pride and said yes.
    I took a couple of gulps and forced myself to stop.
    “Thanks.” I handed the bottle back to her. The trees were thinner ahead of us and as we started toward them I saw a brightness that I knew was glare from the river. I made a straight line through the brush for the water, and emerged into the open. Below me erosion had etched gullies into the sand, from the bluff top to the water’s edge. The water itself was brown, and here and there tiny mirrors of sunlight sparkled on the waves. The opposite bank, nearly a mile away, was a low tree line, riding a white belt of sand. I thought about the escaped convicts and how desperate Angola had made them that they were willing to brave thirty miles of river. They’d beached near here, according to the guards, and then, being creatures of dry land, had headed inland and away from the river with its mysterious depths and devilish currents.
    I let myself down slowly onto the sand, and touched something eroding from the soil.
    “What do you have, a cartridge case?” she asked.
    I shrugged. “Brass.”
    “I’ve seen lots of it. This place must be a shooting gallery during hunting season.”
    “Must be,” I agreed.
    She peered down at me. “Say, are you going to make it? You look tired.”
    I started to tell her I’d dance at her funeral, but held my tongue. “I’m fine,” I said.
    “Are you sure?” She pulled the water bottle out of her pack: “Here. Take some. I don’t want you having heat stroke.”
    I was still staring at the water bottle when the brush crackled behind her. She let the bottle fall from her hand and it went rolling down the slope toward the river. Suddenly dogs were baying and there was a din of men’s voices and the crackle of radios. A man in