Life handed me a Halloween

story right on schedule.

High winds had kicked

up the Tennessee and we were tired of pounding toward Guntersville, so

when Dave found what promised to be a quiet anchorage on the last night

of our cruise, we turned into it with great relief. Paint Rock River,

flowing straight as an arrow into the Tennessee, is narrow and deep and

so heavily wooded that it looks like a tunnel through the trees.

We had spent a few

nights at marinas hard by noisy highways and welcomed the silence, the

remoteness, of the turgid Paint Rock. Our charts showed no roads within

a mile. By positioning ourselves nearly that far from the Tennessee, we

felt secluded indeed.

That feeling would

be less welcome in a matter of hours.

I thought later that

what happened would barely have registered if it had occurred in daylight.

Darkness has a way of sharpening our response to sound.

The moon was in its

last quarter, the sky overcast. Rain on and off. It was very dark.

We'd been asleep several

hours. Dave heard it first, and before awakening fully, thought it was

coyotes like those we'd heard yodeling in Kentucky some weeks before.

we both knew it was a man's voice calling loud through the trees. And

close by.

We barely breathed

as we listened for snapping branches or splashing water. He was shouting

something like, "Go, Donna ­ left, left, left, left, left."

Absurd, I know, but that's what I heard. And believe me, I had ample opportunity

to focus on that sound.

I rose carefully to

a sitting position and looked out of our uncurtained windows. There was

enough of a breeze ­ we knew that by the persistent rattle of the

flag in its mounting ­ to move the boat within the narrow confines

of a river littered with downed tree trunks, so it was difficult to determine

whether we were still heading upstream or had swung 180 degrees, or perhaps

were crosswise in the little estuary.

Wait. A light. Splashing

on the ground the way a flashlight does when its bearer is striding. "Go,

Donna ­ left, left, left, left."

We were invisible

­ no anchor light is required when a boat is moored out of a navigable

channel ­ unless the searcher turned the light toward the boat. He

never did. He either did not see us or was not interested.

Sounds from the previous

evening came