CALABAR RIVER
Will spun the wheel and the bow swept west toward some sticks standing in the water. As they motored closer, Jim saw a dark hole in the trees. Will slowed the engine. A creek overhung with branches indented the muddy river and tunneled into the swamp.
Hustle nosed into semi-darkness. Giant trees walled the sides. Their crowns met high overhead. There was no wind. The air felt thick, hot and was hard to breathe.
Will steered cautiously down the middle, his eyes moving between the sonar depth finder and the masthead. He veered left to avoid tangling the wind vane, anemometer cups and radio antennas in the overhanging vegetation. He swung right to motor around the prong of a sunken tree trunk, which the sonar showed taking up half the channel four feet beneath the surface.
Will throttled back to dead slow and the boat moved in near silence. After weeks and weeks on the open sea, Jim felt the close-dwelling walls of trees loom oppressively. He had never suffered from claustrophobia, but at this moment, as they moved deeper and deeper into the dark slot, he longed to be out in the open.
"A little creepy, isn't it?" said Will.
"More than a little. How long is this creek?"
"Better to ask how deep," Will replied, peering intently at the depth finder and suddenly altering course to shave one side.
Ahead, at last, the trees thinned. Jim caught glimpses of the dull sky and finally the creek emptied into a broad lagoon. Deep in a mangrove swamp, the circular body of water was positioned like the hub of the spokes of a half dozen creeks and streams.
A village of stilt houses simmered in the afternoon heat, lifeless, except for the smoke that drifted over tin roofs. They dropped anchor a quarter mile across the water from it. No one seemed to notice their arrival.
"Where is everybody?"
"The men are fishing. The woman are indoors. Nobody but a damned fool goes out in the sun."
Jim thought that at least they'd stick their head out the door. The place looked deserted. Canoes and skiffs littered a mud beach beside the dock. That narrow break below the smokey village was the only place where the mangroves didn't block access to the water.
"I see boats pulled up on the beach. They're not fishing."
"Maybe they're at a party."
"It doesn't look like they have much to party about. Shall we?"
"I'm going to clean up, first. Run ahead if you like. I'll blow the airhorn when I want you pick me up."
"It's a long way to row and hot as hell," said Jim. "Can't I take the motor?"
"They'll steal it," said Will.
Some children gathered on the dock. Jim inspected them in the binoculars. Stick children, skin and bones, the smallest naked, the older in a scraps of cloth, all barefoot. Suddenly they scattered. An outboard-powered canoe nosed out of a narrow tributary and headed for the dock.
A shapely young woman in a tight white dress ran down to the water, shielding her eyes with one hand and waving toward Hustle with the other.
"Well I'll be damned," said Will. "Give me the glasses."
"You know her?"
"Looks like I'm forgiven."
"For what?"
"Leaving...." Will answered and sung softly a new verse to the tune of the 'po-lice' taking him by the arm:
"'My good gal loves me,
Everybody knows.
'Cause she paid a hundred cash dollars.
Just to buy my suit of clothes.'"