The Empty Chair

the shores of the Paquenoke at what was now called Blackwater Landing.
    She’d made hers out of two curved support rods from the old dinner table chair in the cabin. The rock was the one that Tom, the Missionary’s friend, had flung at her.She’d mounted it in between the two rods and bound it with long strips of denim torn from her shirttail. The weapon was heavy—six or seven pounds—but it wasn’t too heavy for Mary Beth, who regularly lifted thirty- and forty-pound rocks at archaeological digs.
    She now rose from the bed and swung the weapon several times, pleased with the power the club gave her. A skittish sound registered in her hearing—the insects in the jars. It made her think of Garrett’s disgusting habit of snapping his fingernails together. She shivered in rage and lifted the coup stick to bring it down on the jar closest to her.
    But then she paused. She hated the insects, yes, but her anger wasn’t really directed at them. It was Garrett she was furious with. She left the jars alone and walked to the door then slammed the stick into it several times—near the lock. The door didn’t budge. Well, she hadn’t expected it to. But the important thing was that she’d tied the rock to the head of the club very firmly. It hadn’t slipped.
    Of course if the Missionary and Tom returned with a gun, the club wouldn’t do much good against them. But she decided that if they got inside she’d keep the stick hidden behind her and the first one who touched her would get a broken skull. The other might kill her but she’d take one of them with her. (She imagined that this was how Virginia Dare had died.)
    Mary Beth sat down and looked out the window, at the low sun on the line of trees where she’d first seen the Missionary.
    What was the feeling coursing through her? Fear, she supposed.
    But then she decided that it wasn’t fear at all. It was impatience. She wanted her enemies to return.
    Mary Beth lifted the coup stick into her lap.
    Get yourself ready, Tom had told her.
    Well, that she had.

    “There’s a boat.”
    Lucy leaned forward through the leaves of a pungent bay tree on the shore near the Hobeth Bridge. Her hand was on her weapon.
    “Where?” she asked Jesse Corn.
    “There.” Pointing upstream.
    She could vaguely see a slight darkness on the water, a half mile away. Moving in the current.
    “What do you mean, boat?” she asked. “I don’t see—”
    “No, look. It’s upside down.”
    “I can hardly see it,” she said. “You’ve got good eyes.”
    “Is it them?” Trey asked.
    “What happened? Did it capsize?”
    But Jesse Corn said, “Naw, they’re underneath it.”
    Lucy squinted. “How do you know?”
    “Just have a feeling,” he said.
    “There’s enough air under there?” Trey asked.
    Jesse said, “Sure. It’s high enough in the water. We used to do that with canoes on Bambert Lake. When we were kids. We’d play submarine.”
    Lucy said, “What do we do? We need a boat or something to get to them.” She looked around.
    Ned pulled his police utility belt off, handed it to Jesse Corn. “Hell, I’ll just go out and kick it back into shore.”
    “You can swim that?” she asked.
    The man took his boots off. “I swum this river a million times.”
    “We’ll cover you,” Lucy said.
    “They’re underwater,” Jesse said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about them shooting anybody.”
    Trey pointed out, “A little grease on the shells and they’ll last for weeks underwater.”
    “Amelia’s not gonna shoot,” said Jesse Corn, Judas’s defender.
    “But we’re not taking any chances,” Lucy said. Thento Ned: “Don’t flip it over. Just swim out and steer it over this way. Trey, you go over there, by the willow, with the scattergun. Jesse and I’ll be over there on the shore. We’ll have ’em in a cross fire if anything happens.”
    Ned, barefoot and shirtless, walked gingerly on the rocky embankment down to the mud beach. He looked around carefully—for snakes, Lucy supposed—and then eased into the water. Ned breaststroked out toward the boat, swimming very quietly, keeping his head above water. Lucy pulled her Smith & Wesson from the holster. Cocked the hammer. Glanced at Jesse Corn, who looked at her weapon uneasily. Trey was standing beside a tree, holding the shotgun, muzzle up. He noticed her cocked pistol and he racked a round into the chamber of the Remington.
    The boat was thirty feet from them, near midstream.
    Ned was a strong