I RAISED MY HAND, INTERRUPTING to check that I’d understood correctly:
“You took the boat out in the middle of the night?”
The next day it might pour with rain, evidence might be washed away—it had to be that same night and I needed to do it without Chris and Håkan knowing.
It took over an hour to recharge the motor. I sat in the barn, watching the numbers slowly count up. With the batteries at one hundred percent I set about transporting the engine to the river, forced to use the wheelbarrow in order to push it through the fields, trying not to make a noise, scared it would topple over. If Chris were to wake I’d have no explanation. Thankfully I reached the jetty undetected and found the process of attaching the engine to the boat easy. That must have been factored into Cecilia’s thinking when she selected it. I checked my watch, estimating that Chris wouldn’t be awake until eight at the earliest. To play it safe, I calculated that there were five hours to explore and return.
Adjusting the motor speed to the middle of the range, I pulled away from the jetty. They hadn’t traveled downstream—I knew that for certain. The river had been dammed in order to power a quaint hydroelectric station, designed to look like an ancient watermill. There was no way for a boat to pass. They could only have traveled upstream. My worry was how far. I secured my cheap plastic flashlight to the front of the boat, angling the beam at the water’s surface, attracting a cloud of insects, concerned someone would see me, but I held my nerve, in that small boat in the middle of that dark river while the rest of the world slept, the only person awake and searching for the truth.
The river followed gentle curves between fields belonging to various farms, man-managed and uniformly dull. I couldn’t see where Chris might have stopped, or for what reason, so I continued upstream, reaching the edge of the forests. It was like crossing the border into a different realm. The sounds changed. The feeling changed. From here on the river was completely enclosed. Whereas the farms had been silent, these forests were teeming with life, stirred into motion by my arrival. Bushes rustled. And creatures watched me.
Finally, with only forty percent of the battery power remaining, I stopped the motor, allowing the boat to drift. Logically I’d reached the rough point of their final destination, because any further and there wouldn’t be enough power to return to the farm. The reason I didn’t stop at fifty percent is because a return journey would require significantly less power since the boat would be traveling with the flow.
Holding the flashlight, I examined this place, the boat gently rocking under me. With the light I caught flashes of luminous eyes that, in a blink, were gone. The night air was clear. There was no trace of fog or mist. When I looked up at the sky I saw a spread of stars and thought to myself, as many stars as there were possible answers. Chris and Håkan could’ve moored the boat to any of the trees and walked through the forest to reach their destination. There was no way for me to be sure. I sat down, bitterly frustrated, conceding that I’d have to return without an answer.
As I secured the flashlight back to the front of the boat, I noticed that directly ahead there was a branch in the middle of the river stretching out toward me. Curious, I peered into the darkness, discerning a tree growing out of an island—an island shaped like a teardrop. I motored forward, grabbing the branch and mooring the boat to the tip of Teardrop Island. There were marks around the trunk, rub lines where other boats had moored, too many to count, an entire portion of the trunk worn smooth by a long history of visits. On the muddy bank just above water level were partial sets of footprints, some old, some new—the sheer number and variety telling me that far more people had been on this island than merely Chris and Håkan. I was struck by the realization that even though it was the middle of the night I might not be alone. I considered untying the boat and continuing my examination from relative safety, separated by a clear stretch of water. But I needed to see the island up close, not from a distance. I walked toward the cluster of trees situated at the rear of the island, the fat end of the teardrop. In between the trees there was a dark angular shape, a man-made shelter, a shack, a refuge constructed far away from the eyes of people, made from timber, not sticks from the forests, but planks secured with nails. The roof appeared watertight. This was the work of men, not children. Moving around the side I saw that there was no door, just an open space and a ragged curtain. I pulled back the curtain and saw a rug, a sleeping bag unzipped, opened out like a blanket, a kerosene lamp with sooty glass. The dimensions of the space were impossible to ignore, not high enough to allow a person to stand up but wide enough to lie down. The smell was unmistakably of sex. There were cigarette butts in the mud. Some were branded. Some were hand-rolled. I picked one up and sniffed weed. With a twig I raked through the ashes of a thousand fires, finding at the side the melted remains of a condom—an obscene streak of plastic snot.