Killer Bees

One morning I am on a straight stretch of river ahead of the others. I am not thinking about anything, just paddling. Moving my boat through the warm water. The river is dun, the banks verdant, the sky pallid blue.

For no reason I turn my head and glance over my shoulder.

Mike and John are backpaddling wildly, trying to shove their boats in reverse. Rick is halfway between me and them. He is perhaps forty feet behind me, gliding serenely through the water. To his right is a rippling wedge moving directly for him. Bulbous nose and slick eyes and then nothing for fifteen feet until the ridge of a notched, swaying tail.

Mike has stowed his paddle and is scrambling for his gun.

I drop my paddle and jerk on the lanyard. The gun pops into my hand. I swing around in my cockpit and brace my elbows on the combing and try to compose myself.

Rick is almost dawdling. The croc is coming right at him but he is not speeding up or slowing down, he is paddling languidly, now and again turning his head to watch the croc swimming toward him.

Mike has his gun in his hands and his shoulders blocked. His boat is sliding soundlessly toward Rick. John is behind Mike, frozen.

Twisted around, the 9mm steady in both hands, consciously controlling my breathing, my arms slowly moving with the croc, watching Mike out of the corner of my eye with Rick between us and the crocodile going straight for him, I suddenly see what will happen. We will both fire at once and it will be like some slapstick shtick. I will kill Mike and Mike will kill me and the croc, seeing his chance, will drag Rick under.

Rick is relaxed. I don't know if he's even noticed the rest of us.

The croc is closing in. Thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet ...

Blup .

The croc vanishes.

I wait, holding mortally still, finger on the trigger, aiming, expecting a primeval salamander to surge from the placid water jaws clapping teeth gnashing and in one clean chomp take Rick's head right off.

Nothing. The river is blank.

Rick paddles past me, turns his head, and smiles.

We decide to travel in a convoy. Single-file, a hundred feet between each kayak, the gunboats in positions one and three.

We make up signals. Paddle held horizontally overhead with hands equally spaced---stop; paddle held vertically overhead---caution; paddle held vertically overhead and waved---emergency, come quick; paddle held horizontally overhead with blade extended to port or starboard---something is over there, look; paddle held horizontally overhead and vigorously stroking the air---paddle hard, now.

Who knows if they will help.

Mike and I alternate as point man. We both want it. It is the chance to play scout.

Now that we are seriously looking for crocs we see them. They are seldom out in the body of the river. They stay in the shade along the banks, their greasy green eyes peeping through the drowned trees.

When you are hunting you don't look for shapes or colors. If you do everything is an animal. Logs look like bodies, branches like claws, sticks like tails. Instead you learn to let your eyes ride over the landscape on their own. They will search for you. It is not form or hue they will pick out, but motion. Your eyes spot movement instinctively, even the breath of movement, and hold on it like a pointing dog until your mind sees what they see. It is evolutionary. The human nose is a joke, the ears barely adequate, but the eyes , the eyes of a human are the eyes of a predator.

It feels good to be hunting. The moment you begin to hunt, you cease being the hunted. It is a complete metamorphosis. To hunt is to believe in your own power, to believe you will win and not lose. It's a worthwhile feeling even when it doesn't work and you are defeated. And we all are defeated, just not by what we think will defeat us.

That night the sides of the river are so overgrown it's difficult to find a place to dock. It gets dark and we finally have to pull off right where we are. We thread through the sunken trees, jump into the dark water, haul our boats through the mud and tie up.

We tramp down a spot in a mangle of ferns and set up the tents by rote. John whips dinner together, something invisible at the bottom of the pot, then we repair to our separate tents like old couples. For a few minutes the beams of our headlamps roam the surface of our homes, seeking bugs. We kill all we can, click off our lights, lie back and sleep.

We wake in the morning with backaches. Lumpy beds and too many hours in the saddle. We move slow, our bodies taking longer to wake up than we do. Mike and John are finished dressing first and wander down to the boats. Rick and I begin to drop our tents, sliding the poles out. Rick has his pants on, his shirt unbuttoned. I'm in shorts, no shirt.

I'm messing with the broken poles of our tent. My back is turned and I hear Rick start slapping. Thap, thap, thap but I'm not paying attention. Then he starts cursing and Rick doesn't curse and then a low rumble comes over me and Rick begins to screech. It's a piercing cry, a sound I have never heard a man make before. I spin around to find Rick twirling like a dervish slapping and screeching and then he is flying toward me passing me and I'm running now too not knowing what is happening until the black cloud is all around me stinging me and Rick is already in the water and John is in the water and I'm diving in.

I am underwater swimming. I can feel the creatures fluttering in my flesh like thorns. I swim out where the current is and come to the surface and grab the limbs to keep from being swept away and start pulling myself back in toward shore.

Rick and John are there. Only their heads stick above the water. As I come in John shouts "Duck!" and their heads disappear and then I see the patrol of bees and go under myself but start giggling and have to come up.

Seconds later Rick and John pop to the surface.

"Looked like they got you bad," says Rick.

"Did they get you?

"Mostly on the head."

"Duck!"

Beneath the water we are safe. It is our carapace. But we can only hold our breath for so long. We come up together.

"Where's Mike?"

John points down the bank. Mike didn't go into the water. He's standing stock still, his hands clamped over his face, bees crawling all over him.

"Mike, you all right?"

"Just dandy." His voice is muffled.

Bees are everywhere. They are sending out patrol after patrol looking for us. We go under, hold our breath, come up.

"Rick, what happened?"

"Did you see the hive?"

"No."

"We camped right under it. Thing's big as a cage ball. It was hanging from that tree. I accidentally jabbed it with a tent pole."

We start laughing but our laughter gets garbled because we have to go under again.

When we come up, John whispers, "Look at the boats."

Our kayaks are carpeted with a fibrillating mass. We have been living on oranges and our nylon cockpits are soaked with juice.

Rick says, "We'll just have to wait it out."

We've been in the water half an hour when Mike moves. He takes one very slow step, then stops, his hands still over his face. Two minutes later he takes another step. In twenty minutes he has gone twenty feet.

The roar is subsiding now. The patrols are gone but our boats are still unapproachable. Rick and I are still hiding out in the water. John has pulled his shirt up over his head and started moving toward the boats, staying as much under water as possible.

Mike is taking one slow step at a time along the bank. He has removed his hands from his face. Bees land, crawl across his cheeks, along his lips, over his eyelids, then fly away. We wait and watch.

We have been in the water over an hour when Mike reaches the boats. The decks are still heavy with bees. With a bare hand he slowly wipes the bees off the rear hatch. They plop into the mud in a yellow clump. He opens the hatch, pulls out his cap with the bug net, gently wipes the bees off his face and neck, puts the cap on and drops the net. He reaches back inside the hatch, lifts out a pair of leather gloves, slides his hands inside. He is safe. He stands up, turns to us and waves with both hands.

"Hi guys."

We are incredulous. "Did you get stung at all!?"

"Nope." He shakes his head and grins. "So guys," suddenly he starts coughing with laughter, "How's the water?"

"What? What is it?"

"Forget about the crocs?"