“No, I’m going to help you get the rest of these in, first.”

“Yeah, okay. Maybe dat’s better,” he said, looking worriedly at the group of boats that still needed to go out.

Together we wrestled the heavy ones into the water and got them floating behind Peter.

Peter’s boat kept trying to go diagonal on him, and he was having a heck of a time trying to keep it straight.

“Try the other paddle,” I suggested.

“What difference does it make?” he said, clearly frustrated.

“One has a bigger paddle part. Maybe it won’t make any difference, I don’t know.”

He threw the one he was using behind him in the boat and dragged the other one forward, looking at the end with a critical eye. “I don’t see any difference.” He put it in the water and moved it around. “Oh, wait. There is a difference. Cancel my last complaint.”

I smiled, noticing his boat was already more under control.

“I think when you haff two people in da boat, da one riding in da back gets the bigger paddle,” said Bodo, watching Peter stroke it through the water. Even just a small movement made the boat adjust quickly.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” agreed Peter, sounding a lot more confident now. Buster let out a sharp, happy bark, standing at back of the boat, looking at us with his tongue hanging out.

There was just one last boat, the one with the tiny engine on it, left to push out.

“Go get in your canoe, Bryn. I got dis one.”

I waded out into the water, trying not to stress out over the fact that it was getting pretty deep and that any alligator that wanted a snack could be under there and I’d never see it until it was too late.

I gave up on walking all the way to the boat, since the water was too deep, and used the rope to pull it closer to me instead. Once it was in front of my chest, I put my hands on the edge to jump in; but as soon as I pushed down on it, the whole thing tipped sideways. I tried three times before I smacked the water in frustration.

“How the heck am I supposed to get in this friggin thing?”

Buster was dancing around and whining, dipping the front of his body down towards me. He looked like he was thinking of jumping in to help me. I was relieved to see Peter put his hand on the dog’s back, settling him down. Buster abandoned the idea of saving me in favor of lick-attacking Peter’s hand.

“Wait a minute. I’m coming.”

Bodo swam over and got on the opposite side of the canoe. “I’ll hold dis side down. Now you use the edge to pull yourself in.”

This time when I grabbed it, the leverage Bodo gave me on the other side kept the canoe from tipping. The water added another forty pounds or so to my body weight, at least that’s what it felt like, but I was finally able to pull myself in and flop over into the boat. The seat shelf that was moulded to the inside of the canoe jammed into my back, and I knew I was going to be feeling that for few days after.

“Thanks, Bodo. Pull yours up next to me so I can help you.”

I nearly flipped my own canoe trying to provide him the counterbalance for his entry, but eventually we were all in our own boats and no longer tethered to dry land. It was a weird sensation, floating freely while also being connected to everything and everyone that meant something to me.

“I wonder if this is what Christopher Columbus felt like,” said Peter, paddling. He was already looking like a semi-pro the way he was maneuvering his canoe.

I followed behind, trying the different paddles so I could get a feel for them. I wasn’t nearly as coordinated at Peter was, no matter which one I used.

“Hey! You’re pulling my rear end off balance,” he accused, struggling to paddle backwards with his oar and readjust his position.

“I’m not even touching your rear end, you big baby.”

“You’re connected to it, though. Steer straighter.”

“I’m trying. It’s not that easy.” My canoe seemed to have a mind of its own, the nose of it first going left and then right.

“Less muscle, more finesse,” suggested Peter.

“Fine,” I grumbled. I didn’t like not being good at things. Usually when I tried something and put a lot of effort into it, I was successful. Canoes, so far, were one of my few failures, but I wasn’t going to give up so easily.

“Looks good from back here,” said Bodo. “I think we’re gonna be okay.”

“Not a problem!” shouted Peter.

“Yeah, it’s not a problem, Bodo,” I said, smiling with the happiness of our team-level success and the joy of mocking my friend.

“You guyss are making fun of me again, I know dat. But da joke iss on you, because now you are using my words. Dat means I am a leader and you are my followerss!”

“All hail King Bodo!” I said in a thundering voice.

“We are not worthy,” joined in Peter. He turned to shoot me a huge grin, making me thrilled to see him so happy. It was the first time in a couple days that the shroud of sorrow had truly lifted from his face for just a few seconds.

We continued down the easy-flowing waterway for what seemed like miles. It twisted and turned, making its way farther and farther into a more heavily-treed area. There were huge cypress hammocks surrounding us now, with long tresses of Spanish moss hanging down. The roots of the trees had grown into strange shapes, some of them stretching out to join the limbs and roots of nearby trees, causing them to look almost like people holding hands … or in some cases, strangling each other. The filtered light and the little bugs flying lazily around lent a very spooky feeling to the place. It was almost as if we were in another world entirely.

The current picked up, making controlling our canoes more difficult. The more heavily-laden boats got pulled this way and that, making the control of our three manned boats almost impossible. Peter’s canoe ran into an outcropping of a bank for the fifth time in as many minutes.

