3
“This really was a fantastic idea,” I said. For only about the third time. “Thank you.”
“Again, you’re very welcome,” Mike said from the stern. “But how about a little less sightseeing and a little more helping out up there?”
I turned and reminded him, “You just told me to stop splashing you and whacking your paddle. You know, you can’t have it both ways.”
The soft slur of our paddles—okay, mostly Mike’s paddle—cutting through the smooth water, and of the canoe gliding atop it, was just about the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. And at the moment it was one of the only sounds, with most of the insects dormant. A few birds repeated the same whistling call, something like you’d hear from a coach on a sports field trying to get a lagging player’s attention. Occasionally, a car droned in t
