"What else is there to see around here?" she asked sweetly as she loaded the food and the thermos into a basket. She had begun to suspect that he was making fun of her, though she wasn't quite sure.

"Oh, attractions."

"What kind of attractions?"

"Oh, you know. The kind of things we Southerners are famous for. I'll show you."

They emerged from the coolness of the trailer to the harsh reality of the white-hot summer afternoon. She watched from the porch as he backed his truck up to his boat and hitched it up. As they rattled down the driveway, they caught a glimpse of Spriggs on the hill beyond the clump of trees. Something glistened in his hands.

A few minutes later, they were pushing the boat into the river and jumping into it as it drifted out into the current. Winndrow awakened the old blue Evinrude with a quick pull of the rope, and they were off like a shot.

She sat in the front of the boat, facing him with the basket in her lap. She smiled quickly as the warm breeze off the water played with her dark hair, twirling it around her face in flashes of black and blue. Winndrow smiled back and wiped the spray from the river out of his eyes.

They rode the waves for awhile, and then Winndrow whipped the boat around a large island in the middle of the river. At the far end of the island, hidden from the Dover side of the river, was an inlet which turned into a creek. The creek, in turn, split the island into two large, but unequal halves as it wound like a snake through the center. Winndrow deftly steered the boat around the first series of bends in the creek to where the island rose up on both sides, creating the illusion of isolation. It was easy to forget that the pleasant little creek was in the middle of an island in the middle of a river.

Winndrow beached the boat, and they stepped onto the shore. With the basket in hand, they climbed the hill and sat down beneath a fat and lush shade tree.

"I used to come here as a boy," Winndrow said as they bit into their sandwiches.

"So you've always had a boat?" she asked, reaching for the thermos.

Winndrow smiled. "No. This is the eastern end of Pinkham Ridge."

She stopped chewing and looked hard at him to see if he was joking, but instinctively, she knew he wasn't.

"They damned the river a few years ago," he said. "I used to walk to this creek and camp out right about here. Now I don't know who owns it. The government, I guess."

"Maybe that's all of us," she said.

"Yeah, maybe," Winndrow replied wistfully. "But, as I said, the government don't like you messing with their stuff...whether or not you used to own it. Makes no matter."