“Dammit!” he yelled. “I can’t get this thing to go straight anymore.” He was paddling backwards madly when he suddenly stopped and sat up straighter. “Oh my god,” he said, sounding like a happy child. “They are so cool!”

Buster ran to the front of the canoe, barking like crazy. He paused only to run over to Peter and then back to the front one before going nuts again. Something was seriously exciting to the fuzzy pink guy.

“What’s so cool?” I said absently, trying to keep from dragging the rear end of Peter’s boat around again, since it was making him so cranky. It was taking most of my concentration and back muscles.

“There’s like five … no seven … well, more like twenty pretty salamander gecko things here. They’re crawling all over this tree root mess.”

I looked up to see what he was talking about. We had plenty of those kinds of creatures in Florida. A person can’t walk across a sidewalk without twenty lizards scrambling to get out of the way. I swear, they stand on the edges of walkways and dare each other to cross whenever a giant human comes by.

I couldn’t see the salamanders because they were too far away and hidden. The place where Peter was gesturing towards was behind a big root that blocked my view. Buster sure seemed pretty excited about them, though.

“I can’t see dem,” said Bodo. “What are dey doing?”

“They’re crawling all over. And swimming too! I’ve never seen geckos swim before.”

Neither had I.

“What do they look like?” I asked.

“They’re black with yellow stripes on them. Long tails.”

Something was clicking in my brain, nagging me that these gecko salamanders were something I remembered seeing before.

“How many of them are there?” I asked again.

“A ton. More than ten. Maybe more than twenty. They’re everywhere. It’s like a nest of them or something.”

The word ‘nest’ set off the alarm bells. Then Bodo’s next words sent my pulse into overdrive.

“Um, guyss? I think dare’s a gator coming dis way.”

I turned around as fast as I could to look at him, ready to scream at him if he was joking around; but he was pointing just off to my right, and when I looked in the direction he was pointing, I saw that sure enough, a huge log-looking thing was making a beeline for Peter’s boat, its eyes and snout visible above the water as it cut a V through the current. It was moving fast - a hell of a lot faster than we were.

“Peter, those aren’t geckos! They’re baby gators! Get the hell out of there!”

Peter screamed like a girl and back-paddled as fast as his skinny arms could take him.

I did the same, feeling the burn in the muscles of my arms and back as I strained them to the maximum, trying to pull not only my boat, but Peter’s away from the nest.

Buster changed his focus from the nest to the gator. He ran to the side of the canoe and barked like a dog possessed. He wanted to get out of that boat and tear that gator to shreds, from the sound of it.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” cried Peter, his boat now moving back only a few inches from the nest. “Buster! Shut up!”

The gator was about fifteen feet away.

“Bodo, help!” I yelled.

I felt a jerking motion coming from behind me. Bodo had taken the rope tying us all together and was hauling back on it. It moved us towards him a little, but it moved him towards us too.

“Wait!” I yelled, dropping my oar. “You paddle back. I’ll pull Peter!”

Bodo grabbed his big oar and got up to kneel in the bottom of the boat. I spared him just a glance before I grabbed the chain that held Peter’s boat to mine. As soon as I felt my boat moving backwards, I pulled on Peter’s.

The gator was now only five feet away. Peter’s boat was less than two feet from the nest.

“Keep going!” he screeched. “She’s coming!”

As soon as the end of Peter’s boat bumped into mine, I dropped the chain and scooted on my butt up to the front of mine, leaning over to take the edge of his boat in hand. I jerked back on it hard, using the leverage of Bodo’s backward pull to keep my boat from moving forward.

Peter’s body leaned forward involuntarily as I pulled his canoe up alongside mine, putting a good six feet between us and the baby gators. He snatched at Buster and pulled him into his arms, putting his hand over the dog’s mouth to try and muzzle him.

Bodo continued to pull us back a few more feet, while Peter and I watched silently. The momma gator swam up to her babies and opened her mouth. Several jumped in, and for a second, I thought she was going to eat them. But then I noticed several more getting on top of her head. She closed her mouth partway and then climbed up out of the water, into the roots of the tree that had sheltered her babies.

“Holy crap. Did you just see that?” said Peter in hushed tones. Buster continued to struggle and whine in his arms, but Peter kept a hold on him.

“Yes. And I never ever want to see it again.”

“Paddles, guyss, paddles. Bodo iss getting tiredt.”

“Oh, yeah … sorry,” I mumbled, scrambling to my spot at the back of the boat and picking up my paddle on the way. I used the end of it to shove Peter’s boat away from me.

“Peter, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer it if you could avoid running into gator nests for the rest of this trip.”

“Shut up,” he said, putting Buster back down and stroking his oar into the water, moving to lead our convoy again. “It wasn’t me. It was the paddle.”

***

I decided that giving Peter a hard time about his paddling was a bad idea. My lack of canoeing skills was a slow form of torture for all of us.

“Here I go again,” sighed Peter. “Pushed into the bank because someone can’t seem to stop dragging my ass end over into the Netherlands. Good thing there’s no gator nest on this one.